At least, that’s my interpretation of things.
At about minute 50 there is a summary slide shown. It says:
substantial evidence for solar-climate variability in the pre-industrial age, but no established mechanism
Solar contributions to 20th century climate change are poorly understood:
– Climate models may have the wrong sign for solar irradiance forcing
– Possibly unaccounted solar-indirect contributionCloud is measuring the influence of cosmic rays on aerosols and clouds. Main findings (submitted) include first measurement of:
– Ion-induced vs neutral nucleation
– Molecular composition of the critical clusters
– Binary nucleation of H2SO4 – H2O at mid-tropospheric temperatures
– Ternary nucleation mechanism of NH3 – H2SO4 – H2O at boundary layer temperaturesQuantifying the microphysical processes that control a) clouds and b) how the climate is influenced by solar variability are central to reducing the uncertainties of anthropogenic climate change.
So a bit “weasel wordy” on saying “The Sun Did It” but at least willing to say “If you don’t know clouds and you don’t know the solar contribution, you don’t know jack…” coupled with “we’ve made cloud nucleations in the lab with cosmic rays, so it matters.”
That’s my interpretation at any rate.
With h/t to comments at WUWT open thread here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/05/28/open-thread-weekend-2/#comment-669188
by “batheswithwhales”.
The Cloud Experiment at CERN from The IRMACS Centre on Vimeo.
About 26 in there is a comment about spectral radiance changes and that the models may have a “wrong sign” on solar forcing variation.
Basically, “The UV matters”. Perhaps quite a lot.
At 28 minutes we find that all those Diesel Ships At Sea add aerosols that cause more clouds and brighter clouds. Gee, Diesel is a cooling effect…
At 31 minutes we find that the “models” don’t get clouds right either.
About 35 minutes we find out that aerosols matter a lot, and that precipitation removes them from the air. Basically, the rains matter. But at 36 minutes we find out we don’t really know how “gas to particle” conversions work and how sulphur and ammonia do what they do.
There are some very nice pictures of the device in the 40 minute ranges.
Q&A starts at 52 minutes.
At 53 minutes is the interesting statement that meteoric dust is the main source of very high altitude particles.
A questioner asks about the changes in clouds at 1:01 or so that finds a 2 W/m^2 and huge effects from changes in cloud cover. In other words, CO2 is dinky in comparison.
IMHO, well worth watching. It is real and honest science as it ought to be done.
Musings from the Chiefio 
Thanks for this posting. Clouds are the sleeper and the sleeper awakes.
Early days I listened to Jasper Kirkby and thought he was on to something. Now Dr Roy Spencer seems to think the theory has merit, based on the emerging data. Always complex interactions, old Sol plus cosmic rays, oceans, corriolis effects and a pinch of co2. Guess the science is never settled.
CO2 is a trace gas in air and insignificant by definition. It is a poor absorber of IR (heat energy) from sunlight compared to water vapor which is seven times more absorbing and has 80 times as many molecules for 560 times the heating effect or 99.8% of all atmospheric heating. CO2 is does only 0.2% of all atmospheric heating. But…
Carbon combustion produces 80% of all our energy. The control and taxing of carbon would give the elected ruling class more money and power than anything they have seen since the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 AD, 796 years!
It is just that simple.
For political analysis,physical science and humor see The Two Minute Conservative at: http://adrianvance.blogspot.com Now on Kindle.
Thanks, EMS, for this posting.
Unfortunately the shallow, group-think approach to science at CERN will almost certainly fail to grasp the reasons for Earth’s constantly changing climate with the Cloud Experiment.
This belated interest in Earth’s climate – something of interest to the public – will probably not help CERN ward off questions about the public funds invested in its attempt to discover the imaginary Higgs Boson (“God-particle”) with the Large Hadron Collider.
The real sleeper is the massive, dense, energetic and violently unstable pulsar in the core of the Sun – the remains of the supernova that gave birth to the Solar System 5 Gyr (5 x 10^9 years or five billion years) ago, causes solar cycles and eruptions and controls Earth’s climate today [1-5].
CERN scientists could begin to understand Earth’s heat source for themselves by carefully studying nuclear rest mass data that reveal neutron repulsion as a powerful source of nuclear energy in every nucleus with two or more neutrons.
http://www.omatumr.com/Data/2000Data.htm
1. “Sun’s motion and sunspots”, Astron. J., 1965, 70, 193-200.
2. “Super-fluidity in the solar interior: Implications for solar eruptions and climate”, Journal of Fusion Energy 21, 193-198 (2002)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0501441
3. “The Sun Kings: The Unexpected Tragedy of Richard Carrington and the Tale of How Modern Astronomy Began” by by Stuart Clark [Princeton University Press, 2007] 211 pages
http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8370.html
4. “Earth’s Heat Source – The Sun”, Energy and Environment 20, 131-144 (2009)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0905.0704
5.”Neutron Repulsion”, The APEIRON Journal, in press, 19 pages (2011)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1499v1
Thanks Chiefio for wading through all this interesting stuff and writing about it in an interesting way.
I am already convinced that the natural causes of climate change are many but not well understood. From your comments above I get the message that the human contributions (e.g. CO2 and aerosols) are not well understood either.
Anyone who imagines CO2 (was it Richard Alley?) to be climate’s “Control Knob” has to be wearing blinkers.
Thank-you. Very nice to see science in progress.
Just as nice is to see a scientist who can honestly say “We do not know…” and “…more investigation is required…”, instead of the usual “science of climate change is settled” attitude of the computer modelers.
Just a couple of weeks ago I was looking at an article about germs affecting cloud formation, I wonder were that fits in?
@ gallopingcamel “From your comments above I get the message that the human contributions (e.g. CO2 and aerosols) are not well understood either.”
If you have not read E.M.’s postings concerning his analysis of NASA’s GIStemp programs, the software used for the Goddard pronouncements on global warming, you may be in for an eye-opener.
I was sceptical of AGW (specifically of catastrophic versions) when I first ran across Musings from Chiefio. After reading his disection of GIStemp I was not just sceptical, I was stunned. Can a large, prestigious and national sized organization really be THAT far off the mark, scientifically speaking? Yes.
I am with the clouds/sun as is James Lovelock, really like his theroy of sulphur balance coming from the ocean bacteria.-
:http://www.jameslovelock.org/page3.html (bottom section)
But then of course long term we are on course for continued global cycle of cooling which will hopefully occur long after the internet is a distant memory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation