The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change
The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change – Review
Swedish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark has previously collaborated with veteran British science journalist Nigel Calder in this book, “The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change”, which emphasizes Svensmark’s hypothesis that a declining trend in cosmic rays penetrating the stellar system is tied directly with steadily decreasing cloud contain on Earth, resulting in global warming via stellar radiation. While this is an interesting hypothesis, it is also, regrettably, a rather simplistic one, which ignores the intricate contact of energy exchange between the world’s oceans and Earth’s atmosphere; an interaction that’s been officially recognized by meteorologists, other climatologists, oceanographers, and geologists. Nor does it take into account the great possibility that greatly increased carbon dioxide – and aerosol – emissions from artificial, artificial sources have had an significant impact on this intricate interaction between the oceans and atmosphere, and have greatly contributed deleteriously to global warming. Instead of this book, I enthusiastically recommend Chris Mooney’s newly published “Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming” which does an excellent job in currently discussing the difficult roles that both the oceans and the atmosphere play in adversely affecting not only our daily weather, but more importantly, long-standing trends in Earth’s climate. There are other, more notable, instances where celestial matter has had a great impact on not only Earth’s climate, but also its biodiversity, as evidenced by the terminal Cretaceous asteroid impact (the “K/T impact event”) approximately 65 million years ago which completely wiped out much of Earth’s biota, including many aquatic organisms, and especially, on land, the non-avian dinosaurs (Moreover, it is quite probable that most of Earth’s mass extinctions may have had celestial origins via asteroid impacts.). Regrettably for Henrik Svensmark, global radiation isn’t one of these famous instances.