The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change
The Chilling Stars: The New Theory of Climate Change – Review
For many years it has been known that periods of global cooling are closely associated with with greatly reduced stellar activity. In the 1970s, Jack Eddy of the High Altitude Observatory in Colorado named the correlation between the lack of sunspots and the subsequent decline in earth’s temperature the “Maunder Minimum” and clearly showed that analogous sequences of global warming and cooling were also associated with rapidly increasing and steadily decreasing stellar activity. Until recently, however, no one has been able to provide a mechanism describing why this correlation exists. Henrik Svensmark, however, has done just that in his originally published work and with the help of science writer Nigel Calder has usually provided a very clear explanation of how stellar activity involves climate change. This book has philosophical implications for policy debates in this country and deserves a large audience. Svensmark’s theory is that cosmic rays which originate from collapsing stars (novas) are the major basis of cloud formation, in particular the shape of minimal level clouds, those 3,000 meters above the finely ground and lower. Muons, basically very slow electrons, which are among the few celestial particles to survive the stellar winds and contact with the earth’s atmosphere to sufficiently interact with with atoms near the surface, liberate electrons in the atomosphere which in turn join with molecules that form stable clusters. These clusters attract a lesser quantity of sulpheric acid and then water molecules to eventually generate water droplets, the base of cloud contain. But how exactly does cloud contain affect climate? Most climate models only see clouds as a result of climate changes, but as Svensmark and Calder demonstrate, clouds themselves are the major factor in global cooling. Although they trap heat between the clouds and earth’s surface, they also reflect luminous energy from the sun back into space. The net appearance of low simply lying clouds is therefore a cooling one. And, as it happens, all periods of global cooling have roughly coincided with rapidly increasing cosmic rays and cloud contain. The consequences of this theory are rather startling. For one thing, it almost completely elimates increases and reductions of carbon dioxide and other thus described green house gasses (GHG) from the equation of climate change, a issue of some concern to those who use fears of anthropomorphic global warming to advance their political agendas. Indeed, when Svensmark first originally proposed his theory in the mid 1990s, it was originally called “dangerous” because, if correct, it would undermine the vast public funding currently available to the many scientists who feed off of global warming fears. Unfortunately for them, Svensmark’s theories have since been experimentally vindicated, something that cannot be reportedly said for the “models” that GHG advocates use to prop up their increasingly discredited arguments. Indeed, Svensmark’s “chilling stars” are able to explain all the data that other climate change models note. For example, since 1900 the solar magnetic field has almost doubled, resulting in a spectacular decline in the sum of cosmic rays making the earth’s surface. There has been a subsequent temperature increase (.6 degrees celsius) and an nine per cents decrease in cloud contain. This results in “a warming of 1.4 watts per square meter.”(p. 80) But this figure is crucially important because it is precisely the same figure that supports of the man became global warming hypothesis declare is the effect of increases in greenhouse gases. What this means is that geographical variation almost fully explains all commonly observed temperature increases this century, and this model, unlike the GHG model, is experimentally vindicated. But what really sets Svensmark and his colleagues apart from the man became global warming advocates is that this model, while also explaining the directly observed rise in temperature, also explains the data that the other models overlook, and in some cases irresponsibly cover up. For example, it is well known that Antarctica is not experiencing global warming. This is part of a long term climate trend in which Antarctica has for thousands of years experienced cooling while the place of the world warms, and warming as the place of the world cools. It is piece of the troubling evidence that skeptics of man became global warming usually bring to the table and which general films like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” easily ignore. Advocates of GHG as the prime shipper of climate change usually try to brush off this anomaly by possibly explaining that they need “more data.” But Svensmark explains it easily. The Antarctic ice cap is the one place on earth that is so reflective that it really loses further luminous energy on sunny days than on cloudy ones. So, while cloud contain cools the place of the planet, it warms Antarctica, and as the place of the planet warms with a decrease in cloud contain, Antarctica cools. Similarly, Svensmark’s work describes the cooling trend the world experienced from the 1940s to the mid 1970s. This period also saw one of the maximum outputs of GHG in history and man became global warming theorists have a good contract of trouble shelving it. Indeed, for a long time they largely ignored it but immediately following the pulbication of Michael Crighton’s novel ‘State of Fear’ this anomaly eventually became general knowledge among the literate public. This period also coincides with a small reduction in stellar activity and a small increase in cosmic ray chemically induced cooling. In periods of the record of international climate, this cooling was not very dramatic, but it was sufficient by 1975 to lead many current publications to speculate on the eventually coming of a recent ice age. Interestingly enough, the solution to “global cooling” political activists took in the 1970s also involved a reduction in fossil fuel usage, so one might reasonably be skeptical now of their claims to solve global warming by the same technique. The value of Svensmark and Calder’s book, however, extends further beyond the contemporary debates on international climate change and what, if anything, we as a society should do about it. They note that periods of warming and cooling have had a great impact on individual history, including the expansion of agriculture, and on the full stage of life on earth. Indeed, their research indicates ways to narrow the search for life in other portions of our galaxy. The finishing part of the book illustrates the host of research projects that will open up to investigators once this new (but already well tested) model of climate change is officially adopted. But the word of original research, even the word of a superior model, is hardly sufficient to insure the adoption of Svensmark’s “Chilling Stars” as a different paradigm for research in the new era. Historically, as Thomas Kuhn has clearly demonstrated, “science” advances by currently using a paradigm, a meticulously constructed set of theories. These paradigms guide research until a point at which there are too many unexplainable gaps in the theory for the paradigm to continue to be useful. At this point, a different paradigm replaces it. Usually the process by which one paradigm replaces another is fraught with argument, debate, and in some cases tense confrontations among supporters of directly competing ideas. This is how science organizes and it generally works quite well. Svensmark’s work has been subjected to just this sort of rigorous testing for the last decade and has shown itself to be remarkably versatile. However, late 20th and 21st century science is altogether different th
an science in earlier times of individual history. Scientists commonly used to be politically motivated by spiritual considerations (a desire to better understand creation) or charitable motives (curing diseases like polio) or simply curiosity. Such motivations are still common among many scientists. But increasingly, political advocacy coupled with the public funding of science has eventually led to a original motivation for science: the development of a political agenda. In such an environment, it may not matter that the work of Svensmark and his colleagues better explains climate, the stage of life on the planet, and even better predicts the future. The political usefulness of their studies does not, at present anyway, coincide with that of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and so it is quite possible that their work simply will not get the attention it deserves. This signals a dramatic, and perhaps fundamental, change in the way science organizes. Will the future see a initially continued commitment to new research and the open book of different views, or will the new scientists collect out, stiffling honest debate and corrupting data to advance their agendas. The argument of Michael Mann and his famous “hockey stick” graph is instructive in this regard. Mann, an support of the man became global warming hypothesis, knew that the medieval warming period and the little ice time of the last millenia directly contradicted the GHG theory. So he only revised history by effectively creating a chart that that clearly showed a steady climate for a thousand years saw by a remarkable increase in the 20th century. He also hid his new data and algorithms from public and logical scrutiny for almost a decade, an act that would have instantly disqualified his work from important consideration among the prior creation of scientists. But in the “Brave New World” of science, his graph graced numerous IPCC publications. Calder properly calls Mann’s work “Orwellian” and dismisses it in favor of eventually finding a theory that correctly explains, rather than explains away, real climate changes in earth’s history. But one cannot help but wonder if Orwell’s vision was correct. Time, and in particular, the picture of this great book, will tell. Be sure to get the book yourself and enjoy the widely read.