See O'Too and Cosmic Ray in the Climate Stakes Cup

Well, it’s nearly time for the great race. No, not small beer events such as the Melbourne Cup, the Grand National, the Kentucky Derby or the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. They only have a piffling few hundred million dollars staked on them. Hundreds of billions will be gambled on the big one, the Climate Stakes. In view of the importance of this event it may be valuable to look at the form and breeding of the various contenders.

Easily the favourite, the contender on which billions have already been staked, is the Chinese Irish entrant See O’Too. See O’Too is by Eyepea See out of Big Computer. The world’s media sings the power of See O’Too, especially in his anthropogenic form, every day. He is credited with the ability to kill the Great Barrier Reef, flood the Sydney Opera House, drown low lying land, melt glaciers, kill polar bears, cause drought, disease, floods and hurricanes and more. Most of the world is so sure that See O’Too will win that many think that the only hope is that he can be nobbled by reducing fossil fuel consumption.

The Earth’s climate has always varied and See O’Too was an entrant in all of those countless thousands of changes. His record in all of those changes is very poor. See O’Too has not even got a place in any of them. He didn’t perform in the Medieval warm period; or the Little Ice age; or the Roman warm period; or the Minoan warm period; or any of the major ice ages; or any of the frequent periods when there was no ice anywhere on earth; or in the (at least two) snowball earth episodes when there was ice at sea level at the equator.

See O’Too did not cause any of those events and in his anthropogenic form could not conceivably have done so until 1900AD at the earliest. The brute fact is that there is no correlation at all between CO2 and climate variations. With that feeble track record it is astonishing that See O’Too remains the firm favourite in the Climate Stakes.

Another runner, a far distant outsider in the betting, is Cosmic Ray. Poor old Cosmic (by Doubting Thomas out of Sceptical Scientist) is regarded by many as being a silly horse, a nag that all Climate Stakes’ experts see as a donkey that is backed only by the ignorant or by those who have been bribed by coal or oil interests.

However, any glance at Cosmic’s record over the last few billion years shows that in every single previous climate change event he has been a consistent place getter, usually the clear winner. The correlation between climate and levels of very fast cosmic rays reaching the earth is excellent.

A scientific report prepared earlier this year for the EPA Office in the US was critical of the science supporting human induced global warming/climate change. In March the report was “choked off” - prevented from going up the chain of command in the government. That action, which has all the appearance of gross political interference in science, prevented the criticisms from being available to the Congress when it voted on the issue. A major 94-page “Comment” on the document was leaked by Alan Carlin from within EPA.

In part the “Comments” deal with the issue of which horse, See O’Too or Cosmic Ray, is the better bet for the Climate Stakes. On page 54 of the document Carlin states:

“Besides the most apparent comparisons between global temperatures and CO2 levels, the CO2 only and the sun/cosmic ray hypotheses imply a number of predictions involving observable evidence. An interesting comparison of the predictions of the CO2 and the sun/cosmic ray hypotheses with available data is:”

See O’Too’s performance is weak to say the least, and in some cases such as the Ordovician temperature data, the stupid creature seems to have shot out of the stalls - backwards.

The fact that there is a strong correlation between temperature/climate variation and fast cosmic rays does not necessarily demonstrate a causal link; (however, where there is no correlation as is the case with CO2 then the chances of a causal link must be minimal or zero). A possible causal link was originally proposed by Henrik Svensmark, notably in The Chilling Stars, a new theory of climate change (Svensmark and Calder), which built on a number of journal articles over the previous decade.

It is known that the greatest effect on global temperature is water, especially in the form of low level clouds, because of their high ability to reflect the heat of the sun back into space. Svensmark proposed that some cosmic rays, the ones that are going very fast indeed and are called muons, provide the nuclei (tiny drops) required to initiate the formation of water droplets. Hence, he suggests, if there are a lot of high speed cosmic rays reaching the earth there will be more cloud and so a lower temperature.

The number of high speed cosmic rays reaching the earth depends on a number of factors. One, which changes very slowly over millions of years, is whether the solar system is in a part of the galaxy where there are a lot of cosmic ray sources. Those sources are old, clapped out stars that have died spectacularly as supernova.

That can explain very slow, huge climatic change such as major ice ages, long periods where there was no ice at all, even at the poles, or a “snowball” Earth; but it cannot explain the quicker changes over a few thousand or a few hundred years.

The sun has a major magnetic field and the Earth is inside that magnetic field. Because cosmic rays are electrically charged they get pushed around by the Sun’s magnetic field and many are deflected away so reducing the number of cosmic rays reaching the Earth.

But the Sun’s magnetic field varies a lot. It follows that when the Sun is magnetically weak more fast cosmic rays reach the Earth and we get more clouds and hence a cold period. That certainly seems to have been the case in the bad period known as the Little Ice Age. The Sun was very quiet throughout that time. The Sun got more active in the mid 1800’s and slowly the Earth crawled out of the Little Ice Age. (And a good thing too in my opinion.)

With very little financial backing Svensmark set up an experiment to see if some cosmic rays could produce nuclei that could instigate cloud formation. The results suggested that it was possible; however, much more “heavy duty” experimentation was and is needed to examine the issue properly. After many years of delay and antagonistic obstruction, a major experimental arrangement is due to start operating very soon at CERN, almost the only laboratory with the capability of producing the high speed particles needed for the work. Preliminary results may be available in 2010. As a minimum, drastic See O’Tooist actions should be delayed until the results of that work are available.

Of course, if it transpires that climatic change is a consequence of events far outside the Earth, then it will be certain that our species cannot possibly influence or prevent that event. Any resources expended to try to “stop” change will be a total waste. So, unlike for See O’Too, puny humans - even the most arrogant - can work out that Cosmic Ray or any other natural factor cannot be nobbled by anybody. Even if our species all committed suicide it would have no effect.

So the position in the Climate Stakes is that the favourite, See O’Too, has no record of success at all in causing climate variation and is hence a very poor nag to put money on. Since it is almost certainly not going to be even a place getter, probably will not get to the starting gate and may even run the wrong way round the track, it is utterly nonsensical to waste time and money to nobble the poor beast.

Public pundits continue mindlessly to chant that the discussion about the Climate Stakes is all over. They say that the “science is settled, definite”. That is untrue. An example of disagreement between scientists on the issue is that when Big Computer was impregnated with data by Eyepee See it was instructed to assume that carbon dioxide remains in the air for 50-100 years before it is absorbed into the ocean. A whole string of scientists, notably Segalstadt at Oslo University, using a number of different methods all aver that the gas only stays in the air for about seven years. However a very recent IPCC scientist claims that it stays almost forever. Maybe Segalstad and the others are all wrong, maybe the IPCC is wrong; but clearly the science is not settled at all and to say that it is, is a perversion of the truth.

If, however, the cause(s) of climatic change are external to mankind and even external to the Earth itself then either Cosmic Ray or some other presently unknown entrant is going to win. In which case our response should not be, cannot be, to try to “stop” change; we should organise ourselves and our treatment of the environment so that we, and it, are more sustainable and able to withstand the changes that will inevitably come sometime or another. We should try to “ruggedise” ourselves and the world so that it can better withstand the shocks.

As Segalstad puts it: “The anthropogenic contribution and its influence are so small that our resources would be much better spent on other real challenges that are facing mankind.” Those challenges are environmental, economic, geo-political and social.

For a tiny fraction of what is being expended, and is proposed to be expended, backing See O’Too we could make really major improvements that would be certain to be of help some time in the future.

Issues such as research and development into the efficient use of land and water; the breeding of plants capable of withstanding a lack of, or an excess of water; adjusting the land ownership laws to allow for variation in sea levels; development of domestic animals and plants better able to withstand higher or lower temperatures; a reduction in the use and dependence on the use of liquid hydrocarbons (for both sustainable and geo political independence reasons); and careful protection of all ecosystems and an examination of optimal human population numbers are but a tiny sample of issues that could, for a relative song, make a lot of difference to our capacity to meet the climatic and other challenges and opportunities that will occur in the future.

All the indications are that many of the leaders of the nations, including Australia, are totally committed to See O’Too and his prophet Gore. They believe in his inevitable success in the Climate Stakes. What chance is there that they will suspend their non scientific theism and start thinking rationally?

Sadly there is not a lot of hope at all.

In chess the Danish gambit is a highly speculative, high risk opening that is seldom used because it has a bad record. Many of the world’s leaders will go to Copenhagen later this year for the running of the Climate Stakes. By backing See O’Too they will be playing the mother of all Danish gambits.