Wednesday, March 16, 2016

(2B)Footnotes:Profiles in Malicious Deception:Svensmark+1000frolly


February 16th I posted "A Study in Miscommunication - Increasing Antarctic Ice Extent (is No) Mystery!" in which I describe the failings of a NASAGoddard video who's omission riddled and inept communication does more to confuse than clarify.

A couple days after my post I discovered that YouTube's 1000frolly had gotten to the video a few weeks before me and used it's unfortunate omissions as a platform for driving home his argument that CO2 science is a hoax and that scientists are clueless shills.

Now it's my turn to unpack 1000frolly's malicious fraud.  This is the footnotes to part two of my detailed review of his malicious deception saturated "NASA - The "Mystery" of Antarctic Cooling" (Jan 25, 2016).

For easy reference you can open this footnotes page and view it side by side with frolly's dialogue interspersed with my running commentary and corrections.

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{#1}  "see quite clearly... Yoshimura Gleissberg cycle"
It's arm waving, the Yoshimura Gleissberg cycle isn't even holding up to it's own predictions and it's certainly no help in understanding recent climate fluctuations.

The Gleisberg cycle implied that the next solar cycle have a maximum smoothed sunspot number of about 145±30 in 2010 (instead 2010 was just after the cycle's solar minimum) ....[27]

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About that barycenter and solar cycles... 

What drives the solar cycle?

March 30, 2015 by David Dickinson, Universe Today
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{#2}  "Mendoza published in 2007 how they found the 60th cycle was by using the isotope, identifying beryllium10"
True enough, but frolly misrepresents the Mendoza, Velasco study.

"Frequency and duration of historical droughts from the 16th to the 19th centuries in the Mexican Maya lands, Yucatan Peninsula"
Velasco, Mendoza  Climatic Change 83:1-2, 151-168.
Mendoza, Garcia-Acosta, Velasco, Jauregui, Diaz-Sandoval

Abstract finishes with:
"... Comparing natural terrestrial and solar phenomena, we found that the most sustained and strongest modulation of historical drought occurrence is at ∼60–64 years and is between the historical drought series and the solar proxy Be10. For modern droughts we notice that the coherence is similar among AMO, SOI and the solar indices. We can conclude that the sea surface temperatures (AMO) and solar activity leave their signal in terms of severe droughts in the Maya lands, however in the long term, the influence of the SOI on this type of phenomenon is less clear."
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{#3} "But of course if you're, um, Henrik Svensmark"
Yeah.  If you're Svensmark, you invest so much of your ego into your own personal vision, that you ignore solid critique.  

Experts consistently judge his work sloppy, incomplete and that he grossly oversells his conclusions (but then the bar in the contrarian media is quite low.).   Here's an overview of his work, with links to exhaustive scientific reviews of Svensmark's various claims, critiques he consistently sidesteps. (also see #15)

Henrik Svensmark

Rebuttal to Svensmark assertions: Svensmark has received a fair amount of attention in the denialist world. But why? He says he is being ignored. But Why? Is it because there is a great conspiracy of scientists trying to hide the truth about galactic cosmic rays? Or is that that Svensmarks conclusions were not supported by the work presented? 

As it turns out, his conclusions were not sufficiently supported.

An overview based on the work of Peter Laut.
The scientific rebuttal to Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis‐Christensen's work regarding solar as the cause for modern global warming.

Peter Laut found errors in their paper and published a paper addressing the corrections. When the errors are removed the conclusions and assumptions of Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis‐Christensen simply do not stand. Solar can not account for modern global warming.
2003 Paper: Solar activity and terrestrial climate: An analysis of some purported correlations.  Published in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics Technical University of Denmark, Department of Physics, DK-2800 Lyngby, Denmark (Status of 28. February 2003: In press) Received 14 February 2002; received in revised form 22. January 2003; accepted 4 February 2003

The Evidence is Against Svensmark's Assumptions … {Link}
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Taking Cosmic Rays for a spin
Gavin Schmidt @ October 16, 2006

"... Svensmark’s paper itself is indeed of some interest. Aerosol processes are among the most uncertain, and most studied, aspects of climate and these experiments (they bombarded a clean mixture of water, SO2, O3 and air with high energy UV and saw small H2SO4 droplets form) might be useful in adding to that field. One could quibble with the use of the high-energy UV (which never penetrates to the lower troposphere), and the high concentrations of SO2 and O3, but by far the biggest problems lie in the study’s relevance to the real world atmospheric conditions.

The working hypothesis of the cosmic ray crowd is that the (weak) correlations between low clouds and cosmic rays are causal (i.e. a cosmic ray increase – due to a solar magnetic field weakening – causes low clouds to increase, cooling the planet). The ‘spin’ on this new paper is that this has been demonstrated, and is significant, and furthermore, is responsible for the 20th Century rise in global temperatures. But let’s look carefully at what is required in this logic: ..."
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{#4} "... greenhouse effect does not appear to work very well in Antarctica"
Frolly ignores the following lessons in cascading consequences, which clearly explain the mechanisms responsible for the, much exaggerated Antarctica, cooling.

*  The Ozone Hole has actually created a significant reduction in that area's atmospheric insulation...
*  Thus heat escapes more readily through said "hole" in the atmosphere, over that already coldest region of Earth...
*  Thus extreme cooling on the Arctic continent/ice sheet results in even more frigid katabatic winds racing downhill towards the...
*  Ocean who's waters are warmer and producing much more water vapor than in past millennia...
*  Add to that ancient glaciers sliding into the ocean, melting, thus "freshening" regional ocean waters...
*  raising the freezing point, enabling faster ice formation...
*  more wind breaking up ice...
*  colder winds sweeping over that newly exposed freshened ocean water…
*  Ocean downwelling is also pulling heat out of that air and sending it into the depths...

. . . behold extreme growth in the maximum extent of seasonal winter sea ice extent, and regions of cooling on the continent.

Incidentally, why not consider the profound difference between seasonal sea ice and millennia old glacial ice, which is currently calving into the oceans like never before in human history?
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Ozone Hole Is Now Seen as a Cause for Antarctic Cooling
By Kenneth Chang  |  Published: May 3, 2002

"... While average global temperatures have risen about one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, Antarctica over all appears to have cooled slightly in the past few decades.

That has been puzzling, because the polar regions are thought to be more sensitive to warming trends than the rest of the globe. Even more puzzling, a small portion of Antarctica -- the peninsula that stretches north toward South America -- defies the cooling trend. It has been warming very rapidly, about five degrees over the past 50 years, 10 times the global average.

Writing in today's issue of the journal Science, Dr. David W. J. Thompson, a professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University, and Dr. Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colo., argue that the ozone hole, which has opened up each spring over Antarctica in recent years, may help explain both contradictory trends.

''Ozone seems to be capable of tickling the Southern Hemisphere patterns,'' Dr. Thompson said in an interview.

A vortex of winds continually blows around Antarctica, tending to trap cold air at the South Pole. In the new paper, Dr. Thompson and Dr. Solomon show that the winds have strengthened in the past few decades, keeping the cold air even more confined.

The peninsula, which lies outside the wind vortex, escapes the cooling effect, the scientists said.

They say the ozone hole may be the cause of the stronger winds. ..."
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Is There a Connection between the Ozone Hole and Global Warming?
~ ~ ~ 
About those ocean currents:

The Arctic melts, but oceans and ozone hole may cool Antarctica
John Marshall, June 6, 2014

In our computer simulations of the ocean and climate, the excess heat from greenhouse gases is absorbed into the ocean around Antarctica and in the North Atlantic. The heat does not stay in place but instead is carried around by the moving ocean. In the Southern Ocean around Antarctica, currents draw heat towards the equator, away from the pole.

Meanwhile in the North Atlantic, ocean currents carry excess heat poleward towards the Arctic. So while Antarctica warms little, or even cools, the Arctic Ocean’s temperature increases to such an extent that heat is actually lost to the atmosphere over the Arctic.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Antarctica isn't cooling near as much contrarians lead on, take a look:

ANTARCTIC TEMPERATURE TRENDS COMPARED
David Schneider, Project Scientist
To complement the publication, An assessment and interpretation of the observed warming of West Antarctica in the austral spring, comparing trend estimates in numerous Antarctic temperature data sets.
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{#5} "main opposing theory to the greenhouse CO2 effect"
Opposing theory to GHG?  Nonsense.  
It's like saying the Theory of Relativity "opposes" Newton's law of gravity.  "GHG, CO2 Effect" is part of fundamental physics.  
You can't pretend it away by finding new minuscule "effects". 

The Relativity of Wrong
By Isaac Asimov
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Senator Inhofe your "Global Warming Hoax" is a hoax !
A look at modern marvels that would be impossible without that understanding.
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First Direct Observation of Carbon Dioxide’s Increasing Greenhouse Effect at the Earth’s Surface
News release, Dan Krotz  • FEBRUARY 25, 2015

"... The scientists measured atmospheric carbon dioxide’s contribution to radiative forcing at two sites, one in Oklahoma and one on the North Slope of Alaska, from 2000 to the end of 2010. Radiative forcing is a measure of how much the planet’s energy balance is perturbed by atmospheric changes. Positive radiative forcing occurs when the Earth absorbs more energy from solar radiation than it emits as thermal radiation back to space. It can be measured at the Earth’s surface or high in the atmosphere. In this research, the scientists focused on the surface.

They found that CO2 was responsible for a significant uptick in radiative forcing at both locations, about two-tenths of a Watt per square meter per decade. They linked this trend to the 22 parts-per-million increase in atmospheric CO2 between 2000 and 2010. Much of this CO2 is from the burning of fossil fuels, according to a modeling system that tracks CO2 sources around the world. ..."
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{6} "There's enormous supporting evidence for this hypothesis"
Certainly no scientific support.  There is an enormous well funded Republican/libertarian PR machine produced enormous media support - but that's not science, that's jingoism and has nothing to do with learning.

Not Just the Koch Brothers: New Drexel Study Reveals Funders Behind the Climate Change Denial Effort.
By: Alex McKechnie | December 20, 2013

Institutionalizing delay: foundation funding and the creation of U.S. climate change counter-movement organizations
Robert J. Brulle
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'The Inquisition of Climate Science' - A book review
Michael Ricciardi  |  July 13th, 2013
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Report Highlights Failure of Media to Disclose Fossil Fuel Interests
Connor Gibson | 12 December 2012 | 9:40 AM

The ten groups that Checks & Balances examined are well-established fossil fuel apologists. Here is a roundup of watchdog sites with more information on each of these organizations' historic funding from and work for fossil fuel interests like ExxonMobil and Koch Industries (2006-2010 funding figures compiled in the Checks & Balances Project report):

American Enterprise Institute (AEI): $1.675 million from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)

Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI): $88,279 from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)
Cato Institute: $1.385 million from Koch/Exxon (2006-2010)
George C. Marshall Institute: $675,000 from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)

Heartland Institute: $115,000 from Exxon (2006-2010, see also $25,000 grant from Charles Koch in 2011)

Heritage Foundation: $2.523 million from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)

Hudson Institute: $75,000 from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)

Institute for Energy Research (IER): $310,000 from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)

Manhattan Institute: $1.38 million from fossil fuel interests (2006-2010)

Mercatus Center: $8.06 million from fossil fuel interest (2006-2010)
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{#7}  "You know Occam's Razor should cut out CO2, CO2 warming before you even start, you should look at the Sun."
Who's ignoring the sun?  Scientists and climatologists have been paying attention to the sun all along.  Claiming they don't is criminal. 
   
Chapter: 5 Solar, Astronomical, and Atmospheric Effects on Climate
James B. Pollack  |  NASA Ames Research Center
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Changing Sun, Changing Climate?
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Solar-observing satellites
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{#8} "you should look at the Sun"
They have and they do.

 Final Draft (7 June 2013) Chapter 10 IPCC WGI Fifth Assessment Report
Box 10.2: The Sun’s Influence on the Earth’s Climate

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{#9} "without (water vapor) you've just got the greenhouse effect which is quite small and not really very much to worry about"
Here's a perfect example of the Republican/libertarian PR machine believing it's okay to wish away reality.  Wake up!  We have plenty of inescapable down to Earth feedback mechanisms.  Hello, pretending they don't exist, won't make them disappear.

Perry Samson lectures - Feedback Mechanisms In Climate
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Direct evidence for a positive feedback in climate change
March 30, 2015
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ARCTIC CLIMATE FEEDBACKS: GLOBAL IMPLICATIONS
Executive Summary    5
Overview    6 
Arctic Climate Change    8 
Key Findings of this Assessment    11
    1. Atmospheric Circulation Feedbacks    17 
    2. Ocean Circulation Feedbacks    28 
    3. Ice Sheets and Sea-level Rise Feedbacks    39 
    4. Marine Carbon Cycle Feedbacks    54 
    5. Land Carbon Cycle Feedbacks    69 
    6. Methane Hydrate Feedbacks    81
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Sea Ice–Albedo Feedback and Nonlinear Arctic Climate Change Michael Winton
Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA, Princeton, New Jersey, USA
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{#10} "... in order to control the climate for this (Cosmoclimatology) effect to dominate climate changes then that's what you need, the amplifying mechanism."  
But, we're dealing with micro effects, nothing near enough to outweigh natural cloud condensate nuclei.

Dynamical evidence for causality between galactic cosmic rays and interannual variation in global temperature
Tsonis, Deyle, May, Sugihara, Swanson, Verbeten, Wang  |  December 17, 2014

Significance
Here we use newly available methods to examine the dynamical association between cosmic rays (CR) and global temperature (GT) in the 20th-century observational record. 

We find no measurable evidence of a causal effect linking CR to the overall 20th-century warming trend; however, on short interannual timescales, we find a significant, although modest, causal effect of CR on short-term, year-to-year variability in GT. Thus, although CR clearly do not contribute measurably to the 20th-century global warming trend, they do appear as a nontraditional forcing in the climate system on short interannual timescales, providing another interesting piece of the puzzle in our understanding of factors influencing climate variability.
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Cosmic Rays Not Causing Climate Change
By Paul Brown, The Daily Climate on November 11, 2013
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What's the link between cosmic rays and climate change?
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{#11} "Now what they do is effect clouds... formation... properties... brightness... how many of them there are."  Nonsense.  None of that has been documented.  Some micro molecules were produced.  That's it!  No, big deal.  Rather than significant climate regulator, it's looking more and more like Svensmark's mirage.

Physics of Cloud Formation and Development
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Clouds and Cloud Formation
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Frolly also fails to mention that his galactic ray effect could also lead to cooling:

A paper published in the journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics this August noted:

“An analysis of the very recent studies of stratospheric aerosol changes following a giant solar energetic particles event shows a similar negligible effect. Recent measurements of the cosmic ray intensity show that a former decrease with time has been reversed. Thus, even if cosmic rays enhanced cloud production, there would be a small global cooling, not warming.”

Two of the authors of that paper (Sloan & Wolfendale) have also just published another cosmic ray research paper in Environmental Research Letters, finding that the contribution of solar activity and galactic cosmic rays (combined) to global warming is “less than 10% of the warming seen in the twentieth century.”

Sloan & Wolfendale also examine the influence of cosmic rays on the climate over the past billion years in another new paper published in the journal New Astronomy. They find that changes in the galactic cosmic ray intensity are too small to account for significant climate changes on Earth. This was also the conclusion of a paper published this May in The Astrophysical Journal.

In another paper just recently published in Environmental Research Letters, Rasmus Benestad of The Norwegian Meteorological Institute compares measured changes in the amount of cosmic rays reaching Earth to changes in temperature, precipitation, and barometric pressure measurements. Benestad finds no statistical evidence that cosmic rays can explain the recent global warming.

Finally, a paper published last month in Geophysical Research Letters compared measurements of cosmic rays and cloud cover changes, and found no detectable connection between the two. This study is consistent with many previous papers finding that cosmic rays are not effective at seeding clouds.

Thus every step in the galactic cosmic ray-climate hypothesis is fraught with problems.  (http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/nov/12/global-warming-humans-not-cosmic-rays)
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{#12} "Seems these high-energy cosmic rays seemed to particularly influenced low clouds"
Well, no.  Look at what the CERN CLOUD experiment actually achieved:

The CERN/CLOUD results are surprisingly interesting…

"... However, aerosol nucleation experiments are not usually front page news, and the likely high public profile of this paper is only loosely related to the science that is actually being done. 

Rather, the excitement is based on the expectation that this work will provide some insight into the proposed cosmic ray/cloud/climate link that Svensmark (for instance) has claimed is the dominant driver of climate change (though note he is not an author on this paper, despite an earlier affiliation with the project). Indeed, the first justification for the CLOUD experiment was that: “The basic purpose of the CLOUD detector … is to confirm, or otherwise, a direct link between cosmic rays and cloud formation by measuring droplet formation in a controlled test-beam environment”. 

It is eminently predictable that the published results will be wildly misconstrued by the contrarian blogosphere as actually proving this link. However, that would be quite wrong.

We were clear in the 2006 post that establishing a significant GCR/cloud/climate link would require the following steps (given that we have known that ionisation plays a role in nucleation for decades). One would need to demonstrate:
  1. … that increased nucleation gives rise to increased numbers of (much larger) cloud condensation nuclei (CCN)
  2. … and that even in the presence of other CCN, ionisation changes can make a noticeable difference to total CCN
  3. … and even if there were more CCN, you would need to show that this actually changed cloud properties significantly,
  4. … and that given that change in cloud properties, you would need to show that it had a significant effect on radiative forcing.
Of course, to show that cosmic rays were actually responsible for some part of the recent warming, you would need to show that there was actually a decreasing trend in cosmic rays over recent decades – which is tricky, because there hasn’t been (see the figure). ... {link}"
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What's the link between cosmic rays and climate change?
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Bottom line, "Even if what Svensmark says is true, he's multiplying the unnoticeable by the inconsequential"
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{#13} "So you got more solar activity, you get less cosmic rays coming into the lower troposphere. So you get less cloud formation,"
In Svensmark's imagination.  As for our living planet and how clouds are known to be formed, take a look:

Cloud & Precipitation Physics and Atmospheric Chemistry

Chemistry Physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere are often intertwined and influencing each other. One of the most obvious examples of this mutual influence is the formation of clouds. It is commonly thought that clouds form when the air is saturated with water vapor, but the real process is much more complicated. 

Studies show that without the help of condensation nuclei or ice nuclei, small particles in the air that promote the formation of cloud droplets or ice crystals respectively, it would require several hundred percent relative humidity to initiate the condensational process. Different chemicals have different efficiencies in achieving nucleation. Hence the chemical type of particles may have great influence on cloud and precipitation formation.
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Cloud Formation and Development




What exactly are clouds? A common answer from many lay people is that clouds made up of concentrations of water vapor floating in the air. Although this answer is understandable from an intuitive standpoint, it is wrong. Clouds are actually made up of liquid water, in the form of tiny droplets that are so light that they are able to remain airborne without being overcome by gravity. This makes sense because water vapor is always present in the air, but it is invisible. Clouds, on the other hand, are very visible, as is the liquid water of which they are comprised. 

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{#14}  "Here's a carbon14 record of the last thousand years which again is proxy record.  I mean it's not fraudulent like the hockey stick."
It's revealing what frolly chooses to trust and not to trust.

Likewise, he couldn't resist a crude malicious swipe at Dr. Mann, the man contrarians love to hate.  

Interestingly a global community of experts recognize Dr. Mann as an accomplished quality scientist, who's work has stood up to intensive scrutiny.  Take a look at their verdict: 

Mann's dissertation was awarded the Phillip M. Orville Prize in 1997 as an "outstanding dissertation in the earth sciences" at Yale University. His co-authorship of a scientific paper published by Nature won him an award from the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in 2002, and another co-authored paper published in the same year won the NOAA's outstanding scientific publication award. 

He was named by Scientific American as one of fifty "leading visionaries in science and technology." The Association of American Geographers awarded him the John Russell Mather Paper of the Year award in 2005 for a co-authored paper published in the Journal of Climate. The American Geophysical Union awarded him its Editors' Citation for Excellence in Refereeing in 2006 to recognize his contributions in reviewing manuscripts for its Geophysical Research Letters journal.[63]

The IPCC presented Mann, along with all other "scientists that had contributed substantially to the preparation of IPCC reports", with a personalized certificate "for contributing to the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 to the IPCC", celebrating the joint award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize to the IPCC and to Al Gore.[64][65][66][67]

In 2012, he was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union[2] and awarded the Hans Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union for "his significant contributions to understanding decadal-centennial scale climate change over the last two millennia and for pioneering techniques to synthesize patterns and northern hemispheric time series of past climate using proxy data reconstructions."[3][63]

Following election by the American Meteorological Society he became a new Fellow of the society in 2013.[68] In January 2013 he was designated with the status of distinguished professor in Penn State's College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.[69]

In September 2013, Mann was named by Bloomberg Markets in its third annual list of the "50 Most Influential" people, included in a group of "thinkers" with reference to his work with other scientists on the hockey stick graph, his responses on the RealClimate blog "to climate change deniers", and his book publications.[70][71] Later that month, he received the National Wildlife Federation's National Conservation Achievement Award for Science.[72]

On 28 April 2014 the National Center for Science Education announced that its first annual Friend of the Planet award had been presented to Mann and Richard Alley.[73]
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{This is where the grand conspiracy ideation steps in - the whole world is lying about the science, because they want to take away American right-wingers guns and rights, or some crazy shit like that.} 

 A look at McIntyre's crusade of crazy-making:
McIntyre's Mission: An Obsessive Quest to Disprove Michael Mann's Hockey Stick
By Kyla Mandel • Sunday, November 30, 2014
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Why not allow the man to explain it himself.
Myth vs. Fact Regarding the "Hockey Stick"
Mike Mann | December 4, 2004 
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{#15} "... not fraudulent like the hockey stick."
If frolly paid attention, he'd know that with continuing research, it's now a team's worth of robust hockey stick shaped graphs.

Enough hockey sticks for a team
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The Hockey Stick Controversy
Many denialists have claimed that the Hockey stick was wrong and they can prove it because a congressional subcommittee said it was wrong. Is there anyone on the planet that doesn't think a congressional subcommittee can be wrong? Nevertheless, here we show, and reference, the facts regarding 'The Hockey Stick' and the argument.
pastedGraphic_1.pdf

"It's a funny thing. As soon as you say something is controversial, it becomes controversial. The scientific reality of the 'Hockey Stick', is completely uncontroversial when you consider the statistical significance of the arguments presented.

As usual, people are taking the science out of context of its actual relevance. The hockey stick is still a hockey stick and still relevant science. It was never removed from IPCC reports. It is a solid piece of a puzzle that shows a serious change in our climate system that is not only human caused, but profoundly impactful on the global economy of system interactions.

The 'hockey stick' is probably one of the most scientifically reviewed items in the history of modern science.

When all was said and done, the mistakes that mathematician Steven McIntyre and economist Ross McKitrick pointed out, to a congressional subcommittee, were 'statistically insignificant' and deemed irrelevant to the overall strength of the model.


What is even more interesting is that you can throw out the MBH 'hockey stick' and still see with all the collected science that the climate is still warmer now than in the MWP (medieval warm period)."


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{#16} "Here's a result of Svensmark cloud chamber which basically shows the nucleation can occur in the atmosphere caused by cosmic ray interaction so eventually you could see aerosols forming and sow clouds."  
Eventually, perhaps, likely, no.  
Here's an expert's description of what Svensmark has accomplished and all he hasn't accomplished, ...

‘Cosmoclimatology’ – tired old arguments in new clothes

In a recent issue of the journal Astronomy and Geophysics (A&G), Henrik Svensmark coined a new term: ‘cosmoclimatology’ . I think ‘cosmoclimatology’ is a good and refreshing name for anything combining our cosmos with our climate. However, all other aspects of the article I found very disappointing. We have already covered most of these topics before, but the A&G articles provides us with some new aspects to discuss. 

Furthermore, Svensmark is the Director for Center for Sun-Climate Research, Danish National Space Center, and therefore influential. He is also the co-author of a recent book with Nigel Calder that received some attention. Furthermore, a laboratory experiment of his also managed to make some headlines. It seems that solar forcing is one of the sceptics’ last trenches in the debate about climate change. In my view the A&G paper therefore merits a comment as long as the same old and worn arguments resurface without discussing misgivings from the critics.

There are a number of issues which really make the A&G paper poor in my view. One is the neglect in addressing old criticisms of the hypothesis that galactic cosmic rays (GCR) change our climate by modulating clouds (see here, here, & here). Svensmark is very vague on the lack of any trend in GCR or other solar proxies since 1952. 

I confronted him about this question on an European Geophysical Society (EGS) conference in Nice a few years ago, and have since published a paper also making the point. The A&G article makes selective references, without answering the serious criticism forwarded by Damon & Laut (2004), Laut (2003), or myself. To be fair, the critical paper by Kristjansson and Kristiansen (2000) is cited, albeit only to say that Svensmarks’s own conclusion is “a counter-intuitive finding for some critics“. The remaining treatment of critical aspects is completed in the A&G article without further qualifications other than the following passage (my emphasis):

The chief objection to the idea that cosmic rays influence cloudiness came from meteorologists who insisted that there was no mechanism by which they could do so. On the other hand, some atmospheric physicists concluded that observation and theory had failed to account satisfactorily for the origin of aerosol particles without which water is unable is unable to condense to make clouds.

I don’t think this is meant as a joke, and I don’t know if the article tries to make a point about classifying critics and supporters of his ideas as ‘meteorologists’ and ‘physicists’ (I’m a physicist). But that’s a tiny detail compared to the more substantial misconceptions embedded in this passage. There are plenty of ‘seeds’ in the air on which water can form, also known as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN). According to my old text book ‘A Short Course in Cloud Physics’ by Rogers and Yau (1989, p. 95 in Third edition): “Condensation nuclei of some sort are always present in the atmosphere in ample numbers: clouds form whenever there are vertical air motions and sufficient moisture”. The CCN tend to consist of mineral dust, sea salt, or sulphur-based matter.

I have serious misgivings concerning the following – vague yet false – statement put forward in the A&G article :

Attempts to show that certain details in the climatic record confirm the greenhouse forcing (e.g. Mitchell et al., 2001) have been less conclusive. 
By contrast, the hypothesis that changes in cloudiness obedient to cosmic rays help to force climate change predicts a distinctive signal that is in fact very easily observed, as an exception that proves the rule.

Again, no further qualifications or references. The irony is that Svensmark ignores (in addition to the lack of trend in GCR) the fact that the night-time temperature has risen faster than the day-time temperature, which I did pester him about on a Nordic Meteorology Meeting in Copenhagen in 2002. A journalist from Jyllands Posten present at the conference got the message, as my criticism was echoed in a news report the following day (“Klimaforskere i åben krig” [translation ‘Climate researchers in open war’], May 28, 2002): It’s tricky to explain how a warming caused by decreasing albedo would be stronger at the night-side (dark) of the planet.

Another newer puzzle is the surprisingly good correlation between low clouds and GCR (se figure below), since higher clouds (global mean cover ~13%) or middle clouds (~20%) which are not influenced by GCR, mask the lower ones (which represents between 28% and 30% of the globe). It’s indeed a surprisingly good fit between the two curves in the A&G article (reproduced below), considering the time structure of both the high-cloud, middle-cloud, and low-cloud curves, and the satellites cannot see the low-level clouds where there are higher clouds above blocking the view. The fact that the variations are small (~1% amplitude!) compared to the total area, suggest that the overlap/masking effect by the higher cloud must be very small for a high correlation to shine through the upper clouds. Even if the clouds hypothetically were completely determined by GCR, one would expect to see deterioration of the correlation if viewed from above due to the presence of higher clouds not influenced by GCR. Another issue is that the cloud data used in this analysis was only based on the infra-red (IR) channel, and a better analysis would include the visible observations too, but if the visible data are included, then the correlation is lower (private communications, Jørn Kristjansen). ...

This is only half the article, plenty more interesting details at: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/cosmoclimatology-tired-old-arguments-in-new-clothes/
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Also see: 
This is what a scientist sounds like, Dr. Randall on Clouds and such.

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