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Science

Scientists Say Cosmic Rays May Cause Global Warming 80

Posted by timothy from the sell-cosmic-rays-pollution-credits dept.
Saint Aardvark writes "Researchers in Israel and Germany suggest that variations in cosmic radiation as the sun orbits the galactic core may be responsible for changes in the Earth's climate -- including more than half of the change in the 20th century. A PDF of their article is available from GSA Today or read the abstract for their Physical Review Letters article."
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Scientists Say Cosmic Rays May Cause Global Warming More

Scientists Say Cosmic Rays May Cause Global Warming

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  • Once again (Score:5, Funny)

    by EABird ( 554070 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @10:05AM (#6400343)
    Those damn Republicans always helping big corporations spew out cosmic radiation and causing global warming....

    ...oh, wait a minute....never mind.
    • I think we started getting bombarded with the cosmic rays shortly after Dick Cheney completed a trade mission to the Galactic Core.

      Haliburton is to blame, somehow.

  • something smells... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coaxial ( 28297 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @10:11AM (#6400381) Homepage
    I just don't cosmic ray variation would account for more than half of the 20th century's climatic change. The variation just wouldn't be that great given the fact that the solar system simply hasn't moved very far in 100 years.

    I'm just waiting for the antiscience republicans to jump on this. "See? Here's a study that says that cosmic rays cause climate change. Not greenhouse gases! See we were right to censor the EPA's report that global warming was primarly caused through human activity [abc.net.au]. Now let's continue with our report on how nicotine is not addictive [pbs.org], and creation science [icr.org] in our schools [msn.com]".

    • There was no censorship (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      " See we were right to censor the EPA's report that global warming was primarly caused through human activity."

      There was no censorship. A publisher using some self-restraint and standards in what they choose to publish is not censorship in any way. Since the EPA sections which were removed were bad, crackpot science, it is a good thing that the publisher of the report exercized a little editorial discretion.

      "I'm just waiting for the antiscience republicans to jump on this."

      How about the pro-science Re
    • I'm old enough to remember when Reagan's bizarro-world EPA chief James Watt said that trees cause air polution. This is another demonstration of politicians & pundits (seemingly mostly conservative talk-show hosts) willingness to use misdirection to distract people. "Forget about dependence on oil, look at this shiny hydrogen economy over here! Look at it!"

      (Note to Republican apologists: While certain aspects of Watts' statement might be chemically correct, they are of course misleading and irreleva
      • I'm old enough to remember when Reagan's bizarro-world EPA chief James Watt said that trees cause air polution. This is another demonstration of politicians & pundits (seemingly mostly conservative talk-show hosts) willingness to use misdirection to distract people. "Forget about dependence on oil, look at this shiny hydrogen economy over here! Look at it!"

        (Note to Republican apologists: While certain aspects of Watts' statement might be chemically correct, they are of course misleading and irrelevant
        • I guess you intend this as a joke? The article, which references the Reagan claim in a humorous way, is restricted to Eucalyptus trees and is dated 2001, long after the statement, and goes on to make fun of Dan Quayle. I think this fits nicely under my previous disclaimer.
      • Actually trees do cause pollution.

        Not all pollution happens outdoors, alot of the time indoor air is worse than the outside and alot of that pollution is from spores and pollen.
        • Well, that really puts us over the border into the dreamy land of loose semantics. By this measure cats and peanuts cause air pollution too. In a discussion of pollution caused by industrialization and whether or not it can and should be mitigated by legislation, which is a primary job of the EPA, statements like "trees cause air pollution" isn't particularly useful or relevant.

    • I see (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You are dismissing their research out of hand based on skimming a brief news report but it's the Republicans that are anti-science.
      • Republicans aren't anti-science, they're just
        pro-do-whatever-serves-me-NOW-and-damn-the-f uture- and-everybody-else-on-the-planet-except-ME.

    • I'm not saying I agree with their premise; however, your argument has a hole in it: you say The variation just wouldn't be that great given the fact that the solar system simply hasn't moved very far in 100 years.

      Well, that may be true; but, in the past 100 years there have been numerous distant super-nova. In the past 5 years, new emissions have been seen from the black hole at our galactic core, indicating that it may be becoming active again.

      What I'm trying to say, is that it's not necessary that

    • I just don't cosmic ray variation would account for more than half of the 20th century's climatic change. The variation just wouldn't be that great given the fact that the solar system simply hasn't moved very far in 100 years.

      You're missing a lot.

      One is that the sun's own cycles modulate cosmic rays. We see a decrease in neutron detections during peaks of the solar cycle, for example. This is 11 years (22 total for full pole reversal and return).

      Another thing is that comic ray levels don't smoothly mov

  • If you don't like PDF files (Score:5, Informative)

    by Pall Agamemnides ( 673074 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @10:16AM (#6400424)
    ...the HTML version of the article can be found here [gsajournals.org].

  • Just yesterday (Score:2, Interesting)

    by $exyNerdie ( 683214 )

    Just yesterday night I was watching this show on the Science channel [discovery.com]about the Stars [discovery.com].

    They showed the interview of guy who went to space in Apollo mission. He talked about his experience with Cosmic rays. He was telling that if he closed his eyes, he could see fast flashes of light moving across. They didn't know what it was. Later they found out that it was Cosmic rays (high energy particles from a supernova explosion). When they looked at their helmets under magnification, they saw trails where the cosmic
    • I don't know how exactly our atmosphere stops such high energy particles but I am glad it does !!
      It's called the Ionosphere, basically it is a layer of charged particles that deflect or absorb incoming charges.
    • Naaah, those cosmic rays don't kill you. They just give you the ability to stretch, or make you into a super-strong pile of orange bricks, or turn to flame and fly, or turn invisible and project a force field. (Or the Red Ghost and his baboons went through afterward, in a deliberately unshielded (rather than just inadequately shielded) spacecraft, and got even stronger capabilities.)

      On a more serious note, they estimate that the radiation exposure of a Mars mission will be equivalent to a lifetime of smoki
    • That's assuming that *all* of the particles are stopped. I have my doubts. In fact, a pet theory of mine is that frequent flyers have a higher risk of cancer.

  • nobody knows (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ravenousbugblatter ( 682061 ) <ravenousbugblatter@yahoo.com> on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @10:52AM (#6400711)
    This just contributes to the realization that we really don't know a whole hell of a lot about how the climate on earth functions. There is no way in hell we can say for sure what the cause of global warming is or if it even matters (in the grand scheme of things, since temperature cycles have been occuring for billions of years). This of course doesn't excuse civilization from being held accountable for our affects on the climate, but people and politicians (not sure they're really people) really should stop having such narrow points of view.
  • It was more fun telling people that it's the cow farts (and belches) responsible for global warming...
  • Idjiots.

    Evr'yone knows that Kosimac rays don't cause global warming. Heat causes global warming!

  • So? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ahaldra ( 534852 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @11:50AM (#6401078) Homepage
    That's quite an interesting theory. But people tend to forget this is just a theory and right now, it's standing on shaky legs. Lets take a look.

    "Cosmic rays [...] increase the number of charged particles in our atmosphere. There is some evidence that these may encourage low-level clouds to form, which cool the Earth."

    First they take an unproven theory, that high-charged particles create low-level clouds, then they put another theory on top of it, that the fluctuations in high-charged particle concentrations, and the (unproven) low-level clouding, and that ALWAYS results in climatic cooling.

    To construct this theory three techniques were used: "temperature, as inferred from ancient sediment records, carbon dioxide, as inferred from fossilized sea shells and cosmic rays, as inferred from meteorites."
    "All three techniques are open to interpretation. Plus, geologists consider one of the 'cool' periods in the mathematical reconstruction to be a warm period, Olsen points out."

    Cosmic rays resulting in a cloudier earth would be a far more appropriate Tag-line for the Article - since the mathematical model of temperature is at least in one part highly doubtful. Ah yeah and I won't even comment on the lurid slashdot headline which inspired all the trolls here.

    Even if some of the global warming taking place today can be blamed on cosmic rays (or better the absence of them), so what? Should we just close our eyes, telling ourselves "hey its fate. its cosmic. I am just a puny earthling and I can do nothing about it." and lay waste to our planet with a clean conscience? hell, why not blame Canada?

    Yes we do live in a complex environment. Blaming just one parameter for the fucked up outcome, although it probably didn't change much in the last billion years or so and not taking into account the new parameters (read: human influence) sounds pretty stupid to me.

    So yes, I do think these theories are pretty interesting, the more of the process we understand the better, but they shouldn't be used as an excuse to act stupid or ruthless.

    • First they take an unproven theory, that high-charged particles create low-level clouds, then they put another theory on top of it, that the fluctuations in high-charged particle concentrations, and the (unproven) low-level clouding, and that ALWAYS results in climatic cooling.

      Ever hear of a cloud chamber? It works by looking at the condensation trails that form as charged particles move through a water vapor. Charles Wilson won the nobel prize for its invention.

      From http://www.nobel.se/physics/education
    • Even if some of the global warming taking place today can be blamed on cosmic rays (or better the absence of them), so what? Should we just close our eyes, telling ourselves "hey its fate. its cosmic. I am just a puny earthling and I can do nothing about it." and lay waste to our planet with a clean conscience? hell, why not blame Canada?

      The "so what" is "so we shouldn't look to curbing greenhouse emissions to supress global warming." Making regulatory controls to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emiss
  • This sounds soo farfetched and, of course, is a perfect excuse to put up against Kyoto conference. Lovely, awesome Star Trek jargon making your point and numbing people's brains in passive accondesendance... "The bell curve" anyone?
  • our problem.

    Even if global warming is natural - either through cosmic rays or volcanoes or cow flatulance, it is irrelevant to the problem at hand. We should always strive to not contribute (read: accelerate) the problem, and we should even work against it in some respects.

    Global warming whether natural or man-made is a concern for all of us. We KNOW it is happening and we know WHY and HOW. We can't yet acertain WHO is repsonble and to what extent. We are still figuring that out. But we also do know that
    • and we know WHY and HOW...But we also do know that our involvement in the equation is at least not trivial.

      You have a lot more confidence in what a lot of greens (who ignore other science at their whim) are screaming than I do. I will concur that we know that it is happening, but we hardly know WHY and HOW. Hell, these same greens were screaming that we were creating another ice age back in the 1970's, so I fail to see how they have much credibility. Not only do we know now WHY and HOW definitively, we

      • Not only do we know now WHY and HOW definitively

        Preview and preview, and STILL I mistype. "Not only do we NOT KNOW WHY and HOW definitively...."

      • Agreed. And I think the biggest culprit is our orbit. If you take a look at average tempuratures for the last couple million years, you'll see a long term cycle and a short term cycle. Combined, they result in a rollar coaster ride that correlates to ice ages and the like. We are indeed in a warming trend, as inicated by our distance from the sun.

        But getting back to what I said before, we should endeaver to minimize our impact in all ways.

  • And that ozone depletion is still a threat.

    The ozone layer is there to protect us from this cosmic radiation (or cosmic rays as they call them in the articl, I wonder if there're any cosmic freds or cosmic mikes?). When we release toxic chemicals into the atmosphere we deplete the ozone layer. That makes it possible for this cosmic radiation to get through our atmosphere. This leads to global warming, and the increased cancer that seems to mildly correlate over the past half century to one century. Don
    • No, no, no. The Ozone layer stops UV from the sun. Cosmic rays, being quite, quite cosmic in nature, go where they will - ozone or no. (Behold their speedier cousins the Neutrinos - nothing stops those babies- lead? Pah!).

      *sigh* it's easy to get facts confused, especially in such a sticky field as Global Warm/Cooling, but it's fatal to do it on /. ;->

    • Actually the ionosphere and large radiation belts surrounding the earth stop (most) cosmic rays. They collide with charged particles there and get converted into other less energetic things. The piddly ozone layer would do NOTHING to slow down these rays, it simply blocks Ultraviolet radiation. Nothing man has done or could do (though some would argue HAARP might be able to cause problems) can dislodge that belt of protection (ionosphere, magnetic field) from around our planet.
  • A PDF of their article is available from GAS,/b> Today

    Or was is just me?

  • Evil pixies (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sbszine ( 633428 ) on Wednesday July 09, 2003 @08:10PM (#6404566) Journal
    Slightly offtopic, but...

    Whether fossil fuel emissions or cosmic rays or evil pixies are causing global warming, our cities are still enshrouded in horrible choking smog. Thus, I think we should ease up on the fossil fuels and pursue hyrdrogen or fusion or solar or whatever. If it has a positive effect on global warming, great. If not, at least we will be able to breathe clean air while we ponder how to defeat the cosmic rays / evil pixies.
    • Except that hydrogen is bad [cnn.com] too. I've become convinced there's nothing man can do that will not upset an environmentalist somewhere... (re: wind farms) So let's just nuke the planet and let Nature and God sort out the pieces. ;)
      • You've got a dead link there, but point taken: everything upsets someone. Hydrogen (from your url) hurts the ozone layer (though presumably not as badly as coal/oil), hydroelectric is bad for river ecologies, wind is bad for birds a.k.a. property values etc.

        Maybe we chain the pixies to exercise bikes or something.
  • There is alot of uncertanty when it comes to what is happening with the sun and warming from radiation that might be from outside the solar system.

    Earth isn't the only planet in our solar system to be warming up right now.

    Mars is warming
    http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/D a ilyNews/m ars011207.html

    Neptune's moon Triton is warming
    http://www.astro.up.pt/nd/astro_news/98/u k98-7.1.h tml

    Pluto may be warming
    http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/08/19/ pluto.war ming/

    And there is good evidence that the Sun'
  • ...Destroy the Sun!

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