Cosmic Rays, Not Human Activity May be Accelerating Climate Change

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February 12, 2007

Cosmic Rays, Not Human Activity May be Accelerating Climate Change

Montagne_1London's Daily Telegraph reports that Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, believes that the planet is experiencing a natural period of low cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere, which is responsible for much of the global warming we are experiencing.

Svensmark claims carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity are having a smaller impact on climate change than scientists think. If he is correct, it could mean that mankind has more time to reduce our effect on the climate.

The controversial theory comes one week after 2,500 scientists who make up the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change published their fourth report stating that human carbon dioxide emissions would cause temperature rises of up to 4.5 C by the end of the century.

Mr Svensmark last week published the first experimental evidence from five years' research on the influence that cosmic rays have on cloud production in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Journal A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. This week he will also publish a fuller account of his work in a book entitled The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change.

A team of more than 60 scientists from around the world are preparing to conduct a large-scale experiment using a particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland, to replicate the effect of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere.

They hope this will prove whether this deep space radiation is responsible for changing cloud cover. If so, it could force climate scientists to re-evaluate their ideas about how global warming occurs.

Mr Svensmark claims that the number of cosmic rays hitting the Earth changes with the magnetic activity around the Sun. During high periods of activity, fewer cosmic rays hit the Earth and so there are less clouds formed, resulting in warming. "Evidence from ice cores," he said, "show this happening long into the past. We have the highest solar activity we have had in at least 1,000 years."

Humans are having an effect on climate change, but by not including the cosmic ray effect in models it means the results are inaccurate.The size of man's impact may be much smaller and so the man-made change is happening slower than predicted.

Some climate change experts have dismissed the claims as "tenuous". But there is a growing number of scientists who believe that the effect may be genuine.

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Comments

Earth crust Plate movements (ie. continets floating around)
may have dominant effect of icy and warm ages.
In addition the galaxy rotates and every sometime our arm may point at Cold or Warm (i.e. gamma ray and other radiations) parts of the universe.
This may influence cycles on planet Earth.
Human influence is also a fact.

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