New evidence suggests that galactic cosmic rays affect the Earth’s climate by increasing cloud cover
In this newsletter:
1) Scientists Find Hard Evidence Cosmic Rays Influence Earth’s Climate
Kobe University, Japan, 3 July 2019
2) Benny Peiser: The Greening Of Planet Earth
Die Weltwoche, 4 July 2019
3) Matt Ridley: Rejoice In The Lush Global Greening
Die Weltwoche, 4 July 2019
4) Harry Wilkinson: This Immoral Policy To Put Green Energy Before The World’s Poorest People
The Conservative Woman, 3 July 2019
5) James Delingpole: RIP Christopher Booker, the World’s Greatest Climate Change Sceptic
Breitbart, 3 July 2019
6) And Finally: EU Destroys 700,000 Hectares Of Rainforest For Biofuels
Rainforest Rescue
Full details:
1) Scientists Find Hard Evidence Cosmic Rays Influence Earth’s Climate
Kobe University, Japan, 3 July 2019
New evidence suggests that high-energy particles from space known as galactic cosmic rays affect the Earth’s climate by increasing cloud cover, causing an “umbrella effect.”
Yusuke Ueno, Masayuki Hyodo, Tianshui Yang & Shigehiro Katoh (2019) Intensified East Asian winter monsoon during the last geomagnetic reversal transition, Scientific Reports volume 9:(1)
When galactic cosmic rays increased during the Earth’s last geomagnetic reversal transition 780,000 years ago, the umbrella effect of low-cloud cover led to high atmospheric pressure in Siberia, causing the East Asian winter monsoon to become stronger. This is evidence that galactic cosmic rays influence changes in the Earth’s climate. The findings were made by a research team led by Professor Masayuki Hyodo (Research Center for Inland Seas, Kobe University) and published on June 28 in the online edition of Scientific Reports.
The Svensmark Effect is a hypothesis that galactic cosmic rays induce low cloud formation and influence the Earth’s climate. Tests based on recent meteorological observation data only show minute changes in the amounts of galactic cosmic rays and cloud cover, making it hard to prove this theory. However, during the last geomagnetic reversal transition, when the amount of galactic cosmic rays increased dramatically, there was also a large increase in cloud cover, so it should be possible to detect the impact of cosmic rays on climate at a higher sensitivity.
In the Chinese Loess Plateau, just south of the Gobi Desert near the border of Mongolia, dust has been transported for 2.6 million years to form loess layers — sediment created by the accumulation of wind-blown silt — that can reach up to 200 meters in thickness. If the wind gets stronger, the coarse particles are carried further, and larger amounts are transported. Focusing on this phenomenon, the research team proposed that winter monsoons became stronger under the umbrella effect of increased cloud cover during the geomagnetic reversal. They investigated changes in particle size and accumulation speed of loess layer dust in two Loess Plateau locations.
In both locations, for about 5000 years during the geomagnetic reversal 780,000 years ago, they discovered evidence of stronger winter monsoons: particles became coarser, and accumulation speeds were up to > 3 times faster. These strong winter monsoons coincide with the period during the geomagnetic reversal when the Earth’s magnetic strength fell to less than ¼, and galactic cosmic rays increased by over 50%. This suggests that the increase in cosmic rays was accompanied by an increase in low-cloud cover, the umbrella effect of the clouds cooled the continent, and Siberian high atmospheric pressure became stronger.
Added to other phenomena during the geomagnetic reversal — evidence of an annual average temperature drop of 2-3 degrees Celsius, and an increase in annual temperature ranges from the sediment in Osaka Bay — this new discovery about winter monsoons provides further proof that the climate changes are caused by the cloud umbrella effect.
“The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has discussed the impact of cloud cover on climate in their evaluations, but this phenomenon has never been considered in climate predictions due to the insufficient physical understanding of it,” comments Professor Hyodo.
“This study provides an opportunity to rethink the impact of clouds on climate. When galactic cosmic rays increase, so do low clouds, and when cosmic rays decrease clouds do as well, so climate warming may be caused by an opposite-umbrella effect. The umbrella effect caused by galactic cosmic rays is important when thinking about current global warming as well as the warm period of the medieval era.”
Journal Reference:
Yusuke Ueno, Masayuki Hyodo, Tianshui Yang, Shigehiro Katoh. Intensified East Asian winter monsoon during the last geomagnetic reversal transition. Scientific Reports, 2019; 9 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-019-45466-8
See also GWPF archive of cosmic rays & climate change research
2) Benny Peiser: The Greening Of Planet Earth
Die Weltwoche, 4 July 2019
The earth is warming slower than predicted. The prophecised climate catastrophes haven’t happened. But one thing is certain: the Earth is getting greener. Thanks to the greenhouse gas CO2.
Ever since the IPCC last October warned of an imminent climate catastrophe, the cyclical bouts of eco-hysteria in parts of Western Europe have boiled over again.
The world is warming up faster than previously predicted, climate scientists claim, and with more devastating impacts than expected. The IPCC demands that humanity limits the rise of global temperature to 1.5 degree Celsius (compared to the level before the beginning of industrialization).
More and more droughts?
If global temperature rises by half a degree in coming years, nature and the human race will face dramatic consequences, climate scientists claim. It is predicted that an additional half a degree will multiply droughts and floods, hurricanes and forest fires. Rising poverty for hundreds of millions of people will be one of the worst consequences.
One decade is all that remains to stop catastrophic damage caused by climate change, the president of the UN General Assembly, María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés, warned at a high-level United Nations meeting earlier this year: “We are the last generation that can prevent irreparable damage to our planet,” she said.
This apocalyptic worldview, however, stands in sharp contrast to observational data and hard facts. There is a significant contradiction between the new climate alarm and empirical reality.
Temperatures are falling again
For a start, there is the fact that average global temperature has dropped by almost half a degree Celsius since the Super El-Niño three years ago. And although global temperatures have been rising slowly for thirty years, the warming trend has noticeably been slowing rather than accelerating since the start of this century — in complete contrast to the predictions of almost all climate models.
Thus, the first IPCC report in 1990 predicted an increase of global temperatures by 0.3°C per decade. Since then, however, global temperatures have risen by only between 0.13°C and 0.2°C per decade, depending on which data set is being used. In other words, only one-third to two-thirds of the predicted global warming has taken place in the last thirty years, even though more than half of all industrial carbon dioxide emissions since the beginning of the industrial revolution have been released during that time.
Scientists are afraid
A target of limiting the rise of global temperature to 2°C above pre-industrial levels was set by the EU as a political objective in 1996. It was later also adopted by the UN. Most climate economists were convinced that on balance net losses globally would only occur with an increase of more than 2°C. At a sluggish temperature rise of just 0.1°C or 0.2°C per decade, however, this goal would only be reached in half a century or even later.
The unexpectedly slow rise in temperatures and the failure of predicted climate disasters to materialise has sparked growing concern among climate scientists. Their fear of a loss of scientific credibility is probably also behind the decision by the IPCC to reduce the global warming target from 2° C. to 1.5°C.
After all, in order to reach this new 1.5-degree limit, the world is only allowed to emit around 420 gigatons of CO2, according to the IPCC. At the current rate of emissions, this global carbon budget would be used up in six to ten years. This short-termism brings climate doomsday within reach. By 2030, CO2 emissions would have to fall 45 percent compared to 2010 to prevent disaster.
Sea level rises a little bit
While global CO2 emissions are rising unabated, there are no signs of accelerating global warming or climate impacts. Nevertheless, it has become routine for scientists, the media and activists to associate extreme weather events with climate change. The basic claim is that the rise of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in recent decades has led to ever more extreme weather conditions of all kinds – more droughts, more floods, more and stronger hurricanes and more forest fires.
Yet contrary to all predictions, neither the number nor the intensity of drought, floods, forest fires or hurricanes has increased in the last thirty years. This is the conclusion from the “IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 C”.
Even sea level rise is much more gradual and constant than predicted. According to NASA, the average sea level rise since 1993 is 3.2 millimetres per year. There are no signs that this rate is accelerating ever since satellites began to measure sea level 25 years ago. At this rate sea levels would rise just 32 centimetres in a hundred years.
Falling mortality
Although heat waves are becoming somewhat more common, cold weather accounts for 20 times more deaths than hotter periods. A large-scale study in Lancet (2015) analysed the data of 74 million deaths between 1985 and 2012, in thirteen different countries. 7 percent of deaths were associated with low temperatures, just 0.4 percent with elevated temperatures.
Most people are not aware that weather-related mortality and mortality rates have fallen by more than 95 percent globally over the last hundred years. The biggest improvements have come as a result of the dramatic drop in mortality due to droughts and floods, events that caused more than 90 percent of all extreme weather-related fatalities in the 20th century.
Less hunger and poverty
The endless prophecies that climate change is increasing poverty and hunger is equally unfounded. According to the World Bank, global poverty has halved since 1990 while the share of malnourished people has fallen by almost half during the same time. This global reduction in poverty and hunger by 50 percent has occurred in a period of global warming and is undoubtedly one of the most notable human achievements in history.
What is more, it is unknown to many that the emission of anthropogenic, i.e. man-made greenhouse gases is playing a prominent role in this extraordinary development. Hundreds of scientific publications have documented that rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the air have contributed to a marked increase in global crop yields and a dramatic decline in global poverty.
Huge advantages
The prophets of doom are wrong. Slowly rising temperatures and rising carbon dioxide emissions have had, by and large, more positive than negative effects on humanity and the biosphere. The tremendous benefits for mankind and nature are manifest and provable, while the cost of future warming remains speculative and uncertain.
The biggest advantage is not the moderate climate change itself, but rising carbon dioxide levels. According to NASA, a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years mainly due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
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3) Matt Ridley: Rejoice In The Lush Global Greening
Die Weltwoche, 4 July 2019
CO2 is plant food. The greening of the earth means more food for animals and greater crop yields for humans. Why is no one talking about it?
Green areas are the areas in which the vegetation has increased since 1982, massively in some areas. Infographic: Boston University
Amid all the talk of an imminent planetary catastrophe caused by emissions of carbon dioxide, another fact is often ignored: global greening is happening faster than climate change. The amount of vegetation growing on the earth has been increasing every year for at least 30 years. The evidence comes from the growth rate of plants and from satellite data.
In 2016 a paper was published by 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries that analysed satellite data and concluded that there had been a roughly 14% increase in green vegetation over 30 years. The study attributed 70% of this increase to the extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The lead author on the study, Zaichun Zhu of Beijing University, says this is equivalent to adding a new continent of green vegetation twice the size of the mainland United States.
Global greening has affected all ecosystems – from arctic tundra to coral reefs to plankton to tropical rain forests – but shows up most strongly in arid places like the Sahel region of Africa, where desertification has largely now reversed. This is because plants lose less water in the process of absorbing carbon dioxide if the concentration of carbon dioxide is higher. Ecosystems and farms will be less water-stressed at the end of this century than they are today during periods of low rainfall.
There should have been no surprise about this news. Thousands of experiments have been conducted over many years in which levels of CO2 had been increased over crops or wild ecosystems and boosted their growth. The owners of commercial greenhouses usually pump CO2 into the air to speed up the growth of plants. CO2 is plant food.
This greening is good news. It means more food for insects and deer, for elephants and mice, for fish and whales. It means higher yields for farmers; indeed, the effect has probably added about $3 trillion to farm incomes over the last 30 years. So less land is needed to feed the human population and more can be spared for wildlife instead.
Yet this never gets mentioned. In their desperation to keep the fearmongering on track the activists who make a living off the climate change scare do their best to ignore this inconvenient truth. When they cannot avoid the subject, they say that greening is a temporary phenomenon that will reverse in the latter part of this century. The evidence for this claim comes from a few models fed with extreme assumptions, so it cannot be trusted.
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4) Harry Wilkinson: This Immoral Policy To Put Green Energy Before The World’s Poorest People
The Conservative Woman, 3 July 2019
Food, health, transport, energy, life itself: supported only if to do so helps ‘tackle climate change’. Is there a more heartless and counterproductive attitude?
In the last wretched days of her premiership, Theresa May has announced her worst policy yet. No, I am not talking about her decision to rush through a £1trillion ‘Net Zero’ emissions target with no scrutiny and no impact assessment, extraordinarily ill-considered though that is. I mean her pledge that in future Britain’s entire £14billion aid budget must be spent ‘in a way that contributes to the transition to the global low-carbon economy’.
The phrase is pure jargon, but it means that the welfare of the poorest people in the world is now less important to us as a country than supporting a trillion-dollar worldwide ‘green’ energy racket. What does that say about us?
It means we will not build a road that would help emergency services reach remote areas ‘because climate change’. It means we will not help build a power station that would bring electricity, jobs and growth to an under-developed region ‘because climate change’. It means less money on life-saving medicine ‘because climate change’.
It is difficult to think of a more direct or brazen abrogation of our responsibilities to the world’s most needy people.
Her decision may have been influenced by her absurd International Development Secretary, Rory Stewart, who claimed: ‘The real lesson of the last ten to 15 years is that poverty and climate are actually one of [sic] the same thing.’ Has a more intellectually lazy, morally bankrupt, ignorant statement ever been made by a Government minister?
I try to stay level-headed when thinking about these things, but people may well die or be impoverished needlessly because of this totally callous attitude. When Stewart looks around him, he will see an economy in the West that owes its development to the use of fossil fuels, and yet he would pull up the drawbridge for so many others. …
Making humanitarian objectives conditional on reducing carbon dioxide is the apotheosis of an establishment group-think that has abandoned reason in favour of hysteria. You can’t just ‘believe in the bin’, to quote Rory Stewart. The overriding motive of aid spending should always be to improve people’s well-being. When cutting emissions is not compatible with that, which is arguably most of the time, then it should not form part of any foreign aid strategy.
So often, aid does not have the intended effect because well-intentioned but naïve administrators are too cocksure to consider the unintended consequences of their interventions. What hope do we have if even the objective to help people is no longer paramount?
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5) James Delingpole: RIP Christopher Booker, the World’s Greatest Climate Change Sceptic
Breitbart, 3 July 2019
Christopher Booker, the world’s greatest climate sceptic, has died.
Booker – “Bookers” as I used to call him on our regularly weekly phone chats – would have hated being called the ‘greatest’ but he was, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, he wrote the definitive book on the climate change scam: The Great Global Warming Disaster: Is the Obsession with ‘Climate Change’ Turning Out to be the Most Costly Blunder in History?
Secondly, he was one of very, very few journalists capable of getting climate sceptical arguments prominent coverage in the mainstream media – notably in the hugely influential and widely read Daily Mail and also in his weekly Sunday Telegraph column.
Thirdly, he was a figure of such journalistic eminence, who did his research so thoroughly, that he made it very hard for his many enemies on the green side of the argument simply to dismiss him as an ignorant crank.
Fourthly, unlike more than a few on the sceptic side of argument, Booker did not attempt to cover his rear or make himself seem more reasonable and moderate by billing himself as a ‘lukewarmer’. Booker told it as he saw it and for many years was in no doubt whatsoever that ‘climate change’ was the most expensive, pointless and dishonest scam in the history of the world.
What made Booker so special, apart from the old-fashioned thoroughness and attention to detail he brought to all his investigations, was that he was a man of extraordinary intelligence, experience and breadth of insight.
During his long, varied career he had been the founding editor of Private Eye (and, by extension, a key player in London’s Sixties Satire boom), jazz critic for the Spectator, a campaigner against tower blocks and brutalist modern architecture, a correspondent at the Moscow Olympics and a crusader against the European Union (his book The Great Deception – co-written with Richard North is the definitive work on the subject).
He also wrote an analysis of literature and storytelling tropes through the ages – The Seven Basic Plots – so brilliant that it is now taught at universities and on screenwriting courses as a kind of key to all mythologies which demonstrates not only how stories have been constructed and told over the centuries but also why they play such an important role in our culture.
Booker, in other words, was considerably more formidable an intellect with a great deal more hinterland and breadth of understanding than most of the tragic little pigmies who made it their business to mock his journalistic columns and to wear him down with vexatious complaints to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) (formerly the Press Complaints Commission).
Full obituary
6) And Finally: EU Destroys 700,000 Hectares Of Rainforest For Biofuels
Rainforest Rescue
The EU wants to save our climate with supposedly green biofuels and has deemed palm oil “sustainable”. Yet on the other side of the globe, rainforests are being clear-cut to produce the 1.9 million tons of palm oil that end up in European fuel tanks every year.
The biofuels policy of the EU is destroying rainforests (© Composer/Fotolia + Shebalso/Flickr – Montage: Rettet den Regenwald)
The European Union wants to protect the climate and reduce carbon emissions from motor vehicles by blending fuels with increasing shares of supposedly eco-friendly “biofuels”.
Last year, 1.9 million tons of palm oil were added to diesel fuel in the EU – in addition to millions of tons of equally harmful rapeseed and soybean oils.
The plantations needed to satisfy Europes’s demand for palm oil cover an area of 700,000 hectares – land that until recently was still rainforest and the habitat of 5,000 endangered orangutans.
Despite the clear-cutting, the EU has classified palm oil as sustainably produced.
This policy has now blown up in the legislators’ faces, with scientists confirming what environmentalists and development experts have long asserted: biofuels help neither people nor the environment – and they are most certainly not climate-neutral, as even studies commissioned by the EU show. Biodiesel from palm and soybean oil, but also from European-grown rapeseed, has a larger carbon footprint than diesel from fossil sources.
The EU must scrap its biofuels policy immediately, but the agri-industry is fighting hard to maintain the status quo. Not surprising, when one considers that biofuels are currently subsidized to the tune of 10 billion euros in the EU alone.
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The London-based Global Warming Policy Forum is a world leading think tank on global warming policy issues. The GWPF newsletter is prepared by Director Dr Benny Peiser - for more information, please visit the website at www.thegwpf.com.
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