by Richard Schulman
The Democrats and mainstream media are continuing their decades-long campaign to convince Americans that continued fossil fuel use is about to cause an irreversible climate catastrophe. This fossil-fuel alarmism is now a central feature of the campaigns of every single Democratic presidential candidate.
We now know that the main driver of long-term climate change on earth over the past billion years has been the varying flux of cosmic rays penetrating the earth’s atmosphere and creating cloud condensation nuclei (CCNs) in the troposphere. The CCNs in turn provide the starting point for forming the cloud cover that determines how much solar energy reaches the earth’s surface versus being reflected off the white tops of the clouds back into space. These long-term climate changes are modulated to a lesser extent in the short-term — human lifetimes — by solar variability, such as sunspot activity and solar flares. When the sun is in one of its active periods, its magnetic activity reaches out into the solar system and deflects some of the inbound cosmic rays from penetrating earth’s atmosphere. This in turn prevents CCNs from being formed, reducing cloud cover. With clearer skies, the earth heats up more than otherwise.
The sun and the cosmic rays are the main drivers of climate change on earth, not CO2. In fact, it’s the climate and its changes that determine the amount of CO2 present in the atmosphere — just the opposite of what the global warming catastrophists are saying. When increased solar activity or diminished cosmic rays cause the earth to warm, dissolved CO2 in the oceans is expelled into the atmosphere. When cosmic rays increase or solar activity decreases, the earth cools and atmospheric CO2 goes back into solution in the ocean.
Henrik Svensmark, the Danish originator of the cosmic ray hypothesis just outlined above, along with some of his collaborators, explain how they arrived at their landmark theory in this highly recommended Youtube video. His work is also discussed in some prior Founders Broadsheet issues (here and here).
Svensmark’s theory wasn’t welcomed by the mainstream CO2 climate catastrophe community. It threatened the community’s existence, its credibility, and its lucrative research grants. Other climate scientists with different theories but who were nevertheless also skeptical of CO2 catastrophe claims were similarly smeared, denied publication, and/or ignored.
Ten years ago as of a few weeks ago an event known as Climategate took place and exposed to all the world the duplicity of some of the leading climate catastrophe scientists — how they were destroying or concealing evidence that they had manipulated climate data and were orchestrating a campaign to deny skeptics publication of their ideas in prestigious science journals. Then a cover-up of the revelations was orchestrated; it is dissected and refuted in this detailed analysis.
The fraud continues and is acutely analyzed in four short must-see presentations at the recent Heartland Institute 13th International Climate Conference held in Washington, DC. They can all be accessed at the same archive page:
- Roy Spencer (Panel 1)
- Nir Shaviv (Panel 1)
- Anthony Watts (Panel 3)
- Patrick Michaels (Panel 3)
The overarching theme of the presentations is that the climate catastrophe advocates have “tuned” the data to strengthen their cause — namely, to prove that anthropogenic CO2 threatens a climate catastrophe within a short number of years and so must be addressed by extreme emergency measures. Spencer believes warming (“climate sensitivity”) is only 0.13% per annum, Michaels 0.09%. This is less than half what the UN’s climate catastrophe committee, the IPCC, is claiming. Svensmark, who wasn’t at the conference, doesn’t believe CO2 is a significant factor in recent warming at all. Fossil-fuel alarmism, in short, is a UN / Democratic Party marketing campaign, not science.
Henrik Svensmark’s claims are exaggerated and have been debunked by a number of real scientists many years ago. This is not about “fossil-fuel alarmism,” it’s about science and the America’s Rightists’ unwillingness to face the facts.
Where are your citations from the “real scientists”?
I enjoyed your article — but have a question. Being a geologist, I have read this theory before about “follow the sun”, so to speak… However, I never see any facts on what the sun is actually doing now and how it is affecting the CO2 levels. Is the sun actually having a period of increased solar activity?