Climate change — research suggests it is not a swindle

Lauded and criticised for offering a possible way out of the dangers of man made climate change, UK TV Channel 4's programme “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, broadcast in 2007, suggested that global warming is due to a decrease in cosmic rays over the last hundred years.

This would cause a decrease in the production of low clouds allowing more heat from the sun to warm the Earth and cause global warming.

Research published today, Thursday 3 April, in the Institute of Physics' Environmental Research Letters shows how a team from Lancaster and Durham Universities sought a means to prove the correlation between the ionizing cosmic rays and the production of low cloud cover.

Previous research had shown a possible hint of such a correlation, using the results of the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project, and this had been used to propose that global warming was all down to cosmic rays.

The new research shows that change in cloud cover over the Earth does not correlate to changes in cosmic ray intensity. Neither does it show increases and decreases during the sporadic bursts and decreases in the cosmic ray intensity which occur regularly.

One such very large burst caused the magnetic storm which blacked out the power in Quebec in 1989.

Professors Sloan from Lancaster University and Wolfendale from Durham University write, “No evidence could be found of changes in the low cloud cover from known changes in the cosmic ray ionization rate.”

Media Contact

Joe Winters EurekAlert!

More Information:

http://www.iop.org

All latest news from the category: Physics and Astronomy

This area deals with the fundamental laws and building blocks of nature and how they interact, the properties and the behavior of matter, and research into space and time and their structures.

innovations-report provides in-depth reports and articles on subjects such as astrophysics, laser technologies, nuclear, quantum, particle and solid-state physics, nanotechnologies, planetary research and findings (Mars, Venus) and developments related to the Hubble Telescope.

Back to home

Comments (0)

Write a comment

Newest articles

Lighting up the future

New multidisciplinary research from the University of St Andrews could lead to more efficient televisions, computer screens and lighting. Researchers at the Organic Semiconductor Centre in the School of Physics and…

Researchers crack sugarcane’s complex genetic code

Sweet success: Scientists created a highly accurate reference genome for one of the most important modern crops and found a rare example of how genes confer disease resistance in plants….

Evolution of the most powerful ocean current on Earth

The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica’s ice sheets….

Partners & Sponsors