[cbacba]

Originally Posted by Patred_Cow

Such things tend to be the case, if you are referring to a linear path it could as easy be put down to the transit of tectonic plates over a magma pocket, a more traditional but no less valid explanation? If however they were simply scattered about a large caldera then I don't see why this would have suprised you? Is it not to be expected that there would be volcanic vents concentrated in a caldera? It being a volcanic feature associated with vents after all.

It doesn't really though, it's a lone, controversial and less than reputable voice. The weight of evidence is still with the anthropogenic forcing theory, a single piece of research saying differently is not going to convince many people that a theory well supported by evidence is wrong. It would take a lot of corroborating evidence and an explanation for results seemingly portraying anthropogenic GHG's as the primary cause of the current trend. Once more I will make the point that it is an enhanced global warming that is under debate. The warming we are seeing outside of the natural range of variability and we are certainly seeing such a thing is attributable to anthropogenic GHG's. Your theory pinpoints a further source of the natural variability it does little to discount GHG's as the source of the unatural variability we are now seeing.

Interesting how the presumption of AGW, specifically co2 has the weight of the nonexistant evidence while Svensmark and cosmoclimatology are less than reputable for some reason not provided. Also, it's a bit presumptive to claim that what we are seeing is outside of the natural range of variability CONSIDERING that we don't know what that range is on all but the shortest of time scales and there is plenty of historical indirect evidence to suggest that this supposed natural variability is significantly greater than what has been recently claimed.

While I find Ward's ideas interesting with some bit of plausibility to them, I do not accept them any more than I accept the notion that co2 at its present concentration or even radically increased concentrations could have any serious effects on global temperature. And, for the same reason.

While the sun and moon may actually impact equake and volcanic erruption times - per some of the ideas presented by Stephen O'Meara, author and volcano and astronomy gadfly, I don't think there is suitable force left for more distant bodies to provide suitable input.

In the case co2, it's already doing over (probably well over) 90% of what it can do at any concentration and providing a whopping 3 to 7 degrees C of contribution to our earth's temperature, more likely 3 degrees. That means for the "get something for nothing" crowd that there is about 0.3 degrees C to no more than probably about 0.7 degrees C of actual temperature that could be gained at any concentration levels - and that doesn't just mean if THE co2 level merely doubles.

That is what is meant by the statement that there isn't a mechanism to tie GW to co2, beyond what already exists, except for very minute contributions. Raising the temperature by adding co2 to the atmosphere is like trying to make a glass of iced tea sweeter by adding more sugar after the tea has become saturated. The sugar just settles to the bottom as it cannot dissolve. The temperature effects of co2 are well saturated and adding more isn't going to help warm the planet. This is because of the IR blocking mechanisms of ghgs are in bands of wavelength and because co2 blocks its major bands in very short distances - far shorter than the height of the atmosphere. Any effects left to be added are more like pluto's gravitational attraction affecting earth's volcanoes.

As to what causes variations, one merely has to check out water vapor and its extremely potent twin, clouds. Clouds affect all wavelengths of light and cool during the daytime and trap some heat at night - rather like water vapor does since it's not dealing with visible wavelengths of radiant energy. Unlike co2 which is rather consistant due to atmospheric mixing, clouds are quite spotty and transient. Yesterday here it was totally clear and high 70s, today it's totally cloudy and mid 50s.

Global cloud covering variations of just a few percent are going to have dramatic effects upon just how much solar radiant energy makes it to earth. There are numerous tie ins for cloud formation and other causes. One of the first to be discovered was that of cosmic rays. The famous Wilson Cloud Chamber experiment which discovered cosmic radiation was an attempt to study the formation of clouds - and did it ever get sidetracked. Particulates and chemicals also have effects. So far though, rainmakers have had a terrible time trying to succeed at such efforts using the best alternatives known.

Cosmic rays are known to help form clouds. They are also charged particles subject to magnetic fields. Intensities vary with the sun's magnetic field which has an 11 year cycle referred to as the sun spot cycle for the best known variation. There is also a mean level that isn't fluctuating with the cycle. While the sun produces copious amounts of lower energy cosmic rays (<100kev), higher energy ones come from sources outside the solar system. These come from areas of star formation and other objects and areas. This is the realm of cosmoclimatology and that Danish researcher Svensmark.

From what I've seen so far, Svensmark is more interested in the major long time variations of climate due to the solar systems' position in the galactic plane as it 'bobs' up and down in its travels around the galactic center.

What I've read of his work so far doesn't really cover anything of the shorter term variations due to the sun's magnetic field changes. There are others doing that and their little chart of the relationship between temperature changes and magnetic field activity are sort of like those of the co2 and earth temperature charts - except they're much more closely tied in and track better in the shorter term.

I'd like to see what it is that makes Svensmark a kook or and industry stooge or whatever the heck you think makes him unreliable. I'd also like to see your evidence as to the correct tie-in mechanism between co2 and how it changes the temperatures or will change the temperature - (not the charts that merely show one sort of follows the other but not which follows which). FInally, I'd like to see the proof that our current warming is outside of normal boundaries.

As for the lone wolf, in school, I read about this patent clerk named albert who suggested that light came in discrete packets and it could explain the photoelectric effect around the same time he suggested that the speed of light in a vacuum was measurable as that by all observers in inertial frames of reference and that this new way of looking at stuff could be thought of as relativity. Later he came up with E=mc^2 and what became known as general relativity. Far as i can tell, his ideas actually caught on rather well and are still pretty much around a hundred years later. When first published though, this patent clerk was was definitely the lone wolf going up against the consensus of the pack - of which he was not even a member at that time.