'No Sun link' to climate change

Cloud cover affects temperature - but what determines cloud cover?

Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.

The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.

The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.

But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.

Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.

The IPCC has got it right, so we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions Terry Sloan

This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.

Dr Svensmark's idea formed a centrepiece of the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.

Wrong path

"We started on this game because of Svensmark's work," said Terry Sloan from Lancaster University.

Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds Henrik Svensmark

"If he is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal."

Cosmic rays are deflected away from Earth by our planet's magnetic field, and by the solar wind - streams of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun.

The Svensmark hypothesis is that when the solar wind is weak, more cosmic rays penetrate to Earth.

That creates more charged particles in the atmosphere, which in turn induces more clouds to form, cooling the climate.

The planet warms up when the Sun's output is strong.

Professor Sloan's team investigated the link by looking for periods in time and for places on the Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness observed in those locations or at those times.

FEELING THE HEAT Three theories on how the Sun could be causing climate change In graphics

"For example; sometimes the Sun 'burps' - it throws out a huge burst of charged particles," he explained to BBC News.

"So we looked to see whether cloud cover increased after one of these bursts of rays from the Sun; we saw nothing."

Over the course of one of the Sun's natural 11-year cycles, there was a weak correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover - but cosmic ray variability could at the very most explain only a quarter of the changes in cloudiness.

And for the following cycle, no correlation was found.

Limited effect

Dr Svensmark himself was unimpressed by the findings.

"Terry Sloan has simply failed to understand how cosmic rays work on clouds," he told BBC News.

"He predicts much bigger effects than we would do, as between the equator and the poles, and after solar eruptions; then, because he doesn't see those big effects, he says our story is wrong, when in fact we have plenty of evidence to support it."

But another researcher who has worked on the issue, Giles Harrison from Reading University, said the work was important "as it provides an upper limit on the cosmic ray-cloud effect in global satellite cloud data".

Climate change: No Sun link A cosmic climate connection?

Dr Harrison's own research, looking at the UK only, has also suggested that cosmic rays make only a very weak contribution to cloud formation.

The Svensmark hypothesis has also been attacked in recent months by Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory.

He showed that over the last 20 years, solar activity has been slowly declining, which should have led to a drop in global temperatures if the theory was correct.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its vast assessment of climate science last year, concluded that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, the contribution of humankind's greenhouse gas emissions has outweighed that of solar variability by a factor of about 13 to one.

According to Terry Sloan, the message coming from his research is simple.

"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right.

"So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions."

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Is Ethanol Production Fueling the Size of the Dead Zone?

In case you didn’t know, the “dead zone” isn’t just a novel by Steven King or an old TV show, it’s an area about the size of New Jersey in the Gulf of Mexico that during the summer months is incapable of supporting sea life. The dead zone is created when fertilizer run off promote algae growth, which in turn throws off the oceans equilibrium by using all the available oxygen, killing everything else. So, good for algae perhaps, but bad for the sea life in general.

Carectomy recently reported that ethanol production for passenger vehicles could be responsible for a growth in this dead zone. In their words:

Corn is the biggest culprit in creating these environments, and now that the U.S. is looking to biofuels as a solution to its energy needs, the problem’s only getting worse. Bush signed legislation at the end of 2007 that will triple the amount of corn ethanol produced over the next several years.

More after the jump!

Because corn is the crop most used for ethanol in the US (other countries, such as Brazil, use sugar cane), it is clear that corn will have an adverse affect on the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem as the fertilizer heavy crop’s run off travels down the Mississippi and dumps itself into the ocean.

Carectomy goes on to give a scathing overview of how ethanol is the wrong direction for the US and the world, as it solves no problems, but simply makes it seems like problems have been solved. While I would heartily agree with them on many counts, there is much more to ethanol than meets the eye. Political pressures have made most US ethanol production corn based thus far, but other technologies have a promising future.

Cellulosic ethanol, for example, can use any plant matter and turn it into ethanol. That means that food waste, grasses, and just about anything that’s a plant could be made into ethanol. With this technology extremely efficient ways of producing ethanol with environmentally friendly crops could be used, therefore lowering the impact ethanol has on the environment.

With that said, the dead zone is truly an alarming spectacle, and if the US wants to continue to hurdle towards an ethanol economy, it’s going to have to reform its ways and “kick the corn habit” as much as it needs to kick the oil habit.

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Australian MP proposes cane toad-killing day

Scientists are trying to develop a virus which will kill cane toads without harming other wildlife

Australian families have been urged to roll up their sleeves and embark on a slaughter of "the most disgusting creature known to man" - the cane toad - in a national day of amphibian pest control.

Queensland MP Shane Knuth called for a cane toad equivalent of Clean Up Australia Day, an annual event in which Australians scour the countryside for litter.

The fast-spreading cane toads are the country's most disliked introduced pest, their poisonous skin accounting for the deaths of millions of birds, crocodiles and other predators each year.

While admitting that he had, in the past, "belted toads with whatever I could get my hands on," including golf clubs and cricket bats, he said it was important that the toads be dispatched humanely.

Volunteers taking part in the 'Toad Day Out' would be encouraged to kill the creatures by placing them in plastic bags and dropping them in the freezer.

Their warty bodies would then be disposed of at special collection centres.

"Basically we need ... a special day that Queenslanders, especially children, could all play their part, very similar to Clean Up Australia (Day)," Mr Knuth said.

"The toad is probably the greatest environmental vermin and probably the most disgusting creature known to man.

"Each female toad can produce up to 20,000 eggs. If even 3,000 female toads were collected, this has the potential of eliminating 60 million toads hopping around our environment."

The conservative MP said he was deadly serious about the proposal.

"I would like the opportunity to present this to (newly-elected prime minister) Kevin Rudd. This is not pie in the sky stuff. This is reality."

The toad hunt would be best held in January, at the height of Queensland's rainy season, when the toads breed.

The Australian branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said it would support the mass cull but acknowledged that packing freezers up and down the country with toad carcasses would arouse distaste.

"Obviously we're not idiots - we understand a lot people will be highly reluctant to fill their fridges and freezers with dying cane toads, but at the moment that is the only humane way that we can recommend," said RSPCA spokesman Michael Beatty.

Conservationists warned that if the plan was to go ahead, it was vital that volunteers were taught to distinguish between cane toads, brought to Australia in the 1930s from Hawaii to control a sugar cane beetle, and native frogs.

Scientists are trying to develop a virus which will kill cane toads without harming other wildlife.

But Mr Knuth said finding a biological silver bullet for the invader could take decades.

"We will be waiting 50 years if we rely on science. This is a way that will solve the toad problem," he said.

It is not the first time he has demanded a war on cane toads. Last year he suggested that children should be encouraged to hunt them down and paid a bounty of 40 cents (20p) per animal, dead or alive.

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