One of the more hair-brained (in my opinion) schemes to "explain" global warming as something other than a human induced phenomenon (not to say complete and utter disaster in the making) is the idea that it is caused and/or mitigated by fluctuations in cloud cover governed by cosmic rays which are in turned governed by the sunspot cycle. This is a take-down of that argument (to me this argument should be to cosmic ray people much like cold fusion phenomenon was to nuclear people -- two minutes of ratiocination, accompanied perhaps by a back-of-the-envelope-calculation or two, leads to the conclusion that someone has been doing more smokin' than science). Nevertheless serious scientists feel compelled to deal with this simply because, I suppose, this is one of many "ideas" that are placed before a public that does not have the intellectual tools to deal in the most elementary and commonsense fashion with such a claim.
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/07/no-link-between.html
The link above discusses this paper:
Cosmic Rays and Global Warming
Metchosin, Vancouver Island, August 2006
This is looking south over the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the late after noon. The sun is behind the camera. Why are the rays converging toward the horizon?
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