Warming climate blamed on cosmic rays - World - theage.com.au

Warming climate blamed on cosmic rays -

MAN-MADE climate change may be happening at a far slower pace than has been claimed.
Scientists claim that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.
In a book, to be published this week, they claim that fluctuations in the number of cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere directly affect the amount of cloud covering the planet.
High levels of cloud cover blanket the Earth and reflect radiated heat from the sun back out into space, causing the planet to cool.
Henrik Svensmark, a weather scientist at the Danish National Space Centre who led the team behind the research, said the planet was experiencing a natural period of reduced cloud cover due to fewer cosmic rays entering the atmosphere.
This, he said, was responsible for much of the global warming.
He said carbon dioxide emissions due to human activity were having a smaller impact on climate change than scientists thought.
Dr Svensmark last week published the evidence in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Journal.
Some climate change experts have dismissed the claims as "tenuous". Giles Harrison, a cloud specialist at Britain's Reading University, has studied cosmic rays and their effect on clouds and believes the impact on climate was much smaller than Dr Svensmark claims.
Dr Harrison said: "I have been looking at cloud data going back 50 years over the UK and found there was a small relationship with cosmic rays. It looks like it creates some additional variability in a natural climate system but this is small."
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