The doom rhetoric does change quite often, though.

Why do you think the above are disconnected? And why does that give you solace?

"Cutting HFCs, black carbon, tropospheric ozone, and methane can buy us about 40 years before we approach the dangerous threshold of 2 degrees Celsius warming," said co-author Professor Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego.

"By targeting these short-term climate forcers, we can make a down payment on climate and provide momentum going into the December negotiations in Copenhagen," said co-author Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. "The Obama Administration and other key governments need to take up the fast-action climate agenda before it is too late."

Role in climate change

A role of cosmic rays directly or via solar-induced modulations in recent climate change as suggested 1995 by Henrik Svensmark is still disputed.[12] The 2007 IPCC reports mention enhanced empirical results for a stronger evidence for solar forcing of climate change, the purported attribution to cosmic rays remaining ambiguous and being less probable.[12]

Suggested Mechanisms

Henrik Svensmark et al. have argued that solar variations modulate the cosmic ray signal seen at the earth and that this would affect cloud formation and hence climate. Cosmic rays have been experimentally determined to be able to produce ultra-small aerosol particles,[13] orders of magnitude smaller than cloud condensation nuclei (CCN).

According to a report about an ongoing CERN CLOUD research project[14] to detect any Cosmic ray forcing is challenging since on wide spread time scales changes in the Sun’s magnetic activity, Earth’s magnetic field, and the galactic environment have to be taken into account. Empirically, increased galactic cosmic ray (GCR) flux seem to be associated with a cooler climate, a southerly shift of the ITCZ (Inter Tropical Convergence Zone)[citation needed] and a weakening of monsoon rainfalls and vice versa.[14] Claims have been made of identification of GCR climate signals in atmospheric parameters such as high latitude precipitation (Todd & Kniveton), and Svensmark's annual cloud cover variations, which were said to be correlated to GCR variation. Various proposals have been made for the mechanism by which cosmic rays might affect clouds, including ion mediated nucleation, and indirect effects on current flow density in the global electric circuit (see Tinsley 2000, and F. Yu 1999). Other studies refer to the formation of relatively highly charged aerosols and cloud droplets at cloud boundaries, with an indirect effect on ice particle formation and altering aerosol interaction with cloud droplets.[14] Kirkby (2009) reviews developments and describes further cloud nucleation mechanisms which appear energetically favorable and depend on GCRs.[15],[16]

For years now, many members of Congress have insisted that cutting carbon emissions was difficult, if not impossible. It is not. During the two years since 2007, carbon emissions have dropped 9 percent. While part of this drop is from the recession, part of it is also from efficiency gains and from replacing coal with natural gas, wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

The U.S. has ended a century of rising carbon emissions and has now entered a new energy era, one of declining emissions. Peak carbon is now history. What had appeared to be hopelessly difficult is happening at amazing speed.

For a country where oil and coal use have been growing for more than a century, the fall since 2007 is startling. In 2008, oil use dropped 5 percent, coal 1 percent, and carbon emissions by 3 percent. Estimates for 2009, based on U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) data for the first nine months, show oil use down by another 5 percent. Coal is set to fall by 10 percent. Carbon emissions from burning all fossil fuels dropped 9 percent over the two years.

Beyond the cuts already made, there are further massive reductions in the policy pipeline. Prominent among them are stronger automobile fuel-economy standards, higher appliance efficiency standards, and financial incentives supporting the large-scale development of wind, solar, and geothermal energy.

My understanding is that the scientific community is still not convinced that cosmic rays have a major effect on climate. Rather than wade through all the scientific literature, I've sought the authority of wikipedia.



Your report by Svensmark is unpublished however it appears that this issue will not go away. As pointed out in the BBC article posted by vtsnowedin earlier, Piers Corbyn is reporting on this next month.

As world leaders struggle to hash out a new global climate deal by December, they face a hurdle perhaps more formidable than getting big polluters like the United States and China to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: how to pay for the new accord.

The price tag for a new climate agreement will be a staggering $100 billion a year by 2020, many economists estimate; some put the cost at closer to $1 trillion. That money is needed to help fast-developing countries like India and Brazil convert to costly but cleaner technologies as they industrialize, as well as to assist the poorest countries in coping with the consequences of climate change, like droughts and rising seas.

This financing is an essential part of any international climate agreement, negotiators and scientists say, because developing nations must curb the growth of their emissions if the world is to limit rising temperatures. Based on calculations by the International Energy Agency for 2005 to 2030, 75 percent of the growth in energy demand will come from the developing world.

A case filed against “Big Oil” by a small Alaskan fishing village over the ill-effects of global warming on its shores and livelihood was dismissed Oct. 15 by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Native Village of Kivalina filed suit against ExxonMobil Corp. and others last February, attempting to recover $400 million in damages for public nuisance related to emitting pollutants that have allegedly caused the sea to rise and reclaim parts of Kivalina shores.

Taking a page out of the tobacco litigation playbook, co-lead attorney Steve Susman of Houston’s Susman Godfrey LLP also tacked on conspiracy allegations, claiming that exploration and production, power and coal companies conspired to mislead the public about the causes and effects of global warming through industry-sponsored trade groups — viewed as “scientists for hire” in some circles — in much the same way as “Big Tobacco” did to mislead the public for decades on the effects of cigarette smoking. (See “Alaskan village tries tobacco tactics,” July 11, 2008).

Long able to squash lawsuits, the tobacco industry did not have a suitable answer for the conspiracy charges. Big Oil, though, might have, as the court decided that a planet-wide issue could not be laid at the feet of a select few companies.

The Kivalina case is likely not dead, though. The decision will likely be appealed, and the public nuisance claims could be refiled in state court.

Current policies to fight climate change in China, India, the U.S. and other major carbon-dioxide emitters aren’t enough to limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), a U.S. envoy said.

Major developing countries are moving in the right direction to contain global warming, Todd Stern, the U.S. delegate to a 17-nation conference on limiting climate change, told reporters today in London. Even so, the trend in greenhouse gas emissions is still too high, Stern said.

“It’s inconsistent with the facts to conclude that the U.S. is the problem or that the U.S. isn’t moving rapidly,” Stern said. While the U.S. has no definitive emissions reduction goal, he pointed to proposed legislation that would enshrine cuts from 2005 levels by 2020.

“It isn’t a huge, big mystery” what U.S. goals will be, Stern said. “The Waxman-Markey bill had a 17 percent number. The Kerry-Boxer legislation has 20 in there. The president originally proposed 14. The range of what we’re talking about is pretty clear.”

The Obama administration in April made a similar determination, but also concluded that greenhouse gases endanger public health. The EPA is currently drafting the first greenhouse gas standards for automobiles, and recently signaled it would attempt to reduce climate-altering pollution from refineries, factories and other large industrial sources.

In response, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Republican lawmakers have criticized the EPA's reasoning and called for a more thorough vetting of the science. An internal review by a dozen federal agencies released in May also raised questions about the EPA's conclusion, saying the agency could have been more balanced and raising questions about the difficulty in linking global warming to health effects.

The agency released the e-mail and documents after receiving requests under the Freedom of Information Act.

Adora Andy, a spokeswoman for EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, said Tuesday that the draft shows the science in 2007 was as clear as it is today.

"The conclusions reached then by the EPA scientists should have been made public and should have been considered," she said.

GENEVA — Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants that had been absorbed by the ice for decades.

They warned in a study abstract published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology that it could have a "dire environmental impact" on "pristine mountain areas" as global warming accelerates.

Much of the pollution was dumped on Europe's biggest mountain range by atmospheric currents from further afield, according to the researchers at three Swiss scientific institutes.

Their study of layers of sediment from an Alpine lake formed by a hydroelectric dam built in central Switzerland in 1953 revealed "sharp" build-ups of now banned chemical compounds from industry and farming, including dioxins and pesticides like DDT.

"We can confirm with the help of these layers that, in the 1960s and 1970s, POPs (Persistant Organic Pollutants) were produced in great quantities and were also deposited in this Alpine lake," said one of the authors, Christian Bogdal, of the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Testing and Research.

But while the concentration of POPs fell after the 1970s as many of those compounds were banned, the scientists found an unusual resurgence in more recent sediment from the past 10 to 15 years.