Disproved? Large Hadron Boffins Cast Shock DOUBT on Global Warming

MANKIND’S burning of fossil fuels may not be the primary cause of global warming, according to the shock results of a new study by scientists behind the Large Hadron Collider (LCH).

Boffins (a person engaged in scientific or technical research) from CERN have also discovered projected temperature increases over the next century may have been over estimated.

Researchers found trees may have been putting similar aerosols into the air as burning fossil fuels, long before the industrial revolution, meaning humans may have had less impact on the climate than we thought.

Scientists made the discovery during an experiment to create an artificial cloud that was thought could help cool Earth and reverse global warming.

A study published this week in the journal Nature has looked more closely at the tiny particles within clouds, known as cloud seeds, that help cool the planet and found they can be produced naturally.

Clouds, including natural ones and those from aerosols, are seen by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the single biggest source of uncertainty about the so-called human-caused climate change.

The problem stems from not knowing how cloudy the world was before the industrial era, and the fact that some of the gases produced by burning fossil fuels said to warm the plant in the long-term, actually help cool it in the short-term through cloud formation.

But now CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, have left the issue even more confusing after discovering, while creating the fake cloud, that trees could have been putting these aerosols into the atmosphere since they first grew at the time of the dinosaurs.

Their scientists run the LCH – the world’s biggest physics experiment in Geneva, Switzerland.

To make matters more confusing, there are two types of partials.

Direct aerosol particles come from dust, sea salt, and the burning of biomass.

Secondary aerosol particles are formed when gas is converted into a particle, and are responsible for more than half of all cloud seeds in our atmosphere.

Until this study, scientists thought sulphuric acid, largely produced with fossil fuel emissions, was needed to form secondary aerosols, and therefore responsible for the bulk of global warming aerosols.

However, the research found the Earth actually produces these particles naturally, without any interference from man.

The particles are created by a mix of tree vapours and cosmic rays – high-energy particles bombarding the atmosphere from outside our solar system.

Jasper Kirkby, CERN particle physicist and originator and spokesperson of the CLOUD experiment, said: “We found that nature produces particles without pollution.

“That is going to require a rethink of how human activities have increased aerosols in clouds.”

The results may turn the whole climate change debate and projected temperature increases upside down, they said.

Climate change projections had always taken it that the amount of aerosol seeded clouds in the pre-industrial age would have been much less than since industrialisation.

But the findings mean the amounts could have been the same or just slightly less.

An abundance of clouds in the preindustrial era – something the new study hints at – would mean less warming in the future.

This means current estimates of projected warming in the 21st century could be reduced, the study concluded.

Compared to the massive LCH, the cloud chamber for the Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets (CLOUD) experiment at CERN was just a three-metre-wide stainless-steel chamber.

Inside, experts used vapours to recreate Earth’s atmosphere before injecting ultraviolet rays to simulate sunlight.

They directed a beam of artificial cosmic rays from a CERN particle accelerator at the chamber.

They found aerosol particles form 10 to 100 times more abundantly if an ion from a cosmic ray is in the centre of the cluster.

Mr Kirby said: “Since time immemorial nature has had a perfectly good way of making cloud seeds throughout atmosphere by this gas to particle conversion and that’s new.

“Previous knowledge was that you required sulphuric acid – and that sulphuric acid is dominated by human activities.”

Despite the findings, Mr Kirby stopped short of saying humans played no role in global warming, but stressed projected increases in temperature will come down.

He said: “Human impact is not going to go away.

“Temperature will still go up and warming will still occur. But now that we’ve got this important result that is going to pin down the pre-industrial atmosphere, it’s going to sharpen our results and shrink the range of predictions.”