Global warming and environmental catastrophe: science or myth?

[Gothmog]

I would be quite suprised if our ability to quantitatively measure magnetic fields over the last 150 years was accurate to within 10%.

Charged particles don't make up a significant amount of tropospheric heating anyway. Not on the order of W/m2.

There is roughly one ionization event per m3 per second at the surface of the earth as the result of cosmic ray cascades. The energies involved are thus on the order of eV/m2. One eV per second is about 10^-19 W.

As carlos noted the vast majority of the heating happens way up in the atmosphere (known as the radiation belts).

My main point with the magnetic field thingy is that I'm presenting another possible source of warming.

Just think if you spent all your time doing this and recieving the proper training over a 50 year time span!

 

[carlosMM]

I would be quite suprised if our ability to quantitatively measure magnetic fields over the last 150 years was accurate to within 10%.

actually, it becomes quite easy to measure by now - the weakening within the last 50 years was enough to create some dead spots (from too much disturbance by radiation) over the southern hemisphere for airplane radios! They now need especially strong senders and receivers.

 

[Gothmog]

Yes, it's easy to measure them now. My issue is with the intercalibration necessary to construct a quantitative measure over the last 150 years. I would need to see a reference to the work mentioned in Basketcases article. I don't know how the time series was constructed.

Radios are a bit of a different issue as radio interference comes mostly from changes in the charge distribution in the upper atmosphere, which leads to radio emission (whistler waves and such).