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All IPCC definitions taken from Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Working Group I Contribution to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Annex I, Glossary, pp. 941-954. Cambridge University Press.

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The Consensus Project

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	Climate's changed before
	It's the sun
	It's not bad
	There is no consensus
	It's cooling
	Models are unreliable
	Temp record is unreliable
	Animals and plants can adapt
	It hasn't warmed since 1998
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Archived Rebuttal

This is the archived Basic rebuttal to the climate myth "It's cosmic rays". Click here to view the latest rebuttal.

What the science says...

Cosmic rays show no trend over the last 30 years & have had little impact on recent global warming.

[The following is work in progress which I will post to a new thread in the 'Authors' section as soon as it is sufficiently developed. ]

A few scientists have suggested that cosmic rays might have a part to play in the formation of clouds. As cloud cover has a great influence on global temperature, some sceptics, in an attempt to divert blame from human activities, have locked on to the idea of cosmic rays being the cause of global warming. However, the theory suggests that increased cosmic rays result in more overal cloud cover around the world -- which would in fact increase the ability of the earth to reflect the sun's heat and light and thus cool the planet, rather than cause warming.

Furthermore, over the last 30 years of global warming there has been no correlation between cosmic rays and global temperatures.

cosmic rays v temp

As can be clearly seen, while there was good correlation between cosmic radiation and temperature prior to 1970, the correlation breaks down sharply after 1970.

Updated on 2010-08-21 by John Russell.

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