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from the tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek-tek dept.
Unlike electromagnetic radiation, which consists of massless and accelerated charged particles, galactic cosmic rays (CR) are composed mostly of atomic nuclei and solitary electrons, objects that have mass. Cosmic rays originate via a wide range of processes and sources including supernovae, galactic nuclei, and gamma ray bursts. Researchers have speculated for decades on the possible effects of galactic cosmic rays on the immediate environs of Earth's atmosphere, but until recently, a causal relationship between climate and cosmic rays has been difficult to establish.
A research collaborative has published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that mathematically establishes such a causal link between CR and year-to-year changes in global temperature, but has found no causal relationship between the CR and the warming trend of the 20th century.
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-cosmic-fluctuations-global-temperatures-doesnt.html
[Abstract]: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2015/02/23/1420291112
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday March 12 2015, @12:11AM
They're not saying it doesn't cause some climate change - they're saying it isn't responsible for Global Warming - the effect simply isn't large enough.
Similarly, fluctuations in solar output absolutely do cause global temperature fluctuations, there just haven't been any changes in solar output sufficient to cause the degree of warming we're seeing.
Basically there are *many* natural forces that cause variations in the global climate - and our models are capturing those effects with ever-increasing accuracy, and they do explain virtually all global climate changes until about 50-70 years ago, at which point another forcing factor began to have an increasingly pronounced effect: increasing atmospheric CO2 levels.