http://www.express.co.uk/news/scien...on-boffins-cast-shock-DOUBT-on-global-warming
Has climate change been 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 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.
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.
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.
