Are there real benefits from buying organic food? At this point, I’m sceptical of the idea.

The first claim made is that organic food tastes better. However the few tests of this that I’ve seen reported  cast doubt on it. Is it actually true? The problem with answering this sort of question is the same as that posed by testing the efficacy of drugs in treating illnesses. If the person doing the tasting knows that the food is organic, it will influence their judgement when reporting the taste. So the only valid test is a blind one, and preferably a double blind one. This is where neither the person taking the test nor the person administering it knows which food being tasted is organic and which is not. Maybe such tests have been done, but I haven’t seen them reported.

The other main claim for organic food is that it is healthier. But even more so than the claims about taste,  this needs to be rigorously tested, and for the same reasons. We can’t rely on common sense to provide accurate answers.

So at the moment, I prefer not to pay the extra cost that the supermarkets add on for organic food. Especially as most of the charge goes onto their profits and very little to the farmers.

It’s raining again here today in Warrington. July has started off poorly after we suffered a really wet June. There were floods in many places in the UK last month. I’m fortunate to be on reasonably high ground here, so at least I’ve been spared that nightmare.

What surprised and saddened me about the flood victims was to hear so many saying that they were not insured. Having lost so many of their belongings was an even bigger blow than it might have been.

I guess that those people renting their houses are not under the same compulsion to take out insurance as those with a mortgage. Lets hope that the rains in July don’t return as heavily and that we avoid further flood damage.

On a lighter note, one result of the rain is to allow the vegetation to flourish. My neglected garden is running amok. I’ve used the bad weather as an excuse not to get to grips with it. However, I’m not going to be able to avoid it for much longer.

More precisely, the question is whether human activity is primarily responsible for the warming of the Earth we are witnessing now. The fact that the Earth is getting warmer is not in dispute.

The book, ‘The Chilling Stars, A New Theory of Climate Change‘, argues that there is a better explanation for global warming than the accepted dogma that we are producing too much carbon dioxide.

In brief, the authors, Svensmark and Calder, assert that the major factor governing the the temperature at the Earth’s surface is the amount of cloud cover. Specifically that it is the amount of low-level clouds that is the most important factor. These clouds are typically spread over much of the world’s ocean areas.

These low-lying clouds reflect back a significant proportion of the sunlight hitting the Earth. A key point is that the amount of these clouds varies over time.

The implication of these facts is that higher average cloud cover means average temperatures fall and lower cloud cover results in global warming. But what causes these changes in the quantity of clouds at lower altitudes?

The surprising answer is cosmic rays, specifically high-energy cosmic rays. These constantly rain down on the earth from catastrophic events in our galaxy. For example, massive stars at the end of their lives explode and give off copious amounts of cosmic rays.

When these rays hit our lower atmosphere they produce free electrons which facilitate cloud seeding. So higher levels of cosmic rays produce more clouds. Why then do the levels of cosmic rays impacting the Earth vary over time?

The major influence of the level of cosmic rays reaching the lower atmosphere and producing clouds is the Sun. The Sun’s enormous magnetic field deflects cosmic rays which are charged particles. But the Sun is not as static as it appears to us. Besides the 11 year sunspot cycle,.it undergoes longer term variations. In addition to the Sun there are other sources of variation in the rates of cosmic rays hitting the Earth. in the form of cataclysmic explosions in our galactic neighbourhood.

Given what seems to be the sound scientific basis for these theories, the question is how large is the cosmic ray effect in comparison from the rise in greenhouse gases that is the current favourite explanation for global warming? If I understand them correctly, the authors’ estimate is that cosmic rays have around a tenfold larger influence.

If greenhouse gas emissions are not in fact the major influence on global warming that current thinking assumes, we can expect that the forecasts of a continuing disastrous rise in temperatures are wide of the mark. As the cycle of the rate of cosmic ray rates turns, we can expect global warming to moderate and at some point reverse.