The Danish astrophysicist and climate researcher Henrik Svensmark has for several decades researched how the sun and cosmic radiation affect cloud formation in the Earth’s atmosphere and thereby also the climate on the planet.
Recently he was fired from his position at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Berlingske could report last week. To the Danish newspaper Svensmark does not rule out that political considerations lie behind the decision, which he says means the death blow for the research he has devoted his career to.
This is particularly because Svensmark with his research points to a, according to him, overlooked and natural factor behind a large part of the climate changes that the Earth has undergone.
The institutional climate research operates within a paradigm in which it is human emissions of greenhouse gases, above all CO2, that govern the climate changes, and thereby it becomes «controversial» to study other causal factors.
«There is nothing controversial about the research itself. But it is true that many perceive my research as controversial, even though it should not be so.»
DTU has long wished to get rid of Svensmark, who says that protests from MIT and Princeton have postponed the dismissal.
The institution presents it as part of a general strategy:
The director of DTU Space, Henning Skriver, confirms that Svensmark’s overarching research area, atmospheric physics, is now being «significantly deprioritised».
«This is happening as part of an overall strategic prioritisation of the institute’s resources, which affects several research areas and groups,» the boss writes in an e-mail to Berlingske.
Svensmark believes that CO2 has significance for the climate changes, but that the radiation from outer space cannot be neglected, something he himself has made probable with analyses and laboratory experiments.
«I am not saying that humans are not part of this. But regardless of which standpoint one has, it is important to elucidate the significance of natural variations. What I am looking at is the share of the clouds, and it is important to get an overview of that.»
It has made him enemies within the climate research establishment:
It was underlined by the so-called Climategate affair in 2011, where a long series of private e-mails from prominent climate researchers were leaked to the public.
From one of these e-mails it emerged that it was important to get persons with views that were in conflict with Svensmark’s into the circle around the IPCC.
Svensmark cannot be dismissed as an insignificant researcher, writes the Danish climate realist Karl Iver Dahl-Madsen on the websites of the climate-scientific foundation Climate Intelligence (Clintel).
Google Scholar registers more than 7,000 citations of his work and an h-index of 30. Compared with the broader research environment at DTU this places him approximately among the uppermost fifth of the researchers, and probably higher when measured by total number of citations. It is a considerable scientific influence for a relatively small and highly contested research field, far from the large collaborative networks that almost automatically generate many citations.
To Clintel Svensmark says:
«The next decisive step is to develop a climate model in which the influence from solar activity, cosmic radiation, aerosol growth and clouds is represented together with greenhouse gases. That will make it possible for us to investigate how much of the modern climate changes is due to human activity, and how much is natural. This can be done in the course of a few years and with a research budget that is modest compared with the political and economic significance of the question.»
This ought to become a job for an international research team that has funding and an institutional base, concludes Dahl-Madsen.