Global Dimming

[Locutus]

Now here's something to consider:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_qa.shtml

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Catch-22, remove the particualte pollution from the atmosphere while increasing CO2 output and global warming will increase much faster. The conservatives Clean Air laws would increase the rate of Global Warming.

 

[Tonington]

NASA already says this phenomena is in decline, expect warmer temps.

 

[Locutus]

Catch-22, remove the particualte pollution from the atmosphere while increasing CO2 output and global warming will increase much faster. The conservatives Clean Air laws would increase the rate of Global Warming.

:lol:

 

[eh1eh]

We do that on Sunday sometimes. Peking shrimp is my favorite.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

:lol:

What are you laughing about?

The fact that the massive amounts of pollution being produced by developing countries like China and India are beginning to affect the movement of seasonal rainfall bands interfering with monsoons and causing droughts that have the potential to threaten to food supplies of billions.

Or

If we effectively control visible air pollution while allowing increases in CO2 it's possible that temperatures will rise enough in the next 100 years that large areas of the planet will become uninhabitable. Just look to the sub-Saharan region to see the effects of increasing temperature and disrupted rainfall patterns.

Still think it's funny?

 

[Locutus]

Catch-22, remove the particualte pollution from the atmosphere while increasing CO2 output and global warming will increase much faster. The conservatives Clean Air laws would increase the rate of Global Warming.

That was a funny movie is all.

But seriously folks...The conservatives Clean Air laws would increase the rate of Global Warming.

So will you when you start your vehicle in the morning. What makes you think I'm a conservative in the first place? They're all lying weasels dude. The fiberals have been in power since god was a boy and look where it's got us.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Did you read the article from the link I posted?

As much as half the effects of global warming by human produced CO2 production is being masked by global dimming. By limiting the emmission of particulate pollution while not reducing CO2 emmission, the rate of positve temperature forcing will increase.

 

[Walter]

Where I live it gets dim earlier and earlier this time of year.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Where I live it gets dim earlier and earlier this time of year.

Seasons have nothing to do with this subject, why not post something that requires some intelligence.

 

[Extrafire]

What are you laughing about?

The fact that the massive amounts of pollution being produced by developing countries like China and India are beginning to affect the movement of seasonal rainfall bands interfering with monsoons and causing droughts that have the potential to threaten to food supplies of billions.

Or

If we effectively control visible air pollution while allowing increases in CO2 it's possible that temperatures will rise enough in the next 100 years that large areas of the planet will become uninhabitable. Just look to the sub-Saharan region to see the effects of increasing temperature and disrupted rainfall patterns.

Still think it's funny?

You mean the fact that the Sahara is shrinking?

Could be it isn't fossil fuels doing the harm, but primitive bio-fuels. Posted on the other thread, but it belongs here too.

Climate Change: A new study indicates that poor Asians burning dung for energy may be a major cause of global warming. It may explain why glaciers are really melting — and why climate is more complicated than some think.
It used to be a straight-line theory based on easily connected dots. The Earth was warming due to increased levels of carbon dioxide generated by man, his factories, power plants and vehicles. The U.S. and the industrialized world had to drastically reduce its CO2 levels to prevent the poles from melting and the seas from rising. But a new study in the Aug. 2 issue of the British science journal Nature suggests that the absence of technology, not its reckless use, may be a major factor in raising the Earth's global temperature.
The haze of pollution called the "Asian Brown Cloud," caused by wood and dung burned for fuel, may be doing more harm than the tailpipes of our SUVs.
Researchers led by Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California, launched three unmanned aircraft last March from the Maldives island of Hanimadhoo to fly through the Brown Cloud at various altitudes.
A total of 18 missions were flown to explore the blanket of soot, dust and smoke that at times is two miles thick and covers an area about the size of the U.S.
They found that the cloud of soot and particulate matter boosted the effect of solar heating on the surrounding air by as much as 50%.
"These findings might seem to contradict the general notion of aerosol particulates as cooling agents in the global climate system . . . ." concluded the Nature article summing up the study. Dang. Just when we thought the science of global warming was settled.
These findings also may help to explain the rapid melting among the 46,000 glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau and why the Himalayan glaciers have been retreating since at least 1780.
This phenomenon also might help explain why carbon dioxide emissions and global temperatures don't track very well, if at all.
The Asian Brown Cloud was first discovered by Ramanathan in 1999. He had grown up near Madras, India, where his mother, like millions of other Indian homemakers, cooked with dried cow dung — a plentiful, and renewable, source of cheap fuel that was a good source of heat. One might call it the earliest form of biofuel.
Such pollution, because it contains the residue from hundreds of millions of dung-fueled cooking fires and inefficient wood and coal furnaces, carries an unusually large amount of soot.
It previously had been assumed that such particulate matter, like that from volcanic eruptions, had a cooling effect on the Earth. Guess not — at least not all the time.
A computer simulation run by Surabit Menon, an atmospheric scientist at Columbia University, using Chinese weather reports calculated the warming effects of the cloud. Menon found the brown cloud as it spread around the globe contributed more to global warming than Western greenhouse gas emissions.
S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, finds it "ironic that much of (this) pollution could be avoided by the use of cleaner fossil fuels, like gas, oil, and even coal, all of which release CO2."
Ramanathan has found some resistance to his discovery and its conclusions.
"My colleagues warned me when I got into this that global warming is not really pure science — politics is mixed in with it." An inconvenient truth for a dedicated scientist.
India, of course, is exempt from the Kyoto Protocol as a "developing" nation. It's not that easy to put a catalytic converter on a cow. Then there's the politics of the issue. It's easier to blame a soccer mom in her SUV than an Indian family struggling to get through the day. Link

 

[typingrandomstuff]

Global Dimming. An excellent word for a case of the aeroplanes. Electric engines for the planes will help a bit and the plane do need fly low (as stated in the article).

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

You mean the fact that the Sahara is shrinking?

The Sahara is expanding southward into the Sahel region, it's not shrinking.

Could be it isn't fossil fuels doing the harm, but primitive bio-fuels. Posted on the other thread, but it belongs here too.

Yah, that's got to be it, people in the third world burning dung, not the hundreds of millions of cars or thousands of coal or gas burning power-plants that are causing the increase in greenhouse gases. Give your head a shake.

 

[Extrafire]

The Sahara is expanding southward into the Sahel region, it's not shrinking.

Nope, it's shrinking. If I find the link I'll post it.

Yah, that's got to be it, people in the third world burning dung, not the hundreds of millions of cars or thousands of coal or gas burning power-plants that are causing the increase in greenhouse gases. Give your head a shake.

Hey, it was a scientific study. I didn't make it up. But I see you're following this tactic:

Then there's the politics of the issue. It's easier to blame a soccer mom in her SUV than an Indian family struggling to get through the day.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

Nope, it's shrinking. If I find the link I'll post it.
Hey, it was a scientific study. I didn't make it up. But I see you're following this tactic:

Tell the people of Darfur that the Sahara is shrinking, the conflict there is due to the almost total drying up of Lake Chad and aquafers in the region. The process of desertification has been expanding the Sahara since the end of the last iceage. Global warming has accelerated the effect.

I wouldn't call what you refer to as scientific. When you're saying that the introduction of CO2 from a source that is already a part of the Carbon cylce has more of a effect on Global Warming than CO2 introduced from reservoirs available only through mining and extraction. All the CO2 we pump into the air from our industrial activities is extra to the Carbon already present in the system and is the source of the extra GH gases. Burning dung isn't going to introduce new CO2 into the system, burning fossil fuels does.

 

[Tonington]

Come on Extra, you're all over the map now, literally. In response to the Sahara you talk about dung in southeast asia? I'm not disputing the local effects of pollution on weather or climate for that matter, but that is not what is involved in the Sahara. Historically the changes in earth's orbit have changed the Sahara. It is constantly growing and shrinking. Though the advancements took centuries, not decades. Yet again, historical past shows us there is natural mechanisms which do the same thing, only not nearly on the timescales we are seeing.

What's happening now is both orbital changes and climate & vegetation feedbacks have a 'ratchet' effect much like increasing global fishing fleets with more effective capture technology (bottom trawling) have the same ratchet effect.

 

[Just the Facts]

Where I live it gets dim earlier and earlier this time of year.

:lol:

Yeah, it was downright dark here last night!!

 

[Extrafire]

Tell the people of Darfur that the Sahara is shrinking, the conflict there is due to the almost total drying up of Lake Chad and aquafers in the region. The process of desertification has been expanding the Sahara since the end of the last iceage. Global warming has accelerated the effect.

It may be moving in one direction or another, but the info I saw said it was shrinking. Like I said, if I find it, I'll link it.

I wouldn't call what you refer to as scientific. When you're saying that the introduction of CO2 from a source that is already a part of the Carbon cylce has more of a effect on Global Warming than CO2 introduced from reservoirs available only through mining and extraction. All the CO2 we pump into the air from our industrial activities is extra to the Carbon already present in the system and is the source of the extra GH gases. Burning dung isn't going to introduce new CO2 into the system, burning fossil fuels does.

Obviously you didn't read the article. It's not the CO2 doing it, it's particulate, the stuff you were concerned about causing the possible dimming:

A total of 18 missions were flown to explore the blanket of soot, dust and smoke that at times is two miles thick and covers an area about the size of the U.S.
They found that the cloud of soot and particulate matter boosted the effect of solar heating on the surrounding air by as much as 50%.

 

[Extrafire]

Come on Extra, you're all over the map now, literally. In response to the Sahara you talk about dung in southeast asia?

Maybe you should go back and read all the posts, because you obviously skipped most of them.:roll:

In response to his topic of global dimming I posted a study that showed the opposite effect from particulate matter from burning of biofuels in south Asia.

In response to a comment on the Sahara growing, I answered that it is shrinking.

I'm not disputing the local effects of pollution on weather or climate for that matter, but that is not what is involved in the Sahara. Historically the changes in earth's orbit have changed the Sahara. It is constantly growing and shrinking. Though the advancements took centuries, not decades. Yet again, historical past shows us there is natural mechanisms which do the same thing, only not nearly on the timescales we are seeing.

What's happening now is both orbital changes and climate & vegetation feedbacks have a 'ratchet' effect much like increasing global fishing fleets with more effective capture technology (bottom trawling) have the same ratchet effect.

Your points on the Sahara are valid, but then I never said that pollution was having any effect there. It was a separate comment on a statement that the Sahara was expanding, which was a response to my question on a previous post in regards to a comment on the sub-sahara.

 

[Cobalt_Kid]

It may be moving in one direction or another, but the info I saw said it was shrinking. Like I said, if I find it, I'll link it.

Obviously you didn't read the article. It's not the CO2 doing it, it's particulate, the stuff you were concerned about causing the possible dimming:

The overall effect of the particulate pollution is to act as condensation nuclei and promote the development of cloud cover which does reflect more sunlight. This is an effect that has been measured in Europe and more recently in a study in Australia. It does result in more solar energy being reflected back into space.