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More on Global Dimming
dtolman writes "According to the New York Times (registration required) if the world seemed brighter to our grandparents 50 years ago, they were right. While the sun's output hasn't dropped, the amount of sunshine reaching the Earth's surface has dropped an average of 10% since the 1950's. In Hong Kong, the sunlight reaching the surface has decreased even more - 37%! Scientists are theorizing that this is mainly due to air pollution - so this trend might reverse if air pollution clears up." We had a another story on global dimming last year.
In the area i live alone, my father has remarked several times in the last five years how either his eyes have gotten used to the sun after almost sixty years, or that things are a lot dimmer -- he used to wear Blueblockers religiously but now doesn't even keep a pair around.
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Is the surface of the earth really receiving less light, or are we just better at measuring it?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
There's heat, and then there's visible light. They ain't the same thing. Just because it's "dimmer" doesn't mean it isn't getting warmer.
But if dust and grime catch the energy instead of the ground, then isn't the radiation more likely to be radiated out into space, cooling the planet? If the energy hits the ground, then in order to bounce back into space it has more layers of air to pass back through, which would grab that energy instead of letting it all go into space.
Table-ized A.I.
An unrelated, but similar phonomenon is that of the effect of jet contrails on temperature. You can read about it here. The study used the period after 9/11 when all flights in North America were grounded for a few days. An interesting read.
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On a more serious note, try a search for '"september 11" contrails' on a search engine. It was established that due to the absence of contrails in the air, more sunlight reached the USA, and it even warmed up a little as a result over the 3-4 days.
Could still be a fluke, but the chances of that are phenomenally low.
Global Cooling
Acid Rain
Global Warming
Global Dimming
http://www.junkscience.com
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OK. But I have a question. At what point does more "stuff" in the air have a cooling, rather than warming effect? We've talked for years about a "nuclear winter" wherein the dust, soot and smoke kicked up by a nuclear war would block out the sun and cause the Earth to cool.
IOW, at some point, less light does equal less heat.
Proverbs 21:19
Because of pollution, not only are more X-rays and UV getting through, increasing the rates of skin cancer and other problems, but we've also reduced the actual amount of visible light reaching the earth???
Wow... why screw up only one thing, when you can screw up two at no extra cost?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That previous story on Slashdot included Dimming's relation to Warming - in particular, scientists suspect Mars lost its water in a disastrous event called a "Hot Spot," where one point in the ocean reaches so high a temperature that it begins evaporating so fast it actually magnifies the sun's heating effect at that surface point - causing nearly all the ocean to leave the planet through that spot.
Dimming was suggested as the reason this has not occurred - that although heat is up, average sun exposure to the surface is down, and so, evaporation is down too. The net effect is a constant level of evaporation despite rising temps.
So - is Dimming the buffer that keeps the Earth alive during times of Global Warming? Or is it possible to lose Dimming and keep Warming, rendering us as waterless as Mars? Or, is the Hot Spot theory just hot air in the first place?
When I went to India 6 years ago, we went to a place called Mount Abu in the northwestern part of the country in the Gujarat state. When you get up there, you CAN'T see the valley surrounding it. It's sickening. It looks like you are on an island surrounded by an ocean. Then again, the entire SE Asian continent is under a consistent smog. One of my flights was also delayed a half hour because of pollution. Yeah, so it wasn't so bright there. And it took my lungs more than a month to recover after I got back (and kissed the ground).
Please re-read my post a bit more critically if you are interested in what I said. You read quite a bit of hostility into it and I don't care to banter meaning on my time. I will draw your attention to the fact that I say that scientists share the faults we all have and are not elevated above some plane of biases by some great purpose and training.
I've also known lots of folks that don't worship but verify, by their own account. :\ I'm suspicious of your claimed objectivity.
So, on to your question; Here is a quick list...
Consider this:
"There are children playing in the street who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago." - Robert Oppenheimer
Now, you who lashed out at this post and those who tagged it as "flame bait," consider how much objective checking you did before defending science with your mild vitrial. In a sense, you're an example to the very problem I warned against.
Sam