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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.
For a second there, I was under the impression that this was a study on the intelligence of humans.
*whew*
Here is a copy of the exact same news story that does not require a registration link.
Stories like this are typically SYNDICATED, which means that you can find the exact same thing in 50 or so other newspapers, right?
Why, oh why, do people choose to link to a page that requires registration when it's totally unnecessary?
Finally, does this remind anyone else of the Animatrix, on how the skies were darkened to stop the machines?
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
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.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
Before anybody asks the question we know you want to ask:
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.
There, I feel better.
We can fix global warming by polluting the atmosphere more? Too good to be true. What's the catch?
Table-ized A.I.
Every few years this gets brought up. There was an article in the June 94 sci american about it. The topic is a bit of a yawner anyway.
...the day after tomorrow. Next time an asteroid movie comes out, expect plenty of articles about about that in the media.
Future not so bright, shades no longer required.
more on global dimming here
Ok ... so less light is reaching the surface than did 50 years ago though the energy output has remained relatively the same. Is it safe to assume that the energy is being absorted by pollution and thus heating the planet?
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?
Quick! Invest in lightbulb manufacturers!
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.
This post cannot be rebroadcast without the express written constent of Major League Baseball.
Isn't global dimming a good thing? Sunlight isn't exactly compatible with the nerd life...
To all those eco-freaks, it's not pollution. It's mood lighting.
to make sure that solar energy will never be cost-effective. Clever, but diabolical.
Global Cooling
Acid Rain
Global Warming
Global Dimming
http://www.junkscience.com
------
I have not yet begun to procrastinate!
My view of the future just got darker...
So, after the ice age coming back, global warming destroying us, acid rain eating us and the oil supply being exhausted by 2010 I take science headlines with a grain of salt. The fact that this is from the NY Times just furthers my suspicion. That paper has destroyed its reputation over the years.
One thing that folks have to realize is that scientists are people. They get happy and sad, they are humble and proud, and they lie, steal, cheat and grab for headlines as reagularly as any normal person would.
This is not to discredit the publishers of this work, but to remind us all that headlines like this pop up often amount to a new natural trend or in the very rare case, us acctually damaging the environment in a way that it isn't designed to cope with.
I mention this because our geek culture has a way of worshiping the words of scientists and as a result some amusing lies have drifted in and out of school text books and around our little digital communities. Trust no one. The truth is out there. Now will I get sued by Fox or the aliens over Mexico??? Hmmm...
Sam
First, water clouds DO block UV fairly well - you don't get a sunburn nearly as fast on a cloudy day. Second, pollution may not be absorbing UV - it's more likely scattering it.
things are still shining bright. The workers are, at least, and that's good enough for me. AND, I wear my sun glasses at night, so I can, so I can, see you even when I close my eyes.
Ok, so scientists are pissed off about the following things:
1) Global warming: It's getting hotter!
2) Global dimming: It's getting darker!
3) Global light pollution: It's too bright at night!
4) Global noise pollution: It's too noisy!
Why don't we all stop bemoaning all the crap that's supposed to have killed us within 10 years over the past 50 years and just get back to doing something useful with our time. Measuring fractions of changes on a global scale is like stating that my Linux server crashed because of the price of tea in China yesterday! Sheesh.
"It's a heck of a lot worse to, say, invade a country on another continent than to attack a neighboring village."
You're measuring human 'dimness' by the acts of a gov't under motivations we don't have all the facts on?
"Derp de derp."
One unfortunate thing about polution is that the wind blows it everywhere. A coal factory darkens the skies in antartica no matter if it's location is in Denver, Stockholm, or Bejing.
Really? I didn't know fumes from a smokestack in Denver, Stockholm, or Beijing could be auto-magically multiplied to effectively blanket an entire continent in a swatch of life-choaking pollution. C'mon people, stop believing the FUD! You don't like it when Microsoft does it to your precious Linux, why be any different about our planet??? Volcanoes alone produce more pollution and life killing destruction in one eruption than all the many years of our little tiny cars coughing spent fossil fuels into the air.
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'
Wrong. (Not just because you're too lazy to provide any links. You know, like this or maybe this.)
No, you're actually wrong because you fail the reading (and understanding) the articles test - it didn't warm the earth up. It increased the temperature range for each day - that is, both the high and the low temperature - just like a clear day versus an overcast one.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
So how many years before Highlander 2?...
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
This from Environmental History Timeline:
1661 -- John Evelyn writes "Fumifugium, or the Inconvenience of the Aer and Smoake of London Dissipated" to propose remedies for London's air pollution problem. These include large public parks and lots of flowers. http://users.synflux.com.au/~ant/Evelyn/fumifug.h
"The immoderate use of, and indulgence to, sea-coale in the city of London exposes it to one of the fowlest inconveniences and reproaches that can possibly befall so noble and otherwise incomparable City... Whilst they are belching it forth their sooty jaws, the City of London resembles the face rather of Mount Aetna, the Court of Vulcan... or the suburbs of Hell [rather] than an assembly of rational creatures..."
In his diary, Evelyn writes in 1684 that smoke was so severe "hardly could one see across the street, and this filling the lungs with its gross particles exceedingly obstructed the breast, so as one would scarce breathe."
And this from Air Pollution:
In the Middle Ages London air was so polluted by smoke from coal fires that in 1273 Edward I passed a law banning coal burning in an attempt to curb smoke emissions. In 1306 a Londoner was tried and executed for breaking this law. Despite this, pollution was not checked, and on one occasion in 1578 Elizabeth I refused to enter London because there was so much smoke in the air. Smoke killed vegetation and ruined clothes, and the acid in it corroded buildings.
I always wondered if this early pollution may have contributed to Europe's mini-ice age
...every hour to monitor my stocks and commodities. It would download the latest prices every hour. But they suddenly changed the format that the data was represented in and they occasionally added extra significant digits to the prices. Most commodities went through fine but when it reached Chinese tea the extra digit caused a buffer overrun in my code and it went into an infinite loop. The problem is, my cron job was expecting to see a return code, and when it didn't get one, due to a bug in my script it kept spawning new copies of the process in an attempt to get one. Basically I had a fork bomb and it brought my Linux server to a crashing halt...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
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?
Pollute more! It will prevent global warming! :P
This single utopic sentence should have told you it's only unrealistic babble.
First "global warming and now "global dimming."
We're getting cozy, dimming the lights...all we need is "global barry white" and -- BAM -- human population explosion at your service.
The folks in Pittsburgh during industrialization are familiar with the loss of sunlight. So were those in London and Manchester in England during industrialization there. The "English Disease", or rickets, resulted from low levels of vitamin D production due to a lack of sunlight attributable in part to (1) long working hours out of the sun and (2) particulate pollution from burning coal.
An interesting book that deals, in part, with that is Coal: A Human History. Also available here or from your local library.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
...so why is this on slashdot anyway? :P
ascii art
Seems to me that one of the largest concerns is that plant life will be receiving less light which would obviously decrease the amount photosyntesis that occurs. That would mean less oxygen and more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And where is the tipping point be between less photosynthesis and a massive dying off of plants and trees? Scary to think about.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
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).
The US contains 4 % of the total world population and is behind 25 % of the world's total green house gases production.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
What a whacked-out site. You, sir or madam, have been sucked in. And what do all these things have in common? Proposed solutions or mitigation measures could have an impact upon those who put profit above all other considerations.
The way we live now is unsustainable. Sorry if you can't adapt, but things are going to change - voluntarily and gradually, or more quickly and catastrophically. Ideological ostriches disguising themselves as rational voices of scientific dissent aren't helping matters.
Acid rain as junk science... please. Look into Dave Schindler's research some time - there's a reason he was just awarded a million-dollar prize for contributions to the good of humanity.
Posts like yours leave me lost somewhere between pity for the dupes, anger at those who should know better, disgust for the politicians who let it happen, and sadness at our long-term prospects. I normally close with "cheers!", but I can't bring myself to add it here.
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
You don't think atmospheric scientists studying the effects of aerosolized pollution are fully aware of the limitations of their instruments and have incorporated some fudge factors and compensatory effects into the deductions? Why not check out some real science concerning the issue, look at how they correct for and acknowledge measuring instrument deficiencies, and how they reach their conclusions?
The interested reader is directed here:
Da Blog
Yes, you're right.
Summary:
Da Blog
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