Dimming the Sun

[rpc212]

Oh, no, and I thought it was as bad as it could get!

Just saw this Nova program called Dimming the Sun on PBS. I urge everyone to watch this program if you can get it. Then write your politicians and urge them to act now; not in a year or 2 or 10. That's way too late!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

Now I'm not having children for sure! My beloved Polar Bear is going to be horribly wiped out because of Human stupidity, inaction and greed due to global warming. Now we have been compounding the problem all along without even knowing it. Why, oh, why?

What else are we, Humans, doing that we don't even have the intelligence to understand that we are doing?

[glorybound]

Global warming

I just challenge people to go to their local library and pull up newspaper articles of the 60's - 70's on global cooling. You'll read all the politicians screaming we are causing the next ice age....

[RErender]

wouldn't it get cooler if we dimmed the sun?

[percydaman]

our environment is a tricky thing. Ive heard we're heading for a natural ice age for awhile now. I also hear we're causing global warming... Why can't they just cancel each other out for crying out loud??

[rpc212]

wouldn't it get cooler if we dimmed the sun?

You would think so and the scientists rationalized this as well. However, global dimming is actually making global warming worse because it is making global warming appear to not occur as fast as it actually is. How? With natural clouds the water droplets surrounding the natural particles are much bigger and thus don't reflect as much sunlight back into space because the photons from the Sun have room to go through the cloud. Particulate pollution Humans put into the air cause clouds to have more water droplets in them that are smaller and thus create a mirror that reflects sunlight back into space because more photons run into more, smaller water droplets.

This is bad because if we cut particulate pollution without cutting CO2 emissions or an imbalance favouring cutting more particulate pollution global warming is going to surge ahead to where it really should be and we will get much accelerated ice sheet melting, the oceans will warm and rise much quicker and that will release methane hydrates trapped in the ocean floor, again accelerating global warming even faster (methane is 8 times more potent as a atmospheric trace gas at causing global warming than CO2 is!). There is also more methane hydrates trapped in the ocean floor than there is all the oil and gas reserves in the world combined. So we will end up with a type of domino effect which will make life on Earth, as we know it, virtually non-existent.

The whole problem is, is that Humans are playing a massive role in the Earths environment and we don't fully understand the complexities of how our actions are effecting the Earth and the ecosystem upon which we rely for life. We are playing Russian roulette with our lives and, sadly, all the other lives of the other life forms on Earth. What is disturbing is people are not all up in arms over this. We are on a precipice from which there may be no return. Very sad.

Cheers,

[glorybound]

Man-Made Warming?

This has been edited. I removed the cut/paste from the original on-line article and just left the printable PDF to avoid confusion. The views written in the article are not my views. I just thought we needed to hear both side.

http://www.hillsdale.edu/images/user...rimisAug07.pdf

[EricCamper]

Damn....How long were you typing.

Well...It is inevitable that the Earth is gonna do what it wants. I doubt seriously that we are able to change any of it...Are we hurting ourselves? Maybe...But I read that a volcano does more damage to the atmosphere that we ever will. I think I am gonna watch Deep Impact now.

[Da_elf]

well atleast we are doing our part a bit here

• The solar water heating industry saves Barbados about $US 6.5 million per year in imported fuel.
• Inspired by these incentives, the entrepreneurs took the industry forward. Currently, about 32,000 solar water heaters are installed in homes, commercial businesses and hotels in Barbados.
• For the consumers, the 32,000 solar water heaters save about $US 16 million, under the assumption that they would have used electricity at normal rates to heat the water.

[Blitterswitch]

Not to be too pesamistic but $6.5 and $16 million is pennies in the greater scheme of things. I am virtually certain that the production of the these solar water heaters caused a significantly higher quantity of pollution than they will avoid creating through their use any time soon.

I imagine that their cost was also significantly higher the values saved.

This whole carbon offsetting nonsense is just another way for business to screw more money out of the general public. Open your eyes.

[Jonferimonic]

Ah humans are so arrogant. How long has the earth been in existance compared to the amount of time humans are thought to have inhabited it? Even if us terrible polluting humans are having a small impact on the earth and environment I dont think mother nature will just sit back and let the world shrivel into a ball of waste. There will always be a balance in nature. If the earth gets too hot, ice age! If it gets to cold, global warming!
Spraying a few cans of deoderant and sucking up all the fossil fuels isnt going to ruin billions of years worth of growth. If an ice age is gonna happen its gonna happen. Humans just need to stop pulluting so much for the sake of other humans.

[glorybound]

Good Stewards

I guess at the end of the day we have to be good stewards of what we are given, which includes our bodies and our Earth... which is temporary by the way .

[Da_elf]

16 million when you think that our population is 280,000 or so and ive seen where they make them, there are no huge plants or anything and its a fairly simple construction. now if the whole world heated their water with the sun rather than electricity im pretty sure you would see an effect

[dellis]

Yeah...no more long showers.

[RErender]

Yeah...no more long showers.

Heh, especially for those near the poles and in places like the American Northwest or London

[Sawyer]

Hmm I found this:

http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis.asp

Which looks rather familiar by Dr. Fred Singer who was one of the Drs (hired by tobacco companies) working to refute the claims that second hand tobacco smoke caused cancer. And in older interviews claimed that the earth was not warming at all.