I discovered something new last night on the Knowledge Network when it comes to the issues of climate change and global warming. Global dimming[wiki] is a fascinating phenomena that doesn’t get as much press as the previously mentioned topics do. It’s a friend and foe all at the same time.
This is the best, basic explanation that I could find.
Fossil fuel use, as well as producing greenhouse gases, creates other by-products. These by-products are also pollutants, such as sulphur dioxide, soot, and ash. These pollutants however, also change the properties of clouds.
Clouds are formed when water droplets are seeded by air-borne particles, such as pollen. Polluted air results in clouds with larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds. This then makes those clouds more reflexsive. More of the sun’s heat and energy is therefore reflected back into space.
This reduction of heat reaching the earth is known as Global Dimming. [globalissues]
So of course, the more sunlight you reflect into space, the cooler the temps are on the surface. The way the program put it, there needs to be a delicate process of reducing these particles because a sharp decline of air pollution will accelerate an increase of temperatures on the surface of the Earth. And with this being a recent discovery among climatologists, it’s making a lot of current models regarding the future trends of global warming to be reevaluated.
I try to keep a very open mind when I hear about these things, but the data is really hard to argue with. The simple matter is that things need to change for the better, and this needs to happen soon rather than later. Even if nothing will happen for another 10 years or 50 years, everything that is done now can make things better for the next 500 years. We cannot, as a global community, keep pumping junk into the atmosphere.
Oh, and by the way, they are discovering new islands around Greenland at an amazing rate. Not from volcanoes, but because the shorelines are melting away.