TVSF - The Very Special Forum!

This is becoming a big problem, and fast. Global Dimming is perhaps our biggest problem to worry about right now. Read more about it right here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

This was a good site to find out more about it.

http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/G ... imming.asp

I think that we need to put global dimming into perspective. In North Africa, the desert boundary has been going through an advancing-and-receding cycle for many thousands of years; it is nothing new. Even if the current scientific speculations are correct, and global dimming did make a big contribution to the Sahel famines, this is partly an environmental problem, and partly a people problem.

Suppose that there were no artificial national boundaries and that human populations in most places where well below the long-term carrying capacities of their local environments. In that scenario, people affected by disastrous droughts and other big climate changes could simply pack up and move elsewhere. Yes, there would be culture shocks and other stressful adaptations. But culture shocks are far better than starving to death, or getting caught up in wars over dwindling resources.

When the next ice age comes, Africans would remember the kindness of their fellow human beings in other parts of the world. And they would welcome Scandinavian and North American refugees with open arms.

Global Dimming causes trouble everywhere on this planet. The weather gets funny and we have seen too many storms and floods already, i guess it's just the beginning. The ice is melting fast right now. To start the global dimming process takes time, when you have started it, it goes fast. For every year enormous amounts of ice is melting. The 1900 century was a drastic change in world history, and we see the results of that right now. Planet earth has a reaction time of about 30 years. We see the effects of 1976 right now.

Natural phenomens like El Nino gets much amplified by the global dimming. In fact, just about everything else gets amplified too. Mother nature handles most things by herself, without us interfering. I think it's about time to rethink, and do something. If it's not already too late for that.

The politicians have promise to make an solution for the Global Dimming for years. Nothing happened. One thing that they try to use in some cases is to put filter on the factory chimneys . But they said that they can do that on exhaust pipes to.. But it's got to be hard work to change them often,

I consider myself to be an environmentalist. However I am saddened when I see my fellow environmentalists jump on the latest bandwagon, without a thorough analysis of the data and their implications.

There are some clearly unacceptable climate scenarios. Example: Some scientists speculate that we had a Snowball Earth scenario something like 580 million years ago. In between the climate extremes that we can imagine is a range of reasonable climate scenarios for our planet. To a certain extent, choosing the best climate scenario is a matter of personal taste.

If I were the King of Climate, I would choose a climate scenario that would slow down the rate of our global biodiversity loss. Applying that criterion, the optimal climate scenario would probably be somewhat cooler than what we have now.

People in most regions of the planet have adapted to their particular biomes. For some cultures, adapting to a small climate shift--in either direction--would be stressful, and would have undesirable economic repercussions. On a global level, when there is a small climate shift--in either direction--there will be both winners and losers. It is impossible to formulate a realistic Earthwide climate scenario that would please everyone. However if we can achieve some kind of consensus on climate change, then there are some counter-intuitive steps that we might contemplate, in order to achieve our goals.

Example: The defining characteristic of an El Niño is warmer-than-average surface temperatures in certain parts of the Equatorial Pacific. Localized dimming may help to mitigate some of its bad effects. How to accomplish this?

Build coal-fired electric power plants, WITHOUT scrubbers, at strategic locations on the Pacific Rim. These power plants would burn low-sulfur coal most of the time. However they would switch to cheaper high-sulfur coal during actual or incipient El Niños, but only when the winds would carry the sulfate aerosols over the desired locations.

When we read about dimming, it is very tempting to think of it as a problem, and nothing more. However applied dimming could also be an opportunity. Using one problem to solve another problem, and thinking of power plants as a kind of dual-use technology, will require a much higher degree of long-term global thinking than we humans can muster right now. For example, in the current Age of Peak Oil, we in the U.S. are so obsessed with gaining political control over the oil-producing regions of our planet, that we can't even come to grips with the need for serious energy conservation.

The most worrying part about global dimming is how fast it happends. The whole climate has changed in just a couple of years. The ice is melting faster and faster for each year.

About El Nino. I guess El Nino always have been there, since the dawn of the earth, but the global dimming makes it so much more powerful. It's the earths way to get rid of the extra heat, so it must have been there all the time.

I have read lots of reports on internet about how the earth gets warmer and warmer. I will post some of them later. I think i read that Jan-Feb this year was the warmest months in over 1.000 years (or was it 4.000 years). That says a lot.

To be negative and thinking real dark, i think we blew it. It's too late.

But i really whish it was different.

I found some links about global warming.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperatur ... 1000_years

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/06 ... index.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 154533.htm

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/artic ... _evidence/

PINATUBO

The exposive eruption of the volcano, Mt. Pinatubo, in the Phillipines in 1991, was a great hardship for the farmers who lived nearby. Nevertheless, the government's proactive evacuation plan was successful in saving tens of thousands of lives.

The worldwide environmental effects of the Pinatubo eruption were a mixed bag. Because of the Global Dimming caused by the aerosols and ash from the eruption, average surface temperatures dropped by a small but measureable amount, which temporarily slowed down global warming. However there was also a significant but temporary increase in the rate of ozone destruction in the atmosphere, which put people at somewhat greater risk of UV-induced skin cancer.

If you want to read more about the Pinatubo eruption, here is a link to the Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinatubo

Pinatubo, one of my specials. I have lots of documents about that eruption, and lots of video material. I'm very interested in volcanoes and Pinatubo was something extra.



Check out this site.

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Phi ... ework.html

The best volcano site on the net.

http://volcano.und.edu/

Should we increase global dimming?

http://www.physorg.com/news64244336.html

Global Dimming: It Is Getting Darker At Ground Level

Atsumu Ohmura has discovered that the lights are going out all over the world.

"It's an uncomfortable one," says Gerald Stanhill, who published many of these early papers and coined the phrase global dimming. "The first reaction has always been that the effect is much too big, I don't believe it and if it's true then why has nobody reported it before."

That began to change in 2001, when Stanhill and his colleague Shabtai Cohen at the Volcani Centre in Bet Dagan, Israel collected all the available evidence together and proved that, on average, records showed that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth's surface had gone down by between 0.23 and 0.32% each year from 1958 to 1992.

STATISTICS