Posted on 01/13/2005 7:50:36 PM PST by Mike Fieschko
We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements.
They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling.
Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought.
The effect was first spotted by Gerry Stanhill, an English scientist working in Israel.
Cloud changes
Comparing Israeli sunlight records from the 1950s with current ones, Dr Stanhill was astonished to find a large fall in solar radiation.
"There was a staggering 22% drop in the sunlight, and that really amazed me." Intrigued, he searched records from all around the world, and found the same story almost everywhere he looked.
Sunlight was falling by 10% over the USA, nearly 30% in parts of the former Soviet Union, and even by 16% in parts of the British Isles.
Although the effect varied greatly from place to place, overall the decline amounted to one to two per cent globally every decade between the 1950s and the 1990s.
Dr Stanhill called it "global dimming", but his research, published in 2001, met a sceptical response from other scientists.
It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming.
My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on the Asian monsoon ... We are talking about billions of people
Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan
Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution.
Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars, power stations or cooking fires, produces not only invisible carbon dioxide - the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming - but also tiny airborne particles of soot, ash, sulphur compounds and other pollutants.
This visible air pollution reflects sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface. But the pollution also changes the optical properties of clouds.
Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds.
Recent research shows that this makes them more reflective than they would otherwise be, again reflecting the Sun's rays back into space.
Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall.
There are suggestions that dimming was behind the droughts in sub-Saharan Africa which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the 1970s and 80s.
There are disturbing hints the same thing may be happening today in Asia, home to half the world's population.
"My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on the Asian monsoon," says Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan, professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San Diego. "We are talking about billions of people."
Alarming energy
But perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect.
They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide we have placed there.
What has been surprising is that this extra energy has so far resulted in a temperature rise of just 0.6 degree Celsius.
This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of six degrees Celsius.
But it now appears the warming from greenhouse gases has been offset by a strong cooling effect from dimming - in effect two of our pollutants have been cancelling each other out.
This means that the climate may in fact be more sensitive to the greenhouse effect than previously thought.
If so, then this is bad news, according to Dr Peter Cox, one of the world's leading climate modellers.
As things stand, CO2 levels are projected to rise strongly over coming decades, whereas there are encouraging signs that particle pollution is at last being brought under control.
"We're going to be in a situation unless we act where the cooling pollutant is dropping off while the warming pollutant is going up.
"That means we'll get reducing cooling and increased heating at the same time and that's a problem for us," says Dr Cox.
Even the most pessimistic forecasts of global warming may now have to be drastically revised upwards.
That means a temperature rise of 10 degrees Celsius by 2100 could be on the cards, giving the UK a climate like that of North Africa, and rendering many parts of the world uninhabitable.
That is unless we act urgently to curb our emissions of greenhouse gases.
You can see more on this report on Thursday's Horizon, BBC Two, at 9.00pm GMT.
The enviro-Nazi's must be going absolute bat guano over this. They found a new calling.
I'll start worrying when I can throw my sunglasses away. For intuitively obvious reasons this story is...let me say, sensational crap.
It's all our fault.
Yup, they are going to make new business cards and update all their pamphlets and propaganda. Chicken Little, The sky is falling! ! ! !
Isnt the sun usually less bright during the winter...well, not always, but anyway, I dunno about you guys, but over here in Boston today there was an unbearable fog. I couldnt see up 100ft (ok, this is a suburb of Boston, I wasnt in the city today - I admit it.) I realize its kinda hard to see the sun in that much fog, so honestly, I didnt notice that the sun was dimmer...
This is such a load of crap I don't even have the energy to *start* debunking it. These people are insane.
their HOPES are dimming, not the Sun!
We need space environmentalists to block Space the way that they block off-road enthusiasts in hikers in national parks!
-PJ
Or unless we restart all those dirty coal power plants, go back to using coal for house heating, and mayby convert to coal-powered autos...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1320327/posts
Meltdown : The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by ..... and the Media ( author on Foxnews)
Amazon ^ | Recent book | Patrick J. Michaels
Great commonsense companion to this article.
Oh boy, here we go. The next crisis. But doesn't this decrease skin cancer?
Obviously, then, the solution is to quit trying to bring particle pollution, "under control." Fire up the bar-b and let's have more coal burning, shall we?
Perhaps the Brits should be more concerned with "DHimmimg"!
Even with the passing of time and the depreciation of my eyesight over that time, I think I would have noticed a 22% reduction in "solar energy".
Stopped reading there. I've had enough pseudo-"science" for one day already.
Translation:
Since our arguments about global warming aren't getting the traction we think they should be we've got to make the over-hyped crisis seem even MORE imminent now.
The sky is falling twice as fast now!
wouldn't this offset global warming? LOL
So let me get this straight.......We pollute because, well, that is what filthy humans do. This pollution causes global warming which will kill us all. But the problem is that the pollution is blocking out the sun light needed for global warming to kill us all. Now that is some pretzel logic.
Actually, I think it's George Bush's fault.
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