From: benthejrporter
Date: 2014-06-24 23:35:47
It’s clearly a part of this “global dimming” notion being spread by people like BBC Horizon. If I were child watching this, it might make me suicidal. I had nightmares for weeks after I went to the London Planetarium! It’s so full of logical errors that it’s hard to know where to start. David Travis’ study was based on a single three-day period. The temperature range, like all aspects of weather, has numerous causes. I’ve noticed them this week at my home; caused by cloud cover and fog which change its effect within a day-long period. Also, the programme contradicts itself. In one scene they describe Global Dimming as “truly global” and say that even uninhabited regions like Antarctica suffer a 9% dimming factor. Then in a scene a few minutes later, the air from the Antarctic is used as a control in an experiment to measure the phenomenon’s scale! Professor Ramanathan even uses the word “pristine” to describe it. You can’t attach Global Dimming to Ramanathan’s experiment because the experiment shows that the Maldives ’ particular kind of dimming is a localized phenomenon; worse in areas close to pollution sources and far less in areas away from them. I think we’re dealing with two separate phenomena with probably two separate causes. It’s also curious that the programme doesn’t reveal, decisively and unambiguously, whether the recent implementation of scrubbers and catalytic converters have reduced Global Dimming on the truly global scale that its name suggests. For example: has the pan evaporation rate across the whole world gone up since the 1980’s? It says that there has been a “reduction” in dimming, but this could be from experiments like Ramanathan’s that deal only with local variations; they suspiciously avoid detailed explanation. The programme uses frightening images of people starving, floods and forest fires, cities inundated and countryside morphed to desert, accompanied by chilling music and sound effects: Global Dimming: BBC Horizon 2006 Global Dimming: BBC Horizon 2006 This episodes reveals that radiative forcings have been “cooling” the planet. When abatement to mitigate acid rain and smog developed thanks to the Clean … View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo
