With the fairly recent development of 'global warming', I just get a giggle out of good ol 'global dimming'.

What do you guys think of this theory?

From what little I know of it, it seems fairly well confirmed.

So the pollution is blocking the vital rays of the sun thus rapidly dropping the global temperatures and the only way to reheat the planet is to stop the pollution so that holes may appear in the smog so we may get light to the planet once again?

Perhaps.

"angels don't play this haarp"

This problem is already being observed in China where ground ozone formation is a big problem.

I can see the basic concept of what they are talking about. It's still a fairly fresh concept in terms of it being big news like this so lets see what they can come up with in regards to field data, etc.

Fresh concept?

That is what you call arguments that came out in the 1930s and 1940s?

Ummm, I am pretty aware of what the media is presenting to the public and this hasen't really been an area of concern for most people.

With China's economic boom going on, this problem is fast becoming known to your daily western citizen.

That's funny, I haven't seen any mention of global dimming on any news stations...

So the pollution is blocking the vital rays of the sun thus rapidly dropping the global temperatures....Is this the "global dimming" of this thread?

If so, I doubt it has much effect upon surface temperaures of the Earth. Certainly if you are talking about the microscopic carbon particles that come from unfiltered coal plant combustion or diesel buses etc. it makes no difference to absorb sun light a few hundred meters higher in atmosphere than on the surface.

If speaking of water vapor produced at high altitude by airplanes etc, then I think the initial effect may be a slight cooling term in the equations as clouds do reflect sunlight back into space, but soon the cloud will, like the CO2 also released, be transparent gas and not reflecting sunlight back into space, but continues to retard the escape of Earth's IR radiation.

Please define the nature of the "pollution" you are talking about, the time scale you are interested in, plus the sources of the mix of pollution. For example "effect of high altitude jets during first five minutes," then one may be able to make some intelligent comments.

The focus of the global dimming debate was the coal burning at various factories. That all the carbon emissions were creating clouds in the atmosphere that blocked all the rays of the sun that keep our global temperature up from reaching the earth. Without the heating of the sun, we'd end up as cold as say Mars.

Without the heating of the sun, we'd end up as cold as say Mars.

Why not as hot as Venus? Venus is completely enshrouded in clouds. Not one ray of sunlight hits the surface. Venus' cloud cover hasn't kept that planet from developing runaway global warming. Far from it--Venus' cloud cover is a key contributing factor to its thermal behavior.

The "global dimming" croud has forgotten that the sun shines on a particular spot on the Earth for half of the day. Increased cloud cover may reduce daytime heating, but it reduces nighttime radiative cooling even more.

This makes me wonder: Is the "global dimming" croud suffering from "lobal dimming"?

This thread (http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=51769) is also sort of covering that the global dimming story

So the pollution is blocking the vital rays of the sun thus rapidly dropping the global temperatures and the only way to reheat the planet is to stop the pollution so that holes may appear in the smog so we may get light to the planet once again?
NO, U SEAM NOT TO UNDSTAND CLEARLY.G.WARMING IS JUS THE SUDDEN INCREASE IN TEMPERATURE. THE POLLUTION DESTROYES THE OXONE LAYER AND THUS SUNRAYS HAVE DIRECT EFFECT ON THE EARTHS SURFACE.AND THIS SAME POLLUTION FORM GASES WHICH TEND TO RETAIN THE SUNRAYS BOUNCING OFF FROM THE EARTHS SURFACE THUS HEAT IS MENTAINED ON EARTH , INCREASING THE TEMP.
WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
WAT DO U SUGGEST?

Earths magma convection system circulates between the core of the earth and the surface of the earth.
It carries heat from the interior of the planet to the surface,
it rises from the core at the equator and sinks back down to the core at the poles.
As the core temp rises, the heat is transferred to the magma convection system and carried to the surface where it radiates through the earths crust.
It is this heating up that is causing instabilitty beneath the tectonic plates riding above.
That is what is happening not global warming. It is a natural cycle.
Global warming has added Co2 on top of the Co2 already being released from the ocean because of hydrothermal mega plume (vents) that spew the gas which is released into the troposphere and ultimately to the stratosphere.
The magnetic pole TPW tru polar wander is caused by the imbalance in the mass distribution of the plates itself, earth crust displacement especially under water where the earth's crust is thin.

Come on. Nature is resilient. Nature isn't fragile. Just try not mowing your lawn for a month, and not trimming the bushes, and see how long it takes for the "jungle" to start moving in again.

A lot of these "environmental problems" would seem to cancel each other out. And it's generally far better to let humans influence and alter their environment somewhat than to try to "fix" our influences, regardless of the expenses or costs. Surely God designed the world to hold so many people, since God created the world, and commanded people to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.

Pronatalist,

Are you saying that humans should not take any responsibility for their actions, but instead leave everything in God's hands?

What about free will? Didn't your God give us the power to make decisions for good or evil?

...Please define the nature of the "pollution" you are talking about, the time scale you are interested in, plus the sources of the mix of pollution. For example "effect of high altitude jets during first five minutes," then one may be able to make some intelligent comments.I was looking for another old post of mine when noticed this one, by chance only 2 hours after BBC had a full hour (in two 30 minute segments) special called "Global Dimming" -Perhaps more is at their site now.

I can now answer my own question: the "pollution" of concern is the increase in fine particulates man has produced, by burning fossil fuels, especially coal or ironically that man is not making as much fine particles now as recently done. With lots of fine particles in the air, the average size of the water droplets that form on them is smaller, and this makes the clouds last longer, before drops of rain fall. The effect on the cloud albedo is about 10 times larger that previously included in the models and of course more clouds tends to cool more.

It is not only that cloud last longer, but more important from albedo POV is the fact that a given mass of water vapor condensed (just to illustrate point easily) into 1/10 size drops is 1000 times more of these small drops for each 1 of unit size drop. The cross-section of the 1/10 size drop for scattering sunlight is only 1/100 as large as that of the unit size drop, but as there are 1000 of them for every unit size drop, so this is a ten fold increase in the scattering. Similar argument means that half size drops will double the scattering. etc. The BBC did not stress the intelligence of their average viewer with any of this numerics, but all their researchers agreed that the size of drops with more fine centers for condensation would be smaller and the cooling would be proportionally increased.

The main point of the program was that the fine particulate has been very much reduced by recent (last few decades) environment effort as population health became more of an issue. The prior failure in the models to understand this fine particles => fine drops => higher cloud cooling lead to false (too low) evaluation of the cooling. They had thus also made errors (again too low) in the heating associated with green house gases as they fit the coefficients etc of the models to reproduce the observed net heating.

I.e. according to the "experts" of the program, the global warming of green house gases has been seriously underestimated since the nearly offsetting cooling was so badly underestimated. Perhaps the Greenland ice will all melt much sooner than prior predictions, the 7 meter rise (or was it 7 feet?) in the sea will not be in the next century, the oceans will warm, the methane hydrate may cook free and Venus here we come, It may be too late already etc.

Hope Andre is able to see show, it was disturbing :( and I need some reassuring words. :)