Baffled Scientists: Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

[DannyRock]

Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

By Robert Roy Britt

LiveScience Managing Editor
posted: 24 January 2006
10:47 am ET

After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes.

That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period.

Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood.

"The data also reveal that from 2000 to now the clouds have changed so that the Earth may continue warming, even with declining sunlight," said study leader Philip R. Goode of the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "These large and peculiar variabilities of the clouds, coupled with a resulting increasing albedo, presents a fundamental, unmet challenge for all scientists who wish to understand and predict the Earth's climate."

Cloud changes

Earth's albedo is measured by noting how much reflected sunlight in turn bounces off the Moon, something scientists call earthshine. The observations were made at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California.

The findings will be published Jan. 24 in Eos, a weekly newspaper of the American Geophysical Union.

On any given day, about half of Earth is covered by clouds, which reflect more sunlight than land and water. Clouds keep Earth cool by reflecting sunlight, but they can also serve as blankets to trap warmth.

High thin clouds are better blankets, while low thick clouds make better coolers.

Separately, satellite data recently showed that while the difference between high and low clouds had long been steady at 7-8 percent, in the past five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has jumped to 13 percent. High, warming clouds have increased while low clouds have decreased.

Research shows condensation trails, or contrails from jet airplanes, fuel more high-altitude clouds. But they have not been shown to account for all the observed change.

What about global warming?

Earth's albedo appears to have experienced a similar reversal during a period running from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.

Goode's team says there may be a large, unexplained variation in sunlight reaching the Earth that changes over the course of two decades or so, as well as a large effect of clouds re-arranging by altitude.

How do the findings play into arguments about global warming and the apparent contribution by industrial emissions? That's entirely unclear.

"No doubt greenhouse gases are increasing," Goode said in a telephone interview. "No doubt that will cause a warming. The question is, 'Are there other things going on?'"

What is clear is that scientists don't understand clouds very well, as a trio of studies last year also showed.

"Clouds are even more uncertain than we thought," Goode said.

www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060124_earth_albedo.html

[Swamp Gas]

I wonder whether Global Warming and less sunlight reaching the earth is part of the Master Plan to accelerate another Ice Age. Even wonder why the Nazis moved to South America? Increased Cloud cover and less sunlight will increase Carbon Dioxide levels, which in turn increase cloud cover. Add to that CHemtrails AND extra Contrails, and we have a brew for disaster.

[BigBunny]

What is clear is that scientists don't understand clouds very well, as a trio of studies last year also showed.

With the greatest respect to Goode et al what is clear is that one of the fundamental tools of scientific method being the tool of observation is not being utilised. If the Common Man myself included can see the dramatic changes being caused by a particular and peculiar human activity you would think Dr Goode might have noticed as well.

One common false assumption is that the sprayed chemicals eventually return to earth. Depending upon the particularate size it appears that most of the material remains in the atmosphere creating the reflective blanket that Dr Goode has noted. If the blanket is as effective as it appears to be then the heat generated by human activity will necessarily accelerate weather systems leading to the phenomena we see today.

Each of these elements is part of an equation the answer to which is becoming increasingly obvious.

[altitudelou]

Baffled Scientists Say Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/060124_earth_albedo.html

January 24, 2006


...satellite data recently showed that while the difference between high and low clouds had long been steady at 7-8 percent, in the past five years, for some unknown reason, the difference has jumped to 13 percent. High, warming clouds have increased while low clouds have decreased.
________________________________________________________________________

Gee, I wonder if the BAFFLED scientist have taken CHEMTRAIL'S / GLOBAL SPRAYING into consideration in calculating this strange abnormal 13 percent increase in less sunlight reaching the earth over the past five years, it must be very difficult for the establishment scientoids to put out data like this and still lie and try to cover up the ongoing Chemtrail / Global Spraying operation which has been underway since 1996-97.

It is a no brainier that this 13 % increase in less sunlight reaching the earth's surface over the past five years is a direct result of the Global Spraying operation called "Chemtrail's" that has put hundreds of tons of chemical / metallic material into the atmosphere as many have speculated to mitigate and offset the effects of advancing Global Warming, scientist are baffled indeed, that must be an inside joke at the scientoid water cooler because no one that has been watching this Global Spraying operation since the late 90's is laughing at this ridiculous "Baffled scientist" statement.

Quote from Robert Roy Britt
LiveScience Managing Editor

"Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood."

There must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood, Oh really, all that I can say to Mr. Robert Roy Britt is that he better go outside and take a good look up at the sky, obviously Mr. Britt is no rocket scientist given his inability to except his journalistic responsibility and inform his readers of the truth that there is a major undertaking of a Spraying project by our Government and others to in fact cause less sunlight to reach the earth's surface, I submit that Mr. Britt is part of another ongoing attempt to cover up this Spraying project via half truths, misinformation and outright subterfuge of the general public.

[increase 1776]

Ever wonder why the Nazis moved to South America?

They don't like moving alot.Part of the 'Master Plan', is the sacrifice of the U.S. ,to all those pissed-off and pissed-on countries.The U.S. is just like Germany in the late 1930's,only they have learned from their mistakes.Most didn't move here because they knew they'd have to move again.This country will be attacked.This country will use the fema-aka-re-education camps.Germany never lost WWII,they used and abused us.Now they have no use for us.

[BigBunny]

I wonder if anyone has thought of measuring the temperature of the clouds in question let alone otherwise analysing them?

[socrates]

Ok, logic says there has to be a reason for global dimming. It appears that the answer is because of aircraft mostly along with the ships, industry, etc.. It also appears that Big Bunny is right in saying that these particulates stay aloft for a long time. It appears that global dimming is man made. It's tough to see how chemtrails aren't real. If this is a hoax, I wouldn't mind a paycheck for being a useful idiot.

[altitudelou]

LOL, I want a check too !

[halva]

Up until now I have not announced on the internet the URL of the discussion forum I set up some time ago but which has not been much used, for that reason and doubtless for other reasons.

I have decided to announce it. It is:
halva.proboards46.com

Here is some of the content, on the subject of Global Dimming:

www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=105

Gavin Schmidt is a climate modeller at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and is interested in modelling past, present and future climate.

He has written a critique of leading ‘climate change debunker’ and author of ‘Jurassic Park’ Michael Crichton.

www.grist.org/advice/books/2005/02/01/schmidt-fear/


At his ‘Real Climate’ website Gavin Schmidt writes the following:

“It just so happens that most of the posts on this site have tried to counteract arguments from those who would sow fake "uncertainty" in the climate debate. But lest our readers feel that we are unjustifiably certain about our knowledge, let us look at a recent example of the opposite tendency: too much certainty.

A recent BBC Horizon documentary (transcript) raised the issue of 'global dimming' and argued that this 'killer' phenomena's newly-recognised existence would lead to huge re-assessments of future global warming. As part of the hyperbole, the process of global dimming was linked very clearly to the famines in Ethiopia in the 1980s and the implication was left that worse was to come.”<br>
The Horizon documentary confidently asserts that:

“Global dimming is a killer. It may have been behind the worst climatic disaster of recent times, responsible for famine and death on a biblical scale. And Global Dimming is poised to strike again.”

It is horribly premature to declare 'global dimming' the cause of this event.

The suggested 'doubling' of the rate of warming in the future compared to even the most extreme scenario developed by IPCC is highly exaggerated. Supposed consequences such as the drying up of the Amazon Basin, melting of Greenland, and a North African climate regime coming to the UK, are simply extrapolations built upon these exaggerations. Whether these conclusions are actually a fair summary of what the scientists quoted in the program wanted to say is unknown. However, while these extreme notions might make good television, they do a dis-service to the science.”<br>

David Sington’s position:

1. I am the producer of the BBC Horizon Global Dimming, so I'd like to respond to Gavin Schmidt's article, and also some of his further comments.

Firstly, I want to refute the notion that Peter Cox, or any other scientist taking part in this or in any other of the films I have made, was "mugged" with trick questions and made to seem to say things he does not believe. …. Dr Schmidt's suggestion is, not to put too fine a point on it, a serious libel (tantamount to accusing a scientist of falsifying his or her data).

What about the substance of the programme, and Dr Schmidt's criticisms of it? Here, it is important to make a distinction between criticisms of the science itself, and criticisms of the way it is presented.

The film explores what might be expected to happen if a) nothing is done to curb GHG emissions and b) the climate sensitivity is in the higher range Peter Cox and other leading scientists now believe possible. Of course, we are not saying that this is what will happen (to quote the film "this is not a prediction - it is a warning") - but in assessing policy options (which is what in a democracy we are calling upon our fellow-citizens to do) a proper appreciation of the worst case is vital.

Can I just finish by saying that the Horizon film was seen by 3.5 million viewers (representing about 7% of the adult population of the UK) and that copies were requested by the Prime Minister's office. The issues it discussed are being actively debated in Britain.

David Sington
DOX Productions Ltd

[— 6 Feb 2005 @ 11:49 am



Caroline Campbell’s position:


"Hello everybody.

I found that story and made that programme. It has been an utterly absorbed year in the making and I was preparing to leave it behind and move on. Having just sat down to surf the internet for feedback, I now sit here deeply motivated by your comments. Thank you. I will do my best to find a way to take awareness of this issue ‘beyond the Horizon’…

There are a few points to explain. Global Dimming has not hit the media more because few people knew about it. The programme is as I write kicking up quite a storm behind closed doors. Horizon has been thrown into this slightly unusual situation of having broken a major climate story. Sure, Farquhar, Stanhill and Ramanathan have been waving their results in the air for decades but these results appeared to contradict a lot of what climatologists already believed … without enough peer-reviewed data no self-respecting climatologist would translate this gathering evidence into ‘what it meant for the climate’… until Peter Cox came along that is.

He wrote his paper only in the last few months of us making this programme. In it, he predicts we are looking at a 9.3 degree rise over the next century if we eliminate Global Dimming but do nothing about Global Warming. It will be very interesting to see how this paper is taken by the scientific community.

I do not wish to mislead you. Horizon does have a specific structure to its programme-making and we were advised to lean on the disaster-scenario BUT nothing presented in the programme was not the honest belief of the scientists we spoke to.

If you want my honest opinion. I think that an awful lot more work needs to be done to truly understand this one. The data these scientists have is strongly suggestive but it is not a full global picture. We’d need more long-term records from more countries: records that agree though measured using different methods before we can be absolutely certain of the true extent the world has been dimming. Then we need to understand which particles do the heat-absorbing and which ones do the reflecting and which do most cloud-seeding to understand the effects of cutting these down.

However, there is a problem. Time.

The climate predictions are only going to be as good as the data we already have and it is not perfect. To wait 30 years for a whole new set could be suicidal.

A huge frustration of many of the scientists in this programme is that an increasing amount of money is made available to the guys who sit at their computers crunching numbers and generating predictions (with the windows closed) whilst the guys outside who are watching the skies, taking the measurements etc are struggling. Governments, Media etc. all want fast answers. We have to remember that fast answers are not always available. With Global Dimming, we are forced to take a leap of faith. We may not have every scrap of evidence in place, but if we ignore it, it could be suicidal.

Motivating people to act is difficult. I think it does have to come from political leaders because they can make swift decisions and the mounting environmental crisis needs that. I wish I could now run off a list of things YOU can do, choices YOU can make. Now. But the real issue is our reliance on fossil fuels, living a more energy-efficient lifestyle is a great start but it is political will that is needed. I believe, in the time given, nuclear power is the answer driving a baseline electricity-based economy. Hybrid and electric cars.

As for aeroplanes… I don’t know. There is simply too much gained from using them to stop. I must go and do some research into alternatives to the jet engine!

Caroline"



BEATE LIEPERT’S POSITION

Dear David and readers,
Again, I am one of the interviewed scientists and one of the leading experts on "global dimming" and its climate consequences and I initiated the meeting which started the entire debate (Liepert et. al. 2004). Gavin Schmidt is my colleague at NASA GISS and we have been discussing my research on "global dimming" for many years now. He has been very supportive and a great colleague. Graham Farquhar and Michael Roderick (the other interviewed scientists) are frequent guests at our institutions. Furthermore during the research process for the documentary I repeatedly raised my concerns about linking the indirect effect and the Sahel drought without mentioning the study by Giannini et al (Science, 2004). Her study is regarded as the most convincing explanation. She provides good evidence that the Indian Ocean sea surface temperature was the driving factor behind the Sahel drought. My colleagues Rotstayn and Giannini correspond with each other. I respect and know them both quite well. Science might seem pretty boring to film makers in this respect. But that's what it is.

Beate

[halva]

GRAHAM FARQUAR’S POSITION

The DOX program was not scripted in the way that I would have done. But I guess that you'd have to say that if I scripted it, only my mother would have watched it.
Best wishes
Graham

Professor Graham Farquhar, FAA, FRS
Head, Environmental Biology Group
Research School of Biological Sciences
& Chair, Forum of the
Institute of Advanced Studies
Australian National University


From David Travis

I was clearly in the dark about the intent of your first e-mail but after reading through your reply and the various e-mail excerpts you included at the bottom I think I'm getting closer to understanding the debate that is going on here. Let me give you some summarystatements below as general eplies/responses to some of the commentary and then, as time permits, I'd be happy to try and clarify or rebut any specifics you or the others might want to get into.

1. First of all, I believe the Horizons show on global dimming was definitely over-produced and over-dramatized. However, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. Without such effects much of the younger audience would likely have lost interest half-way
through and the sort of discussions that are going on now would probably not be happening. I have heard from an amazing amount of young people (high school and college students) since that show aired. They aren't necessarily "scared" but instead just want to learn more about global dimming. In my opinion, these sorts of shows have two primary responsibilities: (1) Educate the public about latest scientific research on important topics and (2) impact on them the importance of how these findings could potentially affect their lives (or their children's) some day. The latter is crucial in order to have any sort of potential impact on policy makers by getting their attention. I do believe, however, that a fine line is balanced because if it goes too far in the
sensationalist direction the risk is to lose credibility. As a
scientist, I did find myself feeling uncomfortable in spots where the statements seemed a bit too bold without sufficient evidence to back them up (even one of my own!).


************************************************
Dr. David Travis
Professor and Chair
Department of Geography and Geology
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
************************************************

Statement by Leon Rotstayn

The study on which the comments are based can be seen at

www.atm.dal.ca/~lohmann/papers/rotstayn_lohmann_02.pdf

I share your concern about the way some of the climate sceptics misrepresent the facts, but I also agree that some of the words in the Global Dimming Documentary were alarmist. It screened in Australia a few weeks ago, with some changes to the voice over to make it a little less alarmist. It seems to have had a strong impact on many people who saw it, and I have mixed feelings about whether it is justified to be slightly "alarmist" in order to get a strong message across. After all, if I had written the documentary, complete with caveats and qualifications, it would have put most of the viewers to sleep! On the other hand, as a professional scientist, I feel that it is important to be as accurate as possible.

The cited study shows that one can make a reasonable hypothesis for a connection between pollution and Sahelian drought, as summarized in the comment that you have quoted below. I am very aware that this is only the first step in establishing such a link. We hope to address this question further in more detailed simulations that are currently under way. Other modelling groups will probably also look at it.

[BigBunny]

And so Halva, what is the relevance of your latest scribbling to this thread?

[halva]

bigbunny said:

And so Halva, what is the relevance of your latest scribbling to this thread?

Big Bunny, justify why you call it "scribbling", thus starting a fight from the outset?

And Swampgas, indicate some rules so that posters here can know whether postings should be initiated in the Fight Club from square one, or only consigned there from square two, or something like that.

The point of reopening the Global Dimming issue is to show how denial of the connection between policy and the results of policy is causing problems for some scientists who collaborate with those doing the denying.

[BigBunny]

Halva at the time that I asked my question of you we were both on the Forum together - a fact that can be confirmed by Swampgas if necessary. Secondly the only comment in your first post today was as follows:

Up until now I have not announced on the internet the URL of the discussion forum I set up some time ago but which has not been much used, for that reason and doubtless for other reasons.

I have decided to announce it. It is:
halva.proboards46.com

However this post was edited 8 minutes later to incorporate the rest of the post so as to legitimise your latest ascerbic comment. Further your second post had not appeared on my screen at the time that I posted my comment. Therefore while it appears that I posted later, the truth is as I have written. It is simply one of the vagaries of using these Forums. Not a bad effort at bushwhacking although I have represented petty crims who were more ingenious.

In regard to the Discussion Lounge I have already said precisely what I mean in regard to my opinion of you and these comments can be readily viewed by other Forum members. Your allegations are baseless as usual and your attempt to hide behind Swampgas is an insult.

[halva]

The spirit and content of your reply indicates that I should have posted in the fight club in the first place. The order in which I post the various components in my postings does not necessarily correspond to the order in which I conceive them or plan them. That is one of the facilities provided by the self-correction facilities that are available on this forum.

What happened was that you inserted YOUR acerbic comment before I had finished my informational and quite unaggressive and unrelated-to-you posting.

Are you willing to initiate a reciprocal arrangement whereby I can consign your threads to the fight club whenever I like by launching an unprovoked attack on you?

[BigBunny]

Ho hum.

My contribution to this thread actually lies at:
gastronamus.proboards27.com/index.cgi?board=aerosol&action=display&thread=1142604368

[halva]

The Fight Club section of this forum is not hidden. The posts can be read in the "50 most recent posts".

[socrates]

halva said:

The Fight Club section of this forum is not hidden. The posts can be read in the "50 most recent posts".

I don't see any fight club posts there. Perhaps it would be better if you stopped mentioning that section so much.

____________________
Anyway, back to the topic-

That was a good thread you came up with Big Bunny. I almost chose that one instead of this one to bump back to the top.

To me it is quite strange how the emergence of global dimming coincided with so many people first witnessing the chemtrails. That is very good circumstantial evidence.

[socrates]

bigbunny said:

And so Halva, what is the relevance of your latest scribbling to this thread?

I just reread through all those comments posted. Here are my thoughts. Nearly all of the comments were either debunking global dimming or were saying that its effects were being overdramatized. What also stood out to me was when one scientist said we don't have time to wait for 30 year study results. Finally, I noticed the subtle marketing of the "good pollution". I am not trying to instigate here but rather am simply stating my impressions from the commentary posted.

[halva]

socrates said:

halva said:

The Fight Club section of this forum is not hidden. The posts can be read in the "50 most recent posts".

I don't see any fight club posts there. Perhaps it would be better if you stopped mentioning that section so much.

I mentioned it because the problem existed but it seems to have been silently corrected.

[halva]

Wrong.

There is nothing hidden about the "hidden" section of Gastronamus Cafe.

[halva]

Or perhaps it has to do with whether one has authorisation and is logged in.

[halva]

socrates said:

bigbunny said:

And so Halva, what is the relevance of your latest scribbling to this thread?

I just reread through all those comments posted. Here are my thoughts. Nearly all of the comments were either debunking global dimming or were saying that its effects were being overdramatized. What also stood out to me was when one scientist said we don't have time to wait for 30 year study results. Finally, I noticed the subtle marketing of the "good pollution". I am not trying to instigate here but rather am simply stating my impressions from the commentary posted.

Did you see the BBC Horizon documentary on "Global Dimming"?

The transcript is here, but it doesn't do justice to the patronising and hysterical tone of the documentary as one experiences it as a spectator.
www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml

The scientists above, all of whom appear in the documentary, were very much in two minds about the project they had collaborated with.

[socrates]

Tone doesn't mean anything when it is the spin that has the most power. Howard Dean let out a nice howl in 2004 for his supporters. Yet, the scumbags in power took it out of context and said, look at his crazy tone.

Now we have someone arguing that the tone of the global dimming documentary was shrill, thus not to be believed. Mmmmbarium did the same thing with global warming. Now we are confronted with the debunking of global dimming, even though it is quite evident that aircraft emissions are both warming and dimming the earth.

This same "debater" debunking global dimming promotes "Deep Shield" because he was so "rational", not hysterical. Who should we believe, the rational "Deep Shield" or the "hysterical" BBC?

The marketing of pollution unfortunately marches on.

[halva]

The author of the above posting is looking for a fight, and is answered in the fight club.

[socrates]

I am not looking for a fight. You seem to think you should be able to post whatever you want without any critical thinking applied. As chemtrails are real, because we witness them, so too is global dimming. That global dimming has emerged along with chemtrails, that is some damning circumstantial evidence that chemtrails are real. I find it curious why anyone would be trying so hard to debunk global dimming. Well, it does make sense, if one reflects on it.

[marklookingup]

I'm so friggin' sick and tired of people talking about the days after 9/11 and the clear skies that followed, that I could scream.

TPTB, in my mind, had no choice but to stop the assault during those days, or it would have exposed the whole program to all.

What I'm curious about though, did the rest of the world get
sprayed on those days. My gut tells me that all eyes were observing the skies globally, so it was postponed. ??

[socrates]

marklookingup said:

I'm so friggin' sick and tired of people talking about the days after 9/11 and the clear skies that followed, that I could scream.

TPTB, in my mind, had no choice but to stop the assault during those days, or it would have exposed the whole program to all.

What I'm curious about though, did the rest of the world get
sprayed on those days. My gut tells me that all eyes were observing the skies globally, so it was postponed. ??

I think the main piece of data to emerge from those days after 9/11 was that with the planes grounded, there was a noticeable increase in temperature. This showed that even if there is some pollution like sulfur which has radiative forcing traits, that the net result from aircraft emissions is global warming.

I completely agree with your ideas that on certain days they may be a bit more scared of showing their chemtrail cards. There appears to be an awkward cycle for them going on where they are balancing their subliminals with what masses of people are witnessing in the skies.

Some times I really wonder. On the Memorial Day weekend there were scores of reports of massive chemtrailing. I, myself witnessed it here in Massachusetts. I have only seen that twice. In my opinion, chemtrailing is not so so easy for them to get away with. At least, it appears they are unable to do the amount of activity they would want to. I think they are doing widespread experimentation during their stay in legal and social limbo.

[halva]

socrates said:

Now we have someone arguing that the tone of the global dimming documentary was shrill, thus not to be believed. Mmmmbarium did the same thing with global warming. Now we are confronted with the debunking of global dimming, even though it is quite evident that aircraft emissions are both warming and dimming the earth.

This same "debater" debunking global dimming promotes "Deep Shield" because he was so "rational", not hysterical. Who should we believe, the rational "Deep Shield" or the "hysterical" BBC?

The marketing of pollution unfortunately marches on.

The above posting should have been made in the Fight Club here. Why was the Fight Club established? A comment on this please Swamp.

In parallel with the above, the following was posted at "Megasprayer", taking up there, where I cannot reply, an argument that was started here at Gastronamus:


I think on the surface the two may appear to be adversaries, yet perhaps they are simply working the two different sides of the marketing of pollution.

Reynolds wants folks to believe that the megacontrails in the skies are simply water vapour like always. He wants people to be able to rationalize chemtrails as being nothing new under the sun. He is a provider of cognitive dissonance.

Wayne Hall, on the other hand, wishes for folks to see the trails as being abnormal, as part of a clandestine program to cool the planet. At Gastro he is on a mission to debunk the BBC's global dimming documentary as hysterical. He sets to plant in the recesses of the sheep's mind that "Deep Shield" was rational, thus, the supercontrails are for our own good.

The two disinfo agents converge with their tag team trolling on Deborah. She tries to provide hard research while the trolls continue looking for absolutes and confusion. Reynolds works the side of the sheep who are willing to believe that nothing is wrong with the skies, nothing to see here, just move along. Halva, while his signature speaks for the need for calm, works the side of those who have looked into global warming and believe it needs to be addressed.

I think one of the reasons Halva survived so long without detection was because we figured since Deep Shield was a Rense.com type tabloid piece, that it was created to shed doubt on chemtrails as real, that it was essentially a debunker piece. I think we only saw Halva as being naive to believe it as truth. It would have taken a psychic to have known that he knew all along that "Deep Shield" was a fake, that he was pushing it for some insidious agenda.

Now, I think with Halva debunking the BBC global dimming documentary as hysterical, while "deep shield" is rational, this shows that his role is to market the pollution while attempting to condition people that chemtrails are good for us.

He continues to make posts that reveal what a fraud he is.

"Did you see the BBC Horizon documentary on "Global Dimming"?
The transcript is here, but it doesn't do justice to the patronising and hysterical tone of the documentary as one experiences it as a spectator.
www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml "
Baffled Scientists: Less Sunlight Reaching Earth

At DBS, Halva posted,

"Footsoldier what is your explanation for the absence of visible debate between exponents of geoengineering who claim that aircraft emissions have a net cooling effect and can be used to mitigate global warming and people like these Plane Stupid people who prefer to see aircraft emissions as a factor contributing to global warming?"
link

I am sick of Halva playing stupid. He is trying to muddy ideas that aren't that complicated.

Then he goes on to say,
"I take it that you are fully aware of the implications of resuming posting on these subjects here at DBS - where we are prey to noise input from Johnnyspray - rather than going, say to Gastronamus Cafe or to my discussion forum, where you are already registered."

His website is closed to the public and looks like only Halva himself is making posts there. This clown has been putting on this sad act for years. Chem11 has done a service to truthseekers with this website and with this article he wrote on Wayne Hall and the marketing of pollution. Sure there is plenty of disinfo in life, but thankfully there are plenty of us who follow the "My Cousin Vinnie" technique by which nothing can be put past the gambini, nothing.

Sure it took tons of time to figure this mole's tasks. Yet, now that he has been uncovered, a lot more things make sense. What are we gonna do, no longer trust anyone in life because of frauds like Halva? No. It is ok to be idealistic as we continue to hone the bullcrap detectors and force honesty to dominate discussions.



The following is reposted from the Fight Club section of this forum (with slight changes). This discussion should not be going on in the open section of Gastronamus Cafe.

The BBC's "Global Warming" documentary vs "Deep Shield".

The BBC documentary would have been fine if it hadn't insisted on covering up phenomena to which Deep Shield was attempting to draw attention prior to committing suicide.

The debunker Jay Reynolds, whom Socrates continues to refer to in the open section Gastronamus Cafe, wrote to the producer of the Global Dimming programme David Sington, criticizing the hysterical tone of the programme and more or less accusing Sington of aiding and abetting 'chemmies'. Sington's reply was apologetic, suitably ridiculing the chemtrails "loonies", who he said had contacted him in large numbers.

Reynolds leaked Sington's reply to the internet, making Sington look like a fool. I wrote an e-mail to Sington criticizing him for falling into the trap of a climate change debunker.

I later wrote this:


Some scientists and activists have tried to avoid the necessity for a full-scale confrontation with the climate change sceptics by resorting to the hypothesis of Global Dimming. A BBC documentary on this subject by David Sington was screened last year in Britain and in Australia, and another more recently in Canada. The Global Dimming thesis acknowledges the role of atmospheric aerosols in reducing incoming sunlight and reducing climate change. What it avoids acknowledging is that for precisely this reason, programmes of deliberately introducing aerosols into the atmosphere have been advocated and apparently also implemented. David Sington’s compromise solution is really no solution at all. He was attacked from two directions after the first screening of his Global Dimming documentary. He was accused by the climate scientist Gavin Schmidt of being over-sensational in his handling of the scientific evidence - indeed a number of the scientists who appeared in the Global Dimming documentary admitted to having mixed feelings about the programme’s scare-mongering approach - and he was attacked by climate change sceptics who accused him of giving tacit support to the “chemtrails” conspiracy theorists. When he tried to dissociate himself from this charge in a private e-mail, the e-mail was leaked onto the internet and David Sington came over looking like a politically naïve wimp.


The essence of the matter is as follows: When faced with two sides, one side saying: "This not happening, and it would be bad for it to happen, so we must not left it happen" and the other side saying: "This is not happening, but if things keep going as they are, we may have to start doing it" it is not obvious that one must choose always to align oneself with the former against the latter. Who one sides with will be a tactical matter, changing according to the conjuncture. If the latter side appears to be putting up less resistance to the admission that "it is happening" then one may side with them for the purpose of gaining acknowledgement that "it is happening". Then one can go back to taking the side that says "we must not allow it to happen".

It is up to the moderator here at Gastronamus Cafe to work out a code here so that discussion can be separated from vendettas and character assassination.

I was thrown off Megasprayer for pursuing a line of argument that Socrates cannot understand. Is the same thing going to happen here? Or perhaps this degenerative phenomenon going to be allowed just to drag on, punctuated every now and then by an appeal to all sides from Swamp for sweet reason to prevail.

[socrates]

I found an interesting essay on this thread's topic.

Global Dimming
by Anup Shah

(excerpts)

On January 15, 2005, the BBC broadcast its weekly acclaimed Horizon documentary. This one was about a dangerous phenomenon called Global Dimming...



What is global dimming?

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...




As well as fossil fuel burning, contrails is another source

Contrails (the vapour from planes flying high in the sky) were seen as another significant cause of heat reflection.

During the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, all commercial flights were grounded for the next three days.

This allowed climate scientists to look at the effect on the climate when there were no contrails and no heat reflection.

What scientists found was that the temperature rose by some 1 degree centigrade in that period of 3 days...



Global Dimming is hiding the true power of Global Warming

The above impacts of global dimming have led to fears that global dimming has been hiding the true power of global warming.

Currently, most climate change models predict a 5 degrees increase in temperature over the next century, which is already considered extremely grave. However, global dimming has led to an underestimation of the power of global warming.



Addressing global dimming only will lead to massive global warming

Global dimming can be dealt with by cleaning up emissions.

However, if global dimming problems are only addressed, then the effects of global warming will increase even more. This may be what happened to Europe in 2003...

(end of excerpts)

[socrates]

Here's an interesting article written by David Adam in 2003 on global dimming.


Goodbye sunshine

Each year less light reaches the surface of the Earth. No one is sure what's causing 'global dimming' - or what it means for the future. In fact most scientists have never heard of it. By David Adam

Thursday December 18, 2003
The Guardian

In 1985, a geography researcher called Atsumu Ohmura at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology got the shock of his life. As part of his studies into climate and atmospheric radiation, Ohmura was checking levels of sunlight recorded around Europe when he made an astonishing discovery. It was too dark. Compared to similar measurements recorded by his predecessors in the 1960s, Ohmura's results suggested that levels of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface had declined by more than 10% in three decades. Sunshine, it seemed, was on the way out.

The finding went against all scientific thinking. By the mid-80s there was undeniable evidence that our planet was getting hotter, so the idea of reduced solar radiation - the Earth's only external source of heat - just didn't fit. And a massive 10% shift in only 30 years? Ohmura himself had a hard time accepting it. "I was shocked. The difference was so big that I just could not believe it," he says. Neither could anyone else. When Ohmura eventually published his discovery in 1989 the science world was distinctly unimpressed. "It was ignored," he says.

It turns out that Ohmura was the first to document a dramatic effect that scientists are now calling "global dimming". Records show that over the past 50 years the average amount of sunlight reaching the ground has gone down by almost 3% a decade. It's too small an effect to see with the naked eye, but it has implications for everything from climate change to solar power and even the future sustainability of plant photosynthesis. In fact, global dimming seems to be so important that you're probably wondering why you've never heard of it before. Well don't worry, you're in good company. Many climate experts haven't heard of it either, the media has not picked up on it, and it doesn't even appear in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

"It's an extraordinary thing that for some reason this hasn't penetrated even into the thinking of the people looking at global climate change," says Graham Farquhar, a climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra. "It's actually quite a big deal and I think you'll see a lot more people referring to it."

That's not to say that the effect has gone unnoticed. Although Ohmura was the first to report global dimming, he wasn't alone. In fact, the scientific record now shows several other research papers published during the 1990s on the subject, all finding that light levels were falling significantly. Among them they reported that sunshine in Ireland was on the wane, that both the Arctic and the Antarctic were getting darker and that light in Japan, the supposed land of the rising sun, was actually falling. Most startling of all was the discovery that levels of solar radiation reaching parts of the former Soviet Union had gone down almost 20% between 1960 and 1987.

The problem is that most of the climate scientists who saw the reports simply didn't believe them.

"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.

This forced more scientists to sit up and take notice, though some still refused to accept the change was real, and instead blamed it on inaccurate recording equipment.

Solar radiation is measured by seeing how much the side of a black plate warms up when exposed to the sun, compared with its flip side, which is shaded. It's a relatively crude device, and we have no way of proving how accurate measurements made 30 years ago really are. "To detect temporal changes you must have very good data otherwise you're just analysing the difference between data retrieval systems," says Ohmura.

Stanhill says the dimming effect is much greater than the possible errors (which anyway would make the light levels go up as well as down), but what was really needed was an independent way to prove global dimming was real. Last year Farquhar and his group in Australia provided it.

The 2001 article written by Stanhill and Cohen sparked Farquhar's interest and he made some inquiries. The reaction was not always positive and when he mentioned the idea to one high-ranking climate scientist (whose name he is reluctant to reveal) he was told: "That's bullshit, Graham. If that was the case then we'd all be freezing to death."

But Farquhar had realised that the idea of global dimming could explain one of the most puzzling mysteries of climate science. As the Earth warms, you would expect the rate at which water evaporates to increase. But in fact, study after study using metal pans filled with water has shown that the rate of evaporation has gone down in recent years. When Farquhar compared evaporation data with the global dimming records he got a perfect match. The reduced evaporation was down to less sunlight shining on the water surface. And while Stanhill and Cohen's 2001 report appeared in a relatively obscure agricultural journal, Farquhar and his colleague Michael Roderick published their solution to the evaporation paradox in the high-profile American magazine Science. Almost 20 years after it was first noticed, global dimming was finally in the mainstream. "I think over the past couple of years it's become clear that the solar irradiance at the Earth's surface has decreased," says Jim Hansen, a leading climate modeller with Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.

The missing radiation is in the region of visible light and infrared - radiation like the ultraviolet light increasingly penetrating the leaky ozone layer is not affected. Stanhill says there is now sufficient interest in the subject for a special session to be held at the joint meeting of the American and Canadian geophysical societies in Montreal next May.

So what causes global dimming? The first thing to say is that it's nothing to do with changes in the amount of radiation arriving from the sun. Although that varies as the sun's activity rises and falls and the Earth moves closer or further away, the global dimming effect is much, much larger and the opposite of what would be expected given there has been a general increase in overall solar radiation over the past 150 years.

That means something must have happened to the Earth's atmosphere to stop the arriving sunlight penetrating. The few experts who have studied the effect believe it's down to air pollution. Tiny particles of soot or chemical compounds like sulphates reflect sunlight and they also promote the formation of bigger, longer lasting clouds. "The cloudy times are getting darker," says Cohen, at the Volcani Centre. "If it's cloudy then it's darker, but when it's sunny things haven't changed much."

More importantly, what impact could global dimming have? If the effect continues then it's certainly bad news for solar power, as darker, cloudier skies will reduce its meagre efficiency still further. The effect on photosynthesis, and so on plant and tree growth, is more complicated and will probably be different in various parts of the world. In equatorial regions and parts of the southern hemisphere regularly flooded with light, photosynthesis is likely to be limited by carbon dioxide or water, not sunshine, and light levels would have to fall much further to force a change. In fact, in some cases photosynthesis could paradoxically increase slightly with global dimming as the broken, diffuse light that emerges from clouds can penetrate deep into forest canopies more easily than direct beams of sunlight from a clear blue sky.

But in the cloudy parts of the northern hemisphere, like Britain, it's a different story and if you grow tomatoes in a greenhouse you could be seeing the effects of global dimming already. "In the northern climate everything becomes light limiting and a reduction in solar radiation becomes a reduction in productivity," Cohen says. "In greenhouses in Holland, the rule of thumb is that a 1% decrease in solar radiation equals a 1% drop in productivity. Because they're light limited they're always very busy cleaning the tops of their greenhouses."

The other major impact global dimming will have is on the complex computer simulations climate scientists use to understand what is happening now and to predict what will happen in the future. For them, global dimming is a real sticking point. "All of their models, all the physics and mathematics of solar radiation in the Earth's atmosphere can't explain what we're measuring at the Earth's surface," Stanhill says. Farquhar agrees: "This will drive what the modellers have to do now. They're going to have to account for this."

David Roberts, a climate modeller with the Met Office's Hadley Centre, says that although the issue of global dimming raises some awkward questions, some of the computer simulations do at least address the mechanisms believed to be driving it. "Most of the processes involving aerosols and formation of clouds are already in there, though I accept it's a bit of a work in progress and more work needs to be done," Roberts says.

Another big question yet to be answered is whether the phenomenon will continue. Will our great grandchildren be eating lunch in the dark? Unlikely, though few studies are up to date enough to confirm whether or not global dimming is still with us. "There's been so little done that nobody really understands what's going on," Cohen says. There are some clues though.

O hmura says that satellite images of clouds seem to suggest that the skies have become slightly clearer since the start of the 1990s, and this has been accompanied by a sharp upturn in temperature. Both of these facts could indicate that global dimming has waned, and this would seem to tie in with the general reduction in air pollution caused by the scaling down of heavy industry across parts of the world in recent years. Just last month, Helen Power, a climate scientist at the University of South Carolina published one of the few analyses of up-to-date data for the 1990s and found that global dimming over Germany seemed to be easing. "But that's just one study and it's impossible to say anything about long-term trends from one study," she cautions.

It's also possible that global dimming is not entirely down to air pollution. "I don't think that aerosols by themselves would be able to produce this amount of global dimming," says Farquhar. Global warming itself might also be playing a role, he suggests, by perhaps forcing more water to be evaporated from the oceans and then blown onshore (although the evidence on land suggests otherwise). "If the greenhouse effect causes global dimming then that really changes the perspective," he says. In other words, while it keeps getting warmer it might keep getting darker. "I'm not saying it definitely is that, I'm just raising the question."

Ultimately, that and other questions will have to be considered by the scientists around the world who are beginning to think about how to prepare the next IPCC assessment report, due out in 2007. "The IPCC is the group that should investigate this and work out if people should be scared of it," says Cohen. Whatever their verdict, at least we are no longer totally in the dark about global dimming.

Further reading

Global Dimming: A Review of the Evidence, G Stanhill and S Cohen Agricultural and Forest Meteorology Volume 107 (2001), pages 255-278

The Cause of Decreased Pan Evaporation Over the Past 50 Years, M Roderick and G Farquhar Science Volume 298 (2002), pages 1410-1411

Observed Reductions of Surface Solar Radiation at Sites in the US and Worldwide, B Liepert Geophysical Research Letters Volume 29 (2002), pages 1421-1433



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