Re: [Marxism] (fwd from M Lause) PBS's Nova: " Dimming the Sun"

[Les Schaffer <schaffer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Lause wrote:

> I'd be interested in what others thought of the program and the
> argument.
i didn't see the show, but the science is sound. i've looked at several
papers just from the last year or so that discuss pollution from jet
airplanes, and there is a dimming problem.

i havent checked in a while, but as i recall most of the global climate
change models (GCM) can take into account changed composition of
atmosphere. scattering of sunlight by molecules and
macroscopically-sized pollutants is a well established science, with
good repository of experimental results. so its not so hard to include
this scattering into equilibrium models for radiation transfer in the
atmosphere. unfortunately </cynicism> , its no longer rocket science
(though it used to be) and climate change skeptics have tried but failed
to use these effects to discredit long term climate change models, much
like they claimed volcanic dust would change the predictions, but GCM
modelers included these effects without change of basic results. [the
ninth slide in the slide show at the link Mark provided discusses this
stuff]

> This fits the idea that
> you have a tension between two processes--a global heating up of the
> planet from greenhouse gases and regionally variant factors reflecting
> sunlight back into space.

dis what it's all about (localized heating cooling driving weather and
climate change effects)

by the way, the Hansen mentioned in the PBS website is the same guy who
NASA/Bush tried to stifle. he's done great work.


details:

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/aerosol.htm
google:  pollution sunlight dimming site:sciencemag.org

les schaffer

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