rsonin - 07 July 2007 07:46 AM

The global dimming video was exactly the kind of millenial doom and gloom crap that I was talking about above. .

It sounds to me like you just have an emotional reaction to it and can’t evaluate whether it makes sense or not.  It supplied information resulting from the planes grounded after 9/11 and Project ENDOEX and the pan evaporation but all you can do is paraphrase biblical crap.  It sounds like you practice religious style thinking and choose to project that on other people.

psik

Your ad hominem aside, I’m responding critically to a film that intentionally misleads.

It opens with scenes of disaster from the greatest scare-tactic trope of the last ten years, with quick cuts, from smouldering 9/11 wreckage to rushing ambulances, with ominous music - then cuts to clear skies, building tension.

Their first climatologist mentions a change in temperature over three days, and the film is edited so as to make it seem as if he is claiming that this one small set of observations is climatologically significant, which is an arguable proposition, not truth.  The quote used “from a layman’s perspective” juxtaposed with the scientist’s perspective, setting up a dichotomy between the ignorant viewer and the all-knowing expert.  So we are to trust this guy, because he is a scientist, that a one-degree change over three days is somehow significant, despite the absence of any evidence of this.

Then the narrator repeats the error of confounding climate and weather: “No one had ever seen such a big climatic change happen so fast.”  Well, of course not.  Because no one who knows anything about climate will speak of the climate changing over the course of three days, because climate refers to long term weather patterns over the course of years and decades and centuries, not daily observations.

That is the pattern of the film: take a fairly weak assertion, and transform it into ominous fact, then back it with emotional imagery.

It goes on:

“Two years ago most of them had never even heard of it, yet now they believe it may mean all their predictions about the future of our climate could be wrong.”

What about two years hence?  If their models were wrong two years before this aired, then why should I have any confidence in the models they are using now?

I could go scene by scene, but the introduction sets the overall tone of the film.  It uses repeated images of “biblical scale” disaster to support its implication of impending doom visually.  It almost continuously uses this imagery to scare the viewer, rather than convince the viewer with data and facts.  A few examples suffice to show the tone:

Narrator: “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.”  Emphasis mine

Quoted newscaster: “Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korum it lights up a biblical famine, now in the 20th Century. This place say workers here is the closest thing to hell on earth.”  Emphasis mine

These statements, with their biblical references, are juxtaposed with scenes of famine and starvation, to drive the point home.

As for the cause?  We move from the cautiously tentative scientist:

“So what our model is suggesting is that these droughts in the Sahel in the 1970s and the 1980s may have been caused by pollution from Europe and North America affecting the properties of the clouds and cooling the oceans of the northern hemisphere.” Emphasis mine

to an unwarranted exaggeration and predictions of doom:

“Rotstayn has found a direct link between Global Dimming and the Sahel drought. If his model is correct, what came out of our exhaust pipes and power stations contributed to the deaths of a million people in Africa, and afflicted 50 million more. But this could be just of taste of what Global Dimming has in store.” Emphasis mine

A “slight reduction in Global Dimming” led to more disaster:

“Forest fires devastated Portugal. Glaciers melted in the Alps. And in France people died by the thousand. Could this be the penalty of reducing Global Dimming without tackling the root cause of global warming?”

What is the evidence that European pollution caused these localized disasters - a drought in the Sahel, fires in Portugal, heat-related deaths in France, melting glaciers?  Where is the hard evidence?  There is none.  There are correlations which “suggest” that the droughts “may” have been caused by large scale effects in turn possibly partially caused by pollution.  It is far more emotionally satisfying to say that the evil factories of the developed world belched out death to Ethiopians.

(I strongly urge anyone who is interested in that famine to look up some of the political factors that contributed to the disaster - droughts are not unknown in the Sahel, nor anywhere else: it may be better to seek explanations rather than try to pin blame.  What is the explanation of prior droughts and famines?  Of droughts and famines that predate the industrial age?  Have all possible explanations really been investigated, or is this just the use of a conveniently established trope, a meme that thanks to previous publicity - Live Aid, e.g. - already resonates with the public, especially the British public, and is thereby fit for exploitation as a propagandistic tool?)

It should be obvious at this point that I have not simply invented this “biblical crap”, it is the filmmakers who have consciously used it to buttress their gloomy outlook.  They use imagery of immense and tremendous catastrophe, on a “biblical scale”, repeatedly, with CGI to help out with fakes where the real imagery is lacking, so that they can wantonly exaggerate claims, to the point where their last and most pessimistic expert sounds credible.  The worst case scenario that is presented is both bogus and intentionally misleading.  There is nowhere near anything like a consensus among climatologists that such a worst case scenario is even possible, much less likely.

Here are some examples of the more explicit imagery:

15:09 Famine (Genesis 12:10, and many other references)
23:56 Famine
28:08 Famine
36:42 Deadly Heat - “Savage Summer of 2003” montage with enormous fire, lingering death, coffins (Genesis 19, and many other references to rains and lakes of fire)
40:35 Flood - complete with faked image of Trafalgar Square underwater (Genesis 6-9)
41:18 Fiery Death of forests - with the claim that with a 4 degree rise the Amazon forest will catch fire, then turn into desert, complete with faked satellite image of a burning Amazon (cf. Jeremiah 21 “I will punish you as your deeds deserve, / declares the LORD. / I will kindle a fire in your forests / that will consume everything around you.” - or Ezekiel 20:47 “I am about to set fire to you, and it will consume all your trees, both green and dry. The blazing flame will not be quenched, and every face from south to north will be scorched by it.”)
42:38 Drought and famine in England - England turns to a desert (cf. 2 Samuel 21:1 “During the reign of David, there was a famine for three successive years; so David sought the face of the LORD. The LORD said, ‘It is on account of Saul and his blood-stained house; it is because he put the Gibeonites to death.’” - substitute England for Saul, and Ethiopians for Gibeonites.)
43:26 Sandstorm over London (faked) (cf. Proverbs 1:27: “when calamity overtakes you like a storm, / when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, / when distress and trouble overwhelm you.”)
44:29 The boiling, roiling oceans themselves catch fire (Job 41:31 “He makes the depths churn like a boiling caldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.” - it is also a reference to a lake - an sea, actually - of fire, or Hell itself)

I could go on, do a scene by scene critique - there is no lack of material - but I think I’ve spent as much time with this film as I want to.

The way you create this critique you choose to present it as though someone is deliberately running psychological games on you and you have already decided what you don’t want to believe.  You want to imply those 3 days are weather not climate.  But the question is how many locations around the United States were combined to go into those 3 days.

http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/tct/2006/04/21/0604210283.php

Some time ago I found a site where he said the data for those 3 days came from more than 5,000 locations around the United States.  That is not weather, that is climate?

I have to agree with you on the “layman’s perspective” business.  Lots of people act like because they got college degrees that means they have superior intelligence.  Then a lot of them make their knowledge appear more difficult to understand than it really is.

But

How many jet planes were flying around the US in 1945, 1950, ‘60, ‘70?  What I find curious is that global cooling business they started talking about in the early ‘70’s.  What if we have man made cooling and warming and around the mid 70’s the warming started becoming greater than the cooling.

What about two years hence?  If their models were wrong two years before this aired, then why should I have any confidence in the models they are using now?

There is this thing called science.  It is about acquiring new knowledge.  Just because you have a little bit of new knowledge doesn’t mean you know everything.  But the Keeler Curve has been demonstrating rising CO2 since the 50’s so the trend should be obvious.

If you can watch the video and convince yourself that psychological bullsh!t is brainwashing almost everybody but you that is your business.  Just remember the next time you see a contrail in the sky that there were no natural phenomenon in the world producing that effect before 1940.  How many jets are flying around the world every day now?  I think if there is a psychological game going on it is obfuscation via confusion because most people can’t process the data.

Every program has a limited amount of time on the air.  Every program has to be edited.  Decisions have to be made about what to put in and leave out and how to present what is put in.  You can be as selfservingly paranoid about it as you want.

What I found really curious was where Beate Liebert talked about how many billions of dollars were spent on global warming and she and this old guy were contradicting the other climatologists.  Yeah the climatologists consider their careers more important than the science.  So have the nitwit climatologists helped sabotage us by refusing to do the science.

My point is this is one of those situations where if we don’t err on the side of caution we are fools.  But our climatologists don’t talk about how much extra pollution is produced because of planned obsolescence and our economists don’t talk about what we lose on depreciation of that junk.  But when we buy more junk they add it to GDP.

http://discussions.pbs.org/viewtopic.pbs?t=28529

This is obviously one of those situations where nothing significant will be done until it is too obvious and too late to accomplish anything.

psikey

We, as free thinkers, should be capable of examining an issue of this magnitude without clouding it with idealism or politics.  And yet I think that is exactly what has been done here.

We have accepted the debate in the context that the Global Warming advocates, and those that deny it.  I am seeing their terms, their talking points, their counterpoints, even their propaganda in the discussions.

I think the the fundamental questions are:

What is the impact of our civilization(s) on the environment we live in? 
What rationale, practical steps do we need to take to ensure that we do not adversely impact our environment to the point that it endangers the survival of our planet and it’s inhabitants?

I tried to carefully word these questions to ensure that they did not presume or imply:

That it is a forgone conclusion that our civilization has a negative, positive or neutral impact on our environment.
That it is a forgone conclusion as to whether anything should be done, or what should be done, or why.

Although there is no reason to start from scratch on the research, it is possible, to extract the science from the rhetoric, and the guy on the street opinion, and start from there.  Unfortunately, as has already been pointed out, if you start with the propaganda, you will not always get the complete scientific picture, only those portions of it that fit the arguments of the propagandist in question.  If a scientific evidence is referenced, some note should be made as to the identity, credentials of the scientist(s), the full context of their observations, and if possible supporting evidence from other scientists.

I have found that a good place to find topical information,  is the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS):

Some of their sites include:
Eureka Alert - provides links to Research material in Journals, from Conferences, etc. (I noted news items that have been used to support both pro and anti GW positions in the most recent postings)
Science Magazine - Founded in 1880 on $10,000 of seed money from the American inventor Thomas Edison, Science has grown to become the world’s leading outlet for scientific news, commentary, and cutting-edge research, with the largest paid circulation of any peer-reviewed general-science journal.
The AAAS site - has many recordings of lectures, not all climate related, but interesting none-the-less.

There are of course many more sources of information you can point to.  Criteria for evaluating sources should include: sufficient peer review, along with some resulting consensus on theories around climate change, and remedies for any dangerous anomalies that have some scientific basis. 

Personally I fear we have narrowed the discussion to a narrow band of our impact on the environment.  Climate change, along with the impact on plant and animal species, water quality, soil contamination, among others should be equally important to consider. 

The other factor is the rate of consumption.  Although it may have a positive impact on the GDP, is this behavior burying us in waste?  Draining the planet of valuable resources that take longer to be restored, than our rate of consumption? Is our behavior sustainable for future generations?

I got a total of 993 hits on Google by searching on this:

+travis +contrails +stations

You won’t make a good scientist if you don’t research things yourself.  They can only put so much in a 47 minute TV program.  But I suppose you don’t want information that doesn’t help you maintain your objective perspective.

Here are a few samples:

After Sept. 11, Travis and researchers at Penn State University quickly gathered early fall temperature data for the previous 30 years from 4,000 North American weather stations.

They then compared the diurnal temperature range for Sept. 11 to 13 with the 30-year average. The diurnal range is the difference between a day’s high and low temperatures.

They found that the diurnal range increased by 2 degrees to 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which was more than twice any year-to-year variation over that same time period.

“Without Sept. 11, we would not have been able to do that,” Travis said.

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=46487

Wispy cirrus clouds are the only ones that form naturally at the high altitudes where jets cruise. These thin clouds slightly cool Earth’s surface by blocking some incoming sunlight, but they moderately warm the lower atmosphere by trapping a portion of Earth’s outbound infrared radiation. Scientists have suspected that contrails have similar but stronger effects.

Travis and his colleagues looked at the average diurnal temperature range (DTR)—the difference between the day’s high and low temperatures—reported at more than 4,000 weather stations across the continental United States. During the 3-day hiatus of air traffic last September, the average DTR was a little over 1°C wider than normal, even though the average DTRs computed for the 3-day periods immediately before and after that period were below normal.

Furthermore, says Travis, the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and the Northeast—areas of the country typically blanketed with aircraft contrails in mid-September—showed the largest changes in diurnal temperature range, mostly from increased daytime high temperatures. This bolsters the argument that contrails can significantly affect climate, Travis contends. He and his colleagues will report their findings next week in Portland, Ore., at a conference of the American Meteorological Society.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20020511/fob1.asp

The contrails and climate connection was almost impossible to quantify before the tragedy of September 11 and the resulting three-day shutdown of all commercial airline traffic. The satellite data from September 11-13 provided scientists with a view of virtually contrail-free skies for the first time in a half century.

Travis’ research team, which includes Penn State University geographer Andrew Carleton and UW-Whitewater undergraduate Ryan Lauritsen, used satellite images to compare cloud cover from those three days to 30 years of data for mid-September. Then they reviewed daytime and nighttime surface air temperatures across North America collected from 4,000 weather stations.

The group then calculated the 30-year climate “norm” for those early-fall days, using temperature data from the same sources between 1971 and 2000. A final step was to calculate the “diurnal temperature range,” which is the difference between the warmest spike during daytime and the coldest point of night.

When compared against the 30-year record, the group found that diurnal temperature ranges on September 11-13, 2001 expanded as much as 3-5 degrees Fahrenheit. That was more than double any random year-to-year variation over that time.

More importantly, Travis says, they found sharp regional differences in temperature change — ones that correspond closely with where contrails actually form. Contrails, which are formed by a combination of below-freezing temperatures and high atmospheric moisture, are most common through the nation’s midsection, the northeast and the northwest. The biggest temperature changes, as much as 5 degrees, were in those regions.

http://www.uww.edu/marketingandmedia/news_releases/2002_05_contrail_cli.html

How much satellite data was available half a century ago?  This year is the 50th anniversary of sputnik.

“We know for a fact that because of the contrails there are less clear days in the U.S. than there have ever been,” said David Travis, a University of Wisconsin climatologist who headed the study. “We believe that human activity has much greater potential to change regional climate than it does to change global climate.”

The range between the daytime high and nighttime low temperature is called the diurnal temperature, and it has decreased by 3 degrees on average around the nation, and by 5 degrees in the Midwest, Northeast and Northwest where air traffic is the heaviest, Travis said.

But whether the contrail effect changes the average 24-hour temperature is still under study. Based on three decades of records from 4,000 weather stations, scientists are trying to determine if the cooling during the day or the heating at night has a greater influence on the average daily temperature. So far the highs and lows seem to average out.

During the three-day grounding, the diurnal temperature increased by 3 to 5 degrees, the only time it has made such a significant change in the last 30 years, Travis said.

Satellite images of the U.S. showed that the sky was clearer than usual during the three days.

“During the three-day period when there were no commercial flights and only a few contrails from military planes, we got this sudden increase in the temperature range due to the fact that we suddenly had clearer skies across the country,” Travis said.

The diurnal temperature range rose sharply on Sept. 11 and fell again on Sept. 14 when commercial flights resumed, he said.

The diurnal temperature range for Sept. 11-13 for the last 30 years across the U.S., prior to 2001, was 35 degrees. But for the same period last year after the terrorist attacks, it rose to 38 degrees.

Cirrus clouds affect temperature by reflecting some sunlight back into space during the day and by reducing the amount of infrared heat escaping from the earth at night, Travis explained. Scientists have long suspected that contrail clouds affect ground temperatures but there was little data comparing contrail-free skies with today’s jet traffic. Satellite images of the Earth for Sept. 11 to 13 provided the first view of the skies nearly free of contrails in 50 years.

“This result, if it is corroborated by additional studies, represents the first large-scale evidence of the effect of contrails on climate,” said Patrick Minnis, a senior research scientist at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

http://www.contrails.nl/contrails-research/temperature 02.htm

Now the dimming caused by particulate matter is different from the dimming caused by aircraft.  It will not dissipate as rapidly and of course the aircraft are producing CO2 also.  So the long term effects are unknown but accumulating and there is no spare planet.

Curious how we only have this data because of an unpredictable terrorist attack but this effect has been occuring for decades.  But the important thing is that this program is trying to run psychological games on us with the tragedy of 9/11.

psikeyhackr

Regardless of how many locations in the US those data came from, it is weather and not climate.  The more locations they pick, the better their description of the average weather conditions across the states, but three days of freak weather is just that - on it’s own, it says nothing at all about climate change.

One scientist whom we should be able to trust is fellow Secular Humanist E.O Wilson.

His concerns regarding disappearing species, and the habitats that support them demonstrate some clear parallels to the encroachment of human population.

Wilson is a conservationist, which I believe is a natural extension of Secular Humanism.  Some may view this as a political stance, but I know people who share many different political views who call themselves conservationists.  I see conservation as a logical extension of one of the Affirmations of Humanism:

“We want to protect and enhance the earth, to preserve it for future generations, and to avoid inflicting needless suffering on other species.”

He is currently working to build an Encyclopedia of Life that will be designed to record all known information about all known species on the planet.

Some sample pages here:

Death Cap Mushroom

Rice

Yeti Crab

Polar Bear (for novice users)

Polar Bear (for expert users)

Polar Bear (with Biodiversity Heritage Library Information)

This looks like one of the better ways to divulge the research culminating from scientists around the world in reference to any and all species on the planet.

narwhol - 08 July 2007 04:28 PM

Regardless of how many locations in the US those data came from, it is weather and not climate.  The more locations they pick, the better their description of the average weather conditions across the states, but three days of freak weather is just that - on it’s own, it says nothing at all about climate change.

Three days of FREAK WEATHER?

Thousands of locations, some of them thousands of miles apart, all experience the exact same type of freak weather change for three days and by some strange coincidence these three days happen to correspond with the days the US air fleet is grounded.  You aren’t going to wonder what the cumulative effect that air fleet has been for the last 30 years plus all of the other planes around the world?

ROFLMAO

Guess what?  There is no way to figure it out, we are just stuck with the result.  In another 30 years people will probably be stuck with the results of our ignoring global dimming even though we now know about it.

And this is just one example of the Global Dimming explained in the video.  The aerosols are probably a more serious problem.

psikey

Rocinante - 20 June 2007 11:40 PM

mckenzievmd - 20 June 2007 08:29 PM

But I am willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the specialists and their consensus unless something egregiously inconsistent with the theory emerges.

But is there a consensus?  Or is that claim just a Big Lie?  http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/comment/story.html?id=c47c1209-233b-412c-b6d1-5c755457a8af 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consists of just over 3,800 scientists.  However, 17,100 scientists have publicly signed the so-called Oregon Petition stating,  “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

When it comes time to interview a scientist, is the media going to revert to its time-honored tradition of, “If it bleeds, it leads,” and interview the guy who breathlessly warns, “The sky is falling,” or the one who says, “Well, things probably aren’t that bad”?  Remember in 2001 when the media assured us that shark attacks on swimmers was at an all time high, when—in reality—they weren’t? 

mckenzievmd - 20 June 2007 08:29 PM

So far I would characterize much of the opposition as ideologically driven, which doesn’t invalidate their arguments but does raise legitimate questions about their objectivity.

Agreed.  And at the risk of committing a Tu Quoque fallacy, the ACGW crowd are just as ideologically driven and, as such, just as likely to toss any objectivity they may have to further their political causes.

Can you name a single ACGW advocate? Pretty much all I’ve seen are AGW people, this includes Gore.
This whole “catastrophic” and “sole contributor” are descriptions and arguments that the deniers have essentially made up, and are using to paint all of the science. Which is why you can get 17,100 scientists to dismiss claims of definite evidence for catastrophic changes in the climate.
Not just that, but a single sentence petition is hardly enough to counter a huge scientifically peer-reviewed report.

daenku32 - 15 July 2007 04:05 PM

Can you name a single ACGW advocate? Pretty much all I’ve seen are AGW people, this includes Gore.
This whole “catastrophic” and “sole contributor” are descriptions and arguments that the deniers have essentially made up, and are using to paint all of the science.

All emphasis added in the following quotes.  From my reading, these appear to be clear on the A and C in ACGW:

“Global warming is too serious for the world any longer to ignore its danger or split into opposing factions on it.”
—TONY BLAIR

“People tend to focus on the here and now. The problem is that, once global warming is something that most people can feel in the course of their daily lives, it will be too late to prevent much larger, potentially catastrophic changes.”
—ELIZABETH KOLBERT

“Two thousand scientists, in a hundred countries, engaged in the most elaborate, well organized scientific collaboration in the history of humankind, have produced long-since a consensus that we will face a string of terrible catastrophes unless we act to prepare ourselves and deal with the underlying causes of global warming.”
—AL GORE

“All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it’s here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster.”
—BARACK OBAMA

“The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we’re contributing to the warming of the earth’s atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe.”
—BARACK OBAMA

“Climate change is no longer a doomsday prophecy, It’s a reality.”
—ASTRID HEIDBERT, President International Federation of Red Cross & Red Crescent Societies

“We are upsetting the atmosphere upon which all life depends. In the late 80s when I began to take climate change seriously, we referred to global warming as a “slowmotion catastrophe” one we expected to kick in perhaps generations later. Instead, the signs of change have accelerated alarmingly.”
—DAVID SUZUKI

“The science is in. The facts are there that we have created, man has, a self-inflicted wound that man has created through global warming.”
—ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER

Over one million plants and animals, a quarter of all life on land, could become extinct in just decades due to man-made climate change, scientists say.

The main culprit for this change, they say in an article in the British journal Nature, is greenhouses gases, which are churned out by automobiles and industry and trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere.

“An immediate and progressive switch to technologies that produce little or no new greenhouse gases, combined with active removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, could save a million or more species from extinction,” lead author Chris Thomas, a biologist from University of Leeds, said in a statement.

—SOURCE.

“There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production—with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth.”
—NEWSWEEK

“Climate Changes Endanger World’s Food Output.”
—NEW YORK TIMES

“As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval.”
—TIME MAGAZINE

A New York Times article reported that climatologists believed “the facts of the present climate change are such that the most optimistic experts would assign near certainty to major crop failure in a decade.”

The article also warned that unless government officials reacted to the coming catastrophe, “mass deaths by starvation and probably in anarchy and violence”

OK, technically, I didn’t name a single ACGW proponent.  But you get the idea.  Besides if the global warming crowd didn’t believe that global warming was caused by human beings, or that it isn’t a looming catastrophe, then why is all the fuss being made about it in the first place?  If humans can’t alter the climate, and if the sky is not falling, then they should just chill out (pun intended).  The fact that they are so up in arms implies that they believe global warming to be both mainly anthropogenic and catastrophic.

Can somebody answer these questions:

1) What is the correct temperature of the earth?
2) What is the correct concentration of chemicals and gases in the atmosphere?

Three days of FREAK WEATHER?

Thousands of locations, some of them thousands of miles apart, all experience the exact same type of freak weather change for three days and by some strange coincidence these three days happen to correspond with the days the US air fleet is grounded.  You aren’t going to wonder what the cumulative effect that air fleet has been for the last 30 years plus all of the other planes around the world?

ROFLMAO

Guess what?  There is no way to figure it out, we are just stuck with the result.  In another 30 years people will probably be stuck with the results of our ignoring global dimming even though we now know about it.

And this is just one example of the Global Dimming explained in the video.  The aerosols are probably a more serious problem.

psikey

Either way, three days’ weather does not a climate make.
Look up climate somewhere.  Or ask a climatologist what a climate is and what the difference between climate and weather is - they will tell you: listen to narwhol, narwhol is right and you are wrong.

majestyx - 28 July 2007 11:51 AM

Can somebody answer these questions:

1) What is the correct temperature of the earth?
2) What is the correct concentration of chemicals and gases in the atmosphere?

Answers:
1) Variable.

2) Variable throughout history, but currently dried air is fluctuating around 77-78% Nitrogen, 20-21% Oxygen, 1% Noble Gases, 0.35% Carbon dioxide and trace amounts of pollutants such as sulphur oxides and nitrogen oxides.  There is also a variable amount of water vapour in non-dried air.

narwhol - 28 July 2007 12:30 PM

Either way, three days’ weather does not a climate make.
Look up climate somewhere.

listen to narwhol, narwhol is right and you are wrong.

The point is that 3 days of altered human behavior had a the exact same measurable over millions of square miles over the exact same 3 day period.  Quibbling over semantics in the face of physics is absurd.

So it is ridiculous to assume that the airliners flying every day for that last 30 years have not had a climatic effect.

psik

Whereas drawing conculsions about the climate from three days worth of data is really intelligent. At present we are going thorugh a phenomenon of the most average British summer weather since records began - further proof of global warming/dimming/spinning?