That's It - We're Screwed

Last week I taped a late-night BBC documentary on Global Dimming. I've just watched it. We're seriously screwed. ALL of us.

Global Dimming is a phenomenon that's been on the increase over the past 100 years. Basically, particles of pollution are thrown up into the atmosphere and block the sun. But that's not all - they also collect water molecules around them in clouds, causing clouds to mirror-back the sunlight out into space.

Apparently scientists were real sceptical about this at first, until they did a very expensive and lengthy experiment to prove it. But they were puzzled by the results - surely less sunlight reaching us means colder temps? But we've got global warming!

And then some blokes in Australia investigated pan evaporation - how much water evaporates each day from a pan - and found that sunlight is required to "bounce" water particles off the surface and into the air. So less sunlight = less evaporation.

Well, then why is the world drying out?

For a number of reasons.

Remember the drought in Ethiopa region in the 80's? They linked it back to global dimming. The monsoon depends on sunlight heating up the northern oceans during summer sufficiently to shift the rain band around the Equator north to where it's supposed to rain. Pollution from the USA and Europe prevented sunlight from getting through to the ocean, so the band didn't shift. Driving your car, burning coal - you could have caused the famine! Comtrails from planes are a huge contributor too. Satellite images taken over California show more trails than clouds.

Easy solution, you say. Stop pollution!

And that's what is happening in Europe. Cleaner-burning fuels, less particle pollution, problem solved!

No.

A study was done in the 3 days after 9/11 when most planes were grounded. It showed a horrifying situation that no-one could have guessed. Average temperatures jumped double what was expected during that very short time!

You see, there's still greenhouse gas, which is doing the global warming thing. Take away the particle pollution and something horrific happens. We're no longer covered by a screen of pollution, and the sunlight gets through full-strength. The average temperature starts to climb at double the rate that was expected. Ice cap melt, habitat drying out - you know the drill. Within 100 years we face flooding and desertification on a massive scale, and average increase in temperature of 10 degrees. Fine if you're in England, not so fine if you're already in a hot country. Greenland's ice cap will melt irreversibly. Seas will rise about 8 metres. The Amazon rainforests will dry up and burn - releasing more CO2 into the air. Warmer seas cause a certain kind of methane to be released from the seabed - many times more than all the oil and coal reserves we currently have.

As I said - we're seriously screwed.

And it seems there's no hope. There's nothing we can do. It will speed up and we're all dead.

There is only one solution. Stop both particle pollution AND greenhouse gas emissions. NOW. This has been coming for 20 years, but we cannot afford to dilly-dally no more... Not if we plan on living on this planet, or leaving anything for our kids to inhabit. (Note, this programme was aired a while back - how much worse is it now?)

Now it's all good and well for me to go off on a scary rant here, and for you to make big changes in how you live. But the guys in charge simply don't seem to care. Presidents and rulers the world over are carrying on like there's no tomorrow - burning, pillaging, upping their oil consumption and pollution, ignoring those "crazy activists". And thanks to the big guys there just may be no tomorrow for anyone.

What to do? I don't know. One voice in cyberspace ain't gonna make much difference. But spreading the world, working for change, alerting the ignorant - that's something I can do. I can change me, I can change my habits. It may not be much, but if a million, a billion of me do the same, that will make one huge difference.

And we'll no longer be screwed.

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Food for thought:

* What is Plan B?
* See yesterday's Country Living article link about reducing work miles.
* One family, one month, 50kg packaging - note the oil requirements to make a single plastic cap...