Quote Originally Posted by photophorous
Thanks for posting this, Rick. I hate to be negative, but I don't think any amount of logic and/or proof is going to change the minds of those who can't separate the facts from the politics. I saw a political cartoon this weekend that was making fun of Gore winning the prize and they actually used the "inventing the internet" (mis)quote to make fun of him. That says it all, as far as I'm concerned. If someone still believes something as ridiculous and easy to disprove as that, then they'll never open their minds long enough to consider something as complicated as the global warming issue.

I'll stop complaining now so I can mention something interesting I saw on a Nova special the other day. I haven't had a chance to research any of this, so take it for what it is. It seems logical... The show was called Dimming of the Sun, and here's a link to some information on it: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/ Basically, the premise is that particulate air pollution blocks some of the sun's rays from hitting the earth, and this has a cooling effect. This is not contrary to the greenhouse effect. It is in addition to it. The particles in the atmosphere help to counteract the greenhouse effect. Back in the 80s a lot was done to reduce these kinds of emissions because people were getting sick and there was the big acid rain scare. As a result, the air really is cleaner now, and there are a lot less of those particles to block the sun. These scientists think that the greenhouse effect has been underestimated all this time, because the counteracting force of the particulate pollution was not being taken into account. They think this is why many of the current climate models are under predicting actual temperature increases, and things are going to be worse (hotter sooner) than the consensus view.

I don't think Al is being overzealous. I think he is being cautious.

Paul
We use the Global Dimming PBS DVD in our weather clesses here at the college. Quite frankly, until I saw this documentary, I never thought about it!