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Greenhouse effect is much worse than thought
Tuesday, 22 March 2005 12:18 amFour Corners is normally an amazing documentary series, willing to tackle important issues that the commercial media don't dare touch, but tonight's episode was a bombshell! Not only is global warming a real problem, but it is much worse than had been suspected, because its strongest effects have been masked by particulate pollution. I remember having read about this in a science news item in either New Scientist or Scientific American, but other than thinking to myself that it is a bit worrying, I put it aside because I hadn't really thought the implications through.
The Four Corners episode investigates the work that led to the finding and then discusses the likely results for us and our children. Its conclusions are that we are not just in trouble of delivering to our children a seriously sick planet, but in our lifetimes we could see truly devastating change. And if this sounds like the same old hype, think again. One researcher was studying jet vapor trails and their effect on climate. He had always figured its contribution to climate was small because they are really not big in the scheme of things, but he was astonished to see during the 3 days after the 911 terrorist event and the grounding of all planes in USA that the temperature all over USA went up by 1 degree. You might think that 1 degree is not much to worry about, but remember this happened over just 3 days!!! For a climatologist that is a mind bogglingly fast shift in climate.
You might be thinking it is a lucky thing that we are dirtying up the atmosphere then. But that isn't so. If not for this blasted pollution globally dimming the sun we might have actually been able to get through to our blockheaded politicians and perhaps we wouldn't be in such a dangerous position now. Also, smoky pollution is driving other bad changes too, like droughts, shifts in rainfall, lowered evaporation rates, reducing plant growth. By dragging our feet in reducing greenhouse gas emissions we have put ourselves on a knife edge. It is no longer a case of easing off on greenhouse gas production, trying not to damage the profit margins of the wealthiest, while hoping that temperatures don't rise too fast. It is now a matter of cutting greenhouse production fast, lest we plunge the climate into an unrecoverable runaway.
Probably the scariest part is that some unscrupulous monsters will use this to promote pollution as a "good" thing. They will use it as a blindfold to further delay any attempts at fixing the problem... and the world will continue running headlong toward the precipice... the drivers smug, with their blindfolds firmly in place.
If you missed the 8:30pm program tonight and you are in Australia then it is usually repeated on channel 2 Wednesdays at 11:05pm, and ABC2 (digital) Wednesday at 7pm and 9:45pm. If you are not in Australia or you can't watch or record the episode you can watch it on the web at http://abc.net.au/4corners/default.htm in a few days time.
The Four Corners episode investigates the work that led to the finding and then discusses the likely results for us and our children. Its conclusions are that we are not just in trouble of delivering to our children a seriously sick planet, but in our lifetimes we could see truly devastating change. And if this sounds like the same old hype, think again. One researcher was studying jet vapor trails and their effect on climate. He had always figured its contribution to climate was small because they are really not big in the scheme of things, but he was astonished to see during the 3 days after the 911 terrorist event and the grounding of all planes in USA that the temperature all over USA went up by 1 degree. You might think that 1 degree is not much to worry about, but remember this happened over just 3 days!!! For a climatologist that is a mind bogglingly fast shift in climate.
You might be thinking it is a lucky thing that we are dirtying up the atmosphere then. But that isn't so. If not for this blasted pollution globally dimming the sun we might have actually been able to get through to our blockheaded politicians and perhaps we wouldn't be in such a dangerous position now. Also, smoky pollution is driving other bad changes too, like droughts, shifts in rainfall, lowered evaporation rates, reducing plant growth. By dragging our feet in reducing greenhouse gas emissions we have put ourselves on a knife edge. It is no longer a case of easing off on greenhouse gas production, trying not to damage the profit margins of the wealthiest, while hoping that temperatures don't rise too fast. It is now a matter of cutting greenhouse production fast, lest we plunge the climate into an unrecoverable runaway.
Probably the scariest part is that some unscrupulous monsters will use this to promote pollution as a "good" thing. They will use it as a blindfold to further delay any attempts at fixing the problem... and the world will continue running headlong toward the precipice... the drivers smug, with their blindfolds firmly in place.
If you missed the 8:30pm program tonight and you are in Australia then it is usually repeated on channel 2 Wednesdays at 11:05pm, and ABC2 (digital) Wednesday at 7pm and 9:45pm. If you are not in Australia or you can't watch or record the episode you can watch it on the web at http://abc.net.au/4corners/default.htm in a few days time.