Global Dimming Videos

We always hear about greenhouse gasses and how they are warming the planet that we forget to acknowledge the air pollutants that in return that cause a cooling effect. It would seem as though these two factors should cancel out but according to scientist who have been studying these two effects say that they are leading off in opposite directions allowing one to overpower the other in changing the way are climate is today. When particle pollutants are in the air they allow many tiny water droplets to form which produce a mirror like effect and reflect the sunlight coming in right back out into space. Meanwhile fewer but bigger water droplets do not. Global dimming is the overall term for this phenomenon. It is true that we have cut air pollution emissions but it does not help our overall problem we need to reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution so that they can cancel out one another to reduce climate change. With government and skeptics refusing to believe in cutting back greenhouse emissions we will continue down the middle of these two opposite exponential curves resulting in disaster and a point of no return. As James Hanson mentioned in the last video each year greenhouse gas emissions are increasing by two percent each year and by 2015 that will be roughly around a thirty-five percent increase from the time they produced that study. If we start cutting greenhouse gas emissions now we may save our planet but if do not we will begin to see the effects of a runaway climate change in our life time that will result ciaos among our children and grandchildren.