Global Dimming and Global Warming

Scientists have been measuring how much sunlight makes it through our atmosphere for decades. Is it a surprise, less and less sunlight has been making it through due to pollution, thus causing missing leading conclusions regarding Global Warming?

It's sort of a double whammy--sun rays are being deflected by polution, and sun rays that do get through get trapped.

Part of this equation was solved when all the jets were grounded for 3 days after the terrorist attacks on 9/11. For the 1st time in decades the skies above the U.S. were crystal clear, and scientists were able to observe and record one of the largest temperature upswings in 30 years during this 3 day period.

Most people don't aware of this, but with all the jets flying above all day every day, an artificial cloud is created from the contrails of these jets. (the clouds caused by jet exhaust) If you saw satellite images of the U.S. after a typical day of 30,000+ jets crisscrossing the U.S., you would literally see a man made cloud covering the entire country. (As soon as I figure out how to post a picture to this blog I'll upload it so you can see what I'm talking about) When you see this cloud you realize this cloud is actually deflecting 15 to 20% of the sun's rays, you might ask yourself, "What are the consequences of this?"

The consequences are something the PBS documentary was trying to answer. Could this "artificial cloud" actually be disguising the dramatic effects of Global Warming? Could the situation regarding Global Warming be worse than any one has previously guessed.

In other words, everyone knew Global Warming was real because we can see where all of earth's glaciers used to be, but did we really know everything that was happening?

In the past 3 years, the speed of Greenland's ice sheet melting has doubled, in actuality, the speed has accelerated so much they can longer predict how fast it's melting. Greenland's ice sheet is a 1000 miles long and 2 miles deep. (If your having trouble imagining how big that is, cut the U.S. in half, and stick a 2 mile thick slab of ice on either half; that's how big Greenland is.)

There's a lot of freshwater that's headed for our oceans.

On the bright side, there may be some Woolly Mammoths thawing out soon that will be really fun to look at.