It’s not often I have a rant about pollution and greenhouse emissions, but a doco I saw last night shed some light (no pun intended) on something I’d never heard of before; global dimming.
It seems that city smog (or any visible smoke for that matter) that’s put into the air is actually shielding us from the sun. Various people in the know (let’s call them scientists and researchers) have calculated that compared to thirty years ago, we’re receiving 10% less sunlight. It’s not all bad news though, as it seems dimming is actually protecting us from the effects of global warming. The actual bad news is, if we continue dropping pollution levels, we reduce dimming and increase the effects of global warming. A blatantly doomsday calculation reported that in one hundred years the average temperature of anywhere on our planet will be ten degrees higher. Not good.
For more information be sure to check out the wikipedia entry for global dimming.
