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Global Dimming (The Opposite of Global Warming)

R

RainOfSteel

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Global dimming has been reducing the amount of solar radiation to reach the Earth's surface for many years now due to aerosol/particulate matter (pollution) in the atmosphere.

However, global warming studies have not taken this into account until recently, and given that global warming is increasing the Earth's temperature, but only in a tug-of-war with global dimming, means that the effects of global warming have been severely underestimated.

That's right, underestimated.

Since the 1990s, the global dimming trend has been slowly reversing itself. As it goes down, the greenhouse effect will have a more powerful impact than previously predicted (or so it is believed).

Global Dimming

Dimming the Sun


Sincerely,

Chris O.
 
While this is something to study, I don't doubt that there are idiots who're deliberately using warming (especially), and then dimming, as a hot-button issue to push their own agenda.
 
The evidence in favor of the reality of global warming has mounted continually over many years.

The debate has become less about whether it is really happening, and more about how much it will affect us.

Global dimming's science has recently been substantially improved, causing global warming to be looked at again in a new light.
 
I read an article today about a BBC-sponsored computer model (using spare PC CPU cycles) trying to predict the climate through 2080. It got to 2013 and kept dying. Some folks thought it meant there wouldn't be a 2014.

The true debate, RoS, is even less about "how much it will affect us" and more about whether or not human actions are really effecting it in any significant way.

Wasn't "global dimming" something they were studying in the 70s when everyone feared we were all going to end up as popsicles?
 
Originally posted by Fritz88:
I read an article today about a BBC-sponsored computer model (using spare PC CPU cycles) trying to predict the climate through 2080. It got to 2013 and kept dying. Some folks thought it meant there wouldn't be a 2014.

The true debate, RoS, is even less about "how much it will affect us" and more about whether or not human actions are really effecting it in any significant way.

Wasn't "global dimming" something they were studying in the 70s when everyone feared we were all going to end up as popsicles?
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Interesting about the basic time frame of that date. Some time between 2009 and 2015, the sun is suppose to cycle with large solar flares and such. Actually, there are 2 different cycles that are to meet with in a year or two of each other.

Dave Chase
 
Originally posted by Fritz88:
Wasn't "global dimming" something they were studying in the 70s when everyone feared we were all going to end up as popsicles?
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The effort has come forward a bit since then.
 
I remember something about this back in my environmental science days. At the time, the world grid used in the computer models was too large (I believe it was in the order of hundreds of kilometres square) to allow for the input of 'dimming' factors like diesel smoke/water vapour clouds from shipping. As processing power moves on, I expect models will become more and more accurate.

Of course, whether anything can be done about it by then is debatable, and most certainly nothing much will be done about it until the problems become obvious.
 
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Now let us apply that to Traveller:

+ Can a bellingerent nation deliberatly cause global dimming (as the Imperial NightCloak in a StarWars Novel)

+ Will a world go towards "Fallen Angels"(Niven/Pournelle) if dimming wins out?
 
What about the whole Nuclear Winter Arguement? That is basically Global Dimming on an extreme scale caused by the same factors.

In Traveller, I would think that you could seed the atmosphere of a planet with something like SAND(from sandcasters, not beaches) and that would have a nice effect on dimming...
 
Originally posted by Plankowner:
In Traveller, I would think that you could seed the atmosphere of a planet with something like SAND(from sandcasters, not beaches) and that would have a nice effect on dimming...
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This could lead to a whole new armaments theory for planetary assault cruisers. Spinal sandcasters?
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If you read any of the Dorsai Books, I think it was used there once. They PRETENDED to bombard a planet by dropping sparkley things in the atmosphere until the locals surrendered, thinking "Bad Things" were going to happen to them. It was all a sham of course.
 
One of the venusian terraforming plans include floating chaff into the upper atmosphere, and microbes to convert the acids and CO2 into water and clorides and carbonates.

Some lab has, as a practical experiment, been working on the microbes (used to post status on alt.sci.biology and alt.sci.space back in the early 1990's). Apparently they should float in the atmosphere and drop out as they build sufficient carbonate loads. They are supposed to bind up the C, S and Cl, freeing up O.

Couple these two effects, and you potentially get a habitable venus... in a few centuries.
 
I think the easiest way to achieve global dimming is to use an umbrella.

No. I'm not kidding.

Build a solar sail in the lagrange point between the world and its sun big enough to cast a shadow on the world, or just part of it as taste desires to control temperature.

Come to think of it, you could heat the world the same way if you placed the reflector behind the world at the lagrange point.

Or you could just ignore all of that and set up solar sail reflectors close to the sun and reflect part of the energy back at the star, slowly increasing its temperature. If you wanted to heat everything - and had plenty of time.
 
Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
Selectively heating/shading different parts of the athmosphere might also create massiv storms IIRC.
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True, but then again, nobody ever said that Terraforming was going to be easy...
 
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