If you have not already seen it, visitors to this blog will have an interest in this 50-min documentary, “BBC Global Dimming Documentary”, via Gail Zawacki at her Wit’s End blog.
It relates to evidence obtained from the three-day aircraft grounding that occurred after 9/11 and the profound effects that just the U.S. Commercial Aircraft Flying has on Earth’s atmosphere. (One degree Centigrade increase within three days.)
Quoting Professor Guy McPherson ;
“The impact of the aerosol masking effect has been greatly underestimated, as pointed out in an 8 February 2019 article in Science. As indicated by the lead author of this paper on 25 January 2019: “Global efforts to improve air quality by developing cleaner fuels and burning less coal could end up harming our planet by reducing the number of aerosols in the atmosphere, and by doing so, diminishing aerosols’ cooling ability to offset global warming.” The cooling effect is “nearly twice what scientists previously thought.” That this February 2019 paper cites the conclusion by Levy et al. (2013) indicating as little as 35% reduction in industrial activity drives a 1 C global-average rise in temperature suggests that as little as a 20% reduction in industrial activity is sufficient to warm the planet 1 C within a few days or weeks.”
Guy and I both believe a serious economic crash could be the end of us!
None of these risks operate in a vacuum, they are all connected.
Imagine what the carbon footprint of the largest most brutal military on the planet must be?
“According to its own study, in 2013 the Pentagon consumed fuel equivalent to 90,000,000 barrels of crude oil. This amounts to 80% of the total fuel usage by the federal government. If burned as jet fuel it produces about 38,700,000 metric tons of CO2. And the Pentagon’s figures do not include carbon produced by the thousands of bombs dropped in 2013, or the fires that burned after the jets and drones departed.”
The Pentagon’s enormous, unacknowledged contribution to climate change
A reduction in US warmongering would buy the bio-sphere some critical time, fat chance of seeing that happen.
The documentary explains how global dimming fits within global heating, as well as reduced pan evaporation rate. (Sunlight photons serve as the most important variable in water evaporation, and global dimming reduces these photons by about 10%!). Increased small particle pollution turns clouds into sunlight mirrors because of water condensation on the small particles: at least ten times the number of particles and condensation than without the pollution. This greatly reduces the amount of the Sun’s energy coming through the atmosphere. Global heating (GH) due to CO2 tends to increase average atmospheric temperature while global dimming (GD) tends to reduce it, therefore reduced GD will greatly increase GH, within days, just as Professor Guy McPherson has emphasised in many of his presentations.
Guy McPherson references this documentary often and we will be speaking about this phenomenon on his upcoming November 2016 New Zealand speaking tour.
Guy discusses the phenomenon here .
When the Industrial Revolution grinds to a halt and we cease emitting particulate pollutants into the atmosphere, more solar radiation will hit the earth and the oceans, vastly increasing the warming which will compound all the other effects happening now, remember also though there is a 10 to 30 year lag in cause and effect with our emissions and the ones now being generated as a result of the multitude of feedback loops that are now kicking in .
Yet more evidence that we are absolutely fucked and can’t turn this unfolding catastrophe around. Brace for imminent impact, ” Only Love Remains” GMP.
This excellent documentary is embedded below;
BBC Global Dimming Documentary
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I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
My co-host on Nature Bats Last has begun a series monitoring the stock market because of our concerns about the loss of the aerosol masking effect associated with lockdown, the rapidly building economic depression and the attributable increase in warming.
This article proves that that particular feedback is in play.
To quote “President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’.
This is another nail in the Arctic coffin, our planetary thermostat is irrevocably broken and the warming will be non-linear.
https://news.mongabay.com/2020/06/climate-conundrum-could-covid-19-be-linked-to-early-arctic-ice-melt/?fbclid=IwAR0Smet2hxIxLiUl-2AsYnWo4qNieke55pzH0xWibcfA6sbtpiTK0SC9eLM
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“Their study, sponsored by NOAA, was published last week in the journal Nature Geoscience. It concluded that the thin screen of smoke hanging in the troposphere, which extends to about 6 miles above the Earth, dims the sunlight reaching the planet.”
“The total dimming from this widespread but dilute smokescreen is roughly equivalent to the dimming caused by all the thick, visible smoke plumes emitted from fires.”
An inconvenient truth;
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-screen-of-old-smoke-hangs-around-in-the-atmosphere/?fbclid=IwAR0a0SM6DrqAt1XoxwqfPKKOtESlcrJ7MkCGOxa5HKjdHlnsUNgZcOP1YaI
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Guy’s latest analysis concedes that the outcome of the reduction of the aerosol masking effect hasn’t triggered the warming that “Levy et al’ suggested might happen but additionally he points out that we have simply ‘dodged a bullet’.
The Arctic sea ice continues to be in free fall relevant to it’s historical norms.
Dodging bullets in a never ending hail of gun fire is what we’ve been reduced to.
https://guymcpherson.com/2020/11/why-lockdown-did-not-cause-rapid-temperature-rise/?fbclid=IwAR3GOeH6w8Bccosvx98m9GZ-8iwdwdkweuKocLJ_CzKSZ-L0RrDAiUP5Nxs#more-25568
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If I read the following analysis correctly, it seems during the spring lockdowns the reduction of key aerosols was virtually non-existent.
“The results of the study published in the Bulletin of Atmospheric Science and Technology. The study was led by researchers at UD, Penn State and Columbia University.
Nitrogen dioxide is emitted during the fuel combustion by all motor vehicles and airplanes while particulate matter is emitted by airplanes and, among motor vehicles, mostly by diesel vehicles, such as commercial heavy-duty diesel trucks. They are both also emitted by fossil-fuel power plants, although particulate matter is mostly emitted by coal power plants.
The researchers compared measurements of these two pollutants in April 2020 against those in April over the five previous years—from 2015-2019. They chose April because pretty much every state had some kind of social distancing measure in place by April 1, which led to changes in lifestyle.
Overall, they found that there were large, statistically significant decreases of nitrogen dioxide at 65% of the monitoring sites, with the NASA OMI satellite data showing an average drop in 2020 by 13% over the entire country when compared to the mean of the previous five years.
“Not surprisingly, we found that the air quality improved in terms of nitrogen dioxide at all of the stations. So as soon as people started to stay home, traffic was reduced and the air quality was better for nitrogen dioxide,” said University of Delaware professor Cristina Archer. “But when we looked at particulate matter, there was almost no difference. There was no improvement on average with respect to particulate matter and at 24% of the sites, April 2020 was worse than the previous five years for particulate matter concentrations.”
https://phys.org/news/2020-11-covid-shutdown-effect-air-quality.html
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Global dimming writ large
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/12/12/australia-wildfires-volcanoes-global-effects/?fbclid=IwAR3NErFP37w32t1_v7slGS-mgBy6zzfzBaDQRFR1bKb_fNc4mXJpInFelWU
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Global Warming Acceleration
14 December 2020
James Hansen and Makiko Sato
https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-acceleration?fbclid=IwAR1S2QGw9CCw3cmzqdVrgGfBpIrtRpSyPCcCcSRQFISOovX3RSmwckhSkjM
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James Hansen on Radio Ecoshock
https://www.ecoshock.org/2020/12/global-warming-acceleration-hansen-sato.html?fbclid=IwAR1qGqxeTfyiDmDiqG5lINUoNhdhzLFBw9aGmbIyYNgbMXlbl8Db8YRfxvg
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“The paper published in Science by Dr. Daniel Rosenfeld of Hebrew University, and a team of scientists working in China, Germany and the United States, details why they believe that the global cooling caused by aerosols is dramatically underestimated. That may sound like good news at first, but here’s the thing: If the cooling effect is far greater than previously thought, but we’re still seeing evidence of an alarming rate of global warming, that may mean it’s masking the rate of warming that’s been underestimated too.”
https://www.sustainability-times.com/environmental-protection/research-cooling-from-atmospheric-particles-may-mask-greater-warming/?fbclid=IwAR0HSM5QhOAH_PakDSsU6uGENhJ1wu4ydDBj-xIyJdR1EmcMZsxylSJQNbM
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I remember reading a ‘white paper’ ages ago the conclusion of which was that humanity, homo-sapiens Rex, has finally achieved plague status. We’re consuming the riches of the Earth, but giving back nothing but toxic, glow in the dark sludge.
I believe that the die has been cast. And J.Diamond’s work has made it abundantly clear that we’re lemmings hurtling toward the abyss.
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Confirmation just in from the ultra conservative Physorg:
https://phys.org/news/2021-02-covid-lockdowns-temporarily-global-temperatures.html?fbclid=IwAR1mo6h7Dpe-yfvjmPwjTundToDppW_B9F5OwzMiK3GEPhmQSSquWudqdng
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Earth heats up due to pandemic’s cleaner air, study finds
https://www.khon2.com/news/national/earth-heats-up-due-to-pandemics-cleaner-air-study-finds/?fbclid=IwAR37pBcQpt7L_7a2cLE_JRPxGYZnJyzk0mv2ioO369cE1ukePZMLlkzG5bo
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Fox no less!
https://fox8.com/news/earth-heats-up-due-to-pandemics-cleaner-air-study-finds/?fbclid=IwAR3KL3aRJ9zVvGnP3-okFdyfnHMhRhq1lnQvW3l675Du1dWzZAmIj3CcXL8
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“Aerosols for the big volcanic eruptions blocked solar radiation, dropping the solar heating of the Earth’s surface,” he told AccuWeather in an email, adding that climate analysis from Cambridge University in the U.K. done on tree rings show the average summer temperature “dropped by between 1.5 degrees and 2.5 degrees Celsius across Eurasia.”
We are in early stage runaway warming, no degree of ‘mitigation’ will make any difference to our predicament. Our ‘Owners’ will reach for the ‘Nuclear Winter’ option to cool the planet.
https://www.accuweather.com/en/severe-weather/historians-pinpoint-the-very-worst-year-to-ever-be-alive/927803?utm_medium=push&utm_source=pushly&utm_content=931041&utm_campaign=pushly_manual&fbclid=IwAR35XY6rLKN_vTsCn_tcqbttrrzHpJZokf6pRPqHTQMy4b7OBlFrTnii4vU
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“COVID-19 lockdowns temporarily raised global temperatures, research shows”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202164535.htm?fbclid=IwAR0wralJAWLou_tUflZWOl4QFOeShjjZ5eMbxtLDMMRIIvvArs4UV1-08No
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Guy’s explanation of a paper by Rosenfeld et al
https://guymcpherson.com/explained-rosenfeld-et-al-2019/
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Links to the papers Guy quoted are embedded here;
https://guymcpherson.com/science-update-internet-apocalypse-on-the-way/
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“Aerosol summary. Continued ignorance of the aerosol climate forcing, given the importance of aerosols for future climate change, should be unacceptable. The required measurements need to define the aerosol and cloud particle microphysics in detail.”
https://mailchi.mp/caa/global-warming-acceleration?fbclid=IwAR1xi7PiiQRGjtv4133E918vz4ymVumOWkxG5DvaU-7ORaeVXDGj7DrB4qs
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[…] Science Update: Aerosol Masking Effect Previously Underestimated on Overheated Earth and here; Global Dimming Keeping the Planet Habitable Source of the above quote; President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose […]
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[…] to Erupt Climate Change Fuelled WarsMore info on the Aerosol Masking Effect, our Faustian Bargain;Global Dimming Keeping the Planet HabitableJim mentioned my blog post on the coming pestilence leaching out of the former permafrost; […]
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Abstract
“The immense reduction in aerosol levels during the COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to reveal how atmospheric chemistry is regulating our climate, among which the effect of aerosols on climate is a phenomenon of great interest but still in hot debate. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has continually identified the effect of aerosols on climate to have the largest uncertainty among the factors contributing to global climate change. Several studies indicate an inverse relationship between aerosol presence in the atmosphere and the diurnal surface air temperature range (DTR). Herein, we test this relationship by analyzing the DTR values from in situ weather station records for periods before and during the COVID-19 epidemic in China where aerosol levels have substantially reduced, compared with the climatological mean levels for a 19 year period. Our analyses find that DTRs from February to June during the COVID-19 pandemic are greater than 3 standard deviations above the climatological mean DTR. This anomaly has never occurred before in the 21st century and is at least in part associated with the observed reduction in aerosols.”
https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2021/ea/d1ea00021g?fbclid=IwAR2rlfQ22D2bf60in_201Ds5rw6NlTbS0kMDxjN_5xKqJlaEZMAXvyhfy68
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“Temperatures over parts of Earth’s land surface last spring were about 0.2-0.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.1-0.3 degrees Celsius) warmer than would have been expected with prevailing weather conditions, the study found. The effect was most pronounced in regions that normally are associated with substantial emissions of aerosols, with the warming reaching about 0.7 degrees F (0.37 C) over much of the United States and Russia.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/02/210202164535.htm?fbclid=IwAR0p2GpK_a0o942Ua8aEMrxP1j7T1l6uiZC0yLpAaYzLTZg4WhptipZHxeI
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[…] an acceptance that we are all “Born into Captivity” and my understanding of the Aerosol Masking Effect.La Luta […]
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“Wildfires in the western US can significantly affect air quality. Recent research by scientists at NOAA’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory found that enhanced wildfire activity could cause a two- to three-fold increase in particulate matter (PM) pollution over the US Pacific Northwest during August–September.”
Increased fire activity as a result of climate change is a ‘Positive Feedback Loop’ paradoxically increased particulate is a negative feedback loop.
When society collapses there is a danger that losing the aerosol masking effect will trigger a further runaway event, these aerosols may stave it off until the last forests have immolated.
Hansen called the AME “Our Faustian Bargain”.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/feed/tripling-western-us-particulate-pollution-wildfires-warming-climate?fbclid=IwAR1-_SeWaU_g1XaY-Cn2AhNaPEswau72DTXuQqNntdOpOSC4C-ospp7w3uA
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Guy’s latest on Peak Oil and it’s attendant wars and inflationary implications. If you think inflation is bad now get ready for it to get a lot worse because you can’t keep ‘fixing’ inflation with more debt.
What’s now called Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve used to be called counterfeiting
https://guymcpherson.com/science-snippets-peak-oil-has-not-gone-away/
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The last paragraph is chilling
https://www.science.org/content/article/paradox-cleaner-air-now-adding-global-warming
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“The Best Kept Secret in Climate Science
Disclaimer: Please stop reading if you are “doomed out” and would rather read solution-oriented articles sprinkled with sugar-coated positivity. I understand your need to avoid our harsh reality in order to cope with daily life, but some of us realists are unable to build up a wall of protective denial around us and pretend that everything will be okay.”
View at Medium.com
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Guy’s latest work delves into the latest science on the Aerosol Masking Effect indicating that the consequences are worse than previously thought. Where have we heard that before ?
If anyone has more data on the effects of ionising radiation on the ozone layer I’m all ears.
https://guymcpherson.com/31059-2/?fbclid=IwAR3hKlHkDMOybIw4q_t36Y13g9s0TiwUx9s4LUwXmu5Tlm2P1bJ5b8alo9c
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Our predicament is always worse than we know;
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