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 | | From: | knews4u2chew at yahoo.com | | Subject: | As The Sun Light Dims | | Date: | 17 Jan 2005 17:38:21 -0800 |
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 | http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm
Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution.
Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars, power stations or cooking fires, produces not only invisible carbon dioxide - the principal greenhouse gas responsible for global warming - but also tiny airborne particles of soot, ash, sulphur compounds and other pollutants.
This visible air pollution reflects sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface. But the pollution also changes the optical properties of clouds.
Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds.
Recent research shows that this makes them more reflective than they would otherwise be, again reflecting the Sun's rays back into space.
Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall.
There are suggestions that dimming was behind the droughts in sub-Saharan Africa which claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the 1970s and 80s.
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 | | From: | Paul | | Subject: | Re: As The Sun Light Dims | | Date: | Mon, 17 Jan 2005 21:05:15 -0500 |
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 | wrote > Dimming appears to be caused by air pollution. > > Burning coal, oil and wood, whether in cars,.....
There's a sight that's been missing on the highways, that wood burning "Fire"bird; the oil burning "Oil"dsmobile; and that coal burning "coal"vette.
Don't you read this crap before you cut and paste?
-- Paul A. Thomas, CPA Athens, Georgia
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