NationStates Jolt Archive

Global Dimming BBC Transcript (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_trans.shtml)

Well, it looks like we may have overlooked a significant part of the Global Warming Process. Anyone getting any weird visions of Martians happily going about their lives while the skies slowly darken? This is why climate research needs more money and greater public recognition, all of our lives may depend up on it.

Doomsday predictions aside, this is probably going to be the next big thing in the scientific community. I think we are reaching a critical mass here, where our scientific achomplisments will either destroy us, or save us, depending on how fast we learn from the mistakes of the previous generations.

I really wanted to watch that program last night, but I missed it. Thanks for posting the transcript.

Yeah cheers man. It's scary stuff...

it'll stop after the oil peak

It was a scary programm, especcially what happened after on a few days without aircraft flying, we need to do somthing about it now, bfore it's to late.

Hahaha. "Atmospheric science"

I remember when global warming was first "discovered". It was during a particuarly wild party at Langley during the seventies. Back then, the next ice age was the big terror of the scientific community and everyone had thier panties in a bunch about DC being buried under glaciers in a few hundred years.

Well, the head of the Europe desk was jabbering on about it like crazy, and I said he was full of shit, and none of these long hairs really had any idea what was going on, as they had mostly failed out of the mroe prestigious branches of science.

He said that was crap and we were all going to freeze. I called his bluff and told him that within twenty years I would have the whole world convinced that the earth was going to get so hot that the ice caps would melt and sea levels would flood a great deal of the costal US. (I mean come on, even a fifth grade knows that the ice caps melting would have no appriecable effect on sea level for christs sakes).

Anyway, he took me up on it, and thus Project "SPEEDO" was born. A little rooting round led us to Carl Sagans PhD thesis, (Greenhouse effect Sagan 1960), and with a few bribes and a little blackmail a few professors were "persuaded" to publish papers about "greenhouse" gases. (What impresses me to this day however, is no-one bothers to ever read Sagans original work, it makes the whole global warming thing look a bit silly.)

Still the results were more than I expected. Within Fifteen years, not only did we have pretty much every second rate scientist looking endorsing it and making assine predictions, they were even faking data like crazy to back it up.

(I mean, people say with confidence now, just look at the average increas in global temperature since the 1890s, proof of global warming, but no-one noticed this trend until sometime in the 70s? Prior to this all that data supported the ice-age theory).

I suspect this global dimming is just another attempt to gain an undeserved tenure slot, since man effecting the atmos. is the cause celeb today.

So now you know where Global Warming comes from. God, I miss working at the CIA.

(What impresses me to this day however, is no-one bothers to ever read Sagans original work, it makes the whole global warming thing look a bit silly.)

Those who are skeptical about carbon dioxide greenhouse warning might profitably note the massive greenhouse effect on Venus....The climatological history of our planetary neighbor, an otherwise Earthlike planet on which the surface became hot enough to melt tin or lead, is worth considering--especially by those who say that the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth will be self-correcting, that we don't really have to worry about it, or (you can see this in the publications of some groups that call themselves conservative) that the greenhouse effect is a 'hoax.'

(I mean, people say with confidence now, just look at the average increas in global temperature since the 1890s, proof of global warming, but no-one noticed this trend until sometime in the 70s? Prior to this all that data supported the ice-age theory).

and since then we've gotten more and better data. yay science!

Yes, thank you for posting this. I watched it, and was left thinking mainly that, "this is the sort of thing that should be on BBC1 at prime time, really" which is always the way with dear old auntie. For some reason, important things are stuffed away on BBC2 where probably not half so many people will see them. It was the same with anything even approaching daring or, erm, correct about the so called war on terror.

Back to the point, yes, the importance of addressing this really can't be over stated no matter how much seeming hyperbole one cares to employ. Whether or not he really knows it, the archetypal nut on the street corner is for once perhaps correct when he proclaims that the end is nigh. Oh well, by the time we reach the point of no return, I should at least have lived to a ripe... middle age.

With this info, I estimate the planet could be the next Venus by 3000 AD.

and since then we've gotten more and better data. yay science!

So we went back in time and measured everything before the 1970s. Really now.

In a way a feel a little guilty, since people are actually frightened by this, but not much.

So we went back in time and measured everything before the 1970s. Really now.

no. we compiled historical climate records of various kinds from more places around the world for as long as they cover. and we figured out how to look at air samples trapped in the annual layers of ice to look at their composition. and we figured out how to look at fossil pollen evidence to tell us the approximate ranges of various plant species, thus telling us about the climate in those areas. and we figured out how to make better and better models of the earth's climate. and we learned more about the various kinds of pressures that can be put on the system. etc.

as i said, yay science!

no. we compiled historical climate records of various kinds from more places around the world for as long as they cover. and we figured out how to look at air samples trapped in the annual layers of ice to look at their composition. and we figured out how to look at fossil pollen evidence to tell us the approximate ranges of various plant species, thus telling us about the climate in those areas. and we figured out how to make better and better models of the earth's climate. and we learned more about the various kinds of pressures that can be put on the system. etc.

as i said, yay science!

No we didn't. Nobody did that whatsoever. Everyone talks about the dramatic rise in temperatures over the last century. We had accuracte data for that in the 70s, and people thought it pointed to an ice age.

Global warming is a scam. (Read the Sagan paper if you don't believe me, and you'll soon see why.) It's only so popular because second rate professors think it's contraverisal and publishing a doomesday scenario will get them tenure. This is why the claims get more extravagant every year, as new and baseless theories involving ocean currents and the like are thought up.

As I pointed out before, even fifth graders shouldn't fall for the rising sea-level bit (my own contribution), yet many of these chaps treat it like gospel.

Stand by it all you want, ten years from now it'll be on the heap along with phlogisten.

Actually, check out the new Harvard study, by serious people that goes some way to disputing the aforementioned data.

This is seriously worrying.

I'm taking it with a grain of salt, but it's still worrying.

Worrying in that if it's right, then we're dead. There's no way that Europe, America, Asia and Australia are going to cut emmisions at a sufficient rate to help us.