BURN MORE FOSSIL FUELS!!

[rainstorm]

By Matt Falloon

LONDON, Jan 13 (Reuters) - Cutting down on fossil fuel pollution could accelerate global warming and help turn parts of Europe into desert by 2100, according to research to be aired on British television on Thursday. "Global Dimming", a BBC Horizon documentary, will describe research suggesting fossil fuel by-products like sulphur dioxide particles reflect the sun's rays, "dimming" temperatures and almost cancelling out the greenhouse effect.

The researchers say cutting down on the burning of coal and oil, one of the main goals of international environmental agreements, will drastically heat rather than cool climate.

[WXBUFFJIM]

Pretty scary to think that is a possibility.

[Anonymous]

Unbelievable why anybody would still pay attention to that same group that blames every little weather anomily on global warming. Just outright rediculous.


I can see they have lost nearly all credibility...............

I have not bought into a syllable with these reports since 1981..........


bring on the cold and snow ! Because it's coming............

oh -72 F today in Alaska !! ohh - is that caused by American SUV's ???

Is driving a car in Missouri disturbing the earth's crust, causing earthquakes and volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean these days ??

[rainstorm]

actually, they are saying we should drive more suv's!! and i agree.

[P.K.]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming_prog_summary.shtml - You can read a transcript of the programme on there.

We need to reduce these particles that are causing this dimming as they aren't good health wise, and if they are affecting rainfall in Africa to the extent they claimed last night increasing these emmissions can't be justified. However we need to make sure we also reduce greenhouse gases so this extra solar energy doesn't cause too much of a heating effect.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4171591.stm - BBC News report

[sertorius]

I'll be honest: I have no idea how to respond to this. I am a high school Latin/European AP teacher and I discuss this issue quite often class (besides showing weather maps -maybe I should focus more on the French Revolution!!) To me, there are several issues here

1. Both the oil companies and the environmental movement are eating from the same trough and have no desire to quit-they both dribble the same stuff and get billions of dollars for it.The enviornemntal movement today is greases just as many politicans world wide as the oil industry. The result: we get hot air, rediculous unfesable ideas, and nothing get done-the environment still suffers. (a good start would be people picking up thier own trash-or here's one: maybe the environmentalist and oil companies should quit having huge meetings at plush resorts and concentrate on the bus. at hand-I wonder how much fossil fuel was burned at the Koyoto meetings????)

2. Point 1 leads to double speak like the above arcticle and keeps the real truth from ever being conveyed. Niether side wants the truth to come out-keeping knowledge keeps you in power and keeps you fat and happy.

3. Both points one and two leave the majority of the world's population scrathing their heads and then saying the heck with it-I have to make a living to feed my kids.

4. Both one and two also lead to people basing ideas on records that are at most 5,000 years old-sorry folks, that aint long enough string of data. And worse, in the US we're talking about 120 year old records. Example in Platte County Missori in modern Kansas City, in 1844 the winter never saw a frost-it was like summer the whole winter-they 3-4 of those in the 1840s. That never gets mentioned. The earth is old-we aren't nor are our records even 10,000 years ago, a blip on it's screen.

4. Fossil fuels are bad period-there is no getting by that-they create dirty air (regardless if they are making the media idea of the green house affect) and even dirtier politics. They should be banned on those two issues alone.

5. If we can go from traveling by horse to landing a probe on the moon Titan in 120 years, I would think that we could figure an alternate fuel source that would still allow people to keep modern life (we aint going backwards unless we want a bloody 1984'sh nightmare) anybody ever watch Monster's INC.-laughter was much better than scaring!!

6. Finally, i don't have any answers and i prob. didn't even make any sense here. My one solution is that we need a whole new dialogue about these issues-the environmental movement and oil indusry and govt. are using ideas founded back in the French and Industrial Revolutions: ideas like Marxism, Capitalism, Socailism, Anarchisim, etc etc blah blah blah are as old and out dated as the ideas of the Old regime were to the French Revolutionaries. Time to start anew.

7. Let's be honest-if we don't change and really look at this environemtnal problem in a new and truthful unpolitical way(honestly: the Democrats don't care about the enviornment any more than the Republicans-both parties are to blame for this) (the "green house affect" is such a small one compared to others : eg. water, clean air, over development etc.) we are at risk of making this planet unable to sustain our modern civilization-will the earth be destroyed-no-we'll be just a speck on it's history-we will give way to the cock roach-maybe they will do better.

[Anonymous]

Excellent points !


My friend even told me this whole thing sort of reminds him of "stop walking in the neighborhood - you're ruining the earth's mantle !"

Next they'll sue us for it....................


"Officer what's the charge ???"

"Ummm, walking and casing international earthquakes !!"

[JenyEliza]

But isn't burning fossil fuels just a form of re-cycling old, dead dinosaurs?

[PurdueWx80]

I was wondering when the media would get ahold of this. Meteorologists, chemists and climate scientists have known for years that aerosols and other particulates in the atmosphere reflect (and absorb) some solar energy. One should be leary to trust one singular study on this issue. Climate scientists with no particular interest in politics realize that there are numerous negative and positive feedbacks in the climate system, but the postive far outweight the negative. Most in this group also know/believe the climate is warming because of carbon-induced change.

[sertorius]

Purduewx80:

I really enjoy your posts about the weather etc. and enjoyed your response here. There is no doubt the climate is changing-a good part of it is human induced for sure but also, as you well know, the only constant is change and the earth will never stay the same with us or without us. Although I'm still not toally sold on the media idea of "global warming"-I mean Dan Rather blamming the tsunami on global warming come on!!-our environment's ability to support human life is becomming a shambles. Furthermore, fossil fuels are as oudated as much of the dialogue being thrown around. They are dirty and they create a terribly unstable world and to be honest aren't very "renewable". Rather one believes in "global warming" really shouldn't be the issue. Fossil fuels are a horrible fuel source and create a dirty world both socially, economically and politically. Time for them to go and time for a fresh new look at the environment without it being a political football and a way to get yourself or your organization rich and on television. By the way, I liked your post because it was strait forward and truthfull-it would be nice if we could get the real truth about things and not just the enviornment. I'm on my soap box a bit, but niether major party in the US really gives 2 hoots about the enviornement-if they did, we would of had a new fuel source 40 years ago!! Too much money changing hands on all sides.

[sertorius]

By the way, saw that the research center in Anarctica set a recor high temperature yesterday at -17C-by itself it is nothing-records are always broken-but, if taken with that it broke a record set in 2002, this might be showing something. If we have 4-5 years in a row of these types of readings, then all bets are off. One record does not make a trend-a couple of years or more does.