http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/

The above link is basically all I know about the program.

 

'As an Englishman I am often impatient with the notion of America as "the indispensable nation," but on this occasion I think that it is. To combat global warming, the world desperately needs U.S. leadership.'

Huh? It's a global issue, not a U.S. issue. Maybe the UK should take the lead as the only country to actually make their Kyoto goals so far.

 

Russia trounced their Kyoto goals. This was because of the general collapse of their economy, but even so....

IIRC, the UK is doing OK compared to their goals basically due to a fluke. (It's the equivilant of a company actually running at a loss but making a profit for the year due to a one-time event.)

 

I don't disagree with the Kyoto accords but..

I hate to say it but I'm not sure that based on the accords alone that they will work.

One benefit of the economics of very expensive oil is it will make a lot of the alternatives such as solar and wind more attractive.

 

So air pollution might be a good thing..... what a twist that would be.

 

Well, presumably they will talk about this. But the key is timescale. Particulate matter remains in the air for minutes to years, scattering and reflecting sunlight. But CO2 remains in the atmosphere for centuries. So if you assume that we will eventually stop producing the particulate matter, then it will pretty quickly drop out. But the CO2 will remain.

 

I talked about global dimming in the political forum last year and everybody thought I was crazy. Here's a theory that makes sense to me--anyone who has gone from the sunshine to the shade understands the power of the sun, and what happens if its rays are blocked.

The show I saw talked about how there are evaporation tanks all over the world that are checked on a daily basis. They simply show the rates of evaporation, and have for hundreds of years in some cases. Those rates were not coinciding with accepted GW predictions.

Global dimming and reduced solar activity leading to a mini ice age seems a more likely scenario than GW, IMO.

 

No, we didn't think you were crazy. But you have to realize that by the time something gets on to NOVA, it's about 5-10 years behind "cutting edge".

What is crazy is your idea that somehow this validates ignoring/denying man-caused climate change in general.

 

Maybe the following picture -- from last year's IPCC report -- will help. It shows the observed temperature record for the 20th century and a suite of model simulations duplicating it (in black and gray) and, below, the individual components of climate forcing contributing to the simulation results, in color.



Note the purple "Sulfate" line at the bottom. Toward the end of the 20th century, it's contributing nearly 0.3

 

You're putting words in my mouth, again. I actually said just about the opposite--more study is needed before we blame it on the humans.

What really bothers me are the many in the scientific community declaring GW at "settled science", when there are so many variables and just plain bad data out there. Bottom line is that it seemed that GW was being crammed down our throats, whereas now thousands of scientists are backing off their prior statements, saying "hey, we've got to look at this more." Good.