Stephen Rees's blog

Global Dimming

This is a video from the BBC’s Horizon programme. I just stumbled upon it. I thought at first it was some odd attempt at satire. I was wrong. It is entirely serious and as important as Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”

It is not often that accidentally coming upon a tv programme I will stop everything for the length of the show and sit all the way through without moving. This documentary really scared me – but it also made absolute sense.

Air pollution – releasing particulates into the sky – by burning fossil fuels, has not only hurt our lungs, it has been helping to hold back global warming. Now that Europe is finally getting a grip on air pollution, the run away effect of more rapid warming can be seen. So it is not enough to make our smoke stacks and tail pipes cleaner, we have to get to grips with our energy use, and we have to do it quickly. Because the global climate models largely ignored global dimming. And they now need to be adjusted. Because without the dimming we have had, the warming is going be much faster than it has been. And the feedback effects will accelerate this change.