So now there's this and this and the other studies. Despite what some in the blogosphere might say, or what their placards and bumper stickers might say read, nobody wants everything to fall to pieces on account of rising sea levels, drought, uncontainable fires, disease, floods, lost infrastructure, and LOCUSTS LOCUSTS LOCUSTS! [Thrown in for the Apocalypse Is Nigh crowd]

The other day I watched this fascinating piece on PBS about how global evaporation rates have gone down, which would seem to contradict global warming at first because it's often assumed that heat is the main cause of evaporation. But direct light is the leading cause of evaporation, which is telling the smart folks in climatology that we've experienced increasingly less direct sunlight around the globe due to particles in the atmosphere reflecting light back at the sun. This has helped to limit the greenhouse effect; pollution in our atmosphere has actually eased global warming. So, imagine how hot the data would be if we didn't have all that junk in the sky. Their conclusion, and I think it's a logical one: Any effort we make to stem the tide of global warming should be aimed at reducing greenhouse gases only. We should NOT make ANY effort to reduce atmospheric pollutants, until new data can definitively show that the greenhouse effect has waned to levels previously considered normal.

I'm with them, but I'm most certainly not with the bumper sticker people.

Labels: ponderage