A Really Inconvenient Fact

I may not have a B.S. in any scientific discipline, but that has never stopped me from recognizing BS, especially when I step in it. I know, I know: it is dubious at best to come to Contratimes for a science lesson, but once in a while it is OK for us to think like scientists, you know, critically.

My starting point is the rather recent installment of PBS's NOVA called "Dimming the Sun", which I watched a couple of weeks ago (and where I stepped into some serious BS). The point of that rather stimulating science program was that particulate matter released into the atmosphere as a result of human industrial activity, along with myriad contrails produced by airliners, combine to reduce the amount of sunlight that reaches the lower levels of the atmosphere. Studies in the Maldives, for instance, have shown that air pollution may indeed reduce sunlight by as much as 10%. The result, obviously, is that air temperatures in "smoggy" zones are cooler. And cooler air has drastic effects on weather patterns, perhaps even distorting weather and (ocean ?) currents to such a degree that droughts and other sundry calamities occur.

But this is only half of NOVA's story. The other half has to do with reducing air pollutants, especially the particulate matter associated with solar dimming. The idea is that with cleaner air more sunlight reaches the lower atmosphere and ground, thus increasing air temperatures. In other words, the theory is that visible pollutants are masking the invisible catastrophe awaiting us: MASSIVE global warming due to invisible and dangerous levels of greenhouse gases which will "trap" heat should more light penetrate the atmosphere. For a full explanation and a virtual synopsis of the NOVA program, read the Wikipedia article "Global dimming." I urge you to read it not merely because it is interesting, but because of what it never mentions. And you know what? NOVA never mentions "it" either.

But before I tell you what "it" is, I must make one observation about the NOVA program. I might be wrong about this, but I don't think I am: NOVA did not interview a single person with a countervailing opinion regarding dimming, cooling or warming. Not one! Add to that the fact that NOVA only aired the opinions of at best five experts, and one MUST conclude that NOVA might best be taken with something like a grain of salt.

Permit me to back into what is missing in both NOVA's "scientific inquiry" and Wikipedia's article. This passage from Wikipedia is a great starting point. I mean, this is science at its (political?) best:

It is now thought that the effect (global dimming) is probably due to the increased presence of aerosols [sic] particles in the atmosphere. Aerosol particles absorb solar energy and reflect sunlight back to space. The pollutants can also become nuclei for cloud droplets. It is thought that the water droplets in clouds coalesce around the particles, and more aerosol particles result in the clouds consisting of a greater number of smaller droplets, which in turn makes them more reflective: bouncing more sunlight back into space.

Now there is nothing wrong with this virtual rehashing of NOVA's major premise. It is, for our purposes, completely true. But there is something massive, literally, missing from all of this, and one wonders how it could not be mentioned even in passing. I wonder if you have guessed what "it" is. Need a clue? Well, try this one, or this.

Yes, that's right: Volcanoes. What is missing in the global dimming report is the earth itself: that the earth is its own heat engine; and is its own cooler.

Remember in 1991 when Mt. Pinatubo absolutely ripped a hole into our earth's atmosphere, belching material in unimaginable quantities into the earth's very stratosphere? Remember what you were told, that the eruption would affect the entire globe for years? Remember hearing the same when Mt. Saint Helens blew apart in 1980? Remember hearing that such eruptions would cool the earth's atmosphere, even though they hurled millions of tons of gas and heat skyward? Well, if you need a refresher on Pinatubo alone, read this, this and this.

Now let's for a moment return to the Wikipedia quote above, where it is mentioned that global dimming is a result of the presence of aerosols in the upper atmosphere. Alas, there is no mention of volcanic activity. Yet in all three Pinatubo links above we read something like this:

Pinatubo injected about 15 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, where it reacted with water to form a hazy layer of AEROSOL particles composed primarily of sulfuric acid droplets. Over the course of the next two years strong stratospheric winds spread these aerosol particles around the globe.

Unlike the lower atmosphere (or troposphere, which extends from the surface to roughly 10 km), the stratosphere does not have rain clouds as a mechanism to quickly wash out pollutants. Therefore, a heavy influx of aerosol pollutants, like the plume from Mount Pinatubo, will remain in the stratosphere for years until the processes of chemical reactions and atmospheric circulation can filter them out. In the case of Mount Pinatubo, the result was a measurable cooling of the Earth's surface for a period of almost two years.

Because they scatter and absorb incoming sunlight, aerosol particles exert a cooling effect on the Earth's surface. The Pinatubo eruption increased aerosol optical depth in the stratosphere by a factor of 10 to 100 times normal levels measured prior to the eruption.

Oopsy! Just a small detail left out of Wikipedia and NOVA's uh, science. Call it a mere blippish oversight. And to think someone went to the Maldives in the 1990's to run tests to determine whether smog blocks sunlight!

Moreover, what is also not mentioned in either source is the effect the earth's core temperature has on climate; that the earth is not a frozen ice ball (though surface materials are indeed "frozen" in the scientific sense), but a sphere with an incredibly volatile heat source not far below its skin. That source of heat is not only important in maintaining life on this planet, it is important in this discussion of global warming and cooling. But more importantly, that NOVA and Wikipedia never mention either volcanic activity or the earth's radiant heat suggests that real scientific inquiry is not what either is interested in. Finally, neither the TV program nor the online encyclopedia mentions increases or decreases in solar activity, which also wreak havoc on terrestrial atmospherics.

Al Gore has released a new movie called "An Inconvenient Truth," in which he apparently divides for us the facts from fiction regarding global warming. I will venture a guess that the complexities of vulcanism and any one volcano's impact on climate make naught but a small appearance in Gore's film. But that's fine: he is a politician, after all, and he needs science to work for his agenda, which is, in part, to distance himself from "Big Oil," you know, that industry allegedly most responsible for global warming (and the one allegedly associated with Republicans). But that NOVA, an apparently neutral science program, should have neglected not only any countervailing opinions but the facts of Pinatubo––that such an eruption lowered global temperatures as much as .6 degrees C in 15 months––should give us all pause.

There is more that NOVA failed to tell us in "Dimming the Sun," but I will leave that for another time. But let us not in all this permit such "fact-based" programs and resources to have a dimming effect on our much needed minds. We need to think clearly about the complexities before us. I mean, let us beware (unlike Al Gore) of committing non causa pro causa fallacies, you know, mistaking correlation with causality. Gore and NOVA might be right, but we won't ever know if we accept only part of the data.

Peace.

©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved.

For a complete transcript of NOVA's program, go here.

Pinatubo photo courtesy of http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/pinatubo/volcano/

Technorati tags: Al Gore, Global Warming, Global dimming, NOVA, Mt. Pinatubo, vulcanism, An Inconvenient Truth, Climate Change