Documentary Description
Noticed less sunshine lately? In this documentary we see that
Scientists have discovered that the amount of sunlight reaching the
Earth’s surface has been falling over recent decades.
If the climatologists are right, their discovery holds the potential
for powerful disruption to life on our planet. Already it may have
contributed to many thousands of deaths through drought and famine.
Essentially, the phenomenon called “global dimming” may mean that
even the direst predictions about the rate of global warming have been
seriously underestimated.
Until recently many scientists had never heard of global dimming.
Among those who had, a lot remained sceptical. Now, thanks in part to
the work of Australian researchers, the debate is set to edge into
public consciousness.
This special report from the BBC’s Horizon program reveals how
global dimming was gradually unmasked by isolated groups of scientists
across the world … in Israel, Germany, the US and Australia.
Global dimming is a product of the fossil fuels that cause global
warming. It is the result of tiny airborne pieces of soot, ash and
sulphur compounds reflecting back the heat of the sun.
By allowing less sunlight to reach the Earth, global dimming is
cushioning us from the full impact of global warming, climatologists
say. They fear that as we burn coal and oil more cleanly, and dimming
is reduced, the full effects of global warming will be unleashed.
The worst-case scenario has temperatures rising by up to 10 degrees
by the end of the century – twice more than previously thought.
Scientists have also linked global dimming to the failure of rains
in sub-Saharan Africa – and the catastrophic droughts that hit Ethiopia
in the 1980s. They worry that the same thing will happen again in areas
like Asia, home to billions of people.
The overriding concern expressed by climate scientists in this
program is that our climate will be radically altered, rendering many
parts of the planet uninhabitable – unless concerted action is taken to
combat both global dimming and global warming
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