Global Dimming: Another Reason to Take Zoloft

I watched a nature documentary last night. It turns out that, in addition to global warming, the earth has experienced significant “global dimming”. Visible particles of pollutants in the atmosphere block the sun and cause clouds to be more reflective such that some areas of the planet have seen a 30% decrease in solar energy within the last 30 years. The “good news” is that global dimming has countered about half of the global warming the earth would have experienced without it. The “bad news” is that visible pollutants have been reduced while greenhouses gases have not, so we are looking at a possible acceleration of global warming such that I may actually be inconvenienced by it in my lifetime.

Global dimming and the pollutants that cause it are bad for respiratory health. Moreover, it plays havoc with the monsoon system and may be responsible for monsoon failure in the Sahel in the 1980s and the ensuing famine in Ethiopia. Sorry about that, Africans. We didn’t know that our energy consumption and pollution would kill so many of you. Our bad.

China and India are developing rapidly and just starting to pump visible pollutants into the atmosphere on a massive scale. On the one hand, this may mitigate global warming. On the other hand, they may just screw up their monsoon system on which billions of folks in Asia rely. We’re talking famine and misery on a huge scale as well as lots of respiratory disease.

The good news is that global dimming is reversible with reductions in the output of pollutants. The bad news is that humans are not up to the task of doing this until it is too late. The additional bad news is that global warming is worse than we thought.