I saw the Nova recently on Global Dimming. It was ghastly to see the global warming/dimming terrorism going on. You know, “OMG listen to us and do what we say or you’re all going to die!” Which seem particularly hollow, because they demonstrated that hundreds or thousands of Global Warming PhDs across the world failed to notice a basic instrument reading of how much energy, from the sun, is reaching the ground.
Anyway, the premise is that visible polution contributes to global dimming, making clouds brighter, more clouds, and reflecting more light from the sun. Invisible polution, CO2, Methane, etc., contributes to global warming. The two actions roughly balance each other.
While PBS chooses to broadcast climatological apocolypse, I choose to see this as great hope. These two forces may let us, the human race, make the planet the climate that we want. As opposed to the one we inherited from pre history. It’s not simple and the political issues are huge, but this represents great opportunity. This is the teraforming predicted by science fiction shows. We can make Greenland green and move farther north. Canada and Siberia could be more hapitable. Crops could be grown on more of the land. We can make it rain or not rain in parts of the world. This will be limited by the rotation and existing geography of the land, but we can have an affect. All we have to do is realize it and take steps to actively pursue these goals. They are going to happen any way. We already affect the climate. It’s just not being controlled.
This is the key to actively controlling the climate of our world. Never before has this been possible. There is evidence that civilizations have fallen due to climate change. Now we have the ability to prevent or cause this by choice.