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Politics : Bush-The Mastermind behind 9/11? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (6697)	5/28/2004 10:18:14 AM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

Dr Bush....the world nightmare continues After a Period of Brightness, Earth Dims, Researchers Say May 28, 2004 By KENNETH CHANG Tracking the brightness of Earth by looking at its reflection on the Moon, scientists have concluded that sunshine on Earth brightened in the 1990's, then dimmed after 2000. The findings, being reported today in the journal Science, add a new level of mystery to the recent debate about "global dimming" and its causes. Measurements by ground-based instruments around the world have shown a decrease of up to 10 percent in sunlight from the late 1950's to the early 1990's. "This would say that it reversed through the 80's and 90's to a global brightening and now it's flattening," said Dr. Philip R. Goode, a professor of physics at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and an author of the Science article. "And the suggestion is that the trend is turning back to the other direction." The output of the Sun varies only slightly, so scientists theorize that global dimming probably results from air pollution. Some light bounces off soot particles in the air. The pollution also causes more water droplets to condense out of air, leading to thicker, darker clouds, which block light. For that reason, the dimming appears to be more pronounced on cloudy days. Some less polluted regions have experienced little or no dimming. The notion remains controversial because it runs counter to expectations of global warming (less sunlight should mean lower temperatures), and some scientists wonder how widespread the dimming effects are. The ground-based measurements do not cover the oceans. Unlike the earlier data, the research did not look at sunshine on Earth. Instead, Dr. Goode and colleagues at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in California and the California Institute of Technology used a principle described by Leonardo da Vinci. The bright side of the Moon is lighted by sunshine. The dark side is not completely dark. Rather, as Leonardo deduced, it is dimly illuminated by light reflected off Earth. Using a small telescope at Big Bear, the astronomers have for the past five years measured the relative brightness of the two sides of the Moon, which tells how much light is bouncing off Earth back into space, what the scientists call "earthshine." The reflectivity is largely a measure of clouds, which are much shinier than the ocean or ground. Thus, a brightening of earthshine means a dimming on Earth's surface, because less light is reaching the ground. On average, Earth reflects about 30 percent of the incoming sunlight, but that varies day to day and hour to hour. When the Sun rises over a cloudy Asia, earthshine might brighten by 10 percent. Reflectivity also varies by season, higher in April than in October, because the Northern Hemisphere tends to be cloudier than the Southern Hemisphere. Over all, reflectivity increased - and sunshine dimmed at the surface - from 1999 to 2003, with an especially sharp jump last year. But the reflectivity was lower than what the scientists measured during an earlier round of observations in 1994 and 1995. They then took NASA data on cloud cover from1985 to 2000 to calculate the reflectivity. The calculations indicate that Earth reflected 32 percent of sunlight in 1985 and that the reflectivity declined 7 percent over the next 15 years, which would correspond to a brightening of sunshine on Earth. "It gives at least a good argument that the clouds are not getting thicker globally," said Dr. Beate G. Liepert, a research scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. The researchers said they could not say what was driving the changes in reflectivity. "What we say is somehow the cloud properties have changed," Dr. Goode said. The brightening coincided with accelerated rising of global temperatures in the late 1990's. Other scientists have also reported signs that global dimming halted in the 1990's. At a joint meeting of American and Canadian geological societies in Montreal this month, Dr. Martin Wild, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, reported that sunshine measurements from 10 stations worldwide showed no signs of dimming during the 90's. "This is a preliminary result, but I think it gives a clear picture," Dr. Wild said. Dr. Rachel T. Pinker, a professor of meteorology at the University of Maryland, said satellite measurements from July 1983 to September 2001 also showed no signs of dimming. "On a global scale, we didn't find a decrease," Dr. Pinker said. "In fact, we found a small increase." Since 2000, reflectivity has since risen to near the 1985 level. But Dr. Goode said more observations were needed to tell whether the upward jump last year in reflectivity was "was a hiccup or it's really a trend." nytimes.com CC

To: GUSTAVE JAEGER who wrote (6697)	5/28/2004 11:25:31 AM
From: sea_urchin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20039

Gustave > Did you know that it's actually the US gasoline shortage that's driving up the price of crude oil --and not the other way around No, I didn't. To coin a medical analogy, what is happening in the US is similar to a rapidly-growing malignant tumour which is outgrowing its blood-supply and has become necrotic (dead) in various parts because its growth is in excess of the means to sustain it. This is evident by the burgeoning debt, price inflation, devaluation of the currency, loss of jobs, attempts to steal other people's assets, corrupt business practices and dishonest politicians etc. The outlook is not good because, if the analogy is true, besides destroying its host, directly and through its spread (metastases), the growing tumour also destroys parts of itself.