Reply #4: In fact I watched a whole special about the positive effects of pollution... [View All]

[originalpckelly]

(I think the special was called Global Dimming.)

It actually prevented Global Climate Change from being twice as bad. GCC is caused by the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, not by the tiny particles of ash which are spewed into the atmosphere when coal and other crap is burned.



The tiny particles make clouds more reflective, and hence reflect more energy back into space.

The downside is that it makes the clouds less likely to precipitate rain, because the drops of water stay fine and do not condense into larger droplets capable of falling to the ground. This is suspected to have caused a drought in the early 1980s in Africa.

However, if this technique could be used successfully, we might be able to control the average temperature of Earth, and eliminate the negative effects of GCC.

Here is a Wikipedia article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming