Environmental Dilemma (knowledge)

I was watching Channel News Asia on saturday while they were showing a show on some environment problems and found it very interesting.

The term 'global warming' as we know means that the world is getting hotter. However, the 'pan evaporation' (rate of evaporation in the world) is on a decrease. This somewhat forms a paradox because we expect it to increase as it gets hotter, however, it is entirely the opposite. What causes this paradox is known as 'global dimming', which is now considered the cause of famines in parts of the world. 'Global dimming' means that the world is getting 'dimmer' as the amount of light energy reaching us is getting lesser, but it is still getting hotter due to the 'global warming'.

So what causes 'global dimming'? The cause as we all expected - pollution. The pollutants rises up in the air and allows water to condense on these pollutants, to form clouds. Unlike natural clouds, more individual water moledules are allowed to form in these 'polluted' clouds. The increased in these water droplets forms a natural mirror that reflects back the light from the sun, thus, 'dimming' the earth below. Since less photons reaches the earth below, less photons hits the surface of the water and thus cause the 'pan evaporation' to decrease.

However, it is known now that 'global dimming' counters the real threat of 'global warming'. They either have to co-exist or not exist at all. Remove any one, and Earth will face a deadly threat.