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So what's up with all this?
Global Dimming
"In 1985, a geography researcher called Atsumu Ohmura at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology got the shock of his life. As part of his studies into climate and atmospheric radiation, Ohmura was checking levels of sunlight recorded around Europe when he made an astonishing discovery. It was too dark. Compared to similar measurements recorded by his predecessors in the 1960s, Ohmura's results suggested that levels of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface had declined by more than 10% in three decades. Sunshine, it seemed, was on the way out.
The finding went against all scientific thinking. By the mid-80s there was undeniable evidence that our planet was getting hotter, so the idea of reduced solar radiation - the Earth's only external source of heat - just didn't fit. And a massive 10% shift in only 30 years? Ohmura himself had a hard time accepting it. "I was shocked. The difference was so big that I just could not believe it," he says. Neither could anyone else. When Ohmura eventually published his discovery in 1989 the science world was distinctly unimpressed. "It was ignored," he says. " |
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