oh dear, we're all going to die

I made the mistake of watching a BBC Horizon programme last night, and now my head is filled with cataclysmic images. It appears that scientists have miscalcuted the rate at which green house gases are warming the planet. Apparently the planet has been kept cool by Global Dimming caused by pollution particles in the clouds. They are fairly certain that GD is responsible for the failure of the African rains in the 70s and 80s, during which millions of people died. It really is a small world. If we in the west continue to pollute our skies, people in Africa die. The problem now is that if we significantly reduce the amount of pollutants we are pumping into our skies, reducing GD, the planet warms up faster, with disasterous consequences for everyone. I've seen lots of programmes like this over the years, and I have always taken them with a pinch of salt. I guess what was scary about this programme was that they weren't talking about climate changes over hundreds of years. They argued that in as little as 25 years the damage to the environment could be irreversible. There just is no getting away from the fact that this will affect me and not just faceless generations at some point in the future.