Nobel Prize winner: Human-induced global cooling is the only thing saving us from human-induced global warming

Global warming worse than it appears: Nobel Prize laureate - Xinhua | English.news.cn

RIO DE JANEIRO, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Carlo Rubbia, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics, says global warming is a much bigger problem than most people realize.

..."The man in the street does not realize the effects of climate change," because in the last 10 years, the temperature did not increase substantially. So "people feel the pressure of global warming is not a reality," he said.

In reality, there are two phenomena co-existing at the same time -- global warming, which causes the temperature to rise and aerosol, which lowers air transparency and therefore reduces temperature, Rubbia said.

"So we have this unstable equilibrium, on one hand we have global warming which we do not really see because of a lot of pollution produced by the aerosol -- dust in the atmosphere, and etc," he said.

However, "as soon as we clean up the world by using less cars, using much more cleaner car, by burning less, then the full extent of the global warming will come back, and it will be too late," he warned.

Rubbia recalled "a very substantial change in the temperature" of Europe during the summer of 2003, which then disappeared.

All major greenhouse gas emitters agreed under the Copenhagen accord that global average temperature increase should be kept below 2 degrees centigrade.

Today, the temperature of the Earth is only about 0.75 degree centigrade higher than the past, but in reality it should be something about three degrees if there were not the other masking phenomena that is cancelling the warming effects.