Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming 344
Hugh Pickens writes "Scientists estimate that the US Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant, sulfate aerosols, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems. But NPR reports that this good news may have a surprising downside: cleaner air might actually intensify global warming. One benefit of sulfates is that they've been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Researchers believe greenhouse gases such as CO2 have committed the Earth to an eventual warming of roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a quarter of which the planet has already experienced. But thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, the planet has felt only a portion of that warming. And unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last in the air for a week at most, so cutting them would probably rapidly accelerate global warming. The author of 'Hack the Planet' says: 'As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.'"
A little known fact (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Wow.. (Score:4, Informative)
There really are some studies suggesting small amounts of mercury, and other heavy metals, may be healthy.
Hormetic Effects of Heavy Metals in Aquatic Snails: Is a Little Bit of Pollution Good?
http://www.springerlink.com/content/y54l3x43016p6530/ [springerlink.com]
The Changing Science of Toxicology -- Hormesis Makes a Comeback
http://www.mongabay.com/external/toxicology_1203.htm [mongabay.com]
Wikipedia entry regarding hormesis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis [wikipedia.org]
Ron
Re:Sulfur aerosols also cause ozone depletion (Score:4, Informative)
Destroying ozone is bad? Right? Or scientists would say otherwise? May be that's the major reason why scientists didn't recommend to trigger volcano eruption to negate greenhouse effect back in 90s? Now there're scientists told me aerosols are good? I'm not sure whom to trust anymore.
You are confused because you try to reduce reality to one-dimensional values ranging from good to bad.
Destroying ozone means there will be more skin cancer, some animals will die more and people need to start avoiding sunlight. However, destroying ozone in some specific way can very well also mean less climate change, and thus less abandoned cities and hunger and healthier ecosystems.
There's no contradiction. Further, it's not in the realm of science to even debate whether some result is good or bad. I think originally scientists said that destroying ozone will logically lead to all kinds of things, and then politicians decided those things are bad and should be avoided.
Re:Come On! (Score:5, Informative)
Dear BonquiquiShiquavius,
The LA Times and NPR aren't part of the scientific community. They reported on a book written by Eli Kintisch [amazon.com] who is a journalist who writes about science. Also not really part of the scientific community.
I don't think geoengineering is a viable solution, so I don't care to read Kintisch's book. But in the article he seems to be repeating the well known facts that aerosols cool Earth's surface and have a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere than CO2. This doesn't "wildly contradict previous findings"-- I've been explaining [dumbscientist.com] for years that these nuances are described in detail by the IPCC AR4 WG1 report.
Sincerely,
A dumb member of the scientific community
Re:A little known fact (Score:1, Informative)
It is a little know fact that, given the uncertainties of what is happening in our climate system, the warming seen over the last few decades is entirely attributable to the reduction in aerosols in recent years. This is mentioned in WGI chapter 2 of the IPCC report
Oh really? Since you conveniently neglected to link to anything even vaguely supporting your claim, here's one and it does NOT say what you said.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.html [www.ipcc.ch]
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:5, Informative)
>>However the current ecosystem is in a bit of peril, some say that we're currently living through the 6 great extinction of earth, but iirc the jury is still out on that one.
Yeah. While species are going extinct, it's not the "10,000 species a day going extinct" bullshit I heard every time I went to the San Diego Zoo back in the 1980s. The study for that number was based on insect surveys. They dug up a 10 meter square patch of earth, counted the species, then counted them again the next year. Stag horn beetles moved 30' away? They're extinct!
It's one of those memes that everyone knows, but doesn't know just how badly that number was derived.
The actual number of species going extinct is actually very hard to calculate, but it's nowhere near these humans-are-evil numbers tossed around by tree huggers. Just by way of reference, there's only a million animal species or ten on the planet. If these numbers were true, there'd be negative 90 million species left by today.
What bad data? (Score:1, Informative)
What bad data? The Hockey Stick is made to look less warm because GOOD data was added. The original data was from a NW Europe data only study. This is not a good set of data for a GLOBAL phenomenon.
The bad data is the data that you have that says the hockey stick is wrong.
And then you complain when the scientists condemn you and your dittos for promoting it...
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Informative)
No it doesn't, Kintisch is a reporter for the journal Science and as this Nature review of his book [nature.com] points out...
"Both Goodell and Kintisch make it clear that geoengineering is at best a complement to drastic cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. “We have to immediately launch a worldwide program to stop polluting our atmosphere with this surprisingly pernicious trace gas,” Kintisch argues. Most scientists feel much the same, viewing geoengineering strictly as a possible emergency backup plan that should be used only if things get really dire....[snip]...Kintisch also digs deeper than Goodell into explaining the details of how geoengineering might work — and why it would be so difficult to do well....[snip]...That's not to say Kintisch argues in favour of geoengineering, but that he writes from firmly within the world of science, and for an audience who's comfortable with science, too....[snip]...Kintisch is sceptical about the idea that we can tame and control ecosystems, let alone the whole planet."
Re:Everything! (Score:3, Informative)
You do know that major banks http://www.db.com/en/content/company/corporate_and_investment_bank.htm [db.com](click on 'Sustainable Products and Services) are primary pushers of cap and trade don't you? They stand to make billions. Enron too was into carbon credits. You might want to revisit who the greedy fellows are in this debate. Certainly not these guys http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u03QcymdCtg [youtube.com].
Re:*sigh* (Score:5, Informative)
There has been extensive reporting that the lack of statisticians in the climate research area is a problem.
Some chap called Wegman did a report for the NAS (National Academy of Sciences) that was rather critical of the lack of statistical expertise, and some of the most consistent complaints about climate research are in the area of statistics.
I'm not an expert and don't have an opinion on this, though!