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.'"
Everything! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm getting pretty tired of everything causing/amplifying global warming. We're fucked, we get it it!
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At least they didn't somehow make it an iphone news.
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And I'm all for global warming.....
Why? I live where the property values will skyrocket because it will become one of the only comfortable habitable zones, plus being on the largest US freshwater source I can waste water all I want.
Bring on the global warming, I want to see the retarded property values that California has where a $12,000 shitshack goes for $1.2mill.
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So do we need to take Bender's lead and start to pollute like we've never polluted before?
Only if it's the right kind of pollution. Small particles high in the upper atmosphere is what we need.
Re:Fuck You Global Warming (Score:5, Funny)
You mean something like volcano ash, but higher?
Hmm... maybe we need a bigger volcano...
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You mean something like volcano ash, but higher?
Hmm... maybe we need a bigger volcano...
I bet if we just wait 2-3 weeks we will see a SyFy original movie exploring just how terribly wrong that solution could go. They will call it "Ice Magma", it will star Stephen Baldwin, and it will be terrible.
Re:Everything! (Score:4, Insightful)
ranting bullshit
modded down
on Slashdot
Now that is surprising
Re:Everything! (Score:5, Funny)
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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 ar
If we are to err (Score:4, Insightful)
If we are to err, I'd rather we erred on the side of clean air than polluted air.
If we are to air (Score:5, Funny)
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Err today, fucked tomorrow?
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If we err to err, I'd rather we erred err erred err err errer erred.
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That might work. Just on thing - how tall are you, exactly?
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Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Insightful)
Climate change scientists have now resorted to trolling us.
Seriously. Cleaner air is bad for the planet? Shut up. As someone who has asthma, this pisses me off. I like breathing, thanks. Stop wasting time blaming the Clean Air Act and look at practical ways to cut carbon emissions in ways that don't knock us back to the stone age.
KTHXBAI.
--
BMO
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I actually heard an interview with this guy the other day. His point is not that we need to stop cutting pollution, it does cause a lot of respiratory diseases and various other forms of environmental damage.
it's just another effect that needs to be taken into account.
His thing is geo-engineering though, so his take is that this means we must start geo-engineering now.
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:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. Cleaner air is bad for the planet? Shut up. As someone who has asthma, this pisses me off. I like breathing, thanks. Stop wasting time blaming the Clean Air Act and look at practical ways to cut carbon emissions in ways that don't knock us back to the stone age.
This will probably sound wrong, or at least politically incorrect but... Cleaner air can speed global warming while still killing everyone who suffers from asthma.
Natural facts don't usually care about consequences on human health.
So, I think you're point should be more oriented towards something like: "The fact that cleaner air, which we need, may have a cooling effect, should only make us fight much stronger against the original sources of the warming itself."
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You've got it reversed, the point should be
"The fact that cleaner air, which we need, may have a warming effect, should only make us fight much stronger against the original sources of the warming itself."
The pollution increases the amount of heat reflected back into space, reducing the pollution reduced the amount of heat reflected and increased the amount absorbed.
So... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The fact that cleaner air, which we need, may have a cooling effect, should only make us fight much stronger against the original sources of the warming itself."
So... you're planning to get rid of the Sun? ;)
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I didn't see anyone saying that we should start pumping aerosols into the atmosphere again.
We should start pumping aerosols into the atmosphere again. Hey, if it will keep the planet from warming and cause Al Gore to go fucking psycho, it sounds like the perfect solution. Plus, it will keep all our businesses odor free.... everybody start emptying your cans of Lysol.
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It is not even a real downside.
More sunlight means better plant growth (which means that the plants have to consume more CO2.
More sunlight also means better visibility, thus less need for artifical ligh.
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so all you've done is delay warming AS LONG AS YOU KEEP POLLUTING.
And that's exactly the point isn't it? The article is about how as we stop polluting so much, the temperature will increase some because the pollution won't protect us from it anymore (I feel like "protect" might be the wrong word). Am I missing something?
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Sigh. First paragraph: They don't. No, he didn't. No, it wouldn't. Yes, they have. I'd post links, but you didn't, so why bother.
It could be that when "almost all the climate scientists support the use of known bad tree rings", they actually disagree that they are bad, you know. And unlike Exxon, climate science is not a monolithic for-profit corporation with perverse incentives with regard to pollution.
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>>They want to pump sulfur compounds into the atmosphere, including. When I heard this, also on NPR, I wanted to scream, "What about acid rain you stupid fuckers!?"
They've thought about it. I've read the analysis and it's reasonable. The reason WHY they want to use SO2/SO4 is because we know that this is what happens when volcanoes erupt, and it doesn't cause catastrophic effects. There's plenty of other possible solutions - really, anything that increases the albedo and cloud nucleation would work. I
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Also don't forget that global warming will cause an ice age.
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
To paraphrase George Carlin, the planet has been here for what? 4 and a half billion years, and we've been here a hundred thousand years, maybe 200 thousand. And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200.
Do the math. If the entire age of the Earth was reduced to one calendar year, when did humans appear?
December 31st, 11:59pm.
The planet isn't going anywhere.
*** WE ARE. ***
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Insightful)
Eminently put. The planet is not in trouble, global warming or not. The planet has been much hotter and much colder, with significantly different atmospheric conditions (higher CO2, higher O2, vastly different contents pre-O2, etc), not to mention the continents that have been in vastly different positions. In fact, the time we are living in is comparably speaking an anomaly. For most of the time since the Earth was formed, there has been no ice on this planet whatsoever.
So the Earth is absolutely not in trouble. We, on the other hand, might be in trouble. If the worst predictions of the climate scientists become reality, sea level rises may destroy a lot of our fixed infrastructure, such as cities. Humanity will likely survive, but life wouldn't be as easy as now.
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I agree that the planet itself in not in trouble. 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. ;-)
Anyway, nothing like a global spring cleaning once in a while!
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.
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The planet isn't going nowhere .
*** WE ARE. ***
Fixed that for you.
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Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Funny)
the planet has been here for what? 4 and a half billion years, and we've been here a hundred thousand years, maybe 200 thousand. And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over 200.
Not according to the next US president.
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't think anyone is arguing we repeal the clean air act or anything like that. We all like breathing. Also it really wouldn't help. It'd be like if your house caught fire and to avoid death you go to another room. Sure it helps you ignore the problem a few minutes at best, but you aren't doing fuck all to put out the fire. (apologies for the shitty analogy, where is BadAnalogyGuy when you need him?)
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Seriously? You think this is the climate change guys trolling? Why doesn't it suggest a polluter who wants to go back to the cheap & dirty way of doing things?
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Climate change scientists have now resorted to trolling us.
Seriously. Cleaner air is bad for the planet? Shut up.
It would be nice if it were simple, wouldn't it? If we could just say "pollution bad, stopping pollution all good effects."
Grow up. Reality is often quite a bit more complicated than we'd like it. Wshat seem like mixed messages mirror that. Cholesterol can be good and bad, different types. People shouldn't use heroin, but for a small subset of users, sudden withdrawal can actually cause death. Antibiotics kill bacteria in an infected patient, but if you dump in enough drugs to kill all the bugs at onc
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>It would be nice if it were simple, wouldn't it? If we could just say "pollution bad, stopping pollution all good effects."
Indeed. When lecturing on AGW last Thursday, it was amusing when my students asked if the volcano erupting was good or bad for the environment.
The simple fact is that there's no simple answer. If you're an endangered bird who only nests on whatever-the-hell that volcano is, you're pretty much fucked. If contrails from airplanes have a cooling effect, then grounding a bunch of planes might warm the atmosphere. The particulate matter will slightly cool the atmosphere. If you're a specialized form of algae that eats volanic ash in saltwater, it might be great for you, but terrible for the fish nearby.
The really tragic fact about Greens, is that they're stupid. They simply don't understand that every choice is always a mixture of pros and cons, good effects and bad effects and side effects. Their mindset (based on the precautionary principle) is that if ANYTHING is negative about an option, they must file a lawsuit and get it banned.
This has led to:
1) A ban on nuclear power here in California. 40% of America's CO2 comes from coal and gas energy plants - if we'd gone nuclear since the 70s we'd have not killed tens of thousands of people (what? people die from coal?), and met every CO2 target out there, beyond Copenhagen or the farcical disaster that is Kyoto.
2) The Sierra Club successfully shutting down a massive solar plant. (What? Solar is a green energy? But think of all the DESERT that would be covered by those panels! 25 tortoises live there!) Good luck getting more companies to put money into proposing green power generators, assholes. Similar stories exist for wind and tidal projects across the country.
3) Demolition of hyrdoelectric dams. (What? Hydro is a green source of energy!? But fish are friends, not food!) Spending $300M to blow up two hydro plants seems like a good investment, right? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elwha_Ecosystem_Restoration)
4) The introduction of the SUV. CAFE killed the station wagon, but idiot legislation can't kill demand for a product. So we no longer have the wood-paneled station wagon (1972 Country Squire: 18MPG) and now have the most Green-hated thing ever, the SUV (2009 Nissan Armada: 14 MPG).
5) The Clean Air Act lowering particulate counts, as the article says. Not that Clean Air is a bad thing - I certainly wouldn't want to live next to one of those belching, polluting smokestacks. (Like the cooling tower on a nuclear plant, like idiot wunderkind Al Gore showed in an Inconvenient Truth, but I digress.) But it does reduce the "protective" cooling effect particulate matter has in the atmosphere.
As long as idiot Greens continue thinking in all-or-nothing terms, they'll continue making decisions that are horribly bad both for the environment and for the economy.
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The irony is that you ask people to not have such a black and white view on the environment, yet you have a black and white view on politics. When environmental issues come up, it is always very complicated. It is NEVER just greens being naive.
For example, in the wiki article that YOU site, it claims the removal of the dam was for reasons of safety, the salmon, erosion, and nutrients in the riverbed. Which of those is a "green" issue? While "green" folks supported this in various ways, I'm sure there wh
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:5, Insightful)
>>The irony is that you ask people to not have such a black and white view on the environment, yet you have a black and white view on politics.
Since I apparently have a black and white view of politics, I'm vastly interested in what you think those are.
>>For example, in the wiki article that YOU site, it claims the removal of the dam was for reasons of safety, the salmon, erosion, and nutrients in the riverbed. Which of those is a "green" issue?
Indeed. (I'm aware of this, having linked the article for you to read.) As I said with the volcano example, there's always a lot of effects, both good or bad, with every decision. But the trend in general to blow up dams is a very troubling one. We need more power plants, not less.
And flood control is a not-insignificant issue, also. In Japan, the Shinto nature-loving country on the other side of the Pacific, every single (well, over 95%) of every river and stream in Japan is dammed. Mainly for flood control issues, but they also produce about 10% of their total power needs from hydro in places like (the very lovely) Kiso River Valley. It's quite jarring to the American eye to see square waterfalls, square streams, and massive hydro plants in the middle of what could be their Yosemite Valley. But they do have something to it.
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>>but your post is a simple illusion, it's a blueprint for a rant on anything and fully exchangeable
Exchangeable? Not at all. I'm for power generation, and opposed to stupidity. On general principles.
While your point about the dams is a valid one (there's more reasons than fish that they're destroying them), the simple fact of the matter is that California has truly fucked itself when it comes to energy. It has a mandate for 33% of power generated from green sources in a few years, and yet it allows 2
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Insightful)
>>You mix up the meaning of the precautionary principle. It's not the idea of not doing anything because something might have something negative. Rather, often, if something has great risks, even if relatively unlikely, it is better to do the other alternative. And the more unknown things are, the more cautious you should be.
No, I hit the precautionary principle dead on. It paralyzes the decision making process by replacing the weighted balance of pros and cons (which is the alternative, mind you) by allowing anything to block action.
In practice, it means that no power plants get built for thirty years in a state that has grown rather significantly since then.
The worst part is, people don't even realize it is self-contradictory. Sometimes doing nothing is the worst possible alternative, by a long shot.
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You should look a little more into the information instead of your feelings. Don't get so upset just because something isn't what you wanted to hear.
This information has been discussed for over a decade now. It is called Global Dimming. There is a great video on Nova about it if you want to learn.
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Cleaner air is bad for the planet?
Good and bad isn't as one-dimensional as that. Things that are good for one thing, may turn out to be bad for something else. Alcohol, for example, is good for your heart and blood pressure, but bad for your liver. Same thing with some kinds of pollution. Some kinds of pollution may block some of the sun's rays from entering our atmosphere, which slows global warming. But then again, they may hurt the ozone layer, causing more skin cancer.
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The thing is, the air you're breathing is down here - which is where the vast majority of pollution is created. The sun-blocking sulphur compounds need to be up there. A fact which is clearly not mentioned at all in TFS.
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Where does it say that? Did you even read the summary or TFA?
Re:Trolls. Everywhere. (Score:4, Interesting)
Climate scientists have known about the negative forcing of areosols since at least the 1950's. It's the half truth behind the widely repeated troll that "most climate scientists predicted an ice age in the 70's". I know of no reputable climate scientist* who would advocate repealing the clean air act and going back to pea-soupers [wikipedia.org] and acid rain as a sane method of tackling AGW.
* = Eli Kintisch (the author of the original opinion piece in the LA times), does not advocate increasing pollution. He is simply pointing out that man made areosols are currently masking the full impact of CO2 emissions. His book Hack the Planet [nature.com] is an informative work about the pros and cons of geoengineering options that governments may be tempted to consider if things continue on a BAU basis. As the Nature review points out; "Kintisch is skeptical about the idea that we can tame and control ecosystems, let alone the whole planet."
Like the vast majority of scientists his prefered geoengineering option is to wind down the current uncontrolled geoengineering experiment in a responsible manner, but as we have seen there is some mighty stiff oposition against that option from powerfull vested interests. And how surprising is it to learn that they are the same vested interests who, for almost a century, successfully used anti-science and economic alarmisim to fight tooth and nail against any and all proposals for clean air regulations?
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As someone who has asthma, this pisses me off. I like breathing, thanks.
100% percent with you, brother. Clean air regulations and indoor smoking ban made a huge difference in my well-being. And a lot is still to do...
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Not a fan of evolution by natural selection, eh?
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The fact is the clean air act has proably done more to put more carbon in the air than anything. C02 was not considered to be the threat it is today when the law was writen, add CAFEE Standards to this and we get the disaster that is the present day American Autombile fleet. We would all be driving cars that are more powerful than we have today getting 50+MPG right now if it was not for those stupid laws. The irration fear of things like NOx has prevented the development of high compression high efficenc
A little known fact (Score:5, Informative)
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I think perhaps we will discover, that as with much in life, it isn't "entirely attributable" to any one thing, but a combination. Seems a lot in the world is that way. So it may be that some of it is CO2, some of it is less particulates, some of it is solar output, some of it is inaccuracies in temperature data, and so on. To me it seems likely that there may be multiple factors affecting a highly complex system, as well as the fact that our measurements are not 100% accurate. I find it a bit odd that I ha
Re:A little known fact (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, it's odd that an ~18 page summary for nonscientists doesn't include all the nuances in a ~1000 page report filled with scientific jargon.
The summary's forcing chart [www.ipcc.ch] clearly shows a huge, lopsided error bar on the cloud albedo effect, and lists the Level Of Scientific Understanding as "low". This is a copy of figure 2.20 on page 203 of chapter 2. In both charts, notice that the CO2 forcing is very large and known far more precisely.
The particular statement you found, that "the warming seen over the last few decades is entirely attributable to the reduction in aerosols in recent years" isn't something I've seen in chapter 2. The bottom panel of figure 2.22 on page 206 seems like the closest match to your statement, but it's a projection based on emissions over 20 years in the future. Could you specify the page number where you found your statement?
I'll note that your claim isn't necessarily contradicted by figure 2.20 because that's the radiative forcing integrated from 1750-2005, whereas you're referring to something like 1985-2005... right?
In other words (Score:3, Insightful)
the people who are firmly in the man made global warming camp will keep throwing things at the wall until something sticks.
In the last year or so it really comes across as if they are desperate to find an angle. When holes (read doubt) start getting punched in one idea they first defend it by relentless attacking those who question it and then they drop their stance and move to another idea. It really has gotten old. Too many of them have vested interest in companies that are making a killing off the who
Re:A little known fact (Score:5, Funny)
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The reason we sigh is because your point is fucking stupid. The IPCC has scientists involved that know statistics one would assume. This has been worked out. Unless you are saying the temperature magically changes over time which causes a variety of things to change, like the sun's brightness and seasons or even day/night as causes of the temp
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I'm sure you already know then that most of the IPCC was written by politicians, not scientists. And most of those scientists don't have a degree in mathematics, or statistics. But then again I'm just point out the obvious.
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Presuming you mean the IPCC report (it's not good form to go around writing on committees): No it wasn't. And yes, it was. Maybe, but there's a lot of both in the kind of degrees they have.
I'm just pointing out the obvious, too.
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!
Was seen in 2001 (Score:2)
I believe this was observed during the moratorium on air flight in the two days after 9/11. I don't think it speeds global warming. Its is just a constant temperature drop if you take away pollution.
Sulfur aerosols also cause ozone depletion (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Anyone would help me citing are welcome, as I've already transformed the corresponding references into carbon dioxide which joined the greenhouse gas party in the heaven.
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.
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Why can't people understand that stuff can both be good and bad at the same time?
And CFC's(r12, r22 etc) have been banned and replaced with alternatives that don't contain chlorine. So the sulfur aerosols don't really have mush CFC to "trigger".
i.e sulfur aerosols was bad in the 90s because we had mush Chlorofluorocarbon in the atmosphere.
It's simple math. (Score:2)
Climate alarmism in action (Score:5, Funny)
"If we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound," Kintisch writes in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. Kintisch isn't talking about greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide; he's talking about another kind of pollutant we put in the sky -- "like aerosols from a spray can," he tells NPR's Guy Raz. "It turns out that those particles have a profound effect on maintaining the planet's temperature." Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollutants work in opposing ways on the Earth's climate, Kintisch explains. "The greenhouse gases warm the planet when they're emitted, because they absorb heat reflected up from the ground -- the greenhouse effect. These aerosols, though, do the opposite. They block sunlight, they make clouds more reflective -- and by doing that, they actually cool the planet. "The problem is that we're cutting the cooling pollution as we make our air cleaner," he says. Some scientists, he says, are confident that this is connected to global warming, but they don't know how large the effect is. "That's the frightening thing, because if it's a big cooling effect, it means that we've been actually warming the planet more than we know," Kintisch says. "As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.
BINGO!
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BINGO!
Quick Batman! To the GovernmentGrantMobile!
Editor on speed writes headline (Score:2)
...and it is unintelligible.
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Maybe you should get off the drugs yourself. It's a pretty clear headline and meant exactly what I thought when I first read it.
This is old news (Score:2)
NOT news. (Score:2)
See for example:
BBC__Horizon__2005.01.13__Global_dimming
In a nutshell: cleaner air will give even higher temperatures which means the warming by increased greenhouse gasses is in fact worse than what you might expect by naive interpretation of the temperature data.
Trying to pollute the atmosphere (or not clean it up) because of this would give all sorts of other problems.
And as to this guy:
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What about photosynthesis? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.'
...along with more CO2-scrubbing photosynthesis caused by more sunlight reaching the the ground. Did he not consider this?
Respect, Please (Score:2, Insightful)
There are lots of idiot "deniers" (the Fox News viewer) and idiot "believers" (the California soccer mom saving the planet with her Prius). If we're trying to ha
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The oil industry is on the "denier" side, and Goldman Sachs is on the "believer" side. I don't know which I trust less.
I'm no fan of Goldman-Sachs, but since you raised the question: do you know how much money G-S has devoted to lobbying and funding pro-AGW research? I wonder if it's reached 1% of what the fossil fuel industry has spent. Or even .001%. To the best of my knowledge, G-S hasn't even been thinking about energy pricing for that long, let alone considering it a core part of their business.
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So... (Score:2)
Damn, but what a conundrum this is. There really are no easy questions.
Save the planet! Buy a diesel! (Score:2)
And run it on high-sulfur fuel. Sure it smells a bit, but it's Green! Really!
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Funny)
If the media has taught me anything, it's that every single substance, whether artificial or naturally occurring, both causes and cures cancer.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wow.. (Score:5, Funny)
Wait! you found the missing link!
It's not that everything gives you cancer....
It's that the MEDIA gives you cancer!
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: (Score:3, Funny)
why hasn't anyone noticed that the next ice-age is due soon, and maybe it might be a good idea to do something about it?
Martinis and beer are why. They're both better cold.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Air pollution (gases like co2) accelerate global warming.
Air pollution (dust and other stuff that blocks sunlight) slow global warming (aka "global dimming").
Whether or not humans are contributing to this is not an issue I'll get into but these two points are fairly obvious to anyone with half a clue.
Re: (Score:2)
Calling CO2 "pollution" is stretching the limits of the word. It's a greenhouse gas, but pollution implies something that "doesn't belong there" and isn't a good fit, IMO. Would you call O2 pollution?
Frankly, I think it's incredible that plants can live as well as they do considering how little of the atmosphere consists of CO2.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm inclined to agree but since mateomiguel used that term I decided to stick with it.
Re: (Score:2)
If C02 is the [other] thing plants crave, why are C02 levels rising? Wouldn't you expect them to go on a feast and remove it all?
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't you expect them to go on a feast and remove it all?
They would, but unfortunately someone keeps cutting down the jungle growing downtown.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh and some things have been known to cool the climate for CENTURIES. Volcanoes release ash into the air which shades the planet and lowers temperatures.
It was called global warming because the planet is going to get warmer ON AVERAGE. But it isn't a simple system, some places might get colder. And because stupid people (re fox news
Re: (Score:2)
There's so much confusion about global warming now I feel like just telling people to shut up for 10 years until they get their stories straight.
THEY DID! Here [washington.edu] is a paper about this very phenomenon from 1991. Almost two decades.
Furthermore, most of us don't actually find it that confusing. "Some pollutants actually cool down instead of warm, but they don't last as long as the ones that warm" is something a child could understand. If you are confused, then take your own advice and wait to comment on climate issues for 10 years until you understand them.
Re: (Score:2)
There's so much confusion about global warming now I feel like just telling people to shut up for 10 years until they get their stories straight.
I agree! We paid good money for that confusion, too! It's annoying when people don't do as they are supposed to.
signed,
Exxon.
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
Science community? (Score:2)
Dear Science Community,
Okay, so this isn't immediately clear to anyone, not even me. But reading the article, it seems this information comes from one man, Eli Kintisch. Googling around, it looks to me like he's not a practicing scientist, and while he seems to understand science, it seems his main occupation is selling books.
I think that the science community (if you mean scientists) has remained very silent about the total effect of aerosols because those are not known well enough to make announcements. Meanwhile, everybody els
Re: (Score:2)
Dear BonquiquiShiquavius,
As numerous commenters, some above you, have pointed out, this is not a new finding. We weren't wrong. Your media is just really good at glossing over technical issues. Actually, it's just not really good at doing much of anything besides getting advertisers. I digress. This was known in the 60's. The fact that many non-scientists don't know anything about it is not our fault and is the public's shortcoming, not ours.
Hiring a PR firm is an interesting idea, but again nothing r