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Cleaner Air Adds To Global Warming
shmlco writes "In the "You Can't Win For Losing" department, an article on the BBC web site is reporting that reduced air pollution and increased water evaporation appears to be adding to man-made global warming. Research presented at a major European science meeting adds to other evidence that cleaner air is letting more solar energy through to the Earth's surface.
Burn fossil fuels, you make things worse. Clean up your act, and you make things worse. Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?"
Is it time to set off a few nukes and see if nuclear winter can cool things down?"
Uh-uh. Last time I tried that on Sim Earth, my planet was overtaken by sentient robots. Of course, the robots eventually get taken out by carnivirous plants, but is that really much of an improvement?
Marked increase in SMUG. Damn you, George Clooney!
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
I've seen a (semi) serious suggestion that the best way to deal with global warming is to put a thin film of dust in between the earth and the sun. This wasn't from some internet hack either, but a rather senior physicist.
Point is that man-made pollution is more than the earth can absorb because there are too many humans. If we reduced the population, earth would be better able to absorb the naturally-created pollution.
Ohhh! Pay Dirt! A pair of half-eaten choco-pants!
Burn fossil fuels, you make things worse. Clean up your act, and you make things worse
s/make things worse/change the environment/
Maybe we should just realize that we live and therefore we affect the world around us, and that the environment is ever changing. Oh, and things evolve. And it's not a good idea to build a dream home on a sand dune.
you're assuming that the only space and resouces that people use are the ones they're standing or living on.
what about the land needed to grow the food these people eat? that's not in cities. what about the water required to irrigate deserts so those people can have lettuce in january? that's not in cities. what about all the oil required to run suvs and make platic shampoo bottles for all those people? what about the massive hydro and coal electricity projects needed to run all those electric shavers and 60" televisions?
just consider food for a moment. the average north american diet requires 3 acres of areable land per person per year. for the entire population of the united states that works out to just less a billion acres.
overpopulated.
2 1337 4 u!
No it isn't.
If we can cause the problem, we can fix it. The only question is, will we?
You will not drink with us, but you would taste our steel? - Walter Matthau, The Pirates
Acutally, the book was Fallen Angels by Jerry Pournelle and Michael Flynn, and it went a little further than that. The ice age had been held off by pollution-related greenhouse warming. It was only after the world cleaned up its act that the ice age came on.
It's a great book. The heroes were SF fans.
Sorry, I'm a writer. That makes you raw material.
My 10 gallon fishtank has about 500 goldfish in it right now. There's still room left for a few hundred more. I don't understand why people think the tank is overpopulated.
This guy's the limit!
No, really, it is.
Each gas that comprises the atmosphere has the capability to act as a greenhouse gas, and each one blocks different wavelengths of infared radiation. Some of then trap it when the sunlight passes through the atmosphere, some of them capture it when the radiation bounces off the earths surface back into the atmosphere.
C02, Methane, and *gasp* water vapor all contribute to heat retention in the atmosphere. It's basic Geography 101 shit that everyone learns.
However, since water vapor is, you know, an integral part of the atmosphere and several cycles on earth, we really can't do much about that. Better to worry about all the other gasses we up dump into the atmosphere that we can control.
Look out honey cause I'm usin' technology
Ain't got time to make no apologies
What do you mean? If we're products of evolution, then we humans are supremely natural.
There's a difference between being "natural" and "sustainable". The vast majority of natural creatures are also sustainable, because if you don't live a sustainable lifestyle your lifestyle (or species) will not persist. The unsustainable ones get winnowed out. Being "natural" or not has no bearing on whether your species will go extinct or not.
The word "natural" has become so mangled that it that it is both useless and meaningless except as part of a marketing campaign.
And then my cities were surrounded by mind worm boils! They were everywhere! Where did they come from? Did they not like me replacing their fungus with my pretty tree farms? I don't know, but they were pissed off. So I convened a meeting with the planetary council and got the vote to um raise sea levels and uh... Um, sorry what were we talking about?
OK, dude, time for calorimetry 101. Let's assume for a second that the temperature increase was just for the oceans (to avoid messing around with too many different specific heats). Let's further assume that it only applies to the top centimeter of the water (ie, the rest of the oceans are not affected). What would the impact be of a 2 degree fahrenheit increase in the surface temperature?
That's a lot of energy to have floating around that we didn't used to have.
All's true that is mistrusted
You are spot on. Whether you believe we are inducing unnatural global warming or not, the proper answer is not to overreact trying to fix it! What this article tells me is there is much of the equation that we still do not fully understand.
We've seen time and again that messing with the environment can have devastating repurcussions. A smaller scale example of this is the attempt by the US Army Corps of Engineers to drain the Everglades. Now huge amounts of money are being invested trying to fix what was done. And this is minor compared to the implications of trying to modify, one way or the other, the global climate.
It's good to clean up our environment and be good stewards of it, but at the same time, we can't halt industrial progress, nor should we. What happens if, a hundred years down the road, we discover global warming really was only a natural cycle of the Earth's climate? Now, what happens if current industrialized nations have strangled the ability of their economies to produce goods in an attempt to divert a coming 'disaster' that never materialized?
Already, punitive regulations and taxes are in place on industry making it very hard to profitably do business in the United States. This is a primary factor behind the outsourcing that people wring their hands over. As I said, behaving responsibly toward the environment is good, but we have to also balance the needs of being an industrialized society and not overreact against a threat we don't really undesrand.
Government's view of the economy: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving,regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.
A Chemistry Prof of mine back in the day brought something along these lines up. His argument went something like this (I've shorthanded it for those who don't like to read paragraphs):
Pollution = Greenhouse Effect
Greenhouse Effect = Increase in global temperature
Increase in temperature = More water evaporating
Vapourous water = Clouds
More clouds = Less sunlight getting through
Less sunlight = lower temperature
The point being that there is a sense of balance in place. Yes, we're messing things up, but there are some checks and balances that lessen the impact. That's not to say we should keep on polluting, but that the situation IS reversible if given time.
His other big environmental statement was that he'd wish the "Save the Rainforest" people would spend more than 5 seconds looking at their arguments. The fact is (again, according to him) that the rainforests are NOT the "lungs of the Earth." They actually do a small minority of the CO2->O2 conversion compared to what the oceans and seas do. Calcium Carbonate (CaCO3 = Limestone) in the oceans does much more. Plant life in the major bodies of waters (ie.- algae) also is a significant contributor (in relation to rainforests). But there is almost no major coverage of the damage we've done to the oceans through shipping, dumping and other pollution.
Interestingly, the tie-in between the two lies in the algae and plant life. An increase in temperature can lead to an increase of plant life that can convert the polluting gases into O2... as well as other pollutants.
The problem isn't necessarily that we're polluting the environment, it's that we're doing it faster than nature can balance it. This used to be due to ignorance, but now it's willful and due to monetary pressures and laziness.
- In hell, treason is the work of angels.
Thus, by your math, the U.S. can provide all of the agricultural products that it needs, and this is supported by the positive balance of agricultural trade that the U.S. has shown for the last 40 years (2). We ship out things that we can grow more easily (e.g. corn), and import things that we can't (e.g. rice). That margin is dwindling, and we may start to import a bit more than we export, but this is primarily due to an increase in import of consumer-oriented products, not bulk imports. This suggests that to a large extent, this is due to consumers being more savvy and choosing to buy more imported products for variety, rather than because we can't produce enough food.
Anybody who says that that the U.S. can't feed itself is either misinformed or outright lying. Either way, that's a sure sign of somebody with a political agenda.
1. Source: WorldStats.org
2. Source: TruthAboutTrade.org
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I'd say there's a small kernel of truth in the overstated assertion that environmentalists were trying to "destroy industrialization". One of the things that long frustrated me about environmentalism was its Original Sin of Man against Mother Earth mentality (despite the prevalence of pooh-poohing about the same Original Sin meme from Christians). This was the source of a general nostalgia for bucolic pre-industrial life (back to nature), and a general distrust of things industrial. That made a lot of people anti-growth.
However, as environmentalism has matured (and as a younger generation has taken over), a lot of that has dissipated. Many of us would now say what we want is post-industrialism - a world where industry has been retooled so that sustainable management of inputs, outputs and waste are all part of the business model (rather than only the first two, and without regard to global issues). Industrialization was not only a vastly leap forward for humanity and its quality of life, but was in fact good for much of the environment: before industrialization people burned an awful lot of trees, farmed a lot of land poorly, and relied on massive animal stocks for transportation, and none of this was all that friendly to the earth. Now that we've seen the negative consequences of our current industrial methods, it's time for the next major leap forward. And despite all the propaganda, it's clear that pushing green industry will very quickly drive enormous economic growth and likely help humanity solve persistent problems like global poverty.
To answer the critics who say "if this is so great why doesn't business do it itself", I have a couple answers. First, as anyone who's worked at a startup or on a new product launch can tell you, markets move incrementally and businesses outpace them at their peril. So to get the market to surge forward, you often need external intervention. Second, much of what's needed is massive capital investment for long-term gain: in research, in infrastructure upgrades, and in capitalizing new technologies. Businesses generally do not have a 20 year mandate to improve infrastructure, whereas the government has exactly this mandate. And yes, the government intervention does makes mistakes, can promote inefficiency, or can produce unintended outcomes. But it almost always gets the market moving in the intended direction, and the mistakes can be cleaned up later.
If this all sounds a bit breathless, get me a gig at Wired. But I really do believe that investing heavily in this jump will give tremendous results for people, business, and countries.
In the 70s, scientists were absolutely convinced that they'd mastered the complex climate change models, and confidently assured us all that an Ice Age was imminent.
No they didn't.
Don't know how old you are hawkfish, but I distinctly remember that they did. The phobia of the 70's was distinctly the other way. I remember my parents arguing about climate cooling at the dinner table. My mother was convinced that an ice age was imminent. My father was very skeptical. The argument revolved around how well science could predict climate. My father was convinced that since he couldn't get accurate weather forecasts, that climate forecasts were even more suspect. Here we are, 35 years later and the same arguments are still playing out.