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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
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?
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.