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Cleaner Air Could Speed Global Warming
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.'"
I'm getting pretty tired of everything causing/amplifying global warming. We're fucked, we get it it!
If we are to err, I'd rather we erred on the side of clean air than polluted air.
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
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. Of course, that fact didn't make it into the "Summary for Policy Makers." In fairness I should mention that the chances of the temperature change being entirely attributable to the change in aerosols is actually quite low, but it's still something worth considering.
Qxe4
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."
If the media has taught me anything, it's that every single substance, whether artificial or naturally occurring, both causes and cures cancer.
I didn't see anyone saying that we should start pumping aerosols into the atmosphere again. They're just saying it will have an effect. Would you prefer scientists that pretend nothing good ever has a downside?
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. ***
If we are to err, I'd rather we erred on the side of clean err than polluted err.
"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!
Dear BonquiquiShiquavius,
The LA Times and NPR aren't part of the scientific community. They reported on a book written by Eli Kintisch 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 for years that these nuances are described in detail by the IPCC AR4 WG1 report.
Sincerely,
A dumb member of the scientific community
You mean something like volcano ash, but higher?
Hmm... maybe we need a bigger volcano...
>>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.
>>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.
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!
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Wait! you found the missing link!
It's not that everything gives you cancer....
It's that the MEDIA gives you cancer!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
>>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.