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China's Coal Power Plants Mask Climate Change
Hugh Pickens writes "The Guardian reports on new research revealing that the huge increase in coal-fired power stations in China, up from just over 10 gigawatts (GW) in 2002 to over 80GW in 2006, has masked the impact of global warming in the last decade because of the cooling effect of their sulphur emissions. But scientists warn that rapid warming is likely to resume when the short-lived sulphur pollution – which also causes acid rain – is cleaned up and the full heating effect of long-lived carbon dioxide is felt. 'Reductions in carbon emissions will be more important as China installs scrubbers [on its coal-fired power stations], which reduce sulphur emissions,' says Dr. Robert Kaufman. 'This, and solar insolation increasing as part of the normal solar cycle, [will mean] temperature is likely to increase faster.' The effect also explains the lack of global temperature rise seen between 1940 and 1970 as the effect of the sulphur emissions from increased coal burning outpaced that of carbon emissions, until acid rain controls were introduced, after which temperature rose quickly. 'Warming due to the CO2 released by Chinese industrialization has been partially masked by cooling due to reflection of solar radiation by sulphur emissions,' says Prof Joanna Haigh. 'On longer timescales, with cleaner emissions, the warming effect will be more marked.'"
This is going to be taken by both supporters and detractors of Climate Change: Warming Trend as evidence for their cause. Let me go get the popcorn.
Nothing productive will come of this so I might as well sit back and enjoy the fireworks. Nevermind we are trying to figure out a complex model as it changes under conditions that about as far from scientifically controlled as possible. My only hope is we don't accidentally cause an Ice Age trying to fix this.
by Anonymous Coward: I, for one, welcome the shift from car analogies to pizza analogies. um.. overlords?
These 'scientists' really make me laugh...
Because they are all the time revising their models and theories in order to make them more acurate? What a stupid thing for a scientist to do!
Anyway, I have some snake oil to sell you for your headaches... you know, your grand-grandfather used it, so it is sure it works!
Why can't
This is why many American companies outsource manufacturing to china. lax regulations, and those regulations are ignored. It's far cheaper to make your phone in a location where waste can be dumped into the stream behind the building or just thrown into the trash stream and bury those heavy metals in the landfill.
But as long as we ignore that and enjoy low priced products it will all be ok.
Environmental regulations hurt jobs and business! And because of them, business has to outsource overseas because they won't be able to compete! And then there are the taxes .... American business has to go overseas for the cheap labor and the lower taxes in order to compete with the rest of the World.
Translation:
We want to lower our costs to the bare minimum so the CEO and other executives can get filthy rich off of the backs of the workers and shareholders all the while poisoning the people and land of foreign nations because their leaders want to enrich themselves - (fascist) capitalism working with despots.
In the meantime, the super rich propaganda machine has brain washed us peons into thinking that if we work hard and get educated, we too can one day join their ranks - it's a given! As long as we can keep those pesky environmental regulations and taxes low for the very wealthy ($10 million+ assets) out of the way.
In the meantime, the entire World spirals down economically and ecologically and the super rich hang out on their yachts and private jets.
Want to know who to go after? Get the Gulfstream, Bombardier, Cessna (Citation Jets), and the other "corporate jet" makers client lists and then get the individuals behind those corporations.
So you are still trying to make the facts fit your theory?
WTF!?!
Take a look at the facts, and develop a theory from the facts.
Earth's climate swings hotter-colder-hotter-colder. Humans put out less CO2 than one volcano.
I found it impossibly hard to believe that it's cheaper to move your entire operation than install scrubbers
The point is, you can ignore a whole heck of a lot more regulations than just the scrubber requirements.
Fly ash can be dumped onto the lawn until it blows away or is washed away. No need to capture and recycle mercury, or anything else, unless you'll make a profit off it. No need for those pesky worker safety regulations. Boiler inspections, what are they? Have a barrel of used lubricating oil, and coincidentally a barrel sized hole in the ground?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Perhaps the supposed rise in temperature in recent decades isn't due to CO2 emission; perhaps our nasty coal plants in the west prior to that were holding off an increase by putting aerosols in the air, and cleaning them up unmasked that effect.
If coal plants really have this sort of major effect, and they aren't accounted for in the much-vaunted climate models, the models are pretty much junk. If they are accounted for, why is this news?
I can't understand statistics or concepts that are beyond my grasp. Therefore, the scientists must be wrong.
Scrubbers have been required in America since the 1977 revisions to the Clean Air Act. And they're still not
...up to spec. I personally know someone who used to be employed to climb stacks and drop probes in them. We can find plants of all kinds emitting excessive pollutants (as in, over the legal limits) as fast as we can pay people to climb them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not sure how Mann and Co. can keep a straight face whilst publishing rubbish like this. They've basically tweaked an existing computer model - one that did not in any way conform to actual reality - and added further fudge factors to make things balance out and *shock* it does! That is to say, rather than admitting the CO2 hypothesis is wrong and that changes in solar activity and the oceans are more convincing explanations, they prefer to fiddle around with what is an over-parametrised model.
The entire paper is predicated on the assumption that the climate model (and climate models in general) code for sufficient amounts of internal variability. Given that models rarely, if ever, show this, one can safely say that they do not and that they are therefore invalid.
It may affect warming, but it doesn't fix ocean acidification
Let's overlook the fact that we have a big fat admission that temperatures haven't been going up for about a decade and how no one wanted to readily admit that to the public...
Global warming theory, as presently constructed, can't be falsified. "The theory's valid! It's the sulfur, the ocean cycles, the -fill in reasons for lack of warming-."
How can we even disprove this current assertion? They have no idea.
At the very least, this gives credence to the Freakanomics folks. Instead of wrecking the world's economy, how about we just shoot sulfur in the upper part of our atmosphere if you are worried about global warming?
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Even I can spot bullshit from my armchair. Completely dismissing 30 years of evidence just because it doesn't conform to your pet idea--that's bullshit. And it's not how science is supposed to work.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Yes, excellent. Take a infinitesimally short time period viewed through the distorted prism of childhood memory and use that as a basis for confirming or denying climate theory.
You do realize that this is exactly what AGW people criticize in the climate deniers, right?