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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?
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.
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.'"
It may affect warming, but it doesn't fix ocean acidification
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.
Do you think asking some questions about sulfur is worse than actually advocating for trillions of dollars of expense on the economy?
"People who have absolutely no expertise whatsoever think they can just handwave the results and scientific consensus of thousands of researchers who have spent millions of man-hours analyzing datasets from dozens of different and unrelated sources, all of which have the same levels of correlation pointing to the same issues."
This cuts both ways. You want people outside the field to accept their expertise. So just tell me how to falsify the theory. Temperatures not matching predictions won't work because apparently another source will be blamed.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.