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Soot Is Warming the World — a Lot
sciencehabit writes "Soot is bad stuff all around, whether you're breathing it into your lungs or it's heating the atmosphere by absorbing more of the sun's energy. But a new 4-year, 232-page assessment (PDF) of soot's role in climate finds that the combustion product could be warming the world twice as much as previously thought. The study points policymakers toward the best targets for reducing climate-warming soot emissions while at the same time improving the health of billions of people."
This reminds me of a cartoon. Caption: "What if global warming is a hoax and we create a better world for nothing?"
The reason that occurred to me is, here's a case where it makes sense to reduce a pollutant (soot) for public health reasons, even setting the global warming issue aside.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
I find it surprising that this study is so late to the global warming game. I wonder how this affects the existing climate models. For, if as the study says, the exisitng affects of soot have been understated by a factor of 100%, does that not mean that the existing warming models are overstating the effect of CO2?
So it's not the cars causing global warming? Or is this just a way to garner more research funds?
This is about the contributions soot has to global warming and the magnitude of those contributions. This is, by no means, an attempt to isolate global warming down to one factor. It is a complex situation and your logical fallacy is to prey upon that complexity in order to disprove any additional information people try to publish on it.
Also, the paper had a very helpful executive summary. Had you bothered to read even that small fraction of it, one of the opening sentences states:
Sources whose emissions are rich in black carbon (‘BC-rich’) can be grouped into a small number of categories, broadly described as diesel engines, industry, residential solid fuel and open burning.
So, yes, according to the paper in the Americas and Europe diesel engines are some of the biggest contributors whereas in Africa and Asia the biggest contributors are coal and biomass burning operations.
I'm confused.
I know -- it's quite evident. I'm here to help.
My work here is dung.
as long as coal powers the turbines that make the electricity, that's exactly what those things are.
Do you think the universe gives a flying fuck about politics? If the climate is changing (and just about every active researcher in the field says it is), then it does not matter what fucking little bit whether you find it political. Nature is not bound by any ideology, or by politics, or by your distaste for either.
Grow the fuck up. What are you, eight years old, that your reaction to this sort of thing is to shove your fingers in your ears and declare you don't want to hear about it?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Not really, it's only cheaper if we carefully ignore all of the external costs.
WTF does this stupid argument keep coming up?
Natural gas is the future...
Wind is the future...
Geothermal is the future
Solar is the future...
Nuclear (fission) is the future...
Nuclear (fusion) is the future...
Embrace all of the above.
This is a zombie problem, not a werewolf problem.
i.e. We need a shotgun approach, not a silver bullet.
Turns out that this is very easy to remove from the smoke of coal, at my local plant they've been doing it for years and it get's a lot of it ou. One thing is for sure, as we move more of our manufacturing to China we are essentially 'Sooting' our planet because regulations are much less strict there. I wouldn't be surprised if they just send it straight up in the air. If you've ever been in the western united states and seen the haze, most of it is from China.
Of course we do ! Any savings from cheaper power goes directly into your pocket, while the extenal costs are shared with 7 billion people.
That's the problem with externalities. If I can make a deal that is a win of $10 million for me -- but that cauces a loss of $0.05 for every human being on the planet, then it's a huge win for me, so barring laws stopping me, I'll likely say yes. Meanwhile, the deal creates $10M of value, and does $350M worth of damage, thus for humanity as a whole, the deal is a huge loss.
Externalities is one of the biggest problems with capitalism. It explains why rational players can end up making decisions that are a net loss overall.
What gets me, is that this has been known "forever", aslong as there's been a solid theory of capitalism, atleast.
The solution, of course, is to set a fair price on the externalities. What that price is, and how to practically evaluate, collect and distribute that money, is a difficult problem, however notice that even if the money is collected in a highly inefficient manner, it is still frequently better than the alternative.
If you want to do something that gains you $50M while costing every human being $0.05 - then the overall loss is $300M. If there was a tax on your pollution to the tune of $250M, then you'd conclude it's not worth it since the taxes are higher than your gains.
In this case, no taxes are collected, and no deal is made - but nevertheless the tax-code was useful: it prevented $300M worth of harm from taking place.
Notice that even mostly-squandered taxes is a win from the perspective of everyone-but-you.
Let's say instead you want to do something that gains you $100M, while costing the rest of humanity $25M. We tax your activity at $50M, and the inefficiency of bureacracy means half of the collected taxes are completely wasted.
End result: With the tax you gain $50M and everyone else breaks even. Without the tax, you gain $100M, and everyone else is down $25M. -- thus the tax, despite being 50% wasteful, is a net-gain for everyone except you.