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."

Comments

Reminds me of a cartoon

[SirGarlon]

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.

Global Dimming

[paysonwelch]

Everyone hears about global warming, but did you know there is also something called global dimming? Although there are many probable causes, soot falls into this category as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming

Some Corrections

[eldavojohn]

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.

Re:Now THERE's a reversal.

[BergZ]

So here we have a dilemma.
An Anonymous Coward on Slashdot says the IPCC predictions are a dismal failure.
On the other hand David J. Frame & Dáithí A. Stone compared the IPCC model predictions against the observed temperatures and found the predictions to be accurate (source).

So I guess the question is who am I going to believe:
The unsubstantiated claims of an Anonymous Coward on Slashdot -OR- the detailed research of scientists that has passed the peer-review process?
Tough call!