Mar

24

2008
 
 

Know your ABC?



Soot could rival CO2 in melting Himalayan glaciers and Arctic sea ice

Nothing is ever black and whiteSwitching from fossil to wood-based fuel could be the wrong sort of green idea. Black carbon – soot to us – is the second most important source of current global warming, according to a paper published this week in Nature Geoscience. In their review, co-authors V. Ramanathan and Greg Carmichael say that the soot created by burning biofuels – wood, dung and crop residues – and “dirtier” coal and diesel, helps form large clouds that absorb and scatter the sun’s radiation, literally topping it all by depositing solar-heating black layers onto otherwise reflective snow and ice. The problem was centered on the West before the 1950s, but deforestation and developing economies make the tropics and East Asia the current hotspots for soot emissions, which combine with other aerosols to produce immense Atmospheric Brown Clouds. Around half the world’s population lives under the local influence of these plumes, but we’re all feeling it somehow. Source: Ramanathan V & Carmichael G (2008) Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon. Nature Geoscience DOI: 10.1038/ngeo156

Image © Tigerx

nb typo corrected 2150 GMT 24.03.08

Filed Under Climate change, Habitat, Restoration, Monitoring, Economics and conservation, Socio-political issues, Tools and technology | 

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Comments

One Response to “Know your ABC?”

  1. wide eyed on March 26th, 2008 4:04 am

    Soot. We should have known.

    How tiresome. What’s next? How many surprises? How many new targets? Please give us a break.

    No accountability.

    How is it possible that people can be so committed to imposing their will on others. It is crushingly depressing.

    Okay. Soot. More lies.

    What’s going to happen, as the ocean temperature information is buried, as the water vapor information is buried, as the fact of a decline in surface temps over the last decade is buried, as more and better information about the climate is embraced (reluctantly), what’s going to happen is the we’ll-do-anything-to-control-your-life-climate-socialist alarmist crowd is going to wrap itself around soot (or some other new big thing that, what do you know, was easier to deal with and had a bigger impact than we expected) because what the hell they’ve made a living off of manipulating people, and so why admit failure, and the whole never ending, never proven, never demononstrated harassment of global warming nonsense will be put off as solved. Gee. Aren’t we clever. (Psst. The main thing is that the god science not be tarnished, what since there’s always more fear mongering and control to gain in it’s name.)

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