From Nature
Asian pollution delays inevitable warming
Dirty power plants exert temporary protective effect.
The grey, sulphur-laden skies overlying parts of Asia have a bright side — they reflect sunlight back into space, moderating temperatures on the ground. Scientists are now exploring how and where pollution from power plants could offset, for a time, the greenhouse warming of the carbon dioxide they emit.
A new modelling study doubles as a thought experiment in how pollution controls and global warming could interact in China and India, which are projected to account for 80% of new coal-fired power in the coming years. If new power plants were to operate without controlling pollution such as sulphur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOX), the study finds, the resulting haze would reflect enough sunlight to overpower the warming effect of CO2 and exert local cooling.
But this effect would not be felt uniformly across the globe and would last only a few decades. In the long run, CO2 would always prevail, and the world could experience a rapid warming effect if the skies were cleaned up decades down the road.
“The paper highlights the fundamental inequity and iniquity of anthropogenic climate change: ‘enjoy now and make others pay later’,” says Meinrat Andreae, an aerosol expert at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, who was not involved in the work. In fact, he says, dirty coal plants could be seen as “a very primitive form of geoengineering”.
The study, which is under review at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, builds on a well-established idea. Global temperatures were relatively stable in the decades leading up to the 1970s, even as fossil-fuel consumption shot up. Then industrialized countries began curbing SO2 and NOX to reduce acid rain and protect public health — and temperatures increased rapidly. The latest work, led by Drew Shindell at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, looks at how the climate effects of air pollutants and greenhouse gases could play out over time and geography.
read the remainder at Nature
h/t to Leif Svalgaard
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If correlation doesn’t equal causation for seeohtwo, why should it, per se, for any other gaseous emissions?
Why can’t the temperature shift be explained by PDO/AMO shifts??
Aerosol theory is a fig leaf, covering the unexplainable drop of global temperatures between 1945-1980. Had the theory been correct, industrial areas as Ruhr area in Germany would be experiencing much colder climate than surrounding country. Nothing like this has been ever observed.
Jones study about warming of industrial China attributed 1.2 deg C warming since 1950, 0.5 deg C of that being UHI effect. There is no sign of massive cooling, despite Chinese industry most probably does not use modern filters, desulfurisation etc.
Well yes, most fossil fuel power plants were said to be neutral with respect to climate change so long as they produced SOX and NOX as well as COX. But of course we have taken a lot of the sulphur out of power plants and who cares about NOX (Nature produces way more than mankind) so it is the SOX element that provided a degree of global cooling, though why the article is coy about coming right out and saying “cooling” is beyond me unless this is bad news.
Anyway, the real issue is we are doing what we can to take particulates out of fossil fuels exhausts. The fact is they are a factor in morbidity (not mortality or death but life expectancy) and most of the worst affects come from auto exhausts.
What was cleaned up was sulphur, in Europe and North America, the IPCC 4th report apparently cannot quantify if globally SOX has gone up or down or stayed the same.
Yet SOX has indeed a chilling effect, so much so a nobel prize winning (I know, that doesn’t count for anything these days) scientist suggested we should be putting SOX into the atmosphere using artillery or rockets. That idea has now orphed into the concept of artificial volcanoes…..
DEFRA Says (see the aric website):
Globally, quantities of nitrogen oxides produced naturally (by bacterial and volcanic action and lightning) far outweigh anthropogenic (man-made) emissions. Anthropogenic emissions are mainly due to fossil fuel combustion from both stationary sources, i.e. power generation (21%), and mobile sources, i.e. transport (44%). Other atmospheric contributions come from non-combustion processes, for example nitric acid manufacture, welding processes and the use of explosive.
So why the emphasis on NOX?
Global temperatures were relatively stable in the decades leading up to the 1970s, even as fossil-fuel consumption shot up. Then industrialized countries began curbing SO2 and NOX to reduce acid rain and protect public health — and temperatures increased rapidly.
Is this a new playbook? “relatively stable” — “temperatures increased rapidly” — no CO2 mentioned…
Dichotomy springs to mind. This definition of the word adds colour: being twofold; a classification into two opposed parts or subclasses; “the dichotomy between eastern and western culture”.
The “culture” bit…
So, let me get this straight. Pollution will save us from CO2 causing AGW. I know, I know, I’m not a scientist, what would I know…
When will the editors of Nature wake up? Its over, finito, zilch, move on or become a trash journal.
And cleaning the atmosphere will cause us problems, yes? Help me, please. Just give me the tax bill and leave me alone, OK? I give up. NWO is right, I am wrong.
A gin stained tear ran down Winston’s cheek….
All this proves is that we are clueless as to the real effect of power plants on temperatures. I would expect a local land use warming effect, naturally. Power plants are very inefficient, and typically waste up to two thirds of the energy produced as waste heat. Was this effect taken into consideration?
But the delta temperatures in China are among the highest. Strange then that the local cooling thus has partly offset an even greater local warming, for which we have no explanation. Clueless scientists?
“……A new modelling study doubles as a thought experiment……”
eh? – so I googled it
and I quote –
“A thought experiment, sometimes called by the German name gedankenexperiment, is a proposal for an experiment that would test or illuminate a hypothesis, theory,[1] or principle.
Given the structure of the proposed experiment, it may or may not be possible to actually perform the experiment and, in the case that it is possible for the experiment to be performed, no intention of any kind to actually perform the experiment in question may exist. The common goal of a thought experiment is to explore the potential consequences of the principle in question.
Famous examples of thought experiments include Schrödinger’s cat, illustrating quantum indeterminacy through the manipulation of a perfectly sealed environment and a tiny bit of radioactive substance, and Maxwell’s demon, in which a supernatural being is instructed to attempt to violate the second law of thermodynamics.”
so nothing new there then for AGW “science” complete bo*****s
“Blame it on Asia, yeah that’s the ticket”
Did you have anything substantive to write? No insight into the heinous flaws that any paper that supports the consensus must by definition contain.
Looks like we are back to the cooling of the 1970s. But its still the fossil wot done it.
Warming, cooling, any kind of weather — its man, his greed and his consumption.
Hmm. . . Is there anyone in the northern hemisphere who wants to cool things off right about now?
/Mr Lynn
I thought that black soot was speeding the melting of glaciers?
http://news.discovery.com/earth/black-soot-himalayas-glaciers.html
So pollution is reflecting away insolation but absorbing insolation. Hmmm.
“The study, which is under review at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ….” So the paper is still under going peer review? Or am I misinterpreting the statement?
China and India will pay a heavy price for failing to employ clean coal technologies. This price will have little to do with global temperatures but rather with human health.
“In the long run, CO2 would always prevail …” is an article of faith, not science.
The cheer leading of Nature’s editors reminds me of the Genie leading prince Ali into the city of Agrabah.
I can’t wait for Gavin to “bee himself”.
Mike Ramsey
Predictable really. I was wondering how long it would take for a paper like this to come out.
Note: the effect will only last a few decades. (Until about 2030?)
DaveE.
“Top U.N. climate change official Yvo de Boer resigning after nearly four years, departure takes effect July 1, five months before 193 nations are due to reconvene in Mexico for another attempt to reach a binding worldwide accord on controlling greenhouse gases.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jz7D7NvuUSckvF-J-k1ptv_K5aJwD9DUIUK81
How’s that for a crafty comeback to the argument that the global warming climate models have been wrong in every prediction they have ever made? “Eureka! Pollution causes DELAYED global warming! Try and refute THAT!”
The world of climate science is shipwrecked in a fog of mendacity.
Perhaps their next study can be about how crack affects thought processes and the perception of reality. It would be cheaper, too.
Anthony,
Your world climate widget is so far out of date that is it not useful?
All the spots displayed have disappeared and the NOAA values do not represent reality.
When are these jokers going to ‘fess up to the fact that, short of a full scale nuclear war, it is highly unlikely that mankind can do anything to significantly influence the climate?
There is, of course, all sorts of sensible reasons why we might want to increase energy efficiency and reduce pollution. But of course, the warmists (including this merry team who are obviously trying to manufacture fig leaves to disguise the fact that AGW just isn’t happening) are now desperate to keep their obsession going – and carry on stuffing their pockets with tax payers’ money.
The problem I see in the temporary relief theory is that, after the mid 70’s, the nightime lows shot up but the daytime highs dropped to meet them in a region with no power plants upwind within 8,000 miles.
Diurnals are the separation of highs and lows on a daily basis. When you have drier climate, there is a far greater separation than if you have a wetter climate. The amount of water vapor is always the deciding factor, and appears independent of climate state (hot or cold) or even season.
One has to be mindful that as climate swings (globally or regionally) between dry and wet, temperature anomalies can be led about by the nose. How so?
If the water content of air can change, why would other aerosols not do the same?
I´ve asked this to several scientists but never got any conclusive reply. If the negative forcing of anthopogenic aerosols is comparable to that of CO2 alone (AR4), why are we not observing their cooling effect over the emitting areas or downwind from them? As the article says, their effect is local, due to their short residence time in the troposphere. Trends over China, India or Eastern Europe are very much in line with the rest of the world. Perhaps someone would be kind enough to explain this apparent paradox to me?
Am I imagining the desperation that seeps out of this Nature article? Pulling out that advocacy limiter device and stomping on it? Seems more like a tabloid piece than a Science piece.
John
Enjoy now and make others pay later
The devil rebuking sin!
Hundreds of billions of our dollars (our life, and lives of our children) are being wasted on their data manipulation, quixotic windmills, crap-and-trade, biofuel subsidies, bailing out their bosom friends, academic grants and class-envy subsidies. Deficits are such that our grandchildren will be indentured to the world governments. And they continue printing money like there won’t be tomorrow.
At the same time, there is no factual evidence pointing at any temperature rise due to the CO2 increase. (Not to mention that the CO2 data they are using in their criminal models comes from the top of an active volcano!) There is no catastrophe of any kind pending, other than a good 50-year-long global freeze caused by the Sun taking a break.
They think it’s a recession? I think it’s the beginning of the Atlas’ shrug.
Modelling again, any hard facts NO