Crozier, along with Ira Fulton and Duncan Alexander, studied nanoscale atmospheric aerosols called brown carbons, which they said are largely being ignored in climate computer models in favor of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
But the researchers say there are other atmospheric components that can also contribute to climate change — including carbonaceous and sulfate particles from combustion of fossil fuels and biomass, salts from oceans and dust from deserts.
They said brown carbons from combustion processes are the least understood of all aerosol components, but their effect is complex because it both cools the Earth’s surface and warms the atmosphere.
“Because of the large uncertainty we have in the radiative forcing of aerosols, there is a corresponding large uncertainty in the degree of radiative forcing overall”, Crozier said. “This introduces a large uncertainty in the degree of warming predicted by climate change models.”
The research appears in the Aug. 8 issue of Science magazine.
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icefree,
It’s not just the job losses and suffering. The banning of DDT has directly led to the deaths of 100’s of thousands, if not millions.
The shifting of resources from projects that could have benefited mankind to projects that are of no benefit whatsoever, is also a major source of suffering.
I don’t really care what others think. I’m trying to make a difference- just in case Global warming does exist. I’ll keep on recycling and cutting my carbon output. Hurrah for you, Rich, you get a Green star. What you choose to do is your own business. The problem is, the AGW alarmist idiots want to (and already have) force energy prices up for EVERYONE via “carbon taxes” and energy fiascos like corn-ethanol, and pass laws restricting individual freedoms under the pretense of reducing “C02 pollution”. You and your AGWer friends are welcome to practice your AGW religion, just don’t expect us (or try to force us) to practice it. We prefer science, thank you. Oh, and BTW, there’s nothing wrong with recycling (though the economics of it are a bit questionable), and looking for ways to cut our energy use, which is financially smart, but it has nothing to do with “cutting carbon”, which is just plain stupid.
Bruce Cobb: You just have to ask yourself when does this stuff cross the line? and become mob rule. I will keep this short: America is not a democracy
It’s a constitutional republic. The Founders opposed unlimited majority rule because they recognized that individual rights and liberty would be compromised by mob rule. I think alot of people seem to forget this these days.
@richard Johnson
I can have some sympathy with your point of view and your philosophical rationale for your decision. It is a traditional position to adopt when outcomes are unknown.
However historically the philosophy has related to the individual’s decision about something that may or may not affect to them. Most notable example is Pascal’s wager.
What is proposed these days as the precautionary principle is not an individual decision it is a mass coercion since nothing else, it is said, will work. And that is probably true, it wouldn’t. But it occurs to me that what is proposed, being something that takes us into the unknown rather quickly, as also contrary to the precautionary principle. However it has a very high probability of creating something close the scenario you, and all of us, wish to avoid. I could echo your concerns, but from the other side of the canyon.
A simplistic example merely for illustration not as a basis for detailed scientific debate.
Mr. Gore and Dr. Hansen, et al, seem to be of the opinion that the world economy and its people somehow find the fiscal and physical resources to virtually eliminate the ‘carbon economy’ in around 10 years. Let’s accept that at face value for now.
To make that change without inducing enormous changes – likely reductions in our living standards and those of developing nations as a start and who knows what effect on the poorest people of the world – to our currently expected ways of life does not sound very feasible. To maintain most of our current life expectations but using new technology (even if possible in the time scale) would require enormous infrastructure changes, steel production, cement output and other things that I’m sure I don’t have to spell out.
All in a 10 year period (make it a little longer if you like, it’s still pretty dramatic) and all using current technologies constrained by currently available energy sources.
Just think how much CO2 all that activity would produce in the execution of the plan.
So if CO2 IS indeed THE problem and the problem is about to be aggravated beyond control by a tipping point a decade or so away, the Gore/Hansen plans would almost certainly guarantee the catastrophe you and we seek to avoid.
Of course were that to happen Gore and Hansen, et al, could point to their predictions and claim they were right all along and then annex their own laudatory chapter in what was left of human history. They would not be the first people to appear in that category.
The honest answer to the wager in this context, at a personal level, my very well be to resist breeding. That would offer a net benefit to the planet for around 80 years greatly reducing energy consumption and use of raw materials. And it would be a way to clearly demonstrate that you were able to make a difference.
I have yet to meet anyone who was infallible though I have known and worked with several individuals who were very strong and motivating other than one or two irrational weak points. They usually fell foul of their weaknesses or lack of complete information at some stage, sometimes quite destructively. They would, mostly, never admit to their mistakes, to do so would be to self destruct. It is the way most humans function I find – with very few exceptions.
Politicians are very familiar with all of this.
Richard,
The government (via the Fed) caused the Great Depression as Ben Bernanke admits. That, in turn, led to World War II and 50 million dead. It is obvious that even today that the government has NOT learned how to mange the economy.
So, interfering with something so basic to the economy as ENERGY, is fraught with danger.
Here’s something interesting. The Kasatochi eruption in the Aleutian Islands has created one of the largest sulfur clouds observed since Chile’s Hudson volcano in 1991.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/shownh.php3?img_id=15005
Here’s an image from Aqua on Aug 12 that shows how it has dispersed.(courtesy of Volcanism blog)
http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk171/volcanism/misc/kasatochi_OMI_2008225.jpg
Could people please stop blaming the bio-fuels scam on the AGW believers? Its justified on the grounds of ‘energy security’ (which may or may not be an argument in good faith) and it is, of course, just the usual pork barrel politics, the same thing that drives farm subsidies across the developed world. Its highly doubtful that it does anything to reduce CO2 emissions and it clearly isn’t driven by a desire to do that.
Personally I’m a multiple flip-flopper on AGW. I keep swaying around the agnostic position depending on who I read last.