Posted by John Goetz
CNN had the following AP article on their website today. NOAA says that shorter-term pollutants from Asia may raise U.S. heartland temperatures by three degrees in about 50 years.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Smog, soot and other particles like the kind often seen hanging over Beijing add to global warming and may raise summer temperatures in the American heartland by three degrees in about 50 years, says a new federal science report released Thursday.
These overlooked, shorter-term pollutants — mostly from burning wood and kerosene and from driving trucks and cars — cause more localized warming than once thought, the authors of the report say.
They contend there should be a greater effort to attack this type of pollution for faster results.
For decades, scientists have concentrated on carbon dioxide, the most damaging greenhouse gas because it lingers in the atmosphere for decades. Past studies have barely paid attention to global warming pollution that stays in the air merely for days.
The new report, written by scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, makes a case for tackling the short-term pollutants, while acknowledging that carbon dioxide is still the chief cause of warming.
That concept is also the official policy of the Bush Administration, said assistant secretary of commerce Bill Brennan.
In the United States, this approach would mean cutting car and truck emissions perhaps before restricting coal-burning power plants. In the developing world, especially Asia, it would mean shifting to cleaner energy sources, more like those used in the Western world. Much of this type of pollution in Asia comes from burning kerosene and biofuels, such as wood and animal dung.
In addition to soot, smog and sulfates, other short-lived pollutants are organic carbon, dust and nitrates. While carbon dioxide is invisible, these are pollutants people can see.
Projected increases in some of these pollutants and decreases in others in Asia will eventually add up to about 20 percent of the already-predicted man-made summer warming in America by 2060, the report said.
“What they do about their pollution can affect our climate,” said study co-author Hiram “Chip” Levy, a senior scientist at NOAA’s fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, New Jersey.
This pollution will likely create three “hot spots” in the world: the central United States, Europe around the Mediterranean Sea, and Kazakhstan, which borders Russia and China. In the United States it’s “a big blob in the middle of the country” stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, Levy said.
The same analysis also shows about an inch less of yearly rain in middle America because of Asian emissions by about 2060.
As far as American-produced pollution, smog is the main problem. Reducing diesel emissions and increasing mass transit would prove a more effective and immediate strategy over limiting power plants, said study co-author Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
The report make sense, but should also include a strategy for man-made methane, a greenhouse gas which lasts 10 years in the atmosphere, said Michael MacCracken, chief scientist at the Climate Institute in Washington.
Methane mostly comes from landfills, natural gas use, livestock, coal mining and sewage treatment, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The article is not clear if the temperature increase will apply equally across the calendar year, or be tilted toward one season over the others. If the Chinese manage to raise winter temperatures, then perhaps thanks are due. Otherwise, our next president needs to consider the emerging threat in his foreign policy agenda. Fortunately, NOAA stopped short or recommending we invade China to put a stop to the threat.
I thought particulates were the solution to glabal warming?
Ridiculous, I also found another which says Masai men are moving into cities due to climate change:
“As drought and hunger bite harder in their rural homes due to climate change and increased competition for resources, hundreds of Maasai men are heading to towns and cities.”
Anthroposis: A chronic disease state of the earth
– symptoms: fever, chills, accumulation of toxins
– etiology: caused by the bacterium H. sapiens
– prognosis: extremely poor without treatment
– treatment: to date, only palliative treatments have been attempted; remission may be possible if the activities of H. sapiens can be slowed or halted
– Efforts at eradication of H. sapiens have so far proved infeasible, but research efforts appear promising
CNN should check out Sammy Wilson (Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister) comments instead. Check below on BBC, for one of ours!
Ecotretas
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7599810.stm
JN (10:37:27) :
I thought particulates were the solution to glabal warming?
And the cause of the cooling in the 1950-1070s …
How can they have it both ways? First they say that the clearing atmosphere due to reduced pollution contributes to warming and now they say that increased pollution contributes to warming. I believe the simple act of reading a newspaper these days contributes to warming but on a very, very local basis.
Uh… and what China has been doing the past two decades has had no similar effects? If what China does in the next 50 years might cause a 3 degree rise, how much of the recent miniscule warming or cooling is due to what China has been doing?
So maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for the American government to subsidize corporate off shoring to China for the sake of corporate profits and the demise of the American middle class.
China’s trying to outwit the U.S. at its own paranoia/money hungry tactics?
Shame on them!
We’re supposed to be the best at heeding every mental patient’s doomsday story!
Jim Hansen and Al Gore…you guys are my heros.
I’m a mental patient in the waiting room still!
It’s a shame we’re worrying about harmless co2 when we could have made a big dent in real pollution with all the money we’ve squandered studying co2. I worked in Italy for a couple months in 2001. We stayed in a mountain top hotel and drove into a valley each day to the plant we were working at. The smog from all the smouldering cook fires was extremely thick and looked like a fog over the valley all day. I know it wasn’t from transportation because aside from the occasional mafioso in his Ferrari, everyone is walking or pedalling (or riding around in tin cans with lawnmower engines). That town needed a good, clean, coal fired plant which offered cheap electricity. The air would have been so much nicer, but the pizza probably wouldn’t be as good.
The only thing that doesn’t contribute to warming these days is the SUN itself?
3 degrees here 4 degrees there. You’re all going to boil in your own skins
Just stop buying stuff at WalMart and you can reduce the Chinese soot-print.
Those tricksey Chinese. [snip-racist]. Very clever of them to discover a silent way to destroy us.
Reply: A old coworker of mine grew up in Chinatown in SF and actually worked at a fortune cookie factory as a teenager. We often joked about the racist terms you used in that post and how most people don’t realize how racist they are. Even what I left unedited is borderline.
Story is that the Chinese are buying up the biggest coal-fired power plant in England – the Drax power station (actually, it’s in Yorkshire, not England). They are also building a huge power station (coal-fired) in Afghanistan.
This is obviously part of a deadly plot to wipe the US off the face of the map – I would give up now … they have you surrounded!
I have a video from the Nature channel that insists particulate pollution causes clouds and clouds cause cooling. SO2 from volcanos cause clouds and reduced magnetic activity of the sun allows cosmic rays to cause clouds… what with the volcanos in Alaska and South America, a magneticly inactive sun and pollution from China, The average daytime high temp here in Kansas for the last three weeks is down about 10 degrees F.
crosspatch (11:21:52) :
How can they have it both ways?
Easy, “Climate Chaos”.
Could we a common correction regarding what causes warming so we can debunk statements like: “acknowledging that carbon dioxide is still the chief cause of warming.”
Even if people are just consistently forced to flag it as ‘man-made’. Over time getting that type of constant correction to the record will help people understand why the current global warming claims are a farce. If water vapor is the driving factor for 90% and they begin to understand that Carbon Dioxide doesn’t even make up a small percentage of our atmosphere (parts per million slikes past most people) then they’ll realize what a grant funding farce this is.
another important and shameful defeat for the AGW propaganda – lack of basic statistical knowledge:
http://climatesanity.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/applying-monte-carlo-simulation-to-sloans-and-wolfendales-use-of-forbush-decrease-data/
Background:
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/002838.html
I’ve been emitting methane all morning. I’ve walked most of the rubber of my shoes.
Word.
Somehow, it’s really getting funnier and funnier by the day.
My problem is, my sense of humor can’t adopt that fast.
And it’s becoming an art to stay sane in a world which – quite successfully –
works hard to become insane.
I didn’t find – by short – the original phrase from the ‘old stoicist’ Marcus Aurelius,
but as far as I remember, the real goal of life was not to become part of the mayority,
instead stay away of the crowd of the insanes.
KlausB
Hi,
Here is a paper that states
“Aerosols serve as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and thus have a substantial effect on cloud properties and the initiation of precipitation. Large concentrations of human-made aerosols have been reported to both decrease and increase rainfall as a result of their radiative and CCN activities. At one extreme, pristine tropical clouds with low CCN concentrations rain out too quickly to mature into long-lived clouds. On the other hand, heavily polluted clouds evaporate much of their water before precipitation can occur, if they can form at all given the reduced surface heating resulting from the aerosol haze layer. We propose a conceptual model that explains this apparent dichotomy”
And also
“Anthropogenic aerosols alter Earth’s energy budget by scattering and absorbing the solar radiation that energizes the formation of clouds…Because all cloud droplets must form on preexisting aerosol particles that act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), increased aerosols also change the composition of clouds (i.e., the size distribution of cloud droplets). This, in turn, determines to a large extent the precipitation-forming processes.”
Read Dr. Pielke’s review and you can also read the whole paper. Just the opposite what the EPA states.
http://climatesci.org/2008/09/05/new-evidence-for-the-complex-role-of-aerosols-on-the-climate-system-by-rosenfeld-et-al-2008/
OT here but Kasatochi particulates have created beautiful sunsets across the NH. Anyone notice?
From Volcanism Blog
The eruption of Kasatochi volcano in the Aleutian Islands on 7 August injected a very large amount of ash and gas into the atmosphere, including reportedly the largest stratospheric sulphur dioxide cloud since the eruption of Cerro Hudson in 1991. Kasatochi’s aerosols are now producing dramatic and beautiful sunsets across the northern hemisphere.
SpaceWeather.com has a collection of images from locations in the United States and Europe; LiveScience has a good article with some pictures; and there are many Kasatochi sky images at Flickr.
News
Red skies and volcanoes – EarthSkyBlogs, 31 August 2008
Volcano sunsets – SpaceWeather.com, 1 September 2008
Twilights of Europe – The Times, 2 September 2008
Volcano’s eruption colors world’s sunsets – LiveScience, 3 September 2008
Wonder if a cooler Fall/Winter is in store?
After exhaustive and rigorous study on the subject, I have concluded that man’s activities do add to the warming of the atmosphere.
Consider that:
1) Life is a combustion process – every breath exhales unmeasured quantities of waste heat.
2) Almost every activity of man involves some sort of combustion process in which waste heat is exhaled – be it vehicular transportation or manufacturing of any sort.
I have also devised a cure for this excessive heating of the atmosphere.
We need a goodly number of people to voluntarily stop breathing and then all other activities. Perhaps some of our greenie friends would like to volunteer to help save the planet.
The above was said in jest but thinking about it that seems to be the goal of the radical environmentalists.
klausb
Marcus Aurelius: The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.