Here’s a headline I thought I’d never see. In the 60’s and 70’s we were bombarded with images like these:
Now we hear that may be a good thing. Make up your minds! Though I think oceans have a good share of the cause too. From the LA Times
Why cleaner air could speed global warming
Aerosol pollution, which is now on the downswing, has helped keep the planet cool by blocking sunlight. Tackling another pollutant, soot, might buy Earth some time.
By Eli Kintisch
You’re likely to hear a chorus of dire warnings as we approach Earth Day, but there’s a serious shortage few pundits are talking about: air pollution. That’s right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound.
Cleaner air, one of the signature achievements of the U.S. environmental movement, is certainly worth celebrating. Scientists estimate that the U.S. Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant called sulfate aerosols, for example, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems.
But even as industrialized and developing nations alike steadily reduce aerosol pollution — caused primarily by burning coal — climate scientists are beginning to understand just how much these tiny particles have helped keep the planet cool. A silent benefit of sulfates, in fact, is that they’ve been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Emerging science suggests that their underappreciated impact has been incredible.
Researchers believe greenhouse gases such as CO2 have committed the Earth to an eventual warming of roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit, a quarter of which the planet has already experienced. Thanks to cooling by aerosols starting in the 1940s, however, the planet has only felt a portion of that greenhouse warming. In the 1980s, sulfate pollution dropped as Western nations enhanced pollution controls, and as a result, global warming accelerated.
There’s hot debate over the size of what amounts to a cooling mask, but there’s no question that it will diminish as industries continue to clean traditional pollutants from their smokestacks. Unlike CO2, which persists in the atmosphere for centuries, aerosols last for a week at most in the air. So cutting them would probably accelerate global warming rapidly.
In a recent paper in the journal Climate Dynamics, modelers forecast what would happen if nations instituted all existing pollution controls on industrial sources and vehicles by 2030. They found the current rate of warming — roughly 0.4 degrees Fahrenheit per decade — doubled worldwide, and nearly tripled in North America.
More at the LA Times
UPDATE: 4/19 Since one professional science writer (who will remain nameless for now since I’m giving him a chance to retract his personal attack) was unable to determine that the three intro sentences I wrote were poking fun at the fact that “clean air, a problem?” was a bit of satire, I thought I should include this caveat for those unable to discern. – It’s satire.
I suppose I’ll have to make this caveat from no on, since alarmists seem to have no capable sense of humor- Anthony
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
They had to find a way to account for the missing heat. This is it. And they even managed to blame humans!
Gotta give these activists credit…
….but asthma and allergies are rising.
Yes they are. And how convenient to blame people you do not like. Blame farmers or factories or oil companies.
Fact is farmers that also raise livestock have very low allergy rates. People raised on raw milk (on the farm because raw milk is like raw marijuana, and illegal to sell) have much lower asthma, allergy and even rates of diabetes. Raw milk consumers have low rates of lactose intolerance.
If you live in the city you are to blame for the UHI and can pass blame to some of the things you buy for your misery.
Today in America, the worst pollution is in the home. Ourdoor air is cleaner and country air even cleaner.
It is very common for regulation and intervention to have negative side effects or consequences they don’t tell people.
Surreal stuff. Among the many grievances I’ve always had against the CAGW machine is that, for all its noise, it does not even address real pollution. Now they address pollution – in order to praise it. In this demented view, the most useful and virtuous part of fossil fuel emissions turns out to be the real pollution. And the most vicious part is of course CO2, which is not a pollutant. The next step along these lines of thought is to get the EPA to get the real pollutants off their list, outlaw catalytic converters for cars, and propose coal plants where CO2 is sequestered and all the pollutants are mandatorily released to “prevent warming”. Our model for the future will be the good old days of late 19th century London, covered in thick smoke-fog to the point where the word smog was invented there at the turn of the 20th century. The good old days.
By the way, weren’t some scientists back in the 70s eagerly suggesting we should immediately release massive amonts of soot particles above the poles, to prevent an ice age?
And then these people complain there is a conspiracy to make climate science look silly!
The health effects of tiny particles, measured only by weight and not be chemistry, has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of most air pollution researchers.
However, until fairly recently, the only specific type of tiny airborne particle that has been monitored regularly was sulfate (monitored for over three decades).
Despite known concerns about health effects of diesel particulates, including tiny particulate PAHs (very biologically active, thought to cause cancer among other things), researchers until the last few years didn’t include markers for diesel exhaust in health effect epidemiological air pollution models.
Now that researchers are finally including many chemical species of the tiniest particles in the same epidemiological models, most of the model results shift the statistical significance for harm to health from sulfate to black carbon. In other words, it is possible — and to some researchers, probable — that the sulfate health associations of the past may have been due to the lack of competing particle types in the models.
In addition, looking at toxicology, ammonium sulfates (the type of sulfates found in the air) are known to be unharmful, and are a constituent of basic cellular chemistry. There are hypotheses for how sulfates could somehow cause mortality and morbidity in the absence of the direct toxicity found with many diesel constituents, but so far they are only hypotheses.
So it is quite possible that if we were to stop reducing sulfates (now that acid rain is pretty much a problem of the past, with our current low emissions of sulfur), we WON’T harm human health, as we might have thought just a few years ago.
Here’s a link to one of the new articles:
http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info:doi/10.1289/ehp.0800185
If that doesn’t work, google “Peng 2009 Environmental Health Perspectives Hospital Admissions.”
Waite a minute, maybe the climate is SUPPOSED to be warmer. It was cooled down by man’s air pollution.
To CodeTech (00:25:23) :
Yes, air pollution increases asthma incidence, and may even cause it. The specific type of pollution which does so is from heavy traffic, more diesels than gasoline. This is why researchers find more asthma cases among kids who live within about 200 yards of major highways, and in schools which are within similar distances of major highways. California has banned construction of new schools within 500 feet of major roads, for this reason.
We should continue to reduce emissions of biologically active carbonaceous particles and gases from cars and trucks and off-road diesels as well.
None of this has to do with whether we should continue to reduce emissions of sulfur (mainly a power plant emission). Sulfates are not themselves harmful, according to toxicology. There are some theories for how airborne ammonium sulfate, a constituent of basic human cell chemistry, could nevertheless cause harm, even though other tiny particles in the air are known to be biologically active (see my post of 06:02:07) for more info), but right now, these are only theories.
It is mainly the reduction of sulfate that will increase warming. Reducing tiny black carbon emissions from diesels will DECREASE warming while also benefiting our health.
One more thing: when writers use the word “smog,” they confuse us. Smog isn’t a technical term, it means what the writer wants it to mean. For years, it has been used to refer to vehicular exhaust, sulfate emissions, or all particulates mixed together in the air — even to a gas, ozone. Some of these are known to harm human health, some are now beginning to be seen as probably not harmful (sulfates). But if you, the reader, think everything is “smog,” then you aren’t likely to have been given the information to distinguish among pollutants and their differential effects.
So CodeTech, you are right that vehicular “smog” makes asthma worse. Here’s a link to an article showing that proximity to vehicular emissions is associated with increased asthma, even in a city with low air pollution (and almost no sulfate):
http://ehsehplp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action;jsessionid=FBE9ABEBC2F89E34D9EA70C10AD9F978?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.10735
If this doesn’t work, google “Kim environmental health perspectives asthma San Francisco highways”
OMG …. this is just so utterly perverse on so many levels. I can’t even begin to describe my anger at this complete and utter bollocks.
The article states …
“In the 1980s, sulfate pollution dropped as Western nations enhanced pollution controls, and as a result, global warming accelerated.”
Just one observation ….even if this peverse theory was true ….. AGW is supposed to be a global problem. Yes – Western industries have cleaned up in the last 30 years …. but the airspace over Asia has gone the exact opposite and to a much greater extent. Remember the big brown cloud. So explain that ?
It was the decrease in air pollution that created the need for Global Warming. What really burns me is that there are still plenty of scofflaws and scalawags dumping waste in our backyards and watersheds. They’re getting a free pass while so-called environmentalists raise a hue and cry against a bogeyman that a five-year-old wouldn’t believe in. Where is our Joseph Welch to ask the ranters, at long last, have they no sense of decency?
“mikael pihlström (05:05:32) :
The thirld world upswing is
happening now. So there would be a 25-30 year period with the
conditions described by the author exist.”
Clearly, you’ve never been to the “third world”. Restricting “cheap” energy forces people to their only alternative, burning stuff.
Curiousgeorge (05:32:33) :
@ur momisugly mikael pihlström (04:56:30) : “………………But how do you manage to let trace amounts of S deposit on fields all over a country …………” . That’s exactly the issue isn’t it? Trying to manage what is essentially unmanageable, in a futile effort to ensure there are no losers.
This particular context, on the contrary, shows the weakness of
your relaxed attitude to environmental problems: by managing the
acid rain (SO2) issue, we saved some forests, fish returned to lakes,
human health effects diminished and the cost?: adding trace amounts
of sulphur to a nitrogen-potassium sack that has to be carried to
the field anyhow.
You can turn situations into win/win/bearable loss … which is
the lesson for future climate policy
“CodeTech (00:25:23) : said “Sorry, but incidence of asthma is increasing, not decreasing. Cleaner air is nice, but it is NOT decreasing asthma.”
May we therefore conclude that the asthma problem is caused by other faxtors?
http://www.epa.gov/airtrends/
2 points:
This is not JAMA but considering that many of the posts relate to typos, it is peer reviewed. IPCC should be reviewed as thoroughly.
The subject of the piece; how no good deed goes unpunished.
@mikael pihlström
“It is very easy to check this out: global SO2 emissions peaked in 1980
and then declined at least until 2000. The thirld world upswing is
happening now. So there would be a 25-30 year period with the
conditions described by the author exist.”
I went on Google and typed in “global SO2 emissions” … these are the first2 links that come up …. neither of which supports your statement. Did you just make this up ?
The graph in the second link just shows a steady rise over time fort the last 100 years. I think your reading a little too much into this argument about correlations between warming and trends in SO2.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6VF0-43B2JRM-5&_user=10&_coverDate=05%2F31%2F2001&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1300602923&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=6015e534bfab22b310fbb4d4c9f1b77b
http://www.asl-associates.com/globals.htm
I actually predicted in a WUWT comment a while back the crescendo of desperate agw output to save the movement after the alarmist expose in November. I think the silliness is a natural byproduct. What further desperate measures can there be – ice melt causes volcanism; particulates are saving us from hell; lack of sunspots are preferentially freezing Britain; the heat is hiding somewhere and when it jumps out were cooked; heat anomalies in the arctic are causing the return of ice extent to normal… I think someone should compile a list so that we have a psych profile of this phenomenon for future reference.
To Robert Ray (05:00:46) :
The “brown cloud” is not a good thing, but that is because it has a lot of black carbon it it. The black carbon warms the air, reducing precipitation, and when it falls on glaciers in the Himalayans and on ice caps in Tibet, it causes melting with the concomitant change in albedo. Yes, it is very much true that Himalayan glaciers are melting at a far slower rate than the scandalous IPCC report, and some in the western Himalayans are even growing, but the Tibetan ice cap, unless this too is going to be corrected, is losing mass, and this is partly due to black carbon deposition.
If sulfate were removed from the “brown cloud,” the cloud would likely become darker, and absorb more heat. By themselves, sulfates are whitish and reflect light back into space; mixed with black carbon, they cancel some of the warming that would occur if the sulfate weren’t present.
Joni Mitchell might sing:
Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot.
Oh, she did, but probably not in response to this story.
Hey, there’s an institute for everything – The Sulphur Institute has some good notes at http://www.sulphurinstitute.org/learnmore/faq.cfm#plants “Most crops remove 15 to 30 kg for sulphur per hectare (S/ha). Oil crops, legumes, forages, and some vegetables require more sulphur than phosphorus for optimal yield and quality. Plants contain as much sulphur as phosphorus, ….”
Personal pollution notes:
The day I left Pittsburgh (1974, the coke plants and steel mills were still busy), I was driving east toward Massachusetts and looked in my rear-view mirror for a last look. It was about 9-10AM and the air inversion was just breaking up and I could see the brown bubble lifting up and getting disperse by the wind.
My brother lived west of Denver for a while. Denver is a great place for a trading post, lousy place for a city. The weight of the Rockies means that Denver is in a depression and that means inversion and that means some nights he could see the street lights outside of the city, not see them near the city, but could see the tall buildings and their lights sticking above the inversion. An island of light surrounded by a moat of dark.
The visible and damaging component of smog is sub-micron sulfuric acid aerosols. Smog is highly local associated with cities and is not global. Most of that sulfuric acid comes from burning fuels containing sulfur such as “dirty” coal. The external costs of such emmissions far exceed any potential benefits from reducing global warming. We would be much better off if we converted that coal into a clean fuel such as natural gas.
As usual the AGW “researchers” haven’t been reading the literature. Instead they are speculating and calling it “science”. Brown clouds of pollution have been found to cause regional warming and decreased precipitation in the distant past (Harappan Civilzation) and the present (China).
There is no rural warming, only urban UHI warming, currently, under the C02 domes. Part of that UHI effect is due to TiSL (Tarmac impacted Sensor Location). That brings the problem to land use and a behavioral problem. Change the way we behave in terms of how the land is used is a soltuion, that over time, can reap a benefit. Two ways to accomplish that.
1.) Do an extreme makeover (costly)
2.) Make smarter choices each time a place is renewed or freshly built.
Attempting to solve the problem by taxing C02 emissions does nothing to change the land use behavior. It just makes for a new marketing bubble that will be exploited. It will not make anyone’s life better.
There are other ways to make smarter choices about where we expend energy, but that’s another topic.
I read an article decades ago that posited the possibility that a removal of SO2 would result in an increase in world air temperature. At the time, pollution was a far greater concern than AGW, so the pollution controls were instituted and have been largely successful. This is not a new issue.
It also doesn’t really tell us anything. Our factories were belching out not SO2 but also soot and other particulates. SO2 removal may heat things up, but soot removal cools things down, as Kintisch points out in his article.
He also said:
“In 2008, scientists estimated that so-called black carbon, soot’s prime component, is responsible for 60% more global warming above that caused by greenhouse gases. Cleaner-burning diesel engines in the West and more efficient cookstoves in the developing world are the answer.”
Which means that about 40% of global warming is presumably caused by soot, and about 60% is presumably caused by greenhouse gases, which include CO2 plus other contributors (which he didn’t identify) and water vapor (which he doesn’t mention). Since soot has an atmospheric residence time of weeks, and CO2 years, a lot of the recent temperature increases (assuming they’re not bogus – thanks, Anthony, for your efforts) could be reduced by changing vehicle fuel use patterns and by installing on-vehicle controls and by providing people who are burning wood, dung and coal on open fires with clean burning stoves and heaters. A heck of a lot cheaper than carbon sequesturation or CO2 removal under a cap-and-trade scam or heavy subsidization of wind and solar.
To mikael pihlström (04:56:30) :
As always, the dose makes the poison.
The Sudbury, Ontario nickel smelter, in the early 1970s, emitted one tenth of all the SO2 emitted in North America as a whole. Unsurprisingly, with this level of emissions, vegetation died within a radius of about ten miles of the plant.
In the US, acid rain has been harmful where soils and lakes have little acid neutralizing capacity, which is why the US correctly has been reducing SO2 emissions for about 35 years. Today, power plant emissions are about 1/3 to 1/4 what they were at their peak in the 1970s.
To the best of my knowledge, farm soils don’t have the deficit in acid neutralizing capacity that some high lakes and soils in the Adirondacks have. Therefore, the sulfur deposition on farms has apparently had a mild fertilizing effect, according to reports of the National Acid Deposition Assessment Program (NAPAP).
It’s a balance: we wanted to, and succeeded, in substantially reducing the harm from acid rain. But now we may be at a point where further sulfate reductions may no longer bring us much benefit — because acid rain is now substantially dealt with, in the US and Canada and Western Europe — but may exacerbate global warming.
quote A silent benefit of sulphates, in fact, is that they’ve been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Emerging science suggests that their underappreciated impact has been incredible. unquote (Spelling of ‘sulphates’, my correction….)
So, condensation nuclei really matter. With fossil fuel burning we managed to produce enough extra to effect the earth’s albedo and caused the planert to cool . Wouldn’t it be interesting if there was a mechanism whereby humanity could reduce the number of naturally-produced nuclei and thus increase warming?
Google “Ben Franklin stilled the waves: an informal history of pouring oil” and note how the larger experiment off Haslar stopped waves breaking in deep water.
Then read
http://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html
Now you can work out how many fewer salt particles are thrown into the atmosphere as smoothed waters fail to produce breaking waves. Now you can explain the 1940’s temperature blip which so puzzled Tom Wigley.
JF
Now you can correct my spelling of ‘affect’ and ‘planet’. That’ll teach me to be a smart-arse.
JF
The ghost of Big Jim Cooley wrote: “Right people, I have a theory:
As I stated before, since the jet airliner ban here in the UK, we’ve been getting crystal clear blue skies – without even wisps of cloud. It’s coincided, and seems to be directly related.”
I am no scientist but from reading the news the two are related but the other way round. It is because there is a stable high pressure system over Europe (blue skies etc) that the volcanic ash is going nowhere and the planes are not flying.
Once we get back to our usual crappy spring weather it will all be blown away and washed out of the atmosphere by the SW prevailing winds and the associated rainfall.
English Pensioner (04:08:44) wrote:
“Has anyone yet worked out how much naturally produced carbon dioxide is coming from the Icelandic volcano? This is the real reason why aircraft can’t fly as the lack of oxygen causes the engines to “flame out” (as with BA9 in 1982).
But strangely, all the reports are of the ash, not the CO2.”
A CBC radio announcer on a classical music program gave out the information that the CO2 produced by the Iceland volcano was only a fraction of the amount of CO2 produced by airplanes on a typical day. I have no way of verifying or contradicting this statement, but it certainly gives food for thought. (And if anyone can provide good information to contradict the announcer’s statement I’ll be happy to send it to him.)
IanM