Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to British researchers, droplets of oil from deep fat friers are measurably contributing to a vast, cooling cloud over big cities, helping to mitigate the damaged caused by global warming; though more research is required to confirm this effect.
Deep fat fryers may help form cooling clouds
By Matt McGrath
Environment correspondent
23 November 2017
Fatty acids released into the air from cooking may contribute to the formation of clouds that cool the climate, say scientists.
Fatty acid molecules comprise about 10% of fine particulates over London, and such particles help seed clouds.
But researchers dismiss the idea that cooking fats could be used as a geo-engineering tool to reduce warming.
…
Using ultrasonic levitation to hold individual droplets of brine and oleic acid in position, the research team was able to make them float so they could analyse them with a laser beam and X-rays.
The X-rays proved crucial in revealing the inner structure.
“We found these drops could form these self-assembled phases which means these molecules can stay much longer in the atmosphere,” said lead author Dr Christian Pfrang, from the University of Reading.
“These self-assembled structures are highly viscous so instead of having a water droplet you have something that behaves much more like honey, so processes inside the droplet will slow down,” he told BBC News.
“They are resistant to oxidation so they stay around longer, so cloud formation will be easier.”
…
“If it does have an impact, it is likely to be a cooling one,” said Dr Pfrang.
“And the extent urgently needs further research.”
Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42081892
All these years food NAZIs have been persecuting lovers of deep fried food, they were ignoring our selfless contribution to saving the planet from climate change.
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NumberWatch
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
hasn’t been updated in a while – lately posts like this one certainly belong on the list.
Save the world. Eat more chips!
rovingbroker
Deep fried Mars Bars, now entirely justified!
But my model shows that human posterior off-gassing from the special sauce counteracts the cooling of the fat aerosols, so no benefit after all. The world will end on time as predicted.
Please forward this to WaPo and the Guardian and NYT and Toronto Star and and and everywhere – I can’t wait until the snowflakes put this into their vernacular
Ahhh…this is just free advertising for all the Fish n Chip shops. And now I am craving Fish n Chips. See?
OMG!
Trenchers at Whitby.
Try Sullivan’s at Hornsea. Superb.
I’m doing my bit by deep fat frying my turkey. Except it was outdoors in a rural area, rather than a city.
Just imagine how the green blob reacts to barbecue.:-)
Not only barbeque, woks make a lot of grease smoke too. Let’s not forget the Asian influence on urban air.
He’s A Killer … A Viscous Streak A Mile Wide I Tell You.
Snort! Reminds me of the ferocious bunny that swam after Jimmy Carter when he was canoeing.
PMK
My favorite Monty Python piece!!
Two reactions:
Suddenly London seems a lot grungier.
How instantaneous is this effect? Is this why it seems to rain so often when I barbeque?
Ah good point! Very good point actually.
But a farmer had to plant and harvest the potato and the edible oil, then use coal fired power to boil the little bestids in oil and then someone had to eat it and make even worse gases. Yeah, that should work.
The new food trend is Nashville style spicy hot fried chicken. First it is marinated in cayenne pepper, then it is breaded and fried southern style. It is some mighty good eating. Just don’t try the KFC version as it is not done right. If you are a food entrepreneur out side of the US Southeast or Great Lakes area, get on the band wagon.
“The new food trend is Nashville style spicy hot fried chicken”
How does that rate beside Popeye’s spicy chicken? (If you’ve tried it)
“And the extent urgently needs further research” Nuff sed!
john,
Yes – I noticed that closer, too: – ‘And the extent urgently needs further research’.
I fairness Eric W picked that up, too: –
” . . . though more research is required to confirm this effect” – in the very first paragraph.
Auto.
So that’s why it is suddenly so cold in London. Strange though that I can see a 5C difference in temperature in the late evening when driving out from a suburbs music club to my country home. Suggests UHI is alive and well, especially during the summer months.
It will obviously take quite a long time before public money to research this nonsense runs out.
When the environmental chips are down, just keep eating chips – explains all these environmental conferences in foreign sunny places with lots of fried food…
They’re ignoring the airborne bacteria that feed on things like airborne grease droplets and airborne fecal matter. There is, literally, all kinds of crap in the atmosphere and some folks speculate that it may affect the climate. link
So oil smoke from fish n chips is good but oil smoke from vehicles is bad and once freely floating in the atmosphere they can tell which is which?
And with the health police out to get us eating less deep fried stuff there should be a declining trend in these oil clouds anyway.
James Bull
James,
They can tell ‘CO2 from ICE’ – very bad – from ‘CO2 from elitists’ exhalations, and from their air travel’ – Top Double Good Plus.
But I think they still have trouble with oxygen dihydride . . .
Auto
Thanks for the laugh Eric.
Those researchers, (Dr Christian Pfrang, from the University of Reading) are obviously looking to jump on the Climate Gravy Train.
They urgently need funding. No, actually they need to find the unemployment line.
The best thing about Reading University is you can drive past it at 70mph on the M4.
& after bursting through the blockage at Maidenhead you’ll enter the Slough of despondency (:-))
He he – I did my time at Thames Valley Business Park…
There must be some speculative connection between the ozone hole and greasy spoons.
I’m no scientist … but fat molecules are lighter than air ? Then most of America would be floating off the planet. Or, if not, then wouldn’t all the crisp grease be saturating Londoners in a greasy soup? Is that why they all wear macks? I’m so confused
I’m actually not interested in cooling the planet. Warmer is better.
However, I will sacrifice my personnel want and eat more southern fried chicken. fish, chips, and onion rings.
Something doesn’t compute, the same X-rays that found greasy stuffs found nothing in that scientist’s brain..
And just days after “Why cooking a stir fry could be bad for health, according to scientists”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/11/19/cooking-stir-fry-could-bad-health-according-scientists/
So it is good for planetary health, but not humans?
lee
Hang on, this was researched at Texas Tech University and Utah State University. There are a billion Chinese in the University of China who would knowledgeably, and observationally disagree.
Doubtless, the initial American research, will call for a research tour of China for, say a year?
And as we all know, what goes on tour, stays on tour.
and then theres the latest scare over ANY food baked or fried thats actually crisp or browned being a health issue for increased cancer risk..and the named risk escapes me right now..its ludicrous..and yet? theres intent to make all food sellers reduce heat and cook times on such foods
so soggy white hot chips and undercooked breads etc are what you will end up being served
they seem to have UNderthought the health risk of undercooked food i feel being MORE risk of far more immediate and serious health risk..salmonella ecoli etc
“And the extent urgently needs further research.”
Now there’s a surprise!
“And the extent urgently needs further research.”
Are they are going to be cooking up a storm (:-))
Why just chips? North of the border pizzas and mars bars (milky way) go in too as well as white and black ‘puddins’. Canterbury is a garrison town and the chippie near the barracks has deep fried mars bars on the menu when it’s hosting a scots regiment. I’ve seen the delicacy compared to deep fried camembert but I can’t speak from experience and don’t plan ‘further research’.
“Say scientists……..”
OK, I know this is all very funny, but the fact is that humanity is shoving a lot of oil into the environment. Look at https://seawifs.gsfc.nasa.gov/OCEAN_PLANET/HTML/peril_oil_pollution.html
The category ‘up in smoke’ has 92 million gallons per year, more now as the data is rather old, and this is presumably the sort of stuff they are talking about. A large proportion of that, together with all the other run-offs detailed, will end up floating on the ocean where it will smooth the surface and reduce the number of CCNs generated by breaking waves. However, at about Force 4 the smoothing effect begins to break down and aerosols will be generated and wafted into the boundary layer. Up to that point there will be fewer clouds (because of reduced CCN numbers) and albedo will be lower – surface warming.
There is then the question of how a polluted oil/water droplet behaves. I have a vague memory of something called its Wolf number (I looked at this some time ago so that may not be the correct term) which is some measure of how readily the droplets coalesce. If an oil/water droplet grows more rapidly than a pure water one then the clouds generated will have fewer, larger drops and lower albedo – this is the principle behind Latham and Salter’s cloud ships proposal – and will also have a tendency to rain out, lowering the albedo even more. If the droplets are more reluctant to coalesce then the clouds formed will be of higher albedo and will be more persistent.
More research is needed indeed.
JF
CCN… googling… Cloud Condensation Nuclei?
Yes, sorry.
JF