Burning more coal might save the planet

[CoolBreeze]

This article from NPR.....

Cleaning up the air, while good for our lungs, could make global warming worse. That conclusion is underscored by a new study, which looks at the pollutants that go up smokestacks along with carbon dioxide.

These pollutants are called aerosols and they include soot as well as compounds of nitrogen and sulfur and other stuff into the air. Natalie Mahowald, a climate researcher at Cornell University, says so far, scientists have mostly tried to understand what those aerosols do while they're actually in the air.

"There are so many different kinds of aerosols and they have many different sources," she says. "Some warm and some cool. But in the net, humans are emitting a lot of extra aerosols, and they tend to cool for the most part."

As we clean up the aerosols, which we really want to do for public health reasons, we are going to be perhaps causing ourselves more trouble in terms of the climate situation.

The aerosols reflect sunlight back into space, or they stimulate clouds that keep us cool. But it turns out that's not all they do. These aerosols also influence how much carbon dioxide gets drawn out of the air by plants on land and in the sea.

"They can add nutrients, for example, to the oceans or to the land," Mahowald says. "But also while they're in the atmosphere they can change the climate, and so that also can impact the amount of carbon the land or the ocean can take up. So there are quite a few different ways that aerosols can interact."

In an article published in Science magazine, she concludes that those effects add up to quite a bit. At the moment, aerosols are not only helping reduce global warming by cooling the atmosphere, but they're helping reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that stays in the air once we emit it.

That's good news for now — it means the planet isn't heating up quite as fast as it could. But that's bad news looking down the road a little bit. That's because many aerosols make people sick — heart and lung disease in particular. So some nations are now in the process of trying to rein them in.

"As we clean up the aerosols, which we really want to do for public health reasons, we are going to be perhaps causing ourselves more trouble in terms of the climate situation," Mahowald says.

This is not a brand-new idea. For example, other research has found that switching from coal to much cleaner natural gas might not do much to help with global warming because it would also be reducing the pollutants in coal smoke that help offset warming.

Mahowald's results suggest that reducing those pollutants could be an even bigger problem than realized, when you consider that aerosols help remove carbon dioxide from the air by encouraging plant growth. Hard numbers on this effect are highly uncertain at the moment, but this could turn out to be quite significant.

"This is something that's really poorly studied, and I think that the main point of the paper is we've been ignoring this potentially important topic," she says.

And studying it is not easy because the effects aren't well understood. For example, nitrogen can be a fertilizer, but it can stunt plant growth when nitrogen comes out of the air in acid form. Lisa Emberson at the Stockholm Environment Institute and York University in England, who studies these biological cycles, says there are so many subtle effects it's hard to be sure which ones will prove to be the most important.

"I think the take-home message of this paper is we need to understand those interactions far better and we probably need to take action much more quickly than we are doing at the moment," Emberson says.

Right now it seems like we're much more likely to clean up aerosol pollution, while increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the air. So scientists, unfortunately, may have a chance to see how this inadvertent experiment on our planet starts to play out.
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/11/142218650 ... for-planet

[Tom Taggart]

Particulate and sulfur emissions were much worse 100+ years ago when coal powered our industry and transportation, and coal furnaces heated our homes. Pollution remains an issue in developing countries, especially China, where most of our manufactured products are now made.

Facts ignored by the high priests of the Church of Global Warming. Or should I say "Priest and Priestesses", to include the EPA director.

[genlock]

I hope its not too long till we can burn garbage again.
I miss slate dumps on fire too.

[cgarison]

I miss slate dumps on fire too.

I think one of those has been burning on Coburn mountain in Pike Co. KY for the last 25 years. And there might be a house or two built on that old pile of smolder slate. I guess heat is cheap in the winter that way.

[Bob Campbell]

Well, you know we can't trust this because a) it's from NPR
b) it's from a scientist
c) it's from a scientist who will have his results peer reviewed.

So it's pretty much socialist junk.

Other than that it sounds like it may make sense.

[Lester]

Other than the massive amount of fraud that has infiltrated the peer review program, you're absolutely right, Bob!

[genlock]

We were warned.


"Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present

and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific technological elite. "

D D Eisenhower, 1961 Farewell Address