Feed on
Posts
Comments

Yesterday we learned that it is nearly impossible to predict how many doctors we will need in the coming years, Today we learn that “soot” is actually a major contributor to global warming, it can be regional in nature, that its impact was vastly understated in the previous IPCC reports, that it is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming, and of course it is far easier to deal with than altering the entire global economy.

I am almost sure that the “E”nvironmental community will ignore it, or try to nonetheless convince you that they need more money for research or something of that nature. Here is the study. Here is an excerpt from it:

Thus, there is a very high probability that black carbon emissions, independent of co-emitted species, have a positive forcing and warm the climate. We estimate that black carbon, with a total climate forcing of +1.1 W m-2, is the second most important human emission in terms of its climate-forcing in the present-day atmosphere; only carbon dioxide is estimated to have a greater forcing.

 The uncertainties in net climate forcing from black-carbon-rich sources are substantial (wintercow emphasis), largely due to lack of knowledge about cloud interactions with both black carbon and co-emitted organic carbon. In prioritizing potential black-carbon mitigation actions, non-science factors, such as technical feasibility, costs, policy design, and implementation feasibility play important roles. The major sources of black carbon are presently in different stages with regard to the feasibility for near-term mitigation. This assessment, by evaluating the large number and complexity of the associated physical and radiative processes in black-carbon climate forcing, sets a baseline from which to improve future climate forcing estimates.

One Response to “Climate, Black Carbon, and Modeling – an Update”

  1. Harry says:

    Now here is some real meat to chew on, where the epistlemological problems are acknowledged. I am not saying the environmental police should arrest everybody who burns firewood in a stove unequipped with a five thousand dollar scrubber, but the discussion might be more enlightening to talk about the ill effects of black and gray smoke than it is to talk about the ill effects of the CO2 emitted from your gas stove.

    We could talk about, for example, about fires resulting from lightning and policies of the Department of Interior, leading to huge fires in (recently) California, New Mexico, Wyoming, and Arizona.

    Thinking of this, and thinking of your pieces on Coase, (which I have to digest for a while to even attempt to discuss with professor Wintercow) what obligation has the state, the Feds, which owns most of Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, and a good part of California, have to its citizens? Should all compensation go to the pension funds of California public employees, for example, or should some land be sold to horizontal drilling frackers, and the proceeds be sent to the Koch brothers’ favorite charity, AHIW?

    I’ll tell you, this job of being a Czar is tough. So many choices, too little time.

Leave a Reply to Harry