Posted on 12/08/2004 10:49:23 AM PST by cogitator
Massive air pollution casts Asian haze over global climate
A cloud of pollution which has been identified in the skies across Asia travels long distances across the Indian ocean and is now threatening to make the entire planet a drier place, experts warned Wednesday.
"There is a nexus between local air pollution and global climate change," Mylvakanam Iyngararasan, senior programme specialist for the United Nations Environment Programme, told the annual "Better Air Quality" conference at a meeting in the home of the Taj Mahal.
"Research suggests that there will be a large drying-out effect from the air pollution we see now. Harmful chemicals, aerosols and other pollutants impact cloud formation. India has experienced severe droughts in the last few years.
"Pollution from China can be blown in days to India or in a matter of weeks travel to Europe so pollution really is a trans-border problem," he added.
Jitendra Shah, senior environment engineer with the World Bank in Washington, said Asian countries needed "to do their bit to keep the neighbourhood clean."
"No country can build a giant air filter on its borders so all countries have a responsibility to clean their own house in order to keep the neighbourhood clean," said Shah.
Experts also noted there were ample studies which showed there was a blanket of chemicals and dust from cars, aerosols and industrial smokestacks in South Asia.
In 1998, Indian-born US scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan used planes, ships, satellites and a team of 250 scientists from 15 countries to track a cloud of pollution dubbed the "Asian Brown Cloud" that hung over the Indian Ocean.
The cloud has injected intense rancour between the United States and developing countries over the cause of global warming.
The discovery provoked denials from Indian officials who felt the country was being singled out as a culprit in global warming and was seen as vindicating the Bush administration when it pulled out of the global Kyoto climate treaty.
Ramanathan has maintained that Los Angeles, New Delhi, Bombay, Beijing and Cairo contribute the most to a worldwide circle of pollution.
"Pollution is by no means restricted to the Asian region," countered Indian scientist A.K Singhal. "There is a haze over Los Angeles and a thick plume of pollution over most big North American cities," he added.
"There is no way we can contain air between city boundaries so we have to be concerned about the long-range transport of air pollutants in Asia which have serious climate change implications," said Elisea Gozum, former secretary of the Philippines environment department.
About 500 delegates are attending the Agra meeting hosted by India's environment ministry, the Clean Air Initiative for Asian Cities -- a grouping of government agencies, NGOs and others -- and the Society of Indian Automobile Manufacturers.
Instead of worrying about real pollution, we instead have focused on the boogyman of CO2.
There has to be something wrong here, China and India are exempt from Kyoto. This clearly means that these countries do not pollute. Substitute "US" anywhere you see China or India written. Everyone knows pollution is Bush's fault.
(/sarcasm off)
As far as the scientific study of current climate goes, that's essentially been proven. The arguments from global warming skeptics are now more focused on the amount of warming that will occur in this century, not IF warming will occur in this century. The position of the informed global warming skeptics is that the warming in this century will tend toward the minimum change indicated by climate models.
I beleive they are exempt from the Kyoto Protocols.
Btw...where are the pics of these massive clouds?
As you know, CO2 is part of the situation, but I support the position that technology and shifts in energy production methods will handle that. Smoke and soot emissions in developing countries are more easily mitigated and reducing them will have a more significant effect than paltry CO2 emissions controls.
Ahem...
North America Absorbing Carbon Dioxide At Surprisingly High Rate, Team Reports
"We know that we who reside in the United States emit about 6.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year," said Taro Takahashi, Doherty Senior Research Scientist, associate director of Lamont-Doherty, Columbia's earth sciences campus in Palisades, N.Y., and an author of the report. "As an air mass travels from west to east, it should receive carbon dioxide and the East Coast concentration of CO2 should be higher than on the West Coast.
"But observations tell us otherwise. The mean atmospheric CO2 concentration on the East Coast has been observed to be lower than that over the Pacific coast. This means that more CO2 is taken up by land ecosystems over the United States than is released by industrial activities."
I assume you're being humorous. Almost all of China is an ecological and environmental disaster area.
Exactly why the US was right in refusing to sign on the Kyoto Accords. Very skewed..against the US, of course.
Nonsense. Where's the baseline?
That is the assumption by religion of globull warmers, no one really knows the linkage between CO2 and tempreture. Since increases in CO2 usually lags increases in tempreture, the relationship if any would appear to be opposite of what is assumed.
Yup...looks like Switzerland is in trouble. Massive cloud all along the Italian border.
/sarcasm.
Seriously, China has he biggest aggregate problem and WE are the bad guys??
It is bs.
Surface observations indicate that the planet warmed about 0.6 C in the 20th century, 0.8 C since 1850, and about 0.4 C since 1980. The fairly-rapid warming since 1980 has been cited in numerous scientific studies as being at least partially caused by human (anthropogenic) factors, of which the most significant is greenhouse gas emissions from energy production.
"Kinda makes the Kyoto protocol look flakier than ever."
Yes - to most people. Bush and others have known for a long time that Asia and other poor countries exempt from Kyoto are major polluters (industry, cutting/burning rain forests for 2 years of crops, etc.).
Kyoto is bad science AND bad politics. Thank goodness Bush is sticking to his guns on this one even if the French will just hate us more.
If you're still interested in discussion of the differences between glacial-interglacial transitions and the current climate regime, I'm game. Are you really interested, or are you just going to blow off any scientific explanations that I offer?
That's a lot of smoke. Could have an effect on the weather somewhere. Maybe more rain next year on America's west coast.
If CO2 is the reason for all this change, what explains the global cooling which occured in the 1930's and 1940's. It is lame to cherry-pick dates to try to portray some rapid warming caused by man. There is a lot more going on that we don't understand. A real scientist would tell you there is no way of knowing what is caused by natural variation and what if any is caused by man. Globull warming is all speculation and fear-mongering to promote world governance and wealth distribution.
You haven't offered one. But I am getting ready to leave and probably won't get much chance to really look at it for today.
Atmospheric observations don't, and 1850 is an arbirtary baseline anyway, let alone 1980.
What are the variance of normal mesoscale climatological fluctuations? No one knows.
The fairly-rapid warming since 1980 has been cited in numerous scientific studies as being at least partially caused by human (anthropogenic) factors, of which the most significant is greenhouse gas emissions from energy production.
There is grant money to be found by reaching poltically advantageous conclusions based on sketchy data.
We know even less about mesoscale solar weather patterns than we do about terrestrial systems. The Sun does not always burn with uniform intensity.
What is the effect of Earth's weakening magnetoshpere on our changing climate, if it's changing? No one knows.
What's the most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for 70% of the total? Water vapor.
We don't "know" jack about human induced global warming, or if it exists at all.
This has been visible in the Tanana flats south of Fairbanks for over 20 years. The color ranges from yellow to brown, sometimes blue, and it is never clear anymore. The pollution moves through this area like it is directly funneled here from Asia.
The UN and the Left will quickly condemn this study, as it fails to fix the blame solely on America. Must be junk science. (sarc)
Notice how the biggest clouds of pollution in the US hang over the Blue states - coincidence?? I think not.
When we agree to Kyoto and cut our emissions to 1492 levels there will be room for their emissions -- they are exempt from Kyoto. So it's our fault that their emissions have no where to go.
did you notice that the US pollution hot spots look exactly like the election map of Kerry counties?
Primarily sulfate aerosols. Energy emissions were a lot dirtier in the 1930s and 1940s.
It is lame to cherry-pick dates to try to portray some rapid warming caused by man. There is a lot more going on that we don't understand. A real scientist would tell you there is no way of knowing what is caused by natural variation and what if any is caused by man.
You assert it's "lame", but you don't give a reason why. There's no doubt more remains to be learned and that there are uncertainties. In terms of what a "real scientist" would tell you, I think that they would more accurately say that there are a variety of methods that can be used to estimate natural and anthropogenic contributions to climate change, each with its own inherent uncertainty, and that by examining the results of these various methods, a coherent understanding of these contributions will begin to emerge.
It's more about the rate of change than the maximum temperature that might be achieved. It appears from the climate records that the main control of atmospheric CO2 concentrations on 1,000-10,000 year scales is the overall temperature of the ocean. Milankovitch forcing (orbital and rotational changes) influences the total insolation that the Earth receives, i.e. the energy input from the Sun. The climate "tends" toward an equilibrium, which is sensitive to the atmospheric CO2 concentration -- higher CO2 concentrations help to maintain warmer conditions, lower concentrations help to maintain colder conditions.
Milankovitch forcing pushes the Earth's climate into transitions, notably the glacial/interglacial transitions (the big peaks and valleys in the graph), but many of the minor changes are also related to the Milankovitch cycles.
The transitions alter the Earth's radiative balance, which in turn forces the climate system to adjust the equilibrium temperature. As the oceans cool or warm in the system, atmospheric CO2 will decrease (cooling oceans absorbs more CO2) or increase (warming oceans release CO2). It takes several hundred years for the new equilibrium to "hold" after a major transition. When equilibrium exists, temperatures generally only change 0.2 C per century or less.
What is happening now is that atmospheric CO2 is increasing without any external forcing, a very unusual situation in a relatively stable climate regime (which was the point of the first graph). The climate system will respond to this, and the questions that need to be answered are by how much and how fast. Ecosystems can adjust to change, but there are limits to how quickly then can respond, and the alternate to responding is collapsing. Rapid changes are always the most difficult to mitigate (which seems obvious, but that's the core of the issue).
And I'd like to add after re-reading: another control atmospheric CO2 on 1,000-10,000 year time scales is the amount of carbon sequestered in wetlands, like peat bogs. In a warming climate, peat bogs and other wetland systems will also release CO2 as biomass respiration accelerates.
It frequently is.
The most common graphs I've seen refer to an average 1960-1990 baseline. This incorporates a cooler period (60s and 70s) and a slighly warmer period in the 1980s. The graph below is small but shows what I mean:
As for atmospheric observations, presumably you mean satellite measurements since 1979? I suggest getting updated on the subject: several reanalyses of this data are showing increasingly large warming trends.
We know even less about mesoscale solar weather patterns than we do about terrestrial systems. The Sun does not always burn with uniform intensity.
You should peruse this Web page:
The role of the Sun in 20th century climate change
What's the most prevalent greenhouse gas in the atmosphere, accounting for 70% of the total? Water vapor.
That's correct, but water vapor fluxes are dependent on climate. The most significant variable that affects Earth's radiative balance is atmospheric CO2 concentrations, followed by the lesser greenhouse gases.
We don't "know" jack about human induced global warming, or if it exists at all.
Because I have a scientific background, it's hard for me to challenge a viewpoint that has little regard for the value of scientific knowledge. Scientists know a lot about this subject, but they'd always like to know more and be more certain. Even so, they know enough to be reasonably certain about most of the major aspects of current climate change.
Astronomical Theory of Climate Change
The Paleoclimate Record and Climate Models (long but comprehensive)
And if you really, really want to get into this heavily: AS235/OBEE238: Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics and Climate has a smorgasbord of links, including a link to the online book "Ocean Biogeochemical Dynamics"
You might find subchapter 10.4 of interest.
What a coincidence, your baseline coincides with the advent of weather satellites.
As for atmospheric observations, presumably you mean satellite measurements since 1979? I suggest getting updated on the subject: several reanalyses of this data are showing increasingly large warming trends.
Again, within a monumentally small data set.
You should peruse this Web page:
The role of the Sun in 20th century climate change
From your "Global Warming" page:
"Before 1979, there are no direct measures of solar irradiance."
"The figure shows that sunspot numbers rose in the first half of the 20th century, along with temperatures. The rise in solar activity in the early part of the century is though to be connected with an 80 year cycle of solar activity known as the Gleissman cycle. The temperature increase in the second half of the twentieth century does not seem to linked with sunspot numbers." Etc.
Hardly compelling.
Let's also note that all of the baselines on that page start at 1860. It's remarkable how the baselines you cite coincide with technological and methodological developments, yet only offer a small fraction of the Earth's climatological history.
That's correct, but water vapor fluxes are dependent on climate. The most significant variable that affects Earth's radiative balance is atmospheric CO2 concentrations, followed by the lesser greenhouse gases.
Interdependent, not dependent. Funny how the inadvertent dropping of a prefix can get a major variable tossed out.
Because I have a scientific background, it's hard for me to challenge a viewpoint that has little regard for the value of scientific knowledge. Scientists know a lot about this subject, but they'd always like to know more and be more certain. Even so, they know enough to be reasonably certain about most of the major aspects of current climate change.
I see your appeal to authority, and raise you an appeal to healthy skepticism:
Ambitious politicians have an affinity for crises, real or imagined, because getting on the advantageous side of a real or imagined crisis confers great leverage to a a crafty politician. Politicians who control pursestrings, therefore, are not necessarily disinclined to fund scientists who can deliver ready made crises to them.
I would have more faith in the piece if it had mentioned that the Kyoto treaty would do nothing about reducing emissions from China and India.
Nuclear energy.
"There has to be something wrong here, China and India are exempt from Kyoto. This clearly means that these countries do not pollute."
- Sorry, that's not the way Kyoto works. For example, the UK predicted that it would not be able to meet it's Kyoto pollution targets by 2010. Therefore, they will have to pay billions to China and India in penalties based on a very complicated formula, so that China and India can take the cash and spend it to reduce their pollution. Is anyone naive enough to believe that this is where the money will really end up?
It's basically a subsidy from industrialized countries to third world countries that will kill jobs in industrialized countries so that the monies transferred can be used to unfairly compete with and ultimately destroy western economies.
Perhaps. But the causality has not! The data strongly suggest that global warming (and cooling) are very long-period cycles controlled by forces far outside the control of man.
Repeat after me:
Man-made Global Warming is a MYTH!
Man-made Global Warming is a MYTH!
Man-made Global Warming is a MYTH!
It's not my baseline, and I have no idea what weather satellites would have to do with the choice of it.
Again, within a monumentally small data set.
So what's the problem with that?
Hardly compelling.
The best analyses of the Sun-climate connection cannot discern an appreciable solar influence on the warming occurring in and since the 1980s. I can't really worry about whether you assess that as compelling or not -- that's just the way it is.
Let's also note that all of the baselines on that page start at 1860. It's remarkable how the baselines you cite coincide with technological and methodological developments, yet only offer a small fraction of the Earth's climatological history.
And you probably realize that the Earth has been CHANGING over its climatological history? Which is why it's specious to compare, for example, Oligocene climate to Holocene climate because the Earth wasn't the same back then?
I said this recently to somebody else but it bears repeating: the factors which affect Earth's climate on timescales of millions and 100s of thousands of years are different from the factors which affect the climate on timescales of 10,000 and 1,000 years, and other factors significantly affect Earth's climate on timescales of centuries and decades. (For more on this you might look at the links I provided to "Always Right" in a post above this.)
I see your appeal to healthy skepticism. Healthy skepticism should be distinguishable from obstinate adherence to invalid arguments.
Except that the period of concern is the past 150 years, and particularly the past 25-30. Those long-period cycles don't really exert a significant influence on shorter time-scales.
True enough, but the short term fluctuations are well within historical swings anyway. Did you read, in particular, my link to the Norway ice core study? It showed that the planet's warmest decade was the 1930's. The data simply don't fit the predictions of the models; not in the past, therefore very unlikely in the future.
The general level of airborne aerosols and soot particles must have been far higher in the late 19th and early 20th century, even accounting for the increase in population, due to dependence on coal and wood for heat to warm buildings and drive steam engines and electric power plants. In my lifetime, I have watched the skies clear. Once, while driving through Steubenville, Ohio I asked someone there why the buildings were so blackened on the walls and rooftops and he simply said, "The steel plant."
The global warming that we can now measure is not directly attributable to anthropogenic forces alone; the need to use fuels efficiently will lead to more CO2 per energy unit and a wiser move would be to create more carbon sinks.
BTTT!!!!!!
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