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.
"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!!!!!!
Yes, in Svalbard, Norway. Most climatological data sets indicate the 1990s were warmer than the 1930s.
I looked briefly at the links. I'm familiar with many of the arguments made there. The last one in particular would take a few hours to address because so much of it is incorrect.
So... we're talking about regional warming, not global warming, right?
Your observations are quite valid.
As I said, most climatological data sets show that the warmest decade of the 20th century was the 1990s. The 1930s were the next-highest. It cooled off a bit in the 1960s and 1970s. If a couple of spots were a tad bit warmer in the 1930s than the 1990s, that doesn't affect the statement that in general over most of the globe, the 1990s were warmer than the 1930s.
And if you will look at the graph in an earlier post, you will also see that the planet has warmed more rapidly since the 1980s than the warming into the 1930s. That's significant, too.
What's most significant to me is that the data do not correlate to the increase of fossil fuel usage. I still see no anthropogenic causality whatsoever.
Agreed, you must have missed my "(/sarcasm off)" flag.
That's no Asian cloud. It's US smog that's drifted to Asia. At least that's what a BBC weatherperson reported not long ago on BBC World News. No bias, of course.
Please explain your logic, focusing on how anthropogenic causality SHOULD appear in the data.
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