Pollution May Slow Warming; Cleaner Air May Speed It, Study Says

I'd rather have cleaner air. As I stated in the other thread... I'd sooner global warming happen, with natural feeling enviromental changes... weather, rising waters, etc... than have my air filled with pollution.

I was born in longbeach california... pretty polluted town, especially with its proximity to Los Angeles. Anyways, when we moved to Alaska, and went back to CA for a family reunion... I can tell you, I was looking forward to being back near home... but all I could think about was, "Holy hell, this pollution is awful!"

It literally smells like the inside of a rusted out, oily, grimey barrel. And people live in that. Not to mention all the yellow haze everywhere.
 
Yes, thank god for the industrial revolution, averting a near-disaster for sure. Phew, that was close.

*Kirovman wipes brow*
 
It does however imply that the industrial revolution averted a sure global warming catastrophe.

Not considering all the social benefits of the industrial revolution, I think it was/will be particularly damaging to the environment.

I think the article's claim seems a bit far fetched.
 
Link doesn't want to work for me.

Anyways, I'm not sure what to make of this. If it is true, I would still rather that we have efforts going on to clean up the air. And Bush is not doing the world a favour by spewing all sorts of garbage into the air, despite his natural tendancies to do what is universally accepted as being right.
 
If you cant see it, here you go

NYT said:
December 22, 2005
Pollution May Slow Warming; Cleaner Air May Speed It, Study Says

By BLOOMBERG NEWS
Pollution may be slowing global warming, researchers are reporting today, and a cleaner environment may soon speed it up.

Writing in the journal Nature, an international scientific team provides evidence suggesting that a reduction in haze from human causes may accelerate warming of the earth's atmosphere. The researchers said pollutants had held down the rate of global warming by absorbing and scattering sunlight.

"If people clean up the air, more warming will come blazing through," Jim Coakley, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University in Corvallis, said yesterday in a telephone interview. Nature selected Dr. Coakley to write a commentary on the study.

The scientists, who work for government agencies in Britain and the United States, made the finding after adding satellite-based measurements of haze to computer models estimating the consequences of industrial emissions of aerosols, or airborne particles.

Haze scatters and absorbs some sunlight, keeping it from reaching the ground, and this cooling effect is stronger than many scientists had believed, the study says. The cooling offsets about one-third of the warming from the use of fossil fuels and other manmade causes, the study says.

"Consequently, continued aerosol emission controls may lead to a stronger warming than current model predictions," the researchers wrote.

Global temperatures are already about seven-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit higher than they were in the 1880's, Dr. Coakley said, and expected further warming may mean that within decades, summers will be about a month longer than they are now.

The new estimate of the cooling effect of haze is at the high end of ranges cited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a study group created by the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization.

But Dr. Coakley noted that the science was still complicated and that other factors remained to be measured, including the cooling effect of sunlight reflections from water droplets associated with haze, as distinct from the haze itself. Reducing haze would eliminate the droplets and remove yet another source of cooling, he said.

"This is a brave effort," he said of the new report. "But let's see what others come up with now."

In 1995, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and F. Sherwood Rowland received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for explaining how the ozone shield, which screens out harmful radiation, is damaged by industrial gases.
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I agree with Raziaar...

Whenever i went on holiday by the sea... you could just take a deep breathe and the air felt so crisp and fresh because of the unpolluted air coming off the sea... Then you go home and you can just tell the difference in the air, not as fresh and just full of crap.
 
Let's see...global flooding vs. polluted air.

I take the pollution. And I already have breathing problems!
 
MiccyNarc said:
Let's see...global flooding vs. polluted air.

I take the pollution. And I already have breathing problems!
Click to expand...

Global flooding? You make it sound like it'd be a catastrophe with water levels rising many many feet in hours. It's a gradual change, my friend... yes, lives will undoubtedly need to be relocated, but its an evolving earth.
 
This sounds like one of those "Scientists show that bacon is not fattening!" tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear stories to me.
 
bliink said:
This sounds like one of those "Scientists show that bacon is not fattening!" tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear stories to me.
Click to expand...
And damn, I like bacon...
 
bliink said:
This sounds like one of those "Scientists show that bacon is not fattening!" tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear stories to me.
Click to expand...

It does sound credible. But, I'm not fond of having a ton of pollution in the air. I'd rather have clean air. But then again, this means that the warming of the earth could be slowed a bit. Bah! Whatever happens, happens.
 
bliink said:
This sounds like one of those "Scientists show that bacon is not fattening!" tell-you-what-you-want-to-hear stories to me.
Click to expand...

Bacon isn't really good for you really, with the sodium nitrites and the like... but bacon in of itself isn't necessarily fattening. Sure, if you eat it on an improper diet, it could cause you to gain weight, but not likely the sole reason.

Fats != Weight Gain
 
Wow. Did noone think that the industrial revolution thing? How it saved our planet from the brink of catastrophe?

a reduction in haze from human causes may accelerate warming of the earth's atmosphere.
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Yes, hmm, before now I suppose we were undergoing a warming process because we didn't have enough haze in the atmosphere?

Yes, sunlight goes into the Earth's surface. It is absorbed, and re-emitted as radiation that heats the gases in the atmosphere.The proportion that is re-emitted is less than is incident. The re-emitted radiation, which is IR, interacts with the Earth's atmosphere, and resident particles a lot more than incident solar radiation does (due to its wavelength).

And also, you know we need a bit of natural global warming to some extent, otherwise all life on Earth would cease to exist. The pollution we are taling about here causes excessive global warming.

Having no global warming at all refers to a nuclear winter.

I do not see how our artificial aerosols in the atmosphere are supposed to balance global warming more than our regular atmospheric conditions do.

I brand this pseudo-science, in a lower bucket to Scalar-Waves!
 
Ren.182 said:
I agree with Raziaar...

Whenever i went on holiday by the sea... you could just take a deep breathe and the air felt so crisp and fresh because of the unpolluted air coming off the sea... Then you go home and you can just tell the difference in the air, not as fresh and just full of crap.
Click to expand...
Fresh forest air in the morning, fvcking amazing.
I need to do some survival camping again, aint been for months.
 
short recoil said:
Fresh forest air in the morning, fvcking amazing.
I need to do some survival camping again, aint been for months.
Click to expand...

The best thing... is fresh PINE forest air on a cold, crisp morning.
 
Any energy taken into the body that isn't burnt is stored as fat.

But in terms of this article I am now ****ing confused. But I also think it's a "What-you-want-to-hear" type of thing.
 
It slows global warming in the same way that a drill bit stops your boat from sinking till you pull it out of the hole you just drilled
 
The answer is simple... Make the air 50% polluted and 50% clean - WIN WIN situation!
 
Raziaar said:
Global flooding? You make it sound like it'd be a catastrophe with water levels rising many many feet in hours. It's a gradual change, my friend... yes, lives will undoubtedly need to be relocated, but its an evolving earth.
Click to expand...

Lol yea I have noticed that and its pretty weird...I mean yea its not a good thing that water levels are rising but its not like entire continents will be underwater...the ocean water level will rise a couple of feet and people will relocate and adapt. Obviously there's nothing that can be done to stop global warming, we can slow it down by reducing pollution but it is a natural process..eventually the Earth will have another ice age too. Bah either way I dont think anyone posting here on hl2.net will be around to see significant changes...so..
 
a new study suggests that bottled wet farts I blow out of my ass can cure cancer! Hooray!

Honestly, I hope the people who pay these so-called "Scientists" know where their money is going. It seems like every week they bring out a new study that seemingly contradicts an earlier one. It's all just one big in-conclusive mess. They should stop bringing out these pointless studies and do something useful for society instead.
 
Zeus said:
Lol yea I have noticed that and its pretty weird...I mean yea its not a good thing that water levels are rising but its not like entire continents will be underwater...the ocean water level will rise a couple of feet and people will relocate and adapt.
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Yes, but The Netherlands will probably largely flood (It's really really flat, and only a few dykes will then keep it from complete flooding D: )
 
short recoil said:
Fresh forest air in the morning, fvcking amazing.
I need to do some survival camping again, aint been for months.
Click to expand...

Yeah. I used to stay in the country on weekends. Was so fresh in the mornings. I would wake up really early, like when it got light. And take my bike out for a long ride. Good times :p
 
Beerdude26 said:
Yes, but The Netherlands will probably largely flood (It's really really flat, and only a few dykes will then keep it from complete flooding D: )
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No offense, but thats what happens when you build a country (or city or whatever) below sea level. Note that at somepoint, where I live will be underwater too, so yeah. On topic, I would much prefer clean air over a cooler Earth (if this study is correct). This is one of those topics that just makes me rather angry. Cleaner air > Pollution and (according to the article) a cooler Earth. Are you ppl (those who are against reduction in greenhouse gases) in the pockets the oil companies or something...I mean come on. Sigh :hmph:
 
CO2 and a lot of other gasses we massivly emit in the atmosphere speed up the greenhouse effects. While other polutants like small particles actually stop rays entering and hence slow the process down. The found that in the three days after 9/11 the temperature went up by 3%. Because airplanes realeas a lot of the particles in the air. Now first off if that isn't enough proof of how much effect we have on our atmosphere I don't know what is. Second, it means that kyoto which calls for the lowering of the greanhouse gasses and small particles is right. And that only putting better filters on our cars and so fosth will only stop the particles which actually counteract the greanhouise effect is not a good way to this.

And what it also means is that your big SUV is which has a nice filter on it to stop small particles but still ejects a lot of greanhouse gasses is speeding up the global warming unnaturally.
 
This sure sounds like something the conservative propaganda maschine might spew out.
 
For this issue, where hundreds of arguments such as this are brought out all the time going back and forth and back and forth, I don't think 'pollution may slow warming' is that useful to anyone. Yet.
 
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