Posted on 01/15/2012 6:49:52 AM PST by upchuck
An international team of scientists says it's figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.
They say the key is to reduce emissions of two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming methane and soot.
Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels like coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.
Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal Science. Since soot causes rainfall patterns to shift, reducing it would cut down on droughts in southern Europe and parts of Africa and ease monsoon problems in Asia, the study says.
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It all comes down to basic chemistry. There's far more carbon dioxide pollution than methane and soot pollution, but the last two are way more potent. Carbon dioxide also lasts in the atmosphere longer.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
For years they have been BSing us about C02 and we didn't buy it. So now they think they can sell soot and methane? Doubt it.
Related "terrifying discovery."
Another Seth Borenstein story of make believe.
In the words of my favorite President - “Here we go again!”
Have no fear, the EPA is here with an interactive map to help you target the offenders in your area. (We can live with out heat, electricity, food and metals cant we?)
http://ghgdata.epa.gov/ghgp/main.do
Predictable as the day is long. There at least two major groups fostering the man made global warming hysteria.
The first, mostly politicians, wants to use it as justification for massive tax increases and wealth transfer.
The second, the eco-nazis, want to use it to justify forced reductions in energy use.
With all the news about the huge reserves of natural gas in the US, it is totally predictable that both groups would foster a new bogeyman, methane, which just happens to be the principal component of natural gas.
“Beano”: The answer to so called global warming. Beano petros in our autos and furnaces. Whoda thunk it?
OH noooooooooooooooo...they’re going after the cows again.
Well, they definately have a handle on it. They're down to a 4 millon/yr death spread.
It sure took a long time for this Global warming to hit us.
100 years ago the industrial revolution was getting in gear and coalpowered plants, electric and steel were spewing out vast amounts of soot. Cars were burning more oil and no anti-pollution on them, the skies were filled with so much soot that women could not hang out their clothes and many people were gasping for breath in the smog over cities.
I remember in the 60’s driving to work and seing a cloud hanging over the city.
Today that is gone, we have cleaned the environment about 75% I suppose, but now while we have done away with most of the smog and most of the pollution of the industrial revolution we are getting the Global warming from it.
Sure took a long time, but I gues these same scientists think we can clean it up in a month or so if we just closed down everything and stopped human life on the planet.
So does this mean that the learned elites were wrong about CO2 all along?
Its a million trillion times worse than that. Burning the methane in natural gas creates CO2!!!!!!
....well, it will be an "easier" sell, IMO.
Co2 is what we breath out, and what plants "breath" in....
...."soot" is from smokey fires, and "methane" is farts....
...so we perceive Co2="good", soot/methane="bad"
...perception is everything....apparently, the "scientists" are just now figuring this out.
WRONG!
Water vapor is, by far, the chief greenhouse gas.
These people continue to make up their "facts" out of whole cloth.
Send us more more money to fight: global cooling/ozone holes/global warming/Silent Spring/CO2 emissions/DDT/etc, etc; and we will protect you.
All we need to do, is shut off the water and heat to Yellowstone, and any other geothermal spots on the earth, and problem solved! /S
Fact of life... people die! Last I looked the death rate is still 100%! And we all die of something.
A better avenue to end the controversy is to end grants. If there are no grants, there is no money to fabricate lies.
A broke progressive academic is a silent progressive academic
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