HOW'S THIS FOR STARTERS....from 'Nature' science journal..............Soot Called Major Cause of Global Warming
By Cat Lazaroff
STANFORD, California, February 8, 2001 (ENS) - Soot, the familiar black residue that coats fireplaces and darkens truck exhaust, may be a leading cause of global warming. A study in the current issue of the journal "Nature" indicates that soot may be the second biggest contributor to global warming - just behind the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
In their frantic search for a solution to climate change, climatologists and policy makers may have overlooked a major cause of rising world temperatures.
Diesel run vehicles - like this tractor shoveling coal at a power station in Dunkirk, New York - emit soot through their exhaust pipes (Photo by David Parsons; two photos courtesy National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
"Soot - or black carbon - may be responsible for 15 to 30 percent of global warming, yet it's not even considered in any of the discussions about controlling climate change," said Stanford Professor Mark Jacobson, author of a study published in today's issue of "Nature."
Human beings produce most of the soot particles that pollute the atmosphere, noted Jacobson, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering.
"Soot consists primarily of elemental carbon, and 90 percent of it comes from the consumption of fossil fuels - particularly diesel fuel, coal, jet fuel, natural gas and kerosene - as well as the burning of wood and other biomass when land is cleared," said Jacobson.
A reduction in worldwide soot emissions, could prove beneficial in slowing down the disastrous pace of global warming, he argued.
Pollution from a power plant using coal to generate electricity
Jacobson's findings come on the heels of a January 21 report by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC), an organization made up of hundreds of scientists from around the world.
In its most dire forecast to date, the IPCC predicted that, by the end of the century, the average surface temperature of the Earth could increase by 10.4 degrees Fahrenheit, with catastrophic results: melted glaciers, flooded shorelines and long periods of drought that persist for hundreds of years.
The IPCC report pins most of the blame for global warming on human produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which also are byproducts of fossil fuel burning. |
