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Category: News and Politics
LESS BLACK CARBON AND LESS TROPOSPHERIC OZONE = ELECTRIC /COMPRESSED AIR CAR FLEETS.
PURE ELECTRIC VEHICLES AND ‘AIR CARS’ DO NOT RUN ON DEISEL AND NEITHER DO THEY CONTRIBUTE TO THE PRODUCTION OF TROPOSPHERIC OZONE. SO EVEN IF, INITIALLY, A SEGMENT OF THE ELECTRIC CAR FLEET RAN ON ELECTRICITY PRODUCED BY 'CLEAN' FOSSIL FUEL POWER STATIONS, GLOBAL WARMING SHOULD BE REDUCED.(See below)
THE BEST WAY TO CLEAN UP DIESEL DRIVEN CARS IS TO REPLACE THEM WITH ELECTRIC/AIR VEHICLES. WHEN LARGE AMOUNTS OF RENEWABLE ENERGY BECOMES AVAILABLE WE WILL NEED AN ELECTRIC CAR FLEET TO BE IN PLACE. WE WILL NOT HAVE TIME TO LISTEN TO PLEAS FROM THE MANUFACTURERS OF PETROL DRIVEN ENGINES FOR MORE TIME TO ADAPT.
RJMA
EXTRACT
CO2 is only responsible for about half of the problem. The rest is caused by other pollutants. No worldwide attempt has been made to control some of them, even though doing so would be much less contentious and would reduce global warming far faster.
Take black carbon, which gives soot its colour. It is now accepted to be the second biggest contributor to climate change, responsible for between 10 and 25 per cent of it. Formed through incomplete combustion of wood, vegetation and fossil fuels, it lands a unique double whammy.
While in the air, it absorbs and releases solar radiation, helping to heat up the atmosphere. When it falls out on ice and snow, on mountains or at the poles, it darkens them, causing them to reflect less sunlight and melt more rapidly. And as they disappear they expose more dark land or water, which absorbs even more heat and so further warms the world.
A study by the United Nations Environment Programme concludes that the pollutant has played a major part in shrinking Himalayan glaciers, and helped disrupt the South Asian monsoon.
Then there's tropospheric ozone – the gas when it is relatively near the ground rather than in the protective layer in the stratosphere miles above our heads. Largely formed as a result of emissions from car exhausts, it is thought to contribute between six and 15 per cent of the problem.
There's compelling reason to tackle both, quite apart from climate change. Black carbon is one of the world's greatest killers, largely responsible – in smoke from inefficient woodburning stoves – for at least 1.6 million deaths annually, mainly of children, in the Third World. And, together with ozone, it helps cause 800,000 more each year worldwide from urban air pollution.
Introducing better stoves, or solar cookers, dramatically cuts emissions of black carbon, as does cleaning up emissions from diesel vehicles. And boosting vehicle fuel efficiency – and reducing pollution from other sources, ranging from oil refineries to dry cleaners – will cause less ozone to form.
Taking such steps could have an immediate effect on climate change, as both pollutants disappear almost immediately from the atmosphere – as opposed to carbon dioxide, which lasts for centuries. And they should be comparatively uncontentious. Even Senator James Inhofe, the most outspoken global warming sceptic in the American Congress, has supported a Bill on black carbon, beating Al Gore to it by a few days.
Similarly, George W. Bush helped lead a successful bid to speed up the phasing out of hydrochlorofluorocarbons – up to 1,700 times more potent than carbon dioxide in heating up the planet – under the Montreal Protocol for protecting the ozone layer. Just this week, the American, Canadian and Mexican governments have called for this treaty to be extended to tackle yet another group of greenhouse gases.
This provokes my initial question. If the climate negotiations had set out 20 years ago first to pick these low-hanging fruits, surely we would have got very much further in bringing global warming under control, while building trust to tackle carbon dioxide.
Such a strategy is no longer an option. So much time has been lost and climate change has now progressed so far that big cuts in carbon dioxide are already overdue. But attacking black carbon and the other pollutants would have an immediate impact, and could buy us some desperately needed time.
As Durwood Zaelke, the president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, puts it: "It's essential to cut carbon dioxide, but we can't win if we only target half the problem."
GEOFFREY LEAN September 18 2009 Daily Telegraph.
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CLEANER AIR MAY WELL LEAD TO HIGHER TEMPERATURES WITHIN MANY OF OUR CITIES UNFORTUNATELY.
Black Carbon Aerosol Pollution Cools, Heats, Confuses
New research based on NASA satellite data and a multinational field experiment shows that black carbon aerosol pollution produced by humans can impact global climate as well as seasonal cycles of rainfall.
Because aerosols that contain black carbon both absorb and reflect incoming sunlight, these particles can exert a regional cooling influence on Earth's surface that is about 3 times greater than the warming effect of greenhouse gases.
But even as these aerosols reduce by as much as 10 percent the amount of sunlight reaching the surface, they increase the solar energy absorbed in the atmosphere by 50 percent -- thus making it possible to both cool the surface and warm the atmosphere.
Scientists are concerned that this heating may perturb atmospheric circulation and rainfall patterns.
http://www.unisci.com/stories/20013/0817013.htm
HIGHER TEMPERATURES DURING THE WARMEST PARTS OF THE YEAR WILL MEAN MORE HEAT STROKE, FOREST FIRES ETC.THE GREEKS AND CALIFORNIANS ,FOR EXAMPLE, MIGHT NOT BE TOO KEEN.HOWEVER WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE ?
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