Every once in a while, something comes to my attention that makes me go,
It’s common knowledge that burning coal and fossil fuel contribute to global warming. Public health officials agree that airborne particles kill millions of people every year. The good news is that
Using an array of satellite observations, researchers have found that the climatic influence of global air pollution has dropped by up to 30% from 2000 levels.
Science, July 2022
Yet, cleaner air means less particles that reflect heat back into the atmosphere. Could pollution have a silver lining? It’s a Faustian bargain, according to some climate experts.
The cleaner air has effectively boosted the total warming from carbon dioxide emitted over the same time by anywhere from 15% to 50%, estimates Johannes Quaas, a climate scientist at Leipzig University and lead author of the study.
Science, July 2022
A lot of the airborne particles that make us sick, like black carbon, or soot, absorb heat and warm the planet. These are the pollutants that come from ICE cars (no not that ICE, “Internal Combustion,) and power plants. Yet, the bad pollutants come along with sulfate and nitrate particles, which reflect the sun away from the earth and help cool it.
According to Oxford scientist, Stuart Jenkens, there’s just too much variability in the data from the last 20 years. So it’s impossible to predict how much impact less reflective particles will have on global warming.
We’ve made a lot of progress in cleaning up the air, and that’s good, especially for human health. But Hansen thinks there’s little hope of cutting emissions fast enough to meet the 1.5°C target he and other scientists have called for.
But never fear, Hansen and his colleagues have a plan.
Diliberately pread aerosols through solar geoengineering. That’s the controversial idea of lofting sulfate particles into the stratosphere and creating a global, reflective haze.
“It will be necessary to take temporary corrective measures,” he says, “almost surely including temporary purposeful use of aerosols to avoid catastrophic implications.”
Uh-oh! That’s reminding me of a movie where geoengineering had a catastrophic effect.