The Lost Decade: Is Global Warming Happening?
Between 1998 and 2008 global temperatures... fell.
Which is kind of inconvenient for the inconvenient truth folks, because it makes it rather difficult to claim that anthropogenic global warming will be the end to civilization as we know it, or at least make it difficult to ski Zermatt in May.
Now, a new theory has emerged: the Earth's temperature fell between 1998 and 2008 because Asia was pumping out so much pollution. Yeah, that's not a typo: because they were pumping out so much pollution, temperatures fell.
Specifically, they pumped out a lot of sulphur (or sulfur for the Americans) which caused the planet to cool down, counteracting all of the CO2 and CO equivalents which they also pumped out. Yeah...
Most of Asia's carbon emissions came from coal and with coal emissions comes sulfur. Sulfur is a key ingredient in the formation of aerosols, which form hazy cloud layers that reflect heat from the sun back into space. These aerosols, the paper argues, are responsible for the halt in rising temperatures.
But they say - this won't last because sulphur regulations will get more serious and then we will be back to warming up like DC in August in no time.
So... what's wrong with sulphur? Or more to the point - why the hell do I care about emissions anyway? Honestly, build a couple of big collectors, take in the CO2, sequester it until such time that algal fuels or CO2 to Methanol makes sense. Problem freaking solved. In the meantime, sulfur seems to be doing the trick - or something else does, because the bottom line here is that global warming is not happening.
Actually, what this really means is that everyone driving around in old Mercedes diesels would be better off burning old school diesel rather than veggie fuel. So if you converted your old Merc to run on McDonalds, you are hurting the environment by not pumping out world-cooling sulphur you selfish bastard.
Which is kind of inconvenient for the inconvenient truth folks, because it makes it rather difficult to claim that anthropogenic global warming will be the end to civilization as we know it, or at least make it difficult to ski Zermatt in May.
Now, a new theory has emerged: the Earth's temperature fell between 1998 and 2008 because Asia was pumping out so much pollution. Yeah, that's not a typo: because they were pumping out so much pollution, temperatures fell.
Specifically, they pumped out a lot of sulphur (or sulfur for the Americans) which caused the planet to cool down, counteracting all of the CO2 and CO equivalents which they also pumped out. Yeah...
Most of Asia's carbon emissions came from coal and with coal emissions comes sulfur. Sulfur is a key ingredient in the formation of aerosols, which form hazy cloud layers that reflect heat from the sun back into space. These aerosols, the paper argues, are responsible for the halt in rising temperatures.
But they say - this won't last because sulphur regulations will get more serious and then we will be back to warming up like DC in August in no time.
So... what's wrong with sulphur? Or more to the point - why the hell do I care about emissions anyway? Honestly, build a couple of big collectors, take in the CO2, sequester it until such time that algal fuels or CO2 to Methanol makes sense. Problem freaking solved. In the meantime, sulfur seems to be doing the trick - or something else does, because the bottom line here is that global warming is not happening.
Actually, what this really means is that everyone driving around in old Mercedes diesels would be better off burning old school diesel rather than veggie fuel. So if you converted your old Merc to run on McDonalds, you are hurting the environment by not pumping out world-cooling sulphur you selfish bastard.
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