Small, new, remotely-operated, unmanned aircraft are being flown in the Arctic to measure black soot. The soot is produced by burning diesel fuel, agricultural fires, forest fires, and wood-burning stoves. It is transported by winds to the Arctic, where it darkens the surface of snow and ice, enhancing melting and solar warming. See http://saga.pmel.noaa.gov/ andhttp://www.pmel.noaa.gov/edd/manta.html
Let me state I’m all for drastic measures to stop black soot emissions worldwide. If the unfccc / ipcc process were any reasonable it’d have already spun a separate group pushing for immediate action.
And wreck the economy? Maurizio, are you insane? I’m sorry, but our way of life is non-negotiable.
Since people die and glaciers melt here-and-now the “WRECK THE ECONOMY’ bit is moot. And I’m sure there are ways to strongly diminish black soot without wrecking any economy.
Not without depriving the third world with the opportunity to lift themselves out of the much greater peril of poverty. Remember your Cost Benefit Analysis! No Maurizio, we must adapt to black soot. Besides, the only reason why more people are dying from soot is because there are more people. Population growth in soot affected areas is the real culprit, not the soot itself.
Further more, even if we follow a soot as usual model, future opportunities to paint black soot white gives us another reason not to adopt costly policy measures today.
Down with this sort of crazy talk on the Internet.
I’m sorry but not suprised to find some of my most vociferous interlocutors attracted by an impossibly humorous aspect of black soot emission.
On my part given the number of children that die because of black soot emitted by the fires started in often windowless kitchens by their mothers for the one reason of cooking food for those same children, I’ll continue advocating for what appears a relatively inexpensive solution, ‘upgrading’ those hearths to start burning something else. Plus of course lifting people out of abject poverty, so they can afford a windowed hut at the very least.
As for ‘more people die because there are more people’, I suppose next step will be, to reach perfect safety and zero death we need to go back to zero people…
Enough with your crazy sootist agenda. Soot is a natural, wholesome plant fertilizer.
Anthropogenic sources only account for 10% of airbourne particulates. The oceans dwarf any human contribution. Thanks to their religious fanaticism, sootists would doom developing countries to live in poverty and wreck the economy even though we can’t control the oceans.
Windows are intermittent Maurizio. They only open sometimes, and are open least of all when it’s cold and dark and when burning things is most needed. Trust in clean coal.
Yep jason I understand now your brains have sent you divorce papers some time ago. So sad.
That’s an ad-hom! Playing the man and not the ball huh…
So how come the black soot isn’t causing the ice to melt at the Antarctic?