Cleaner Air Creates Global Warming
THE BBC brings news that the dirtier the air, the cooler the planet.
How sunny do you want it?
Since the 1970s, European temperatures have risen by about half-a-degree Celsius per decade. This warming rate is faster than the global mean change (roughly equal to 0.18C per decade) and the trend averaged over all the Earth’s land (roughly equal to 0.27C per decade) during the same period.
The regional climate models used by scientists have failed to simulate the European experience, say Vautard and colleagues; and they point to legislation that has cleaned up Europe’s air as the probable cause.
This has limited the presence of the tiny particles, or aerosols, in the atmosphere which help trigger the low-visibility phenomena. With fewer fogs, mists and haze, more of the Sun’s energy has been reaching the surface, leading to a rise a rise in temperatures, they tell Nature Geoscience.
The team’s analysis suggests the clearer air’s contribution to the background warming trend may have been about 10-20% across Europe as a whole; and in Eastern Europe specifically, it may have been as much as 50%.
Winters were colder before the EU.
Posted: 21st, January 2009 | In: Media Comments (4) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
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January 22nd, 2009 at 9:30 am
Blatantly not ironing is better. You need electricity to use an iron.
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:01 am
Ok, I’ll be environmentally freindly and not dust.
Now can someone somewhere say that not ironing is better for the planet?
January 21st, 2009 at 3:48 pm
Eventually, barring an energy breakthrough, they WILL probably have to open up the mines again. The cheap Polish coal is no longer cheap, so homegrown nutty slack will be just as good. These mines, of course, will be private and almost unregulated. It will be decades after they re-open that another NCB emerges. I hope Maggie T realises this likelihood before she shuffles off this mortal coil. Yes, I am bitter much.
As to falling temperatures, we’re British. We’ve been cold before. We managed. We’ll do it again.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Open up the mines! Bring back the coal fire! When I was a lad the fog in winter was so bad you couldn’t see your hand behind your back. It never did us any harm, we thrived on it. Mind you both my parents worked in the local sanitorium. By coincidence my dad used to stoke the boiler.