Reuters reports:
A U.S.-led drive to reduce soot and other heat-trapping air pollutants worldwide is less promising than hoped as a new front in the fight against climate change, according to a study published on Monday.
Frustrated by failure to agree a broad international deal to limit global warming, about 30 nations have joined the U.S. initiative to limit short-lived air pollutants as a new way to curb temperature rises, protect health and aid crop growth.
But the report said that extra measures to reduce such pollutants, led by soot and methane, would cut temperature rises by only 0.16 degree Celsius (0.29 Fahrenheit) by 2050, far less than some estimates that the benefits could be 0.5C (0.9F).
The dutch met office determine da while ago that the rise in surface temperatures locally was due to the anti-pollution efforts, whereby with less pollution and sooth more sunlight hit the soil.
Heads i win, tails you loose
Soot reduction decreases the number of deaths, therefore worsening the overpopulation issue. It’ll never be popular. /sarc
Where to start? I thought that burning “natural” stuff was supposedly better, but it’s natural stuff that produces soot. Then I thought the aerosols were supposed to reduce the likelihood or the magnitude of global warming, but now it turns out that soot is a warming forcing. But the US is a tiny factor in soot anyway — most soot is from dirty burning of coal (hello, India and China) or from burning “natural” stuff (the Asian haze).
But the real hoot is this: “… far less than some estimates that the benefits could be 0.5C (0.9F).” Benefit? We don’t know if global warming is more beneficial than harmful, nor do we know that slowing it would be a good thing, nor do we know that we even can do so.