Soot - Can We Get Rid of It and Help Stop Global Warming?

I'm on all manner of RSS/Syndication feeds, from science to copyright to video to politics - a list that I've cultivated over the past few years to get rid of the huge numbers of email lists I used to be on and the number of Usenet News groups I read from time to time.

Every now and then something really thought provoking shows up - and today is one of those days.

The subject is soot; the stuff that is basically carbon that has not been properly burned and turned into carbon dioxide in all the various ways we burn things these days.

The article in question is from Wired.com reporting on a simulation, the results of which are published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres.

The bottom line on this simulation is that elimination of soot could reverse global warming in as little as 10 years, compared to much longer timelines for reduction in CO2 emissions, typically measured in hundreds of years. This is because soot only sticks around for a few weeks whereas CO2 stays in the atmosphere (and continues to affect global warming) for 30 to 50 years.

Soot is what I find on my car in the morning here in Pitt Meadows - downwind from Vancouver much of the time. I'm at the beginning of what is called the Fraser Valley air shed - that funnel-shaped physical layout of mountains/hills on either side of the valley that keeps the air from upwind/Vancouver intact as it carries its load of soot and other noxious contaminants up the valley.

Soot is what coats glaciers and causes the sun to warm the snow more, melting it and decreasing the size of them over time. This is known as "lowering the albedo" or lowering the reflectivity.

The dramatic lowering of the amount of soot our civilization creates could help reverse the temperature climb we're seeing and if nothing else, extend the time we have to do other things to reduce and finally correct the global warming.

What can you do? Tell your congress-critter, MLA, MP, local government and anyone else about this study - and get them to start their process of dealing with the soot that the likes of poorly tuned diesel engines like big trucks and railway/generation stations, etc.

You can also support efforts to control soot at the smoke stack of industry - a very easy task that simply has to be done.

And you can support anyone who helps change third-world burning habits away from things like open fires and burning dung to properly constructed and equipped stoves and burners that lower or eliminate soot.

This is not hard, it just needs to be recognized as a very inexpensive way of helping with the overall problem

richard