Global Warming Updat…
Global Warming Update:
Transcript:
“Considerettes” on the road: I’m here in a Rhode Island pizza place eating my sub reading the Boston Herald and I come across this little brief article:
Acid rain, the pollutant blamed for killing fish and damaging forests, has a beneficial effect of reducing emissions of methane, thought to be responsible for about a fifth of today’s enhanced global warming effect, researchers say.
“Quite rightly, most attention has been given to the negative aspects of pollution, but if we want to understand all of Earth’s complexities, and make better predictions of future climate, we also need to understand the ‘good side’ to these problems,” said lead researcher Dr. Vincent Gauci, of the Open University in Britian.
So it’s not quite as simple as they like to make it sound. If we were to enact rules to get rid of acid rain, we would have more warming. But of course, it would be presented as though man is still producing more greenhouse gases, when in effect it’s possible that some effect in one place is having a negative effect elsewhere. Push on one side, you get a change on the other side. It’s not as simple, and we can’t possibly be setting public policy, enacting radical changes to our economy, based on the current science. It just isn’t responsible to do that. So just keep that in mind.
The original BBC article is here, with more details, including this quote:
The researchers used a computer model of their findings to estimate the global effect of sulphate depositions from 1960 to 2080.
They discovered that by 2030, levels of sulphur pollution may be sufficient to reduce methane emissions by 15% of the total amount of wetland emissions.
“The model shows that acid rain actually reduces emission to below pre-industrial levels,” said Dr Gauci. “This shows that at low levels, acid rain is not harming the ecosystem.
“Inadvertently, it could in fact be quite good.”
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