Green Options » black carbon

Limiting Black Soot and Ozone – Buying Time against Climate Change

Michael Ricciardi — Sat, 30 May 2009 01:43:56 +0000

According to the journal Nature Geosciences, “increasing concentrations of black carbon have substantially contributed to rapid Arctic warming during the past three decades.”

A paper from that journal, “Climate response to regional radiative forcing during the twentieth century,” was authored by climate researchers Drew Shindell, at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Greg Faluvegi of Columbia University. Shindell, Faluvegi, and many other climate scientists believe that limiting black carbon sources may “buy the world some time” in the race to control climate change as richer nations develop their climate change policies and begin taking the slow steps towards overhauling their carbon heavy energy sources.

The researchers assert that aerosols are responsible for “half or more” of Arctic warming. Unexpectedly, their paper’s claims and recommendations sparked a flurry of critical emails, perhaps due to confusion over the atmospheric roles of different aerosols.

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Black Soot! Time for a Fair Discussion

Dr Vandana Prakash — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 14:07:33 +0000

A recent NY Times articles brings to fore the contribution of Soot, also known as Black Carbon, to the issue of global warming. And how efforts are underway to reign in the global warming by replacing the mud-stoves in villages of India! On the Earth day, a legislation was introduced in US Senate for the EPA to assess the options for reducing the black carbon pollution.

Picture: Traditional Peruvian Wood-burning Mud-Stove

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Black Carbon Reductions Could Reverse Arctic Warming Within Weeks

Bryan Nelson — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 01:45:04 +0000

A new study from the journal Nature Geoscience has found that 50% of the total temperature increases in the Arctic over the last century have been due to black carbon, a substance that only stays in the atmosphere for several days to weeks.

This means that if black carbon emissions were immediately halted, it may only take a few weeks for warming trends to reverse by half.

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Small Business Wins Grant for Green Fast Food

Tina Casey — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:51:08 +0000

If good things come in small packages, then a $70,000 small-business grant from the U.S. EPA could rock the fast food world. The pea sized grant will go to develop a low cost pollution control retrofit for commercial underfired charbroilers like the one at your local burger joint. Innova Tech, the company that won the grant, is developing an energy efficient system that combines a filter, vapor condenser, and continuous grease removal system. If the technology proves successful, it could provide a key to reducing the impact of commercial cookeries on rapid glacier melt.

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NASA Says Cut in Soot Emissions Would Slash Global Warming

Andrew Williams — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 14:29:52 +0000

Nasa scientists have told government’s that a simple cut in worldwide emissions of soot could lead to a dramatic reduction in the effects of global warming, as well as preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths from air pollution.

Soot contains black carbon, thought to be the second largest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide. Whilst airborne, it it spread around the globe by wind, heating the atmosphere by absorbing and releasing warmth from the sun’s rays. When it falls to the surface it also darkens snow and ice in polar regions or high mountain ranges, further reducing the Earth’s ability to reflect solar radiation.

Cutting soot emissions has a virtually instantaneous effect since it disappears rapidly from the earth’s atmosphere, unlike CO2, which can linger for hundreds of years.

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