Pollution controls caused Arctic ice melt: NASA

posted at 12:18 pm on April 9, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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People have blamed the retreat of ice in the Arctic on carbon-dioxide driven global warming.  However, new research at NASA suggests that environmental intervention in the 1970s could bear most of the blame.  The elimination of aerosol particle emissions have removed a cooling element for the northern hemisphere, which has reduced a natural balance in the climate on the effect of human activities:

New research from NASA suggests that the Arctic warming trend seen in recent decades has indeed resulted from human activities: but not, as is widely assumed at present, those leading to carbon dioxide emissions. Rather, Arctic warming has been caused in large part by laws introduced to improve air quality and fight acid rain.

Dr Drew Shindell of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies has led a new study which indicates that much of the general upward trend in temperatures since the 1970s – particularly in the Arctic – may have resulted from changes in levels of solid “aerosol” particles in the atmosphere, rather than elevated CO2. Arctic temperatures are of particular concern to those worried about the effects of global warming, as a melting of the ice cap could lead to disastrous rises in sea level – of a sort which might burst the Thames Barrier and flood London, for instance.

Shindell’s research indicates that, ironically, much of the rise in polar temperature seen over the last few decades may have resulted from US and European restrictions on sulphur emissions. According to NASA:

Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50 percent. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates.

On NASA’s site, Shindell continues:

In the modeling experiment, Shindell and colleagues compiled detailed, quantitative information about the relative roles of various components of the climate system, such as solar variations, volcanic events, and changes in greenhouse gas levels. They then ran through various scenarios of how temperatures would change as the levels of ozone and aerosols — including sulfates and black carbon — varied in different regions of the world. Finally, they teased out the amount of warming that could be attributed to different climate variables. Aerosols loomed large.

The regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest real-world temperature increases since 1976. The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures increase by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, where aerosols play less of a role, the surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F).

That makes sense, Shindell explained, because of the Arctic’s proximity to North America and Europe. The two highly industrialized regions have produced most of the world’s aerosol emissions over the last century, and some of those aerosols drift northward and collect in the Arctic. Precipitation, which normally flushes aerosols out of the atmosphere, is minimal there, so the particles remain in the air longer and have a stronger impact than in other parts of the world.

Now we have a counterargument to cap-and-trade!  Rather than pursue ridiculous and economically disastrous emission controls on naturally-occurring carbon dioxide, we can simply stop imposing aerosol controls.  That would cost less and have more impact on the problem that climate-change activists claim to want to solve.

However, there are two things wrong with that argument.  First, the modeling is as much unproven as is the CO2-climate-change models are.  The latter completely missed the cooling trend of the last few years, which calls into question their entire premise.  Until the modeling proves itself, the science remains unsettled — as it must for people attempting to extrapolate the future by looking at only the last few hundred years on a planet billions of years old.

Second, and probably more important, most of the activists are less concerned about actual climate change than they are about having an excuse to nationalize energy production, along with everything else.  They stopped listening to “science” a long time ago, as soon as they heard enough to justify confiscatory government policies, and have tried to quash all other lines of inquiry with the same enthusiasm as the medieval Inquisitions, and with the same motivation — power.  Don’t expect them to listen to NASA when the agency refutes part of their argument now.

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