New thought on soot and global warming

In the past year or two, some climate scientists had talked about, as an extreme measure, actually getting soot into the atmosphere as a way of reducing global warming. The thinking was that the fine particles might reflect away sunlight.

Wrong thinking. Instead, the black or near-black soot aerosol particles do what black-colored item normally do: absorb sunlight and heat up.

Reviewing dozens of recent scientific studies, two researchers in the United States calculated that black carbon is the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

The plus side is that soot cycles back out the atmosphere after just a week, rather than the century or so with carbon dioxide. This also is another good reason the hypocrisy of countries pretending to be carbon-neutral when their nation’s corporations ship polluting industries plants to environmentally lax countries needs more negative exposure.

A full 60 percent of the soot, though, comes from either burning forests, or burning biofuels, according to the study’s authors. If the latter is true, I guess biodiesel just got even less green.

There’s a word or two for it, folks. It’s called “drive less.” Or, “conserve fuels.”