Air pollution by coal -fired power stations has negative external effects that damage human health. Carbon emissions of these power plants contribute to global warming. A recent article in The economist Discusses recent acceleration in global warming and suggests that the twin goals of a cleaner air and a cooler planet are possible in conflict:
Evidence against different perpetrators comes from the work that has recently been published in Science. Helge Goessling and his colleagues from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Bremerhaven used satellite data and weather data to show that the earth gradually reflects less sunlight in space in the course of this century than before. 2023 was the smallest year so far. This was apparently due to the lack of cloud covering, especially in the northern middle widths.
Part of this can be due to the new IMO rules [reducing ship engine emissions]But dimming is too strong to be explained alone. Bjorn Samset from Cicero, a Norwegian climate research institute, points to another possibility: the lack of sulfate emissions is not a result of cleaner ships, but of cleaner Chinese coal -fired power stations. Since 2014, China has made progress in reducing sulfur emissions by closing particularly harmful power plants and scrubbing sulfur from the flue gases in others. New data lead to Dr. Samset and colleagues think that cleaning up has a clear effect in the northern Pacific, where cleaner air and fewer clouds will mean more warming.
This graph shows the recent acceleration in global warming:
Some have suggested to use “geo -engineering‘To tackle global warming. A recent article in The guardian Indicates three options:
Stratospheric aerosol -injection:
Aeries release small aeros roll particles that reflect light in the room.
Cirrus Cloud become thinner:
The least understood method, sowing thin cirrus clouds in the upper troposphere With ice cream cores could reduce their lifespan and increase cooling.
Marine Cloud Brightening:
Boats release aeros roll particles that increase the reflectivity of low clouds.
There are substantial political challenges with any geo -engineering project. Some countries can win while others, especially if rain patterns were influenced. Nevertheless, I suspect that geo -engineering will be tried at a certain point in the future, because the world seems to give the goal to prevent global warming by limiting the emission of greenhouse gases.
Keep in mind that we are already doing ‘geo -engineering’ in the sense of artificially changing the world’s climate. The debate is whether we should try this in a constructive way, instead of a destructive way.
Ps. I have always been a moderate issue of the problem of global warming, about halfway between the Doomsters and those who reject the problem as a myth.