Vocal Voices

This article is interesting -

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... tures.html

It suggests that the burning of fossil fuels does not cause global warming, but actually helps to cool it.

What do you think?.

Typical of the DM with the first part of the headline, up to the colon: "Forget global warming, pollution can actually COOL the planet"

Unfortunately I can point to hundreds, thousands, of posters on various blogs and comments pages who will take that as gospel and nothing will deflect them from that belief. They will not even bother with the article and even less with the science.

The article actually states that sulphur aerosols are short lived - 1 to 2 years - whereas CO2 is long lived - centuries. All of which is true. It also states that the aerosol effect is a bit like the Curate's egg - good in parts. In addition it goes on to confirm that the overall effect is still one of "global" warming, in the long term.

What it does not say is that "pollution" is good. It also forgets to mention that sulphur aerosols oxidise over time to become sulphur trioxide (SO3) and that when this mixes with water (H20) it becomes sulphuric acid (H2SO4) or acid rain. Acid rain kills plants directly by burning their tissues, it also drops the pH of the soil to levels where nutrients cannot be absorbed and so plants do not grow. It omits all the bad news about the "good" news.

There was a time when such articles would have had me frothing at the mouth, but I do not care much any more. Why? Well. my children and their generation will be the first to live through the effects of what we are doing, and have done, and yet for some reason many of them in general do not appear to be interested. They appear to want to follow us without learning any lessons.

I will be long gone before any really catastrophic events occur, but they will live with them one after another.