Nick Palmer wrote:
Ironically, although I have never seen it mentioned by anyone other
than me, the acid/particulate pollution, and therefore cooling
effect, from the much larger amount of coal burnt then may have
masked the warming effect from the increasing CO2.
As far as I know, far more coal is being burned now than at any
previous time in history. U.S. consumption has increased from 560
million short tons in 1950, to 1,029 tons in 1990, to 1,133 million
tons in 2005. See:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/pages/sec7_5.pdf
There are more scrubbers in the U.S., Japan and Europe than there
used to be, so it may be that fewer particles are released into the
atmosphere, but I doubt it. China now burns more coal than the U.S.,
and many of their plants, houses and factories have no scrubbers. For
the past few months the coal pollution from China and the dust from
the expanding Gobi desert has blanketed southern Honshu in Japan. I
have recent photos from Yamaguchi and Hiroshima showing a yellow
pallor over everything. Very futuristic and science fiction, like the
smoke from the forest fires 200 miles south of Atlanta that have
blanketed the city lately. I hope this scares the hell out of everyone.
In the U.S., particulates from coal kill roughly 20,000 people per
year. In other words, the death toll is equivalent to the Twin Towers
attack every two months, but no one in power cares or does anything
about it because we are used to it, and because most of the victims
who live downwind of the plants are poor, elderly or otherwise
marginalized, and they do not vote.
For more information on how this might turn out, see the book by
Jared Diamond, "Collapse."
- Jed
