Pollution is terrible! No wait, pollution prevents global warming! Yay pollution!
Smoke belching from Asia's rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998 because of sulphur's cooling effect, even though greenhouse gas emissions soared, a U.S. study said on Monday.The paper raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate change when emerging economies eventually crack down on pollution.
World temperatures did not rise from 1998 to 2008, while manmade emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel grew by nearly a third, various data show.
But... why would emerging economies "eventually crack down on pollution" when that pollution is the only thing standing between humanity and GLOBAL WARMING? Shouldn't the anti-warmists now be promoting the use of fossil fuels to protect our fragile environment?
The study said that the halt in warming had fueled doubts about anthropogenic climate change, where scientists say manmade greenhouse gas emissions are heating the Earth.
There was doubt because... y'know... there wasn't any warming.
"It has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008," said the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States.
But now it's completely clear!
Sulphur aerosols may remain in the atmosphere for several years, meaning their cooling effect will gradually abate once smokestack industries clean up.
Which they'll do why? Coal is cheap, plentiful, and it protects us from global warming! All hail coal!
Other climate scientists broadly supported Monday's study, stressing that over longer time periods rising greenhouse gas emissions would over-ride cooling factors."Long term warming will continue unless emissions are reduced," said Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring at Britain's Met Office.
Long term? Wasn't global warming supposed to heat up the earth by like one degree over the next century? If we're talking about longer term than that, it's hard to be worried. Burn more coal.
(HT: NC, RC.)
