Soot, also known as black carbon, is the second-leading cause of global warming after carbon dioxide, and it’s totally preventable. We already have the technology to avoid producing it; it’s just a matter of using it.
The problem is that this soot is also created in developing countries from cooking and rudimentary heating systems (like people burning coal in their homes) and there is no real way to stop that without a replacement form of energy.
Black carbon/soot has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than the usual estimates, according to the journal Nature Geoscience (from March 2008).
Black carbon produces particulates, a serious form of pollution. Black carbon pollution is a major player in global warming. What causes it? Home cooking fires, and also burning wood and coal. Anything that produces soot, including diesel exhaust.
According to the Nature Geoscience paper:
“Between 25 and 35 percent of black carbon in the global atmosphere comes from China and India, emitted from the burning of wood and cow dung in household cooking and through the use of coal to heat homes. Countries in Europe and elsewhere that rely heavily on diesel fuel for transportation also contribute large amounts.”
An Earthjustice video urges U.S. leadership at Arctic summit
Soot, aka Black Carbon, also causes lung cancer. It contributes to 1.6 million deaths per year. According to the Guardian,
“Around 400,000 people are estimated to die each year due to inhaling soot particles, particularly because of indoor cooking on wood and dung stoves in developing countries. These deaths are mainly among women and children.”
Why isn’t all this a pandemic to the WHO? This is something hardly anyone is talking about. More and more I think that pollution, soot, greenhouse gas emissions, etc., should be regulated by the EPA, the WHO, and other health organizations. This is killing people. It’s also another reason (besides Radon) why people who have never smoked get lung cancer.
Interestingly, Senators who are usually far apart on environmental issues agreed on Earth Day that the EPA should look at ways to control a dangerous pollutant that kills millions worldwide and accelerates global warming, particularly in the Arctic.
Senators John Kerry (D-MA), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Tom Carper (D-DE) and Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican known as the Senate’s chief global warming skeptic, introduced a bill requiring the EPA to study black carbon pollution and within a year come up with solutions for reducing emissions.
The bill is S. 849: A bill to require the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a study on black carbon emissions.
Black carbon consists of microscopic airborne particles of soot that come from diesel engines and industrial smokestacks in the developed world and residential cooking and heating stoves in the developing world. Breathing black carbon causes serious respiratory illness responsible for 1.6 million deaths a year, and when it falls on ice or snow in the Arctic, it causes it to melt faster. Since black carbon stays in the atmosphere only a short time, fast action to control it will buy time for addressing the larger issue of carbon dioxide, the chief cause of global warming.
The polluting effects of cooking using biomass like wood or cow dung in south Asia are illustrated through a measurement of aerosol optical depth, a way of measuring the quantity of pollutants in the air by the relative ability of light to penetrate through them. This representation shows reconstructed levels of pollution from 2004 and 2005. Credit: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego
“The science emphatically proves that black carbon has a larger impact on climate change than was previously understood and we can’t escape reality,” Sen. Kerry said in a press release.
See more information at The Guardian.
Erika Rosenthal, an Earthjustice attorney who is attending this week’s Indigenous People’s Summit on Climate Change in Alaska, where black carbon is on the agenda, called the bill a welcome first step.
“It’s important that we continue reducing black carbon emissions at home, and help developing countries transition to cleaner fuels, engines, and cookstoves,” said Rosenthal. “Secretary Clinton’s delegation in Norway must show global leadership for an action plan that immediately reduces black carbon from diesel engines, agricultural burning and marine vessels. These technologies are already available. Now we need the political will and financial support to put them in place as soon as possible.”
This black carbon is also created by burning wood and coal.
“The Obama administration has made a good start at home by increasing funding to clean up dirty diesel engines, but much more must be done – and quickly,” Rosenthal added. The U.S. must transition to using shore power for ships at berth; increasing transportation efficiency through retrofits and turnover of pre-1994 trucks and ocean-going vessel speed reduction; heavy-duty vehicle emission reductions; and the adoption of special black carbon mitigation initiatives for the American Arctic.”
Some info in this article is from Earth Justice
The bill does include Jim Inhofe as a co-sponsor, which really makes me wonder what he is up to. He has called global warming a “hoax”. You can read about this bill here.
It’s important to not only blame people in “developing countries” for black carbon. In my area of central Minnesota, “Particulates” according to my daily newspaper, is the main cause of our regular, ongoing pollution. That’s probably because there is a coal burning plant within 20 miles of where I live. No matter how many “scrubbers” they put on coal plants, burning coal still produces dangerous levels of pollution.
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