It is only 3/5s of white carbon.

Having grown up in California, I often wondered why I had to pay large sums of money to keep my car exhaust "clean" when I would follow diesel trucks and buses belching out this crap! I am happy to hear common sense meeting up with science to say that "Geez, those trucks and buses belching out visible clouds of nastiness are actually the big problem."

NO DUH!

Is is just heartwarming to see that the money we have poured into this group of "scientists" is really starting to pay dividends.

And the ozone article in sideboard is just as thrilling.

Glad to see this is one area where you get what you pay for.

/product however remains imaginary and a consensual dogma.

SlimXx: Oh sure, blame the black carbon, you racist bastards!

Well, it certainly isn't the white carbon!

Myself, I long for the day when our population of sheeple is on foot and unarmed.

/your future

BubbaJones: Having grown up in California, I often wondered why I had to pay large sums of money to keep my car exhaust "clean" when I would follow diesel trucks and buses belching out this crap! I am happy to hear common sense meeting up with science to say that "Geez, those trucks and buses belching out visible clouds of nastiness are actually the big problem."

NO DUH!

There is no such thing as "clean diesel". Just as there is no such thing as "clean coal". These are marketing terms put out there by the oil and coal lobbies to make people think that these industries care about the environment. Except for keeping government regulators off their backs, they don't care. Not in the least. Both fuels produce extremely toxic and polluting by-products as they're burned.

paidhima: snocone: Myself, I long for the day when our population of sheeple is on foot and unarmed.

/your future

I'm sure someone will nibble the hook eventually.

patience, grasshopper

drumdaddyjb: So... who wants to write the letter to China and India to have their citizens cease and desist their shiat burning? Just cc a copy to Europe with the bit about diesel cars.

k thanks.

Don't forget Africa. Got to keep them living in grinding poverty. Ya know, for the good of the planet. We'll let them have solar panels so they can have a radio and listen to how awesome it is to have things like running water, indoor plumbing, paved roads, and air conditioning.

The west is not the problem anymore. We've cleaned up out act. I know people who live only a few miles from coal burning power plants. Not a spec of soot to be found, not a whiff of sulfur in the air. Try doing that In China. You'll need a tape measure to measure how thick the soot gets.

Environmental protection techniques should be shared with these developing countries and their installation encouraged. With all the money we blow on foreign air I would think we could ask they spend a bit on some basic scrubbers for their power plants. Better fireboxes in coal plants not only make for cleaner emissions, they increase efficiency as well. Other technologies both increase efficiency and reduce harmful emissions.

Are they gonna be as clean as the west? No, but they don't have to be as dirty as we were when those technologies didn't exist.

Will politicians thus implement reasonable regulations that weight the costs and benefits? I doubt it.

Fark Me To Tears: There is no such thing as "clean diesel". Just as there is no such thing as "clean coal".

Bull shiat. My family were largely farmers in the past. I was told stories about how the coal power plants used to blacken the fields, reducing crop yield, and stink up the air. Drive by a coal plant today and see if that's still the case

Today those problems no longer exist. As I said before. I know people who live right next to coal power plants and you don't even notice them.

well played, clevermitter!

So when are we going to stop arguing about causes, and start researching, a) results, and b) palliatives?

Somebody above said they'd trade coastline for "increased crop yields and farming in Siberia." That would be nice...if we knew that that was what would happen. There are as many theories to state that the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia would not create arable farmland, but instead the world's largest marsh; the resultant plagues of mosquitoes and other insects would be a disease sump that could make the Black Death and malaria endemic again.

Would there be increased crop yields? Maybe, but where? And for how long? During the last period of global warming, the Medieval Warm Period (~900-1300 AD), there were extended growing seasons and larger crop yields in Northern Europe. There were also record floods and droughts in North America; decades-long El Ninos in South America, and floods and famines along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers in China.

And if there were increased crop yields, that would lead to increased populations globally. We can't feed our populations now. Global warming, we know from the last one, also leads to drought and a need for water rationing. What do we do for warmer areas with less water? What about desertification? And what happens when the warm period ends? Most climatologists are in agreement that warm periods nearly always end in much cooler ones that last much longer.

The Medieval Warm Period became the Little Ice Age (~1330-1850 AD), a 500-year period of blisteringly hot summers and frigid winters that killed millions from starvation, disease and warfare.

But have no thought for the morrow.

TwowheelinTim: Just because the smut isn't belching into the air as it once did doesn't mean it is "clean". They scrub the pollutants out of the air, but they still exist. It's a shell game, now you just don't see it. "clean coal" is a myth. Do a little research before you call bullshiat.

I have and people who say clean coal is a myth are largely "watermellons" and armchair yuppie twits like yourself who have never known and never experienced "dirty" coal. Both my dad and uncle worked in cola plants and coal mines in the past so I have people I can ask directly. Both are amazed at the progress that has been made over the last 30 years and comment how much cleaner and more efficient everything is today.

Is clean coal perfect? No, nobody is making that argument. Is it clean in the sense that it does a small fraction of the pollution that occurred in the past? Absolutely. My church does mission trips to Peru. You see people whose handkerchiefs are black from the soot that they breath in. You don't see that in the US.

Something does not need to be perfect to be "clean". My beddroom is "clean" compared to the garage, but quite dirty compared to a hospital operating room. Look at the coal plants in places like China that lack even basic scrubbers. Then compare that to an average coal plant in the US and say with a straight face that the US plant isn't "clean". You can't and trying to make the argument speaks only to one pursuing political agendas independent of facts. If you want to shiver in the dark and cold, be my guest. I'll take clean coal over no coal thank you very much.

Now, we can argue over solutions that are cleaner than coal, like nuclear. I'm all for the development and mass production of breeder and other types of nuclear reactors to reduce our coal use, but of course the watermellons don't want that either. They think parricide is slaving for 15 hours a day on subsistence farming and dying when we are 47. No thanks.

Once again, standard argument collection; draft 0.0.6 "points" list...

1) The Earth's climate is dictated by many variables, including but not limited to incoming solar radiation, albedo (surface reflectivity), ocean circulation, GHGs (greenhouse gases).
2) Changes in these variables result in changes in the Earth's climate; such changes can either be forcings (initial drivers) or feedbacks (amplifying/dampening responses). Some variables can be both (such as CO2), while others are basically one or other (tropospheric water vapor is essentially only a feedback, solar irradiance only a forcing).
3) GHGs influence the climate by changing the planetary energy balance- short-wave radiation (light) passes through the atmosphere to reach the Earth's surface, where it is absorbed and reradiated as longer wave radiation (infrared); although GHGs are basically transparent to visible light, they are not with respect to IR, absorbing and re-emitting it and thus increasing the Earth's energy balance.
4) Changes in the Earth's energy balance will result in a warming or cooling to a new equilibrium. The presence of GHGs and the resultant increase in Earth's energy balance, including positive and negative feedbacks, increased the Earth's globally averaged temperature by ~33K.
5) Human activities such as fossil fuel combustion and land use have increased the concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere well outside the bounds of natural variability for at least the last 800,000 and likely the last several million years, necessitating a warming to a higher equilibrium in the absence of some mitigating factor.
6) How the climate system (including feedbacks) responds to changes in forcings and feedbacks can be constrained by examining paleoclimatic (from the Earth's history), observational, and physics-based modeling evidence. This evidence provides a basis for "fingerprints" of various perturbations to the climate system.
7) Observed phenomena such as changes in/to: the surface temperature over the last century, temperature trends in different layers of the atmosphere, outgoing and incoming radiation, expansion of the tropics, etc. are consistent with the "fingerprint" of enhanced greenhouse warming and stratospheric ozone depletion in addition to natural fluctuations in solar, volcanic, ocean/atmosphere oscillatory activity.
8) Conversely changes in non-anthropogenic GHG forcings/ozone depleting substances alone (e.g. solar irradiance, volcanism, ocean/atmosphere oscillations, etc.) are insufficient to explain observed phenomena.
9) Paleoclimatic, observational, and physics-based modeling evidence necessitate further warming to a higher equilibrium, with concomitant changes in climatic norms like globally averaged surface temperature, precipitation patterns, sea level, etc. to which human civilization is accustomed.
10) While these changes will not be uniformly negative (e.g. high latitude NH countries like the China, Russia, Canada, the US may see an initial boost in crop productivity), the balance of evidence suggests that warming beyond 2°C will result in net negative consequences for humanity.
11) Unchecked emissions growth is capable of driving a warming of ~ 6°C in a century or two, a similar temperature change from the warmth of an interglacial to the depths of an ice age but an order or two of magnitude more rapidly.
12) Due to the immense atmospheric lifetime of CO2, emissions trajectory policies decided now matter in determining impacts experienced not just over the next few decades, but in the coming centuries and millennia.
13) Although climate is dynamic, in the geologic past changes similar to those expected under unchecked emissions growth (in magnitude and rate of change) have resulted in mass extinction events.
14) Mitigation of emissions to a stabilization level of ~450 ppm CO2 or lower is technologically possible and economically feasible (i.e. will cost growth of global GDP equivalent or less than the cost of unchecked emissions growth).

Plus, for anyone who wants to keep score in the thread:

Counterarguing is an often effective resistance strategy that involves direct rebuttal of message arguments (Abelson, 1959; Buller, 1986; Cameron & Jacks, 1999; Eagly & Chaiken, 1995; Festinger, 1957; Festinger & Maccoby, 1964; Jacks & Devine, 2000; McGuire, 1964; Sherif, Sherif, & Nebergall, 1965; Wright, 1975; Zuwerink & Devine, 1996). Attitude bolstering, in contrast, involves support arguing- that is, generating thoughts that are consistent with and supportive of one's original attitude without directly refuting message arguments (Abelson, 1959; Cameron & Jacks, 1999; Festinger, 1957; McGuire, 1964; Sherman & Gorkin, 1980). Message distortion involves selectively processing or understanding a persuasive message in a way that favors one's original attitude (Cooper & Jahoda, 1947; Festinger, 1957; Kunda, 1990; Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979; Pomerantz, Chaiken, & Tordesillas, 1995). Social validation involves resisting the message by bringing to mind important others who share one's original attitude (Festinger, 1950, 1954, 1957; Festinger, Gerard, Hymovitch, Kelley, & Raven, 1952). Source derogation involves insulting the source, dismissing his or her expertise or trustworthiness, or otherwise rejecting his or her validity (Buller, 1986; Festinger, 1957; Festinger & Maccoby, 1964; Wright, 1975). Social validation and source derogation are responses that do not require message scrutiny, although both are likely to be coded as unfavorable thoughts in the general cognitive response approach. Negative affect involves responding to the persuasive attempt by getting angry, irritated, or upset (Abelson & Miller, 1967; Jacks & Devine, 2000; Janis & Terwilliger, 1962; Sherif et al., 1965; Zuwerink & Devine, 1996). Finally, selective exposure involves resisting persuasion by leaving the situation or actively tuning out the persuasive message (e.g., Brock & Balloun, 1967; Frey, 1986; Kleinhesselink & Edwards, 1975). - (doi:10.1207/S15324834BASP2502_5)

Oh, and the pretty picture for the scorekeeping crowd.

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