Hillary Clinton : Cut soot, cut warming

Hillary Clinton: Cut soot, cut warming

February 16th, 2012, 6:04 pm posted by

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announces new international climate initiative Thursday in Washington, D.C. Photo by Charles Dharapak, the Associated Press.

A new international initiative that seeks to reduce the potential effects of global warming by cutting soot and other short-lived pollutants was announced Thursday by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

And the idea is largely based on the work of a UC San Diego climate scientist.

Reducing common pollutants such as soot from diesel exhaust or methane from natural gas fields could be a fast way to curb the warming climate scientists expect in coming decades. Clintons initiative would cut these pollutants, as well as ground-level ozone; environmental mini! sters fr om five other nations have signed on.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a climate and atmospheric scientist at UC San Diegos Scripps Institution of Oceanography, published work three years ago showing that enough greenhouse gas mainly carbon dioxide has been pumped into the atmosphere to raise Earths global average temperature by two degrees over the next 50 years.

Scientists say the two-degree threshold is enough to cause serious effects worldwide.

But carbon dioxide, the main human-emitted gas that is driving climate change, can last centuries. While cutting carbon dioxide is important, the results would be slow in coming, Ramanathan said.

Cutting pollutants such as soot, also called black carbon, could bring quicker results.

I suggested that one way to keep the temperature warming below two degrees is to cut these short-lived pollutants, because their lifetime is anywhere between a week for black carbon to 10 years for methane gas, he said.

Replacing old-fashioned cooking stoves in places like rural India could help cut soot, and perhaps curb the effects of global warming. Photo courtesy UC San Diego.

And California is a leader in controlling such pollutants, Ramanathan said. The same methods could help control soot from residential cooking using coal in places like China, or from the use of brick kilns in India.

I keep saying, the world has to come to California to find out how we did it, Ramanathan said. We dont have to invent new technologies. Its a question of exporting and sharing knowledge.

And he sees a side benefit: rapid reductions in warming might persuade climate science critics of the reality behind th! e data s upporting a strong, global scientific consensus.

This is something they will get to see, Ramanathan said. These scientists are not just talking about fictitious things.

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