Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pollution. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Athmospheric Pollution Solution

I watched again the Nova program on solar dimming that came out last year. As usual I have a few issues with their conclusions, but what else is new.

What has been recognized is that we are putting a great deal of fine particulate in the atmosphere. In fact, it is huge and the effect is global in extent rather than a local nuisance. Although the interpretation proffered is that this actually lowers global temperatures, I beg to differ. This actually turns the atmosphere into a better heat sink. There are simply more opportunities to capture a photon.

Remember that a thunder cloud passing overhead will briefly cool of the surface. Yet that same thundercloud has absorbed vast amounts of solar energy that it is transporting back up into the upper atmosphere to release as condensation energy. Which do you think is greater?

They quote the one degree widening of the diurnal temperature range during the 9/11 grounding as evidence, yet this supports my proposition far better. The loss of water vapor in the high atmosphere reduced its moderating effect on the diurnal temperature spread.

This implies that a large portion of global warming may be entirely due to the unwelcome improved capacity of the atmosphere to retain solar energy. This is primarily caused by industrial smokestack pollution and slash and burn agriculture. Remember, we are concerned about particulates here, although we want to control the noxious chemicals as well.

We have already demonstrated that the conversion of slash and burn over to sustaining Terra Preta corn biochar culture can essentially resolve that part of the problem. This is true even if we use the corn stack field system that created the original soils. Only a small amount of particulate will actually escape into the atmosphere.

That only leaves us with the industrial smokestack which I will save for a later post. That problem has been partially solved and can be easily be well and cheaply solved.