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.
The researchers from Boston and Harvard Universities and Finland's University of Turku said pollution, and specifically sulphur emissions, from coal-fueled growth in Asia was responsible for the cooling effect.
Sulphur allows water drops or aerosols to form, creating hazy clouds which reflect sunlight back into space.
"Anthropogenic activities that warm and cool the planet largely cancel after 1998, which allows natural variables to play a more significant role," the paper said.
Natural cooling effects included a declining solar cycle after 2002, meaning the sun's output fell.
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.
"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.
Now it is global cooling to be expected. But motherfuckers responsible for this are still narrow-eyed. I am sure that our Nobel price winner, world peace leader will make the right choice - nuke this bastards.
Hmm, if this were true, there should have been complaints about acid rain due to the increased sulphur. It seems to me that the Global Warming folks are trying to explain why the planet has cooled despite their pet theory about CO2 being a major cause of warming not matching observations (e.g. despite increased CO2 emissions, the planet has apparently cooled). So, they blame sulphur/aerosols. Of course, another option is that perhaps CO2 is not a major contributor to global warming and that temperature increases from the 1970's to 1998 might be due to ocean oscillations and solar activity, both of which are a better match to explain both recent temperature increases and recent cooling.
Despite the AGW proponent's wishes, the ice core data that has been gathered throughout the years actually shows that CO2 rise follows temperature rise. No matter how hard they try and obfuscate or twist this truth, they will never get around the fact that temp rise causes CO2 rise.
So the report is saying... if China slows down burning coals, green gas to sulphur ratio will increase and consequently global surface warming? if China burns more coals, more cooling? WTF
Well doesn't feel like it - it's fucking sweltering in Shanghai right now. The Interfoto exhibition starts tomorrow - hope those cheap bastards have good air con inside the hall LOL
I studied for 4 years, Environmental Engineering and the only thing I can say that climate prediction is like predicting the coffee grounds. A huge number of factors contribute to climate change and it seems to me that even today we are not aware of many aspects of this problem. One thing is certain, that the main factor influencing our climate is the sun and the "blinding" of our star can definitely affect the cooling. Until now, scientists are arguing over what caused Little Ice Age in the years 1300 to 1950. We are not able to predict the precise weather forecasts for the months ahead ...