SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the overcast-with-a-chance-of-light-wood dept.
The pre-industrial atmosphere contained more particles, and so brighter clouds, than we previously thought. This is the latest finding of the CLOUD experiment, a collaboration between around 80 scientists at the CERN particle physics lab near Geneva. It changes our understanding of what was in the atmosphere before humans began adding pollution – and what it might be like again in the future.
Most cloud droplets need tiny airborne particles to act as "seeds" for their formation and growth. If a cloud has more of these seeds, and therefore more droplets, it will appear brighter and reflect away more sunlight from the Earth's surface. This in turn can cool the climate. Therefore understanding the number and size of particles in the atmosphere is vital to predicting not only how bright and reflective the planet's clouds are, but what global temperatures will be.
...
The CLOUD experiment at CERN also recently discovered that gases emitted by trees can stick together to make new seeds for clouds in the atmosphere – without needing any help from other pollutants as was previously thought. Scientists had thought that the cloud seeds needed sulphuric acid (often mixed with other compounds) or iodine molecules to stick together to initiate the process.In our new follow-up study, published in PNAS, we worked with other CLOUD scientists to simulate this process in the atmosphere. Our work suggests that even today trees produce a large fraction of cloud seeds over the cleanest forested parts of the world.
More trees means more clouds, which means cooler Earth.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @11:46PM
Does not really mater which side you end up on. Pollution is not good. Pollution in pure economic terms is waste, waste costs you money. Pollution in metaphysical terms messes you up. It is not good for you as a human.
I think they had it right in the 70s. Give a hoot dont pollute. Nice and simple.
It is plainly obvious 2 different groups have hijacked the whole thing to make money from the arbitrage. Getting rid of pollution means creating better things. That is hard and costs time and money. It is easier to 'trade it away' and 'make a market for pollution'. Everyone wanted to get rid of coal. It was not going anywhere. Right up until the point the bottom fell out of the cost for natural gas. That alone did more to curb air pollution than anything. However, it may have ended up creating a whole new type of pollution. You can use laws to help curb pollution but it is only a short term stop gap. Because people will figure ways around the new laws. There is money to be made.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday October 12 2016, @02:44AM
I think they had it right in the 70s. Give a hoot dont pollute. Nice and simple."
This is all true but what you seem to have missed is that the AGW cultists have *redefined* pollution. They're calling CO2 pollution now, even though it's a normal part of the atmosphere that's already been there, and is therefore NOT pollution in any rational sense.
I'm not joking when I call them cultists, they have all the trappings of one, including the habit of redefining words whenever convenient, with little or no regard to their actual meaning.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?