Pollution from leaded gasoline might have reduced the impact of greenhouse gases, study says
Before you think we've gone crazy, let's make clear that this is a post about a serious report published in Nature Geoscience. According to this report, lead that was expelled to the atmosphere through exhaust gases stimulated the growth of clouds. Larger clouds imply less solar radiation, which has a definitive cool effect. Investigators from Switzerland, Germany and the U.S. "captured" clouds on some mountains and compared them to artificial ones created in laboratories. Their conclusion: if the air has some lead suspended in it, temperature and humidity didn't pay as significant a role in cloud formation.
What's interesting is that their models show that between 1970 and 1980, before unleaded gasoline became common, most dust on the Earth's suface had lead particles in it. This might have helped more clouds get created, and that reduced the impact of greenhouse gases accumulation in the atmosphere. Now that the lead content in our air is lower, temperatures rise. However, these investigators aren't saying that we should pump lead in our atmosphere - it is toxic, after all - just that when it was there, it helped keep temperatures a bit more stable.
[Source: Nôtre Planete (via Le Blog Auto)]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
required 9:06PM (5/22/2009)
Weird. On a somewhat related note, nearly everyone I've ever known has pencil lead stuck somewhere in the palm of their hand. Newer people have graphite though.
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Trev 2:37PM (5/23/2009)
Pencils never actually contained lead in them.
Richard in FLA 9:19PM (5/22/2009)
So as temperatures were lower this winter than last year, would that have meant that if we had "leaded" air it would have been even colder? Then the "man made" Global warming point would have been mute?Chief Inspector Jacques Clouseau says "Bery interesting..."
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MIke!!ekiM 12:35PM (5/23/2009)
Global Warming has been proven by a massive amount of world wide data.
Richard in FLA 1:21PM (5/23/2009)
You need to stop watching CNN and watch other networks that report otherwise. "Man Made" global warming HAS NOT been proven. In fact, there's overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Despite this, I think we should clean up our world. I believe in being green, but I don't buy the taxing of our future away to Obamamites.
tekd 2:41PM (5/23/2009)
There is no overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and the fuel industry's own scientists came to the conclusion that man-made global warming was genuine decades ago. And this isn't some conspiracy theory, they found out what their scientists had found then began the giant PR push to seed the idea that their own science was dubious:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/04/climate-lobbying-group-ignored-its-own-science-advisors.ars
Just to make this clear, FUEL INDUSTRY SPONSORED STUDIES showed that the evidence existed for man-made global warming, which the industry then covered up and claimed was dubious.
Seriously, quit reciting nonsensical political crap about contrary evidence. All the actual scientific data point to us having an effect. You might as well believe that smog can't be man-made either. Or go drink unfiltered water with factory runoff in it.
And even if you really did believe that global warming is some cyclical phenomena, is your plan to just sit around and go extinct? Meteors hitting the earth is also a natural phenomena that occurs once in a while, but that doesn't mean you should sit around and let it annihilate us.
NeilBlanchard 7:32AM (5/23/2009)
Hi,
This has been known for a while: smog-type pollution blocks the sun; but that doesn't meant that we'd be better off! The smoke from big fires also blocks the sun -- but the released carbon starts to amplify/accelerate the global climate change. Ditto for the melting tundra releasing methane -- this will greatly accelerate the changes!
And folks, we are experiencing Global Climate Change (or as someone called it "Global Climate Weirdness") -- so while the *average* temperatures are going up (in many places and overall), some places will get cooler, and the weather patterns shift around. The new normal is different than it was, and the extremes are a little more extreme. If the Greenland ice sheet melts enough to stop the Gulf Stream current, then England will go into an ice age pretty rapidly!
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NeilBlanchard 7:34AM (5/23/2009)
The other main thing to remember is weather |= climate.
Sincerely, Neil
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Kumar 7:54AM (5/23/2009)
So basically, when the artificial clouds induced by lead in gasoline dropped, the artificial clouds produced by the increased air traffic over the decades took up the slack.
Very cool documentary on PBS or Disco channel (I can't remember which) on the drastic increase in sunlight for the few days after 9/11 that air traffic was grounded.
I, for one, enjoyed what I knew would probably be my only contrail-free sunset.
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RPM 2:29AM (5/24/2009)
"I, for one, enjoyed what I knew would probably be my only contrail-free sunset."
Well I'm glad you were able to bask in the sun and enjoy yourself ..while millions of others in the USA were morning the tragic loss of over 3000 lives due to terrorists attacking our great country.
What a tool.
biomi 6:20PM (5/24/2009)
That was Nova "Dimming the Sun".
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sun/
BoneHeadOtto 9:20AM (5/23/2009)
cool, so we cool the atmosphere by making more and larger clouds. So does this have any impact on fresh water supply?
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Herm 1:35PM (5/23/2009)
there is no "wierdness" about climate change.. its all natural and it changes all the time.. not man made at all. CO2 concentrations lag temperature changes, thus it is higher temperatures that create higher CO2 levels in the air. The current solar minimun will have a big effect on climate.
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meme 4:18PM (5/23/2009)
You're absolutely right that climate changes all the time... but almost never this fast. The last time in history that the climate changed this rapidly was the PETM -- the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago. For reasons still unknown, there was a sharp spike in CO2 and temperature over the course of a few hundred years, which triggered a methane spike, causing a total rise of 5-10 degrees celsius -- the exact same path we'll be taking if we undergo the "business as usual" scenario through 2100. The overwhelming majority of the world's coral and other calcium carbonate-shelled species died from the increased ocean acidification. The thermohaline circulation changed, leading to entirely different climates in different regions of the planet, causing a radical change in the planet's species. After all of the rearrangement was done, the world was such a different place that we give the era a different name -- the Eocene.
Do you really want us to create the Anthropocene here?
Anyway,as to this article: they're not talking about *eliminating* the effects of global warming; they're talking about *masking* the effects of global warming. It's like taking pain killers when you have cancer. Are the pain killers making you better? No; they're just masking it. Increasing the cloudcover doesn't change the fact that the greenhouse gasses were continuing to rise during this point.
BlackbirdHighway 3:22AM (5/24/2009)
Don't waste your time trying to convince the deniers. Teaching your dog algebra would be a more productive use of time.
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Herm 5:27AM (5/24/2009)
I am not a man made global warming "denier", I am agnostic on that subject.
jpm100 8:35AM (5/24/2009)
Grasping at straws to salvage a theory where the evidence slowly and steadily keeps mounting against it.
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Shock Me 8:54PM (5/24/2009)
Global warming is definitely real, when the sun finally expands into its red giant phase this whole rock will be a cinder. Let's strip this thing clean before we leave. How about some AGOOA (anthropogenic gettting off our asses).
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stas peterson 7:39PM (5/27/2009)
It is amazing the lack of scientific knowledge by the most confirmed ideologues here. There has been no global warming for 11 years after, a period of 19 years of climbing temperatures, after a period of 30 years of cooling, preceded by.... Yadda, yadda, yadda.
The association with the no longer climbing temperatures and Man has not been established and only theorized. Current 21 st century Science as opposed to the erroneous Science of the 1950s that these ideologues quote, is producing measurable, quantitative differences, with the hypothetical, qualitative propositions advanced in the 1950s era. Back when we believed in the Steady State unchanging universe, thought Black Holes were science fiction, and didn't understand the unification of the weak force and electromagnetism. Back then, Science derided an explosive beginning to the Universe, as a funny, derisively named, "Big Bang" farce.
Yeah, I listen to the erroneous hypotheticals of the Science of the 1950s, in all things.
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