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Kyoto Treaty & Soot From Burning Wood

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09-11-2002, 04:22 PM

Robert Cohen

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Kyoto Treaty & Soot From Burning Wood

Subject: Soot Apparently Unacknowledged In Kyoto Treaty
From: (Robert Cohen)
Date: 11/9/02 10:12 AM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

It is reported this morning on NPR's excellent "Weekend" program that the
burning of wood for fuel produces soot as a by-product, and that soot's
cumulative hindering of some sunlight is apparently actually
causing/affecting/contributing to weather havoc, for instance, regarding the
recent floodings in China.

The reluctance or opposition of the United States to
sign the Kyoto accord in part reportedly has to do with the alleged failure of
other interested parties to include the regulation of soot which is said to be
a major contaminent, partucularly in lower socio-economic areas which must rely
principally upon wood fuel.

So when I go for a walk during a wintry night in
this tacky-tocky bourgeois U.S. housing subdivision, while smelling the smoke
from the pseudo/sooto decor fireplaces, I shall involuntarily be ingesting the
fragrant pollutants, distinguishing between pine and hickory while
contemplating the complexity & convolutions of the political-economics behind
the the Kyoto imbroglio and fuelish nature of some antipathy toward the U.S.

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11-11-2002, 11:18 AM

Larry Caldwell

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Kyoto Treaty & Soot From Burning Wood

In article ,
writes:

It is reported this morning on NPR's excellent "Weekend" program that the
burning of wood for fuel produces soot as a by-product, and that soot's
cumulative hindering of some sunlight is apparently actually
causing/affecting/contributing to weather havoc, for instance, regarding the
recent floodings in China.

Forest fires burn many times more wood each year than is consumed for
fuel, and the smoke particles color the atmosphere for a thousand miles
downwind. The fires in Indonesia not long ago were mammoth, because a
thick peat understory dried out and caught fire. Not only the forest,
but a bed of peat up to 60 feet thick was consumed. People were dying in
the cities from smoke inhalation.

The contribution that makes to the weather is anybody's guess.
Particulates do aid in the formation of raindrops and snowflakes.

--
http://home.teleport.com/~larryc

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11-11-2002, 05:14 PM

Robert Cohen

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Kyoto Treaty & Soot From Burning Wood

Subject: Soot Apparently Unacknowledged In Kyoto Treaty
From: (Robert Cohen)
Date: 11/10/02 5:13 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id:

I perceive both volcanic emissions and, yes, forest fires as indeed affecting,
worrisome pollutants.

B-t-w: In this article, dated 12 Dec 2001, Professor Mark Jacobson says the
Kyoto Treaty fails to deal with soot from wood fires.
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Eliminating soot could slow global warming
December 12, 2001.

SAN FRANCISCO - Greenhouse gases are blamed by many scientists for contributing
to global warming, but at least one researcher says the real key to modifying
world temperatures is diesel soot.

"If you want to control global warming, the first thing to go after is soot,''
Mark Jacobson, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at
Stanford University, said Tuesday.

Jacobson, in a presentation to the American Geophysical Union, said soot
produced by burning diesel fuels, coal, and wood has a much more severe impact
on the environment relative to its mass than do greenhouse gases such as carbon
dioxide and methane.

Eliminating all fossil-fuel soot - estimated at about 5 million tons per year
worldwide - could cut net global warming by 40 percent in three to five years,
Jacobson said. "Controlling fossil-fuel soot will not only slow global warming
but also will improve human health,'' he said.

A soot particle, made up primarily of black carbon, warms the air by absorbing
sunlight and radiating the heat into the air. Greenhouse gases, by contrast, do
not absorb sunlight but create warming by absorbing Earth's heat and then
radiating it back into the environment.

Jacobson said that while soot was widely believed to be the biggest cause of
global warming after carbon dioxide, controlling soot emissions could have a
more immediate effect on temperatures because soot does its damage to the
environment during the relatively brief time it remains in the air.

But he said that most current climate change models do not take soot into
account. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, aimed at reducing global warming, also failed
to deal with soot emissions, he noted.

Jacobson, who reached his conclusions after developing a computer model to
include the climactic impact of soot, said controls could be improved by
tightening standards on particulate emissions, requiring industry to devise
better particle traps, and switching from diesel fuel to gasoline or hydrogen
fuel cells.

Diesel fuel powers almost all commercial trucks, buses, and tractors worldwide
and 33 percent of the passenger vehicles sold in Europe last year, according to
Jacobson.

Diesel-powered passenger vehicles are much rarer in the United States - only
about one in a thousand cars - but overall diesel emissions from all vehicles
in the United States are still about 75 percent to 80 percent of those of
Europe.

Read more on climate change
The Scientific Alliance's view on climate change and Kyoto
See Also:
The Scientific Alliance's view on climate change and Kyoto.

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