This story should have been covered in every mainstream media outlet in Australia, but as far as I am aware, it was only addressed on some internet sites. A peer reviewed paper published in the leading generalist science journal, Nature, using data obtained from the lockdown period in South Asia, examined what happened when the production of greenhouse gasses fell, and aerosol pollution decreased. The decrease in aerosol pollution had the result of increasing alleged warming, as aerosol emissions reflected radiation back into space. Renewable energy, the Greens tell us is great because of a reduction in aerosol pollution, but the results of this will be exactly the opposite of what the environmentalists are expecting, as less pollution means clearer skies, and more supposed heating.
Of course, all this assumes the basic premise of the environmentalist, that climate change is occurring, but assuming that to show its falsity, we can see that renewable energy will be a failure in its own terms. This is a very strong argument for maintaining fossil fuels, as their alleged pollution should be a good thing for the climate change environmentalist. Long live the pollution from fossil fuels!
“Using observational data gleaned from COVID-19 lockdowns in South Asia, scientists publishing in a Nature journal (Nair et al., 2023) have now determined the ongoing switch to zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions renewables will subsequently lead to a dramatic reduction in climate-cooling aerosol (pollution) emissions. Because aerosol emissions have a relatively greater climate impact by reflecting shortwave radiation, the net effect of transitioning to renewables will be to “drastically” increase Earth’s temperatures over the coming decades.
“Mitigation strategies focusing on the phase-out of fossil fuels will lead to quick removal of the short-lived aerosols while the longer-lived major greenhouse gases decrease much more slowly, likely resulting in undesired net warming of the climate during a decades-long transition period.”
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-023-00367-6
Aerosol demasking enhances climate warming over South Asia
- R. C. R. Nair,
- Krishnakant Budhavant,
- R. Manoj,
- August Andersson,
- K. Satheesh,
- Ramanathan&
- Örjan Gustafsson
npj Climate and Atmospheric Science volume 6, Article number: 39 (2023)
Abstract
Anthropogenic aerosols mask the climate warming caused by greenhouse gases (GHGs). In the absence of observational constraints, large uncertainties plague the estimates of this masking effect. Here we used the abrupt reduction in anthropogenic emissions observed during the COVID-19 societal slow-down to characterize the aerosol masking effect over South Asia. During this period, the aerosol loading decreased substantially and our observations reveal that the magnitude of this aerosol demasking corresponds to nearly three-fourths of the CO2-induced radiative forcing over South Asia. Concurrent measurements over the northern Indian Ocean unveiled a ~7% increase in the earth’s surface-reaching solar radiation (surface brightening). Aerosol-induced atmospheric solar heating decreased by ~0.4 K d−1. Our results reveal that under clear sky conditions, anthropogenic emissions over South Asia lead to nearly 1.4 W m−2 heating at the top of the atmosphere during the period March–May. A complete phase-out of today’s fossil fuel combustion to zero-emission renewables would result in rapid aerosol demasking, while the GHGs linger on.