"Clean up your snow to fight global warming, Canada urged";
A team of U.S. scientists has found that "dirty snow" is a surprisingly significant contributor to global warming, and is urging Canada -- as "custodian" of a vast, snowbound nation -- to lead an international cleanup effort.The researchers have measured, in the first comprehensive study of its kind, how snowy landscapes tainted by carbon particles from inefficiently burned fuels and forest fires are absorbing more of the sun's heat than the less sooty snow cover of centuries past.
"Snow becomes dirty when soot from tailpipes, smokestacks and forest fires enters the atmosphere and falls to the ground," the team explains. "Soot-infused snow is darker than natural snow. Dark surfaces absorb sunlight and cause warming, while bright surfaces reflect heat back into space and cause cooling."
Even a slightly darkened surface impairs the natural reflective properties of snow crystals, say the scientists, who calculated that dirty snow accounts for a startling one-third of rising temperatures in the Arctic over the past two centuries.
[...]
"Just as Brazil is the custodian of the Amazon, a world resource whose deforestation has all sorts of negative consequences, so is Canada a custodian of an important swath of snow-covered land that helps to cool the planet," said Mr. Zender.
He also raised a red flag about increased ship traffic through the Northwest Passage -- widely viewed as a potential economic boon for Canada in the coming decades -- as a result of the melting Arctic ice pack.
"One implication," Mr. Zender said of his team's research, "is that any increase in shipping through the Arctic Ocean -- for example, the Northwest Passage -- is likely to exacerbate these effects by putting soot emissions right in the middle of the remaining snow and sea ice. We must think very carefully about this."
"Soot-infused snow is darker than natural snow. Dark surfaces absorb sunlight and cause warming, while bright surfaces reflect heat back into space and cause cooling."
Yes, we already know that . You explained it to us back in the 70's when you suggested covering the Arctic snow fields with soot to cause global warming and thus prevent the rapidly approaching Ice Age.
A British friend of mine who was in the Army in Germany in the 80's told me a story about how they once had to flip over the snow on the parade square because it was dirty, and some muckey-muck was coming for an inspection.
And I thought that was dumb!
There seems to be some contradictions in the science.
1. They forget that we have higher levels of CO2 these days, thereby, keeping the heat in the atmosphere so the reflected heat from the snow has no way to get back to space.
2. If the snow absorbs more heat, there would be less heat in the atmosphere, thereby creating a "heattrap" and reducing the temperature of the atmosphere.
3. To think that man can cover all the snow in Canada with enough soot to make a difference is a bit naive. Have any of these scientists been in the arctic.
4. This one is not the scientists fault, because they had now way of knowing this, but we still had two feet of snow here on April 11 this year, so we probably offset most of the environmental damage from soot cvered snow in 2007. Its not like they have a huge flying camera that could take a picture of the snow cover. Someone should invent one of those.
What about yellow snow?
Un freakin believable! Who in the Hell is funding these nit wits? When so called scientists come out with conclusions like this when wood and coal have ceased to be the major sources of heat in Canada and natural gas and electricity have taken over it is beyond comprehension how they came to this conclusion.This is like saying that we have to stop snow drifting as the rippled snow will affect the reflective ability of the snow.Just because they say that white snow causes global cooling and dark snow causes global warming,it "aint necessarely so".
Canada's very own Caribbean !!
Forests are dark surfaces. Shouldn't we be cutting them down, then?
AC,
"Forests are dark surfaces. Shouldn't we be cutting them down, then?"
I agree, we should cut them all down and burn the wood to heat our homes. Since we would have more "open" snow, we would offset all the soot from the burning. The first year would work out to no effect, but subsequent years would have no trees to burn and create soot as well as all the extra "open" snow. We could stop global warming in its tracks.
Anything for a grant...
So, what happens to the snow when a couple of volcanos go off? Forest fires?
Can't they, uhnn, train the polar bears to eat the soot?
"Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow, watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow....."
*Don't Eat the Yellow Snow, by Frank Zappa. From the album Apostrophe(') March 1974
Mr. Zender is a good example of my old Ontario farm neighbour's expression, that in this world "there are more horses asses than there are horses"
As I said before we should ban black cars,clothes, pavement and any color but white that reflects heat.
So when should the planning start for covering the dark prairie soil with a white tarp in the summer?
We must then eliminate black-top for surfacing roads. Maybe a nice shade of Dion green?
The more that the so-called experts talk about their depth of knowledge the more I figure the entire global warming issue is just the latest Paris Hilton episode in the political and scientific circles.
Gus
I heard about this several months ago from a truck driver. It was in a truckers newsletter and it directed the blame towards the Chinese and their use of coal to drive their economy. If Canada is the land of ice and snow... the great white north then we must condem China for contributing more than it's fair share to artic warming.
China is polluting B.C.'s air and nothing is being done about it.
Why is it that CO2 gets labeled the main greenhouse gas when we know it is water vapour that does most of the warming? Ask most people what the main greenhouse gas is and they will say carbon dioxide.When it is pointed out that H2O vapour contributes 90 % of the warming they get this look of disbelief on their face. Most have never this fact. When told that CO2 is doing all it can to warm the planet they think they are being lied too. Most don't even know that without the global warming provided by water vapour the planet would be a frozen ball of ice. Is that an inconvenient truth?
I gotta say, I'd wouldn't mind seeing the government grab onto this report and use it as a reason to force polluters to reduce emissions of particulate matter, in spirit of reducing global warming. At least particulate matter is a real pollutant, and reducing emissions would lead to real air quality improvements.
Better than wasting money on reductions of CO2.
Just imagine; a new sooty snow tax. What'll they think up next?
[quote]So, what happens to the snow when a couple of volcanos go off? Forest fires?[quote]
Already ahead of you on that one, Warwick. The pre-Columbian Americans and the pre-Roman Old Worlders had huge teams of crack fire-fighters, that would do nothing BUT extinguish continent-wide wildfires and put out volcanoes; these teams were so efficient that they managed to save humankind, and THAT'S why these crackpot theories are being brought up today.
SDC,
lol. Don't give the goracle any ideas or he'll be selling "vulcan" credits along side his carbon credits.
Pre-columbian firefighters... The thought of sacrificing many gorebots into the mouths of hot volcanos is appealing... Maybe we can start with dr.fruitfly? He's not a virgin (presumably) but neither are gore's flock of stinky hippies.
I must admit to a certain strange satisfaction in watching so many people fall hook line and sinker for this notion that global warming spells the end of mankind.
It's bizarre to see just how many people can get suckered.
I would never have thought that Joe average citizen could be so easily hoodwinked.
And doesn't Joe average citizen realize that if CO2 emissions are to be drastically reduced, he is the one who is going to get stuck with the bill? Not the Al Gore's and others of the world, but Joe average citizen.
And Joe average citizen will pay further because of the number of research grants etc. on this topic that will be funded out of his tax dollars.
Zender?
Sounds like a "Seinfeld" character to me...
Kyoto RIP --- Heiligendamm, Germany last week.
End of story.
Russia? China? Not even an honorable mention?
Well...that was a short nap, Kate!
"Forests are dark surfaces. Shouldn't we be cutting them down, then?"
You're right. But what to do with the trees?
I suggest burying them in the ground in the form of newspapers. Heave all your old paper in the garbage can so that they end up in the landfill.
It's a great conversation starter as well.
Somehow people decided that they are so great that they can make a change in either direction - cooling or warming, eh?
Sorry to piss in their cornflakes, but a single large volcano eruption or dust storm in Africa puts more dust and smoke into the atmosphere, than entire civilization over its entire history. Next thing we will here will be that we are supposed to calm the sea as the waves increases the surface of evaporation and creates the strongest greenhouse gas - H2O vapors. Aye saylors, pour oil in sea to stop the storm.
This is not even funny anymore, is there a way to turn off the climate change news on my firewall?
I do remember the bad old days of coal-fired locomotives and furnaces - DIRTY! And with lots of other pollutants as well, which were harmful to health (real air pollution, not the kind in green fantasies, is actually harmful to people). The last time I smelled that once so-familiar reek of coal was while visiting Prague a year ago. Petroleum and natural gas have much smaller emissions of real pollutants than coal, and, if Russia's baseline for CO2 emissions can be taken arbitrarily as 1993 [or thereabouts] then I suggest that Canada's soot emission baseline be taken as 1950. Once that is done, we emerge as virtuous! As well as healthy, in fact if not in fantasy.
Toronto, of course, would remain as evil (as well as unhealthy) as ever because of its incinerators.
As Patrick Moore said, there were some real problems and they were mostly taken care of thirty years and more ago.
When Mount St Helens erupted in the 80's we had the dust all the way to Winnipeg.
This is an excellent stick for the Tories to us to get their clean air act passed.
It ejected roughly 10 billion metric tons of
magma, and 20 million tons of SO2, bringing vast
quantities of minerals and metals to the surface
environment. It injected large amounts of aerosols
into the stratosphere—more than any eruption since
that of Krakatoa in 1883. Over the following
months, the aerosols formed a global layer of
sulfuric acid haze. Global temperatures dropped by
about 0.5 °C (0.9 °F), and ozone destruction
increased substantially.
The above is about Mt. Pinatubo eruption.
[b]The temperatures dropped.[/b] Does that settle the science?
I got the distinct impression that Zender thinks Canada is covered in snow year round.
John Lewis:
What incinerators in Toronto are you referring to?
Last time I looked, burning anything was anathema to
them.
I guess we owe a vote of thanks to Michael Jackson for changing his skin color to white. I didn't realize he was so environmentally aware.
Dirty snow here in Canada destroys the world ! Thanks for the heads up slick ! This winter I'll be rrrrright on that driveway snow!
I'm just in awe at the morbidity of scientific con men....global warming with snow....please tell me more.... this new science astounds me...tell me more about how snow warms the palnet and how sheep's bladders can be employed to prevent earthquakes.
jnicklin: " I got the distinct impression that Zender thinks Canada is covered in snow year round. "
And that it never snows ... nothing ever gets covered up.
On the other hand it's usually warmer during the few hours of daylight in the winter.
If we keep warming the globe our snow should melt. Then the earth will cool right?
Forest fires? In the winter? How do we put them out? Obviously we have to throw snow on them!
The last time I was in the Arctic there was a remarkable absence of trees - isn't that why we call it 'tundra'? Are not the prevailing (winter) winds from the north-northwest? These devestating winter forest fires would likely send their smoke to the south-east not across the tree-line into the barren, snow-covered northern desert.
Are we sure Zender is not having us on? Or at least telling the research grant officers what he knows will result in an extension of his sinecure?
If this is science, I must have slept through that lecture.
Give the proponents of global warming along with these researchers a shovel. Send them North in January to live in an igloo and say have at it. "Maybe" we will see you in July.
"dirty snow accounts for a startling one-third of rising temperatures in the Arctic over the past two centuries"
This only goes to show how minuscule the overall temperature increases are. The dirty snow at the edges of roads alone was responsible for 1/3 of the increase! And did they factor in the reduced amount of horse dung in the snow over the last 80 years?
Never mind what on earth they "calculated" to get to that conclusion... I swear they're just making this stuff up.
Somebody tell Zender we've solved the problem, he should grateful - we're raising the temperature to melt all that dirty snow and enhancing the molecular conversion of that simple carbon to natural complex organic compounds. Further, our environmental warming process is manifestly increasing the amount of green plant material available to absorb the every increasing amount of CO2 and releasing oxygen in its place. The increased biomass will trap extraneous water, preventing its atmospheric release, reducing the greenhouse effect. Polar Bears are omnivorous, they'll be able to benefit from the increased food diversity, and evolutionary selection mechanisms will adjust the Polar bear phenotype for populations with greater temperature adaptibility. We got it covered.
More of thier crazy crack-pot ideas what next for these wackos anyway HEY WATCH OUT FOR YELLOW SNOW
As usual, I take personal offense when self-declared *experts* such as these call themselves *scientists*. They are actually pseudo-scientific, environmental politicians. History is NOT their strong suit. Rewriting history is their venue.
How utterly pedictable is their liberalism that this, again, is somebody else's fault, and that the guilty shall solve THEIR problem, using the solutions that have been offered.
Damned glass houses; they tend to shatter upon close, *vigorous* inspection using rocks.