The “SuperFreaks” have put out a dishonest and stupid book, in which they advocate sulfate aerosols as a solution to global warming. Trouble is, it isn’t.
They claim climate scientist Ken Caldeira has endorsed this policy “solution,” but policymakers only listen to “people like Al Gore,” who think “it’s nuts.” Somehow Levitt and Dubner fail to mention that Caldeira himself has actually said the SuperFreaks’ policy perspective is ridiculous:
As a long-term strategy, it’s nuts.
Bizarrely, Levitt and Dubner never once mention the one policy area that is universally recognized as being “cheap and simple” by economists and scientists alike — boring energy efficiency. Guess they were too busy chatting with call girls and mosquito-laser billionaires.
Again the Wall Street Journal tries to trivialize global warming and its remedies, with this half-baked sulfate aerosol fantasy….solving global warming with a jet and a garden hose….Right. Just dirty up the atmosphere more than it already is, create more acid rain, poison the oceans…..and for nothing.
The Journal encapsulates so much of what is wrong with unrestrained capitalism: dishonesty, corruption, anti-science, monopoly, plutocracy, restraint of progress.
link
Sulfate Lens Enhances Climate Warming Properties of Atmospheric Soot
By Susan BrownJune 29, 2009
Particulate pollution thought to be holding climate change in check by reflecting sunlight instead enhances warming when combined with airborne soot, a new study by researchers at the UC San Diego have found.
Like a black car on a bright summer day, soot absorbs solar energy. Recent atmospheric models have ranked soot, also called black carbon, second only to carbon dioxide in potential for atmospheric warming. But particles, or aerosols, such as soot mix with other chemicals in the atmosphere, complicating estimates of their role in changing climate.
Sunlight driven chemical reactions over Riverside, California, give suspended soot a lens-like coating that enhances its atmospheric warming effect. (Photo by arneheijenga via Flickr, creative commons share-alike license)“Until now, scientists have had to assume how soot is mixed with other chemical species in individual particles and estimate how that ultimately impacts their warming potential,” said Kimberly Prather, professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. “Our measurements show that soot is most commonly mixed with other chemicals such as sulfate and this mixing happens very quickly in the atmosphere. These are the first direct measurements of the optical properties of atmospheric soot and allow us to better understand the role of soot in climate change.”
Prather and Ryan Moffet, a former graduate student at UC San Diego who is now at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, measured atmospheric aerosols over Riverside, California and Mexico City. Using an instrument that measures the size, chemical composition and optical properties of aerosols in real time, they showed that jagged bits of fresh soot quickly become coated with a spherical shell of other chemicals, particularly sulfate, nitrate, and organic carbon, through light-driven chemical reactions.
Within several hours of sunrise, most of the atmospheric carbon they measured had been altered in this way, they report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online the week of June 29.
Particles of sulfate or nitrate alone reflect light, and some have proposed pumping sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere to slow climate change. But these chemicals play a different role when they mix with soot.
“The coating acts like a lens and focuses the light into the center of the particle, enhancing warming,” Prather said. “Many people think sulfate aerosols are a good thing because they are highly reflective and cool our planet. However we are seeing that sulfate is commonly mixed with soot in the same particles, which means in some regions sulfate could lead to more warming as opposed to more cooling as one would expect for a pure sulfate aerosol.”
Their measurements showed that in the atmosphere the lens-like shell of sufate and nitrate enhances absorption of light by coated soot particles 1.6 times over pure soot particles.






