Source: csmonitor.com via CSMonitor on Pinterest
By Nicholas Kusnetz, at Rolling Stone
Climate scientists have shed new light on a serious threat to our way of life: black carbon. (No, it's not a metal band, though there is one that's pretty close.) New research suggests that this substance – more commonly known as soot – is one of the biggest causes of global warming, second only to carbon dioxide in slowly making parts of our planet uninhabitable.
Earlier this month, a group of climate scientists made waves in the environmental community when they published a study arguing that black carbon is fully twice as bad as previously thought. In fact, they estimate it causes two-thirds as much warming as carbon dioxide. That's the bad news. The good news – and "good" is relative when it comes to climate – is that this may be one of the few areas where nations rich and poor can come together and actually do something about climate change.
A brief explanation of the problem: When almost anything burns, it releases tiny particles of soot into the air. That black stuff in the plume of diesel smoke you see pouring out of a garbage truck's exhaust pipe? That's black carbon. We've long known that those particles contribute to global warming in several ways, as well as leading to millions of premature deaths worldwide. Most simply, when struck by light, soot heats up like a black leather car seat on a sunny day. When it floats down onto ice or snow, it turns what was once a bright, shiny, heat-reflective surface into a filthy heat-sink….
Keep reading: Black Carbon: The Secret Climate Threat | Politics News | Rolling Stone.
