It’s The Soot Stupid! Leading Environmental Group NABU Says Soot Is 50% Responsible For Arctic Warming

With every passing year we get without global warming, CO2 loses more and more of its credibility as the cause for climate change. So what to do? Move on to another issue that will do just as well. Blame it on soot from automobiles and industry, and push for lots of regulation.

Black soot is responsible for 50% of Arctic warming.

Influential German environmental group Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU) is now demanding a greater focus on soot when it comes to climate regulation. NABU writes:

The dangers of soot particles and other air pollutants have not been strong enough issues in politics up to now. NABU Director Leif Miller: ‘Up to 50 percent of the warming in the Arctic can be traced back to the influence of soot particles. Thus these particles play a role in climate change that is just as important as greenhouse gas CO2,’ Miller added.”

When listening to Miller when it comes to the scale of potential regulation, soot, which comes from the burning of fossil fuels, becomes just as attractive as CO2. Defining soot as a problem would pave the way for the massive regulation of a broad swath of our society. Soot would do just fine.

In Central Europe transportation is the main source. Together with other pollutants, soot particles make up the group of ‘short-life climate drivers’. They force climate change similarly as much as CO2, but remain in the atmosphere much shorter. Their reduction would impact the climate much more quickly than a reduction of CO2.”

NABU transportation expert Dietmar Oeliger adds: “By combating a climate driver that has an immediate impact, we would gain valuable time in reaching our climate targets”.

This sounds like it’s straight out of Fritz Vahrenholt’s and Sebastian Lüning’s book “Die kalte Sonne”, who also advocate measures for cleaning up soot in developing countries as a far more economical way of slowing down Arctic warming. BUND writes:

The German government must pass a binding reductions target by 2020. All diesel soot sources must be outfitted with modern exhaust cleaning systems such as particle filters. In addition, it is also necessary to fundamentally think about alternative mobility strategies where the internal combustion engine plays a significantly lesser role than today.”

Together with environmental groups BUND, Deutsche Umwelthilfe and the Ecological Transportation Club of Germany (VCD), NABU has been pushing for stronger public awareness with its campaign: “Soot-free for the Climate”.

So even if CO2 turns out to have only a minimal or moderate effect on climate, it will still be necessary to massively regulate soot (fosselin fuels) in the relatively spic-and-span western industrial countries. Of course developing countries will be given a free pass here.

Whatever the outcome, it is nice to see that climate-factors other than CO2 are now being taken seriously by environmentalists.

And once the sun and oceans are considered, CO2 practically disappears from the warming equation. But with soot accounting for 50%, don’t expect the environmentalists to concede solar and oceanic cycles are playing a major role. Something has to be left for CO2.

All the blame has to be kept on fossil fuels.