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Celebrate Earth Day by Polluting the Air

That's not a joke. OK. It's kind of a joke to most of us around here. But it's not a joke at all to Science magazine correspondent Eli Kintisch who penned an oped for Sunday's Los Angeles Times. He warned that the great strides we've made in the last 40 years reducing air pollution is actually going to make global warming worse.

Please sit down for this. Are you sitting down? Go ahead. I'll wait. Ready? OK. Here's the gist, from Kintisch's piece:

You’re likely to hear a chorus of dire warnings as we approach Earth Day, but there’s a serious shortage few pundits are talking about: air pollution. That’s right, the world is running short on air pollution, and if we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound.

Cleaner air, one of the signature achievements of the U.S. environmental movement, is certainly worth celebrating. Scientists estimate that the U.S. Clean Air Act has cut a major air pollutant called sulfate aerosols, for example, by 30% to 50% since the 1980s, helping greatly reduce cases of asthma and other respiratory problems.

But even as industrialized and developing nations alike steadily reduce aerosol pollution — caused primarily by burning coal — climate scientists are beginning to understand just how much these tiny particles have helped keep the planet cool. A silent benefit of sulfates, in fact, is that they’ve been helpfully blocking sunlight from striking the Earth for many decades, by brightening clouds and expanding their coverage. Emerging science suggests that their underappreciated impact has been incredible.

Arrrrghhhhhh!!! We just can't win with these climate catastrophe alarmists! "We must clean the air of all these pollutants to save the planet!!!" ... "NO! We must pollute the air again to save the planet!!!" ... or something. It's always something that we're doing — and must either stop doing it or do more of it. The constant and contradictory instructions from the green do-gooders is making my head hurt.

Scientist Rich Trzupek is even more frustrated and I am. In his post yesterday at Big Journalism, Trzupek wrote that when Kintisch's story "was brought to my attention, I threw up repeatedly." And after wiping his mouth and composing himself, he decided that "nothing but a rant will do." You should read the whole rant.

Trzupek notes how asinine it is for the LA Times to run this oped about the need to throw more soot into the air when (1) thousands of scientists would think it ridiculous, and (2) the Eyjafjallajokull eruption in Iceland is doing that job much better than man could. But Kintisch's thesis even stupider than that, Trzupek writes, because:

... history tells us that Katla — a far larger and much more dangerous volcano — will blow soon afterwards. When Katla goes, and it’s overdue, it will spew so much ash into the atmosphere that we’ll be begging for a little global warming.

All this nonsense leads Trzupek to one conclusion:

There’s only one word to describe people who actually believe that mankind can control nature: MSM journalists.

Ain't that the truth. But Trzupek left off his list: Al Gore, Barack Obama, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry ... (OK, just about every Democrat in Congress), the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, the European Union, Hollywood, most rock stars, MTV, the Discovery Channel, all public school children who lack parents with a sensitive BS detector ... You get the picture. We could go on all day naming people who are not in the MSM, but have been suckered by its alarmist, inaccurate (and, yes, decietful) reporting.

It's telling that Kintisch's tag line at the end of his LA Times piece notes that he is the author of a new book called Hack the Planet: Science's Best Hope — or Worst Nightmare — for Averting Climate Catastrophe. I don't know what's worse: The myth that man has more control than nature over whether the earth warmer or cooler, or that government bureaucrats will have to direct every aspect of our lives in service to that myth. Actually, I'm pretty certain the latter is worse.

P.S. Now's a good time, I think, for a shameless plug: The Heartland Institute is holding it's fourth International Conference on Climate Change in Chicago from May 16 through May 18. It will be yet another informative gathering of scientists who are more interested in ... well ... real science instead of hype and politics.

If you can't make it for the conference, stay tuned around here for frequent updates. And also follow the #ICCC4 hashtag on Twitter.

Tags: Eli-Kintisch, ICCC, MSM, Rich-Trzupek, agw, big-journalism, climate, earth-day, earthday, environment, More…

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Comment by Ronald A. Lau on April 22, 2010 at 8:54am: See the part about 'soot'?

A big producer of soot are diesel engines. Trucks use diesel engines. Trucks are used to move goods all over the nation and the world. Trucks are a huge part of the economy.

If you can influence the Trucks, you can influence the economy.

Its all about control.

Comment by Ronald A. Lau on April 22, 2010 at 8:49am: If you believe the environmentalists are all about the environment, then of course this story will confuse you to the point of nausea.

But when you discover that environmentalism is actually about controlling the population, then it all makes sense.

The push for clean air has run its course, and can no longer justify any more control over energy (and therefore the economy and therefore the people).

Global Warming was supposed to be issue used to continue the process of taking over energy production, but it has been exposed to early, and the next crisis is not available.

So the environmentalist movement will just pretend Global Warming has not been exposed while they search for a new threat to all human life.

Comment by M.Bailey on April 22, 2010 at 8:43am: It boils down to a desire to control something can not be controlled. IMO this is like when the gov't tries to manipulate the economy with various pieces of legislation, the effects of which can NOT be fully predicted by our simple mushy brains. To believe that humans can, or should release things into the atmosphere to help control warming is absurd.

The best case scenario here is that we live on as clean a planet as possible considering that we need economic activity to survive well, live long and prosper (with all due respect to Mr. Spock). If having clean air means that the planet warms up a bit, then so be it. If economic activity means that the planet warms up a bit then so be it.

I want a clean planet. Every reasonable person wants a clean planet. Every reasonable person looks at China and sees the horrible effects of pollution caused by unchecked, unsustainable growth and nobody wants that. We have a good balance in America. We need to stop trying to control Mother Nature.

Celebrate Earth Day by Polluting the Air

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