NASA: cars contribute to global warming!
February 21st, 2010 by Jim JustHere’s a news flash from NASA: cars contribute to global warming!
Motor vehicles give off only minimal amounts of sulfates and nitrates, both pollutants that cool climate, though they produce significant amounts of pollutants that warm climate such as carbon dioxide, black carbon, and ozone.
In a paper published online on Feb. 3 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nadine Unger of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and colleagues described how they used a climate model to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100.
In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it.
Keep in mind that those cooling aerosols from electric power generation and industry (mostly from burning coal) and biomass burning (otherwise known as deforestation) fall out of the atmosphere quickly, leaving the greenhouse gases behind in the atmosphere to do their warming work for centuries to come. Says Unger:
The differences are because the impacts of greenhouse gases accumulate and intensify over time, and because they persist in the atmosphere for such long periods. In contrast, aerosols rain out after a few days and can only have a short-term impact.
Credit: NASA GISS/UngerUnger’s model finds that in 2020 (left), transportation, household biofuels and animal husbandry will have the greatest warming impact on the climate, while the shipping, biomass burning, and industrial sectors will have a cooling impact. By 2100 (right), the model finds that the power and industrial sector will begin to contribute strongly to warming as carbon dioxide accumulates.
Here’s a simple idea that would go a long way towards saving the planet:
Cap the national driving speed limit at 34 MPH (55 KMH).
Benefits of a national slowdown would include:
- Massive reductions in oil consumption
- Immediate and significant C02 reductions
- Smaller, lighter vehicles = less materials consumption
- Instant surge in demand for high-speed rail and other public transportation
- Large drop in tire-related particulate pollution
- Plunging traffic fatality rates + reduced health industry expenses
- Constriction of suburbs & exurbs, relieving pressure on farm lands and other rural lands
- Shipping diverted from truck to rail & ship
- Demise of the “big box” model, reinvigoration of local economies and communities
- End of our road and bridge building mania
As if that’s likely to happen.
Still, the passion may be fading from our love affair with the automobile. The Federal Highway Administration reports that vehicle miles driven in December were unchanged from December 2008:
Travel on all roads and streets changed by 0.0% (-0.1 billion vehicle miles) for December 2009 as compared with December 2008. . . . Cumulative Travel for 2009 changed by +0.2% (6.6 billion vehicle miles).
Unfortunately, as our passion fades the automobile has taken a new lover: China.