Word: blackness
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Unlike CO2, which can hang around in the atmosphere for centuries - CO2 that was emitted by the first coal-powered train is probably still in the air, warming the planet - black carbon has a relatively brief life span. It remains just a few weeks in the air before it falls to earth. That's key, because if the world could reduce black carbon emissions soon, it could help blunt warming almost instantly. "You can wait a week or a month and the totals in the atmosphere can be significantly different," says Eric Wilcox, an atmospheric scientist with NASA. Meanwhile...
...there's much less burning of biomass and any diesel combustion tends to be much cleaner, as the clearing skies over major U.S. cities demonstrate.) Though India is responsible for less than 3% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to Ramanathan it is responsible for about 6% of global black-carbon emissions, give or take a significant margin of error. India and other developing countries rightly argue that rich nations are responsible for the majority of carbon already in the atmosphere, and should therefore take the lead on cutting emissions, but if black carbon is definitively proven to play...
...science is evolving - it's so new that black carbon wasn't even listed as a warming agent in the most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - but it cannot be ignored. Black carbon is already having an impact on the ice atop the Himalayas, the massive glaciers that feed the major rivers of Asia when they melt each spring. Thanks to global warming, these glaciers are receding, threatening the long-term water supplies for the region. Ramanathan, Wilcox and an Indian glaciologist Syed Iqbal Hasnain are working to figure out the impact of black carbon...
...good news is that while taking CO2 out of our energy cycle has proven very difficult - especially in poorer developing nations - black-carbon emissions should be easier to curb. Reducing deforestation will help - the burning of tropical rain forests is a big contributor to the black-carbon load. Next, diesel filters in cars can be upgraded, and biomass-burning stoves can be exchanged for technology that uses solar power or natural gas. These changes will cost money, but they should be cheaper than decarbonization. And cutting back on black carbon will also pay immediate health dividends, with less air pollution...
...excerpts from his memoir, including the preface in which he explained his compulsion to write “Colored People” as an attempt to preserve the rich memories of growing up colored in the 1950’s, negro in the early 60’s, and black in the later 60’s in small-town Piedmont, West Virginia, with a family who stressed the importance of education...