Word: soot
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...also carbon hogs. Each year, about 100,000 ships contribute some 1.3 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, about 3% of global carbon emissions. In addition, ships spew out huge amounts of traditional air pollutants, like nitrous oxides (NOx) and sulfur oxides (SOx), and emit black carbon soot, a leading contributor to melting Arctic ice. "It's an overlooked and important problem, but it's also extraterritorial," says Travis Bradford, the chief operating officer of the Carbon War Room, based in Washington, D.C. "And there's no external force that will cause the shipping industry to change...
...earth too hot to be habitable. The temperature on Venus, for instance, where the atmosphere is 96% CO2, is over 400°C, or 750°F.) By contrast, black carbon in the air actually absorbs sunlight as it comes from space, directly heating up the atmosphere. "The soot particles are like the parts of a blanket, and it's getting thicker," says Ramanathan. "The smoke absorbs sunlight and heats the blanket directly." (Read "COP15: Climate Change Conference...
...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 on glacial loss. Beyond warming the atmosphere, black carbon can also speed the melting of glaciers by literally turning them black - soot on snow makes the ice heat up faster. "When black carbon falls on the snow, it darkens it," says Ramanathan. "If the snow is white, it reflects 80% of the sunshine, but with black carbon it absorbs the sunlight...
...today museums, restaurants and hotels have started to move in. Among the latter is L'Hotel in Pietra, hotelinpietra.it. When Brazilian owner Cristina Bergamini first stepped inside the abandoned 13th century church that would become the hotel, the white stone of the church's ancient walls was black with soot and its floor was buried under decades of garbage. "I could show you some photos you wouldn't believe," says Bergamini...
...Kumar has heard of global warming, but to him it's incomprehensible that the live coals in his iron are partly to blame for it by producing black carbon, or soot, a greenhouse gas considered more destructive than carbon dioxide. Though he would like to stop using coal - "an electric iron would be so much more convenient," he says - the upgrade is too expensive. But he is saving up for one, and once he does, he will move from using coal to using electricity produced with coal, the source of more than 60% of India's electricity. (See pictures...