CO2 emissions have zero effect in the near-term due to cancelling effect of combustion-derived aerosols: non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all near term warming

CO2 emissions are actually having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term, due to the cancelling effects of aerosols, which are produced by fuel burning such as in cars and power plants.

The EarthSave International Report “A New Global Warming Strategy” states:

“[O]ther greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully. When taking into account various gases’ global warming potential—defined as the amount of actual warming a gas will produce over the next one hundred years—it turns out that gases other than CO2 make up most of the global warming problem.

Sources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global warming we are going to see for the next half century. Even this overstates the effect of CO2, because the primary sources of these emissions—cars and power plants—also produce aerosols. Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, and the magnitude of this cooling approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2.

The surprising result is that sources of CO2 emissions are having roughly zero effect on global temperatures in the near-term”.

It goes on to say:

“[S]ources of non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for virtually all the global warming we’re seeing, and all the global warming we are going to see for the next fifty years. If we wish to curb global warming over the coming half century, we must look at strategies to address non-CO2 emissions.

The strategy with the most impact is vegetarianism.“

Source: A New Global Warming Strategy – Noam Mohr for EarthSave International – Abstract – Full report (PDF) – (Further references given on pp 4, 5)

Date: August 2005