It has been reported (only very recently) that the reduction in sulphur in shipping fuels (the reduction started a few years ago) may well be contributing to warming. Good old-fashioned unintended consequences. Makes me feel like a bourbon cocktail.
This warming from reduction in aerosols appears to be gaining broad acceptance. The changes in forcing are being related to ship tracks (chemtrails by another name).
A link to an article
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02430-x
Paywalled, unfortunately.
From Twitter (
)
(As an added bonus you can get a visualisation of the Middle Eastern shipping bottleneck from the pretty chemtrails).
Here is another article about ship tracks and the effects on forcing.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abn7988
This one is not paywalled, extract from introduction below:
"Ship-tracks were first observed in early weather satellites as “anomalous cloud lines” (
1) more than 55 years ago. They appear as quasi-linear tracks in marine low cloud fields (
Fig. 1). Detection of ship-tracks in satellite data relies on a reflectance contrast between background and ship-track clouds (
Fig. 1). The existence and detection of the contrast depend on various factors such as the wavelength of the observation and the background properties of cloud and aerosols, tiny suspended airborne particles (
2–
5). Hence, although ship emissions can affect low clouds by increasing aerosol concentrations, not all of them produce detectable ship-tracks. Ship-emitted aerosols produce ship-tracks by increasing the concentration of droplets in marine low clouds, which makes them appear brighter (
6,
7), the so-called aerosol indirect effects.
Aerosol indirect effects act as a radiative forcing to Earth’s climate by modifying cloud reflectance and amount and thus affecting Earth’s energy balance (8, 9). The aerosol indirect forcing partially counterbalances the radiative forcing caused by greenhouse gases." [
emphasis added]
In my considered opinion any attempt at SRM is nucking futz. Naturally then I am assuming it is going to happen (invest now).
My prediction, the first efforts (of the international coalition of good guys) will be hailed unilaterally as saving the world. The efforts will be redoubled. Nations states will start getting in on the act, the law of unintended consequences kicks in, and then BAM! end of the world.
If you want to know the rest, ask ChatGPT to write you a cheesy end of the world Hollywood film script where only us NZers manage to survive except for the South Island which topples into the ocean from the weight of all the underground bunkers around Queenstown that were built by billionaires.
Wait a minute that gives me an idea... maybe it would even be a better script if AI took control of the cloud/temperature control mechanism???
NB: I used the journals "Nature" and "Science" as references for those who feel the need to have sufficient authority to which to genuflect. Personally, I do not think these journals are quite the publications they once were (they used to be revered throughout academia).
