Plug the soot

More grist for the mill - soot is inching close to carbon dioxide as a major contributer to global warming. And where does most of soot come from? - burning biomass in the developing nations, (which still do not have other means).

According to a new study by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, if we were to cut soot emissions we could drastically halt the melting ice in the Arctic. His study showed that soot is second only to carbon dioxide in contributing to global warming; putting it above other greenhouse gasses like methane. Additionally Jacobson found that soot kills over 1.5 million people prematurely each year and affects millions more with respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and asthma. (that has been well known fact.)

Jacobson found that while fossil fuel soot contributed more to global warming, the soot emitted from biofuels caused eight times the number of deaths as fossil fuel soot did. By providing electricity to rural and developing areas, the need to burn biofuels to cook and heat would drop, and possibly so too the health impacts.

Reducing soot emissions would have an immediate impact on global warming due to the magnitude with which soot is playing a part in our atmosphere, and the way in which it plays. Soot is washed out of the atmosphere within a few weeks, compared to gases that sometimes stay for decades or a century. So it is best to address this problem which we can by replacing biomass with electricity in the villages of developing nations.

Controlling the carbon emissions from all the polluting industries, power plants and vehicles has proven to be a slow and difficult task. How easier will it be to lighten million homes with electricity, and cut the soot?