Make haste slowly

摘要

Work by the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) project published in the past month has pushed the issue of black carbon back up the climate change agenda just at the time when the harsh economic conditions worldwide were threatening the agenda as a whole. For black carbon, or soot as it's more commonly known, offers one of the few areas of climate change where there is potential for a "quick win". And the work of the project indicates that the scale of the win might be more than had been expected. The four-year study has identified not only that there is more black carbon in the atmosphere in the northern hemisphere than had been thought, but also that its importance in terms of global warming is greater than had been previously considered. Using the measure of watts per square metre, black carbon was rated second only to carbon dioxide as a global warming agent - 1.1 W/m~2 against 1.56 for CO_2.