There is little doubt the burning of carbon fuels is driving rapidly accelerating climate change.
However, new research shows recent climate fluctuations appear to be primarily driven by particulate air pollution (various soots - mostly from China, Siberia, India, and other major polluters, including those in the Americas and Europe), and much less by CO2 and other anthropogenic Green House Gases as previously thought.
These Black & Brown Carbon soots — the byproducts of incomplete carbon fuel combustion — appear to be the primary climate warming culprits in recent decades, and earlier as well, when industrial warming first peaked in the 1930’s and 40’s with heavy coal use that was 20x dirtier than today’s coal technologies.
Mercury and heavy metals emissions simultaneously released with such soots are also rapidly contaminating the world’s air & water, and are causing illness and world-wide autism rates to soar, as shown in additional research links found on this website.
Most soots and metals fall out of the atmosphere within weeks. Therefore eliminating toxin-laced soot generation will immediately lower temperatures and also allow natural biochemical processes to begin detoxifying the World’s contaminated water.
Adoption of clean power technologies, and scrubbing technology for existing power plants and vehicles, will dramatically reduce world wide soot output.
Therefore, new regulations and economic incentives for rapid implementation of soot free technologies need to be developed to solve the climate problem. Selection of technologies for such incentives first need to be based on solid transparent research that shows which climate forcers and pollutants are the most problematic causative factors, and which technologies will most quickly and effectively eliminate those factors.
Further, because most particulate aerosols don’t accumulate in the atmosphere with each year, as GHGs do, a shift in the direction of world policy is required — as the world’s largest soot emitters need to immediately reduce particulates, regardless of past contributions to CO2 & GHG emissions. The new research findings shift the political, social, and economic realities of climate change from older developed nations with advanced emission controls to developing nations with pollution emission problems.
Paradoxically, while the current excessive level of soot emissions makes global health and warming problems multiples more serious and immediate than previously thought, it also makes the problems potentially much easier to rectify, as existing particle scrubbing technologies can dramatically and immediately reduce such particulate at little cost. The countries and corporations of the world need to work together to eliminate this pollution.
As supported by the data in Paragon’s climate research, it appears that the rapidly rising temperatures of the 1920s, 30s, and 40s was driven by the steady increase of extreme air pollution & soot particulate being generated then. That extreme pollution, and the significant — but little understood — climate change problem that occurred (which led to record temperatures being set in the 1920s & 30s) appears to have been quickly brought under control by rapidly adopted technology advancements, and the reduction in pollution those changes produced.
This wasn’t due to a coordinated plan by governments. Instead it was driven by human nature and private initiatives to pursue new ways to make machines and profits.
And, as “positive” economic news and “opportunity for profit” always spread quickly — both today, and in the past, it often brings large changes to the way society operates, and in many cases, significant environmental effects.
Despite no modern communication technologies, economies of scale, or international treaties, it was simply the development of superior technology and the incentive for profit that caused the massive shift in technology 90 years ago that saw cleaner, cheaper oil & gas begin to rapidly replace dirty coal. And, just like that, in just over a decade, coal’s 100 year long world dominance as the fuel for almost everything requiring power was usurped by a rapidly adopted technological advance.
As relates to current climate issues, research shows that once again rising accumulations of soot particulates — generated from the burning of coal, heavy oil, diesel, biomass, and flared natural gas — are the primary culprits warming the planet, melting artic & glacial ice, and causing extreme storms and draught in various regions.
These research findings indicate the need for a modification in the current global approach to climate change, and for the development of national and international policies for investment in new infrastructure and equipment to address the problematic air pollution driving the current climate change, extreme weather, and toxic heavy metal emissions problems.
Future technology implementation and fiscal policy support must specifically address the need for:
A potential framework for such policy is in development at Paragon (see below) and will be ready for review shortly.
For any policy-assisted emissions reduction plan to be successful, it must appeal to human nature and the desire for profit; preserve and ultimately transfer the wealth of the world's corporate stockholders; and not dislocate world economies. Otherwise, history shows that regardless of any plan’s merit it will be resisted and fail.
To help asses potential policy and infrastructure planning models to bring about rapid profit-driven global implementation of clean technology on the massive scale required, we’ve brought together some of the most dynamic, socially & environmentally conscious, energy-related business leaders to provide feed-back and insights on proposals for today’s economic and regulatory environment.
Everyone is in agreement on one factor — that any technology implementation plan needs to provide superior economic results as compared to maintenance of the status quo.
With that in mind, and because tax policy and the desire for money drive most human and corporate behaviour, our plan and policy recommendations are supported by data that show: