SMOG AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper adopts American plans, or lack of plans, to combat climate change. For one thing, he claims he will clean up city smog, and that will fix the warming ruining Canada's arctic.

This is the first of a two-part exploration of the theory and practice of smog control as climate policy. I interview a cloud specialist from the University of British Columbia, Dr. Phil Austin. We re-discover another inconvenient truth - smog has helped shelter us from the true impacts of all the greenhouse gases we've already dumped into the atmosphere.

According to Dr. Austin, the world should already be 3 degrees hotter than before the industrial revolution, instead of 1 degree now. There's already that much carbon and other gases up there. But smoggy particles, sometimes continent sized banks of them, are reflecting sunlight, and causing chemical reactions, that protect us - unless it gets washed away in the rain....

In my opinion, this interview has lasting value. Pick it up as part of your own questions about our strange climate (and why it will get stranger.)

There is no copyright. Feel free to rebroadcast this piece.

Alex
Radio Ecoshock
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