We’re about to kill a massive, accidental experiment in reducing global warming

Studies have found that ships have a net cooling effect on the planet, despite belching out nearly a billion tons of carbon dioxide each year. That’s almost entirely because they also emit sulfur, which can scatter sunlight in the atmosphere and form or thicken clouds that reflect it away.

In effect, the shipping industry has been carrying out an unintentional experiment in climate engineering for more than a century. Global mean temperatures could be as much as 0.25 ˚C lower than they would otherwise have been, based on the mean “forcing effect” calculated by a 2009 study that pulled together other findings (see “The Growing Case for Geoengineering”). For a world struggling to keep temperatures from rising more than 2 ˚C, that’s a big helping hand.

And we’re about to take it away.

Read the MIT Technology Review story by James Temple - “We’re about to kill a massive, accidental experiment in reducing global warming.”

Shipping’s Heavy Fuel Oil Puts the Arctic at Risk. Could It Be Banned?

Heavy fuel oil—the molasses-like sludge left after the oil refining process—is among the dirtiest fuels on the planet, and yet its use by ships is widespread in the Arctic, a pristine environment where it could do significant harm.

The majority of the Arctic's black carbon, a short-lived climate
pollutant, comes from heavy fuel oil used in ships.

Burning the fuel contributes to climate change, and a spill in Arctic waters would be a nightmare for emergency response coordinators. But it's cheap, and attractive for ships making long hauls, the kind of traffic on the rise as climate change makes Arctic shipping easier.

Concerns about the safety and use of the fuel in a delicate and remote environment led to it being banned in the Antarctic in 2011, but efforts to include the Arctic in that ban fell short.

Read the Inside Climate News story by Sabrina Shankman - “Shipping’s Heavy Fuel Oil Puts the Arctic at Risk. Could It Be Banned?”