The Speculist

It's the Soot

Randall Parker reports that carbon dioxide may not be the actual culprit in global warming (if in fact there is a culprit at all):

While this may not be immediately obvious this report seems like good news. Why? Because it is a lot cheaper to reduce soot emissions than to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. If a substantial source of warming can be cancelled out cheaply then that buys time (assuming it really is necessary to intervene in the first place) to develop technologies that will allow carbon dioxide emissions to be reduced at much lower cost.

So let me see if I've got this straight. The world may be getting warmer, but then again, it may be getting colder. We aren't sure. If it is getting warmer, this maybe be due primarily to carbon dioxide emissions. Or it may be due to soot. Or (let's face it) it may be due to something else.

Then again, it may not be so much that the world is getting warmer or colder, maybe it's getting darker.

Whatever the heck is going on, it's obvious that we should start passing and enforcing some really restrictive laws pronto.