Does your Carbon Footprint matter? Or is it meaningless?

[Pat Coyle]

Fast Company - In what must rank as the mother of all unintended consequences, and in a finding certain to have effects on international policy, NASA scientists have found that a decrease in airborne sulfates--dirty smokestack particles caused by burning coal and regulated by the Clean Air Act since the 1970s to prevent acid rain and air pollution--may account for as much as 45% of Arctic warming. Dr. Drew Shindell of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies reports:

"Sulfates, which come primarily from the burning of coal and oil, scatter incoming solar radiation and have a net cooling effect on climate. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed a series of laws that have reduced sulfate emissions by 50%. While improving air quality and aiding public health, the result has been less atmospheric cooling from sulfates." Read More

Note: Dr. Shindell works for Dr. James Hansen, a star of Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth and the world's leading voice making the demon Carbon Dioxide synonymous with all of society's ills. But Dr. Shindell is recommending that focusing on the effects of aerosols rather than carbon dioxide emissions may be the more effective strategy against climate change and especially the melting of arctic ice.

So what do you think? Does this cause you to pause and wonder who can you trust? Will you look into this issue in order to avoid blindly trusting so-called "expert" opinions in the future? Or will you conclude that this news is a subversive plot hatched by big business? Share your thoughts here

[Arik Flanders]

Very interesting post. I had not yet heard of these theories.

[Pat Coyle]

No takers on this question, eh? Hmm.

[Sarah Brown]

The more kids you have in your family the smaller each footprint will be... Get green by sharing a house, sharing a car, sharing heat and air conditioning, sharing food, sharing everything. The more you share your life with others the smaller each footprint will be. Who better to share your life and home with than your own children, the children you adopt and your foster kids?