Science: Still on the march!

Seth Borenstein, for years the Associated Press's most egregious and ridiculous AGW alarmist, must have blanched at least a little when confronted with writing this story (as it showed up in the Post this morning), mustn't he?

An international team of scientists says it has figured out how to slow global warming in the short run and prevent millions of deaths from dirty air: Stop focusing so much on carbon dioxide.

Stop ffffffffff . . .

They say the key is to reduce emissions of methane and soot — two powerful and fast-acting causes of global warming.

Carbon dioxide is the chief greenhouse gas and the one world leaders [sorry, guess I already used that one] have spent the most time talking about controlling. Scientists say carbon dioxide from fossil fuels such as coal and oil is a bigger overall cause of global warming, but reducing methane and soot offers quicker fixes.

Soot also is a big health problem, so dramatically cutting it with existing technology would save between 700,000 and 4.7 million [there's scientific precision] lives each year, according to the team's research published online Thursday in the journal
Science. . . .

Science, eh? But how do they know all this, Seth, huh? Huh? (Seizing Seth by his no-doubt manly shoulders and shaking.) Tell me! Tell me!

Two dozen scientists from around the world ran computer models of 400 existing pollution control measures and came up with 14 methods that attack methane and soot. The idea has been around for more than a decade, and the same authors worked on a United Nations report last year, but this new study is far more comprehensive. . . .

If adopted more widely, the scientists calculate the methods would reduce projected global warming by 0.9 degrees Fahrenheit by the year 2050. Without the measures, global average temperature is projected to rise nearly 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit in the next four decades. But by controlling methane and soot, the increase is projected to be only 1.3 degrees. It also would increase the annual yield of key crops worldwide by almost 150 million tons. . . .

The study even [!] does a cost-benefit analysis to see whether these pollution-control methods are too expensive to be anything but fantasy. They actually pay off with benefits that are as much as 10 times the value of the costs, Shindell said. The paper calculates that as of 2030, the pollution-reduction methods would bring about $6.5 trillion in annual benefits from fewer people dying from air pollution, less global warming and increased crop production. . . .

And so on. Now that I think about it, Seth probably wasn't taken aback at all. See, this new push will be taken up alongside the ongoing push to force taxpayers to pay trillions in carbon dioxide mitigation costs. Great. And all based on the exact same kind of "science."