Have pollution controls cause global warming spike?

There seems to be better correlation with this than CO2...

Via WUWT

Pollution controls have contributed to a more transparent atmosphere, thus allowing for “…a staggering increase in surface solar radiation of the order of ∼20% over the last decade.”

A new paper (O’Dowd et al.) from the National University of Ireland presented this summer at the 19th International Conference on Nucleation and Atmospheric Aerosols suggests that clean air laws put in place in the 1970′s and 80′s have resulted in an increase in sunlight impacting the surface of the Earth, and thus have increased surface temperatures as a result.  In one fell swoop, this can explain why surface temperature dipped in the 1970′s, prompting fears of an ice age, followed by concerns of global warming as the air got cleaner after pollution laws and controls were put in place. Read it all...

Another reason to avoid buying Chinese goods

I will never be accused of being a rabid environmentalist. However, I do believe pollution is a serious problem which must be controlled. I am not talking about the hysteria over carbon emissions. I am talking about real cancer causing pollutants. These chemicals are what environmentalists need to focus on. The Chinese, in their mad dash to flood the global economy with cheap and poorly made goods, failed to consider environmental impacts. They are paying a heavy price.

China "cancer village" pays ultimate price for growth
Wed Dec 10, 2008 10:27pm EST

By Emma Graham-Harrison and Vivi Lin

XIDITOU COUNTY, China (Reuters) - Once an isolated haven, the Chinese village of Liukuaizhuang is now a tainted hell, surrounded by scores of low-tech factories that are poisoning its water and air, and the health of many villagers.

One in fifty people there and in a neighboring hamlet have been diagnosed with cancer over the last decade, local residents say, well over ten times the national rate given in a health ministry survey earlier this year.

Many fear they are paying for the country's breathtaking economic expansion with their lives, as surrounding plants making rubber, chemicals and paints pour out health-damaging waste.

"They asked in the hospital whether my family had a history of cancer. I said: 'No, in the last three generations no one had it'," one villager told Reuters, pulling out his x-rays and doctor's diagnosis that he had lung cancer. "It must have a lot to do with the pollution here."

Three decades of reforms and opening up since 1978 have transformed China from a rigidly ideological backwater into the world's fourth largest economy, lifting millions out of poverty, but not without a price...

Full story here.