How Sulphur Regulations Have Helped To Warm The Planet
By Paul Homewood
h/t sean2829
This was published in October 2022:
A global standard limiting sulfur in ship fuel reduced artificial “ship track” clouds to record-low levels in 2020. Pandemic-related disruptions played a secondary role.
Ship tracks, the polluted marine clouds that trail ocean-crossing vessels, are a signature of modern trade. Like ghostly fingerprints, they trace shipping lanes around the globe, from the North Pacific to the Mediterranean Sea. But in 2020, satellite observations showed fewer of those pollution fingerprints.
Drawing on nearly two decades of satellite imagery, researchers found that the number of ship tracks fell significantly after a new fuel regulation went into effect. A global standard implemented in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) – requiring an 86% reduction in fuel sulfur content – likely reduced ship track formation. COVID-19-related trade disruptions also played a small role in the reduction.
Ship tracks were first observed as “anomalous cloud lines” in early weather satellite images acquired in the 1960s. They are formed by water vapor coalescing around small particles of pollution (aerosols) in ship exhaust. The highly concentrated droplets scatter more light and therefore appear brighter than non-polluted marine clouds, which are seeded by larger particles such as sea salt.
By capping fuel sulfur content at 0.5% (down from 3.5%), IMO’s global regulation in 2020 changed the chemical and physical composition of ship exhaust. Less sulfur emissions mean there are fewer of the aerosol particles released to form detectable ship tracks.
While analyzing 2020 data, the researchers found that ship-track density fell that year in every major shipping lane. Ship-based tracking data indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic played a role by decreasing global shipping traffic by 1.4% for a few months. But this change alone could not explain the large decrease in observed ship tracks, which remained at record-low levels through several months of 2021 (the most recent data analyzed). The researchers concluded that the new global fuel regulation played the dominant role in reducing ship tracks in 2020.
This reduction in pollution has undoubtedly had an upward effect on ocean temperature. The question is how much.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Removing a pollutant, rather than trying by nefarious means to reduce CO², could have a measurable effect on global temperatures? Who’d have thought?
Interestingly the arrival of the world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas, has attracted the attention of the BBC climate scare department. They quote the International Council on Clean Transportation (no, me neither) who take umbrage even though it uses LNG for its propulsion, which is far cleaner than fuel oil. I’m no marine shipping expert but how else would the ship get around, sails and batteries?
BBC News – Icon of the Seas: World’s largest cruise ship sets sail from Miamihttps://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68118822
“This reduction in pollution has undoubtedly had an upward effect on ocean temperature. The question is how much.”
I doubt the doommongers/ profession climate activist care about those kind of small details if they can get a scary headline from it. I would not be surprised if these sulphur regulations were enacted with this in mind.
Don’t forget that long before tinkering with emissions from ships, that in the ’80s, just before Jim Hansen and Sen. Tim Wirth kicked this Global Warming scam into gear, the UK was “The Dirty Man of Europe” and was doing its best to kill all the trees in Europe by causing “acid rain”.
Cue to the UK “leading the world” again, by clamping down on power station sulphate emissions, introducing more efficient flue scrubbers, building state of the art FGD (flue gas desulphurisation) plants, closing gypsum mines and putting up electricity prices for the plebs. Obviously.
Later, in the noughties, it was proved that Scandinavian tree die back, “acid rain” were caused by inappropriate and excessive use of fertilisers in Europe (France and Germany amongst those fingered) and nothing to do with Coal Power Station emissions. After the privatisation of the Electricity industry (both generation and distribution) in the early 90s and coal in 1995, no-one was keen to discuss the “acid-rain disaster” and, although FGD had been installed at Drax and Ratcliffe, others (like Ferrybridge) were sold off effectively at a discount because public money had already been allocated to FGD, but HMG couldn’t be arsed to make sure FGD was actually introduced.
And it was then strongly suggested by naughty (but tenured) academics, that removal of sulphates from power station emissions was largely responsible for the fearful increase in Glowbull warming in the 90s. But, understandably, this news, like the puncturing of the acid rain bubble, was as celebrated as widely and enthusiastically as a particularly loud and noxious fart might be at a Royal funeral.
By then the GangGreen Uniparty had devised better strategies for destroying cheap and dependable electrical energy, as we hopefully all now understand.
Katy Mersmann pushing ignorance from an all-powerful government.
‘NASA Study Finds Evidence That Fuel Regulation Reduced Air Pollution from Shipping’
‘Pollution is the introduction of contaminants into the natural environment that cause adverse change.’
There is no evidence whatsoever that ‘ship tracks’ cause any harm at all. They are NOT pollution.
Here’s the BBC inventing a story about pollution from shipping in 2021, 18 months after IMO 2020 fuel regulations took effect.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210413153303/https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56735508
“Suez canal blockage caused sulphur pollution spike”, it proudly proclaims. Until I proved to them the story is nonsense. Oops.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210414175944/https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56735508
A day later the story has completely changed. ”The long reach of Mount Etna’s gas emissions”
<i>One such plume even arced over the Suez canal during its blockage last month.
This had analysts at the Airbus space company incorrectly tying the SO2 to shipping – as reported by the BBC.
The suggestion was that vessels waiting to make a passage through the waterway were raising the concentration of the gas in the atmosphere locally.
This assessment has now been accepted as wrong and withdrawn.</i>
One day perhaps BBC Science reporters will actually have scientific and journalistic training and be able to check their stories. Verified, because
It doesn’t add up…
Sulphur Hexaflouride is designated the most Global Warming Gas of all by no less abody than the IPCC of the UN. It is a tad unfortunate and something of a wonderful irony to us AGW/CC/C-E non-belivers that Sulphur Hexafluoride is essential for wind turbines.
Ooops!
Spark suppression inside heavy duty switchgear?