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Comment by HPsquared | Hacker News Reader

Big ships burn bunker fuel which is high in sulphur. So much so, that the shipping lanes are visible on a world map of SO2 concentration:

https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/chem/surface/level/ani...

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Which is fascinating because sulphur emissions counteract (mask might be a better term) global warming. Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.

Wild when you see just how much emissions are still being released and still presumably cooling the Earth, meaning the effects of climate change we're seeing now are still likely a dampened version of the true long term impact.

Sulphur dioxide is also a threat to life (humans, animals, and plants) and can result in acid rains

I recall there was a major push against Acid Rain in the 70s-90s. If SO2 emissions were effectively regulated in that period (easy to do because “acid” is scary) then what magnitude of impact did that have on our post-90s warming?

To be clear, I'm absolutely not promoting increased sulphur emissions as a solution to our climate problems. Moreso pointing out that all those emissions are potentially masking the true severity of our current predicament.

I want to be sure people reading your comment understand why sulfur dioxide was problematic. Didn’t want to imply your comment was misleading

It also gets released naturally in copious amounts from volcanic eruptions.

> Reduction in sulphur emissions is suspected to be one of the main culprits of this years sudden rise in Earth sea-surface/land temperature this year.

Was there an outright study of the "main culprits" part of this? As I recall there was some evidence but then the main discourse was based on a lot of extrapolation by a viral tweet.

Not to my knowledge, which is why I used the word "suspected" since I think this falls on the "makes intuitive sense, but would not surprise me in the least if it turned out to be completely incorrect" category of hypotheses.

I consider "suspected" to be the least level of evidence while still taking something into consideration as a potential cause. A suspected murderer might not even have been arrested, let alone convicted.

We do know that sulphur emissions have a global cooling effect, and we do know that sulphur emissions recently were reduced, so it's a reasonable hypothesis from first principles.

This is a good overview if you haven’t read it already: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...

So another poisonous emission was partially offsetting the effects of other harmful emissions.

> Big ships burn bunker fuel which is high in sulphur.

Starting in 2020 there's a limit:

* https://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/PressBriefings/pages/02-I...

thats a great map, but let's be honest just look at China and India. that seems priority 1 to solve

Oh indeed, also look at the scale for numbers - concentration is far higher there. It's just interesting that the shipping lanes are visible against the low background levels at sea.

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