Study on the energy turnaround : phasing out fossil energy sources could prevent millions of deaths

you Would completely abstain from the Burning of fossil fuels, there would be annually about 3.6 million deaths less. This is the result of computer simulations, an international research group under the direction of Jos Lelieveld of the Max-Planck-Institute for chemistry in Mainz. Fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas accounted for about two-thirds of global air pollution, writes the Team in the journal "PNAS". Other sources include agriculture, Burning of biomass, and industrial pollutants.

The cooling effect

"would that way you Would eliminate all air pollution sources, increase number of even more than five million per year", Ko cited-author Andy Haines of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, in a communication to the Institute. In Germany, therefore, a year of 124,000 deaths could be avoided. The researchers combined a global atmospheric chemistry-climate-model studies derived health effects of air pollution. To heart-circulatory diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer.

the climate of the waiver would not only have desired consequences. Because according to the calculations, fossil fuels contribute to 70 percent of the cooling effect of the fine dust. The tiny particles in the air reflect sunlight and thus lower heating of Land and sea surfaces.

Would dismiss any man-made ultra-fine dust particles in the air, this would have – in comparison to the current Status quo in the short term, an additional increase in the global annual average temperature is 0.73 degrees Celsius. By a simultaneous strong reduction of short-lived climate-damaging gases such as methane, ozone and hydrofluorocarbons would be to limit the warming to 0.36 degrees Celsius, resulted in the simulations.

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In the tropics it would be more rain

The Disappearance of the fine dust would have an effect on rainfall in the world. "By reducing the aerosol concentrations in the tropical precipitation tend to increase as the particles will shield the oceans from solar radiation, which inhibits the evaporation and the water cycle slows down," write the researchers. India would, therefore, 10 to 70 percent more rainfall, Northern China from 10 to 30 percent, Central America, West Africa and the Sahel, respectively, 10 to 40 percent more.

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Thomas Leisner, head of the Institute for meteorology and climate research at the Karlsruhe Institute for technology (KIT), said the calculations did not correspond to the latest state of scientific methodology. He keeps the Numbers of premature deaths, but is too high. In the calculation of such rates of death, there are still large uncertainties. The discussion about the sense of fine dust and nitrogen oxide limit values, which has recently been conducted extensively in Germany, had begun with the critique of pulmonary physicians, at similar, but less sophisticated model calculations. (Tsp, dpa)