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08/10/2007: "Industrial revolution steadily covering earth in greasy ash"

Around the middle of the 19th century the Arctic took a sooty turn for the worse, according to researchers studying how humans have affected the climate.

Soot can darken the snow, causing it to absorb sunlight, warm up and melt. That, in turn, can add to local climate warming by exposing darker ground which absorbs energy from the sun that the white snow would have reflected.

Ice cores from before about 1850 show most soot came from forest fires. But since then, black soot in the snow has increased several times over and most now comes from industrial activities, according to a paper in Thursday's online edition of the journal Science.

[ But with the industrial revolution, we all got to be kings who lived lives of leisure with 3 hours of work a day, no disease, no social problems and other grand Utopian visions... right? ]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070809/ap_on_sc/climate_change