Soot, when it falls on snowy areas such as the Arctic and high mountains, causes the earth to absorb more sunlight, instead of reflecting it as snow does.
They're cleaner because they don't emit greenhouse gases or soot: the heat and water they generate as a byproduct can be used for cooling and heating the tower.
And because a pyrolysis stove doesn't produce much smoke, it releases very little carbon dioxide or soot.
Moreover, when wood burns in an ordinary stove, it releases soot and carbon dioxide, both of which can trap heat in the atmosphere.
Beyond fossil fuels Although CO2 is the main driver of global warming, there are plenty of others, such as soot, methane, nitrous oxide and even aeroplane vapour trails.
Instead, ministers from 25 countries will co-operate to vastly reduce black carbon (better known outside these talks as soot), as well as methane and ozone in the atmosphere – substances known collectively as short-lived climate pollutants.
China's cities have now reached a similar stage, minus the street protests, and local and national governments are increasingly following American and European regulators in imposing limits on emissions by new cars of nitrogen oxides (NOX), hydrocarbons and fine soot particles.
Under its "Euro 6" standards, due to come into force next year, diesel cars' NOX emissions will have to be 84% below the limits set when it started regulating them in 2000, and their soot output must be 96% below the initial limits set in 1992.
Best of all, the emissions will be well below the Clean Air Act's requirements with 99% of the sulphur being removed, and emissions of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide and particulates (tiny pieces of soot) being far lower than is possible using scrubbers.So far, two IGCC plants have entered service in America, with support from the Department of Energy.
Soot, or black carbon, stays in the atmosphere for an average of six days, whereas carbon dioxide lasts for centuries, even millennia.
That would not prevent the disappearance of the summer sea ice, but it might delay it by a decade or two.As Ny-Alesund's spring research season began, a team of French soot researchers were among the first arrivals, after the Northern fulmars gliding over the fjord.
