Air pollution, a global scourge that kills millions of people a year, is shielding us from the full force of the sun. Getting rid of it will accelerate climate change.

– Well this sucks –

“Aerosols are masking one-third of the heating of the planet,” said Paulo Artaxo, an environmental physicist and lead author of the chapter on short-lived climate pollutants in the most recent round of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), completed this year.

“If you implement technologies to reduce air pollution, this will accelerate – very significantly – global warming in the short term.”

    • alaphic
      16•8 months ago

      Dude, if you think this is bad, I can only hope for your sake that you don’t ever stumble into Bing’s news aggregator… Literally every. single. article. that has anything to say regarding man-made climate change that doesn’t shoot sunbeams and happy straight up your asshole somehow ends up with a good 3 or 4:1 downvote to upvote ratio within minutes of posting. It’s fucking disgusting, tbh.

      The comments on these articles are also generally all some variation of one of the following: Someone questioning how Biden is making money off of this (🙃); Accusations of malfeasance or corruption on the part of scientists and/or science itself; “Nuh uh, cuz God didn’t say so” as a rebuttal to climate data; “It’s being done on purpose by the sun/libs/terrorists/Biden/Santa Claus”; “There wasn’t any extreme weather when TRUMP was president”; “It’s all a hoax to take your guns, somehow”; or, my two personal favorites, “The planet goes through these cycles naturally and nothing humans could do is capable of altering the climate” which is almost always followed shortly by “We’ll have the technology to fix it by the time it gets really bad in 50-100 years, even though it’s not going to ever get that bad because it’s a hoax perpetuated by the libs and scientists to make money by selling… Something, probably”

      • @[email protected]
        1•8 months ago

        I agree, my comment was a bit edgy. And now, although there are 11 down-votes, there are also 47 up-votes (for the post) which is, all in all, quite good compared to what you describe happening elsewhere.