Everything is complicated: the fight against global warming is causing it even more (3 photos)

Here, environmentalists and fighters for all good things experienced cognitive dissonance.





In short, as we all remember, humanity is actively destroying the environment through the use of coal, oil, and gas. Because of this, the temperature on the planet is rapidly rising; it has warmed by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times, glaciers are melting, and sea levels are rising. This is what nature fighters have been telling us for decades.

But suddenly it was discovered that burning fossil fuels causes not only global warming, but also global cooling. One of the great ironies of climate change is that air pollution, which has killed tens of millions of people, is also curbing some of the worst effects of a warming planet.



Tiny particles produced by the combustion of coal, oil and gas can reflect sunlight and contribute to the formation of clouds. This helps protect the planet from excess heat.

Since the 1980s, these particles have offset between 40 and 80 percent of warming due to greenhouse gases. However, now that society is actively fighting pollution, the cooling effect of these particles is weakening.

Scientists have analyzed the results of air pollution control in China and come to grim conclusions. China, struggling with its own air pollution problem, has sharply reduced pollution over the past decade. As a result, the air became cleaner and the temperature even higher. Satellite images showed that the formation of protective clouds decreased after sulfur emissions fell.



In a new paper, scientists from the University of Maryland argue that reducing air pollution could double the rate of warming in the 2020s compared to the rate since 1980. Scientists are concerned that cleaning up air pollution and eliminating fossil fuels could cause even more and faster warming.