You know how the world's richest people have been in a panic about the weather the last 50 years or so and have dedicated trillions of dollars to fighting the sun?
Yeah, they might have made it worse.
Irony of ironies!
As it turns out, trying to "fix" the planet may have made more worse.
From University of Washington researcher Knut von Salzen, via The Conversation:
Clouds play a vital role in the environment, providing rain but also reflecting sunlight before it reaches the Earth's surface.
But between 2003 and 2022, clouds over the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific became less reflective, allowing more sunlight to reach the ocean surface and causing sea surface temperatures to rise.
My colleagues and I recently conducted research that shows global efforts to improve air quality have unintentionally accelerated climate warming by modifying clouds.
Environmentalists accidentally letting in way more sunlight because of their environmental policy:
I'm sure we'll all be fine, of course! But by the standards of global warming hysteria we're apparently doooomed!
As Knut von Salzen writes, "decreasing the amount of particulate pollution has also reduced the cooling effect of clouds, accelerating climate warming:"
The key factor turned out to be aerosols — tiny particles that act as seeds for cloud droplets. When there are fewer aerosols, clouds contain fewer but larger droplets. Those droplets reflect less sunlight and are more likely to rain out quickly, producing shorter-lived, darker clouds. This process weakens the cooling influence that low clouds have over marine areas.
Side note: This explains how bad my sunburn's been at the beach in recent years.
Salzen claims the unanticipated result shows that "air-quality improvements that save lives also remove a cooling shield that has been masking a significant portion of greenhouse-gas warming," suggesting more vigorous suppression of greenhouse gas emissions is needed.
They've been warning about this for about half a decade, though, so I'm not sure anyone actually cares!
As the old song goes: Look all around, there's nothing but blue skies!
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