This article presents a problem for us – cleaning up air pollution may make the future hotter. What to do? The idea that we have to trade-off health and global warming is specious. Clean up the air so we don’t have health problems, while significantly reducing our use of fossil fuels which emit GHGs.
A study published this month in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests that eliminating the human emission of aerosols—tiny, air-polluting particles often released by industrial activities—could result in additional global warming of anywhere from half a degree to 1 degree Celsius.