CLEAN AIR = GLOBAL WARMING

As much of the world marked Earth Day this past week, the Environmental Protection Agency reported that air pollution has declined dramatically over the past 20 years. It sounds like good news, but science writer Eli Kintisch argues that there’s a surprising downside: Cleaner air might actually intensify global warming.

“If we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound,” Kintisch writes in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times.

Kintisch isn’t talking about greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide; he’s talking about another kind of pollutant we put in the sky — “like aerosols from a spray can,” he tells NPR’s Guy Raz. “It turns out that those particles have a profound effect on maintaining the planet’s temperature.”

You might remember aerosols. They came in very handy, before our moonbat rulers decided they were bad for the environment.

Not to worry, generous government grants allow scientists to search for solutions, such as

injecting new pollutants into the stratosphere while we continue to clean up our emissions.