A Correction

I speculated last spring that the lockdowns were a natural experiment to determine the severity of anthropogenic global warming.

I was right, but in the wrong way.

I was wondering if decreased CO2 emissions would lead to detectable changes in temperatures (thus the wording "global warming" above rather than "climate change").

BUT, it turns out the effects of other forms of pollution are larger. The relative absence of aerosol pollutants that block infrared radiation actually led to a increase in temperatures.

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Astute readers will note if less aerosols (leading to a larger gross temperature increase) has a stronger effect than less CO2 (leading to a smaller gross temperature decrease), then a return to what we were doing before should be beneficial. Except it's not. Or at least that's what we've been told.