We can phase out fossil fuels fast without having a burst of warming

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Burning fossil fuels spews carbon dioxide into the air, which warms the climate through the greenhouse effect (as if you didn't know that). But burning fossil fuels also spews sulfur dioxide into the air, and sulfur dioxide forms aerosols that can deflect the sun's rays and thus cool the climate. It has thus been argued that phasing out fossil fuels would have the undesirable effect of accelerating the warming of the planet in the near term, since we'd be getting rid of the cooling aerosols at the same time.

This very argument was made by countries with serious air pollution issues, and it indicated to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change policymakers that the countries were struggling to figure out how, and how much, to limit emissions.

But climate scientists Drew Shindell and Christopher Smith have now re-analyzed the modeling data and concluded that there is no way we could halt emissions quickly enough for the aerosols' "climate penalty" to be meaningful. "Even the most aggressive plausible transition to a clean-energy society," they write, "provides benefits for climate change mitigation."

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