this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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China

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GrainEater@lemmygrad.ml
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According to “The Hill”, China decreasing its air pollution is actually bad for climate change… somehow (thehill.com)
submitted 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) by materialanalysis1938@lemmygrad.ml to c/china@lemmygrad.ml
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The gist of the article is that China has reduced its usage of aerosolized sulfur dioxide over the last few decades. Sulfur dioxide is a dangerous chemical that causes acid rain and potentially respiratory illnesses. But apparently this is bad.

According to “The Hill” this will actually increase the speed of global warming because that harmful sulfur dioxide also offers a layer of protection against the suns rays that are now going to be absorbed in slightly higher amounts by the atmospheric CO2 to which the article concludes “we also must reduce CO2 emissions”

China has set a goal to be carbon neutral by 2060 while the current U.S. president seems to be doing everything possible to crush environmental regulation altogether.

This is what passes for journalism here in the USA.

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[–] LVL@lemmygrad.ml 16 points 6 days ago

Funny how they can take a legit finding but then editorialize it to bash China for doing a good thing. Yeah, cutting SO₂ does let more warmth through and will cause a 0.05 Celsius/decade growth but it's literally just showing the warming we are already creating and is tiny compared to the 0.2 Celsius/decade growth we're getting from CO₂ and methane. They also don't mention the fact that the USA and Europe also cut their sulfate emissions decades ago and contributed to this same type of "unmasking" effect.