According to Geophysical Research Letters, the Earth warmed half a degree last year due to reduced soot and sulfate particles. This was due to the pandemix quarantines. [Study Here](https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2020GL091805)
So I’m genuinely asking: could increasing clean energy also cause global warming? Are we in a lose/lose situation?
In: Earth Science
Short term, yes
Soot, aerosols, clouds, and plane contrails reflect light high up and keep it from reaching the surface, this reduces the amount of energy that the Earth absorbs and therefore the amount of IR that it has to reemit and can have trapped by greenhouse gasses
Soot and aerosols clear out very quickly, on the order of months so a rapid drop in the amount of soot in the atmosphere will result in a brief uptick in temperature
But the soot generally comes along with CO2 production which sticks around. A reduction in CO2 production slows the rate at which Earth is getting warmer so while you see a slight uptick immediately the long term growth tilts downward.
If we shift heavily over to green energy it will result in a significant decrease in soot, but the resulting drop in CO2 production and hopefully decline in atmospheric CO2 will help stop the increase, but it will take many years to see the impact of a CO2 reduction
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