We’ve accidentally cooled the planet – and that’s about to stop

It is widely accepted that humans have been warming the planet for more than a century by burning coal, oil and gas. The Earth has already warmed by almost 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, and the planet is about to race past the hoped-for 1.5 degrees Celsius mark of warming.

But fewer people know that burning fossil fuels not only causes global warming, but also global warming cooling. It is one of the great ironies of climate change that air pollution, which has killed tens of millions of people, has also managed to limit some of ...