This is climate pollution. One cannot see the global warming gases, but what we can see are the global cooling particulates created by burning naturally occurring sulfur in fossil fuels. Recent increases in global sulfur in fossil fuels regulations have accelerated global warming substantially, as they are removing global cooling that has masked about half of all warming humans have ever created.
Blame it on China and it Will Magically Disappear – Ignoring Climate Warming and Relaxing Air Pollution Standards
Bruce Melton PE
Recent popular press reporting has highlighted the Rump administration’s actions to relax air pollution standards in metro areas in Phoenix and now in Salt Lake City too, because of what they say are air pollutants from China. This is bunk of course, because only a relatively small part of the air pollution cited is from China. What this is, is a blame game to get out of jail free. Blame it on China and all those deaths from air pollution will magically disappear, just like the deaths from Covid. What is happening, directly in the face of cleaner emissions in both the U.S. and Asia, is climate warming effects.
Numero Uno: Asian air is far cleaner today than in the past because of particulate rules limiting sulfur in fossil fuels responsible for millions of deaths per year from respiratory disease. These rules have been partially responsible for the acceleration of warming recently as they remove sulfur oxide global cooling pollutants that come from burning naturally occurring sulfur in fossil fuels. The West began limiting sulfur in fossil fuels in the 1970s with the Clean Air Act. China has really upped their air pollution regulation game since the Beijing Olympics and India is now cleaning up their skies too.
Numero Dos: It is not far-fetched at all that local air pollution is influenced by events across the globe. The image comparison cover image for this article is from the trail into Boot Canyon in Big Bend National Park. The Bravo Study by the National Park Service says this pollution is from Mexico, but also substantially from the US Southeast (up to 52 percent at times), from Texas and the West, with up to 10 percent from other global sources outside of North America. The bias of this study is that it only looked at July through October data.
Numero Tres: How then, is foreign aerosol pollution increasing when the sources of that pollution are decreasing because they (China and India) have adopted sulfur regulations in fossil fuels? It’s because dumb-bunnies like those that are illegitimately participating in the governance of our country are anti-science fools. Climate warming substantially increases the ozone forming chemical reactions in our atmosphere that are natural and have been happening since the beginning of time to create haze. Human’s emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides from burning fossil fuels exacerbate these natural atmospheric chemical reactions. Bao 2025 linked below (not to be confused with BRAVO) confirms that warming has increased ozone formation with complicated mechanisms. Much of the US increase can be tied to weather patterns, because the U.S. air pollution regulation effectiveness is greater than in China because their rules are still relatively new, and because their population drives their pollution emissions because of a population four times larger than that in the US. And then there’s India, behind china, but rapidly moving forward. China shows limits to the increasing ozone from warming effect because of what is likely maximum chemical reaction rates in the atmosphere. What remains is that warming does have a substantial effect on ground level ozone and regardless of the source, like with the air pollution get out of jail free card from our current illegitimate elected science fool leaders, it doesn’t matter where the negative effects are created. Warming increases them and we are responsible for warming, and we must change our climate mission to one of climate restoration, not our current policy of a little further warming is safe, so as to halt the degradation tipping activation of our world’s Earth systems, eliminate the warming caused weather disasters, and eliminate inequity and injustice caused by climate warming.
Bravo Study – Big Bend National Park Website – https://www.nps.gov/bibe/learn/nature/aq_bravo.htm
Air Quality Monitoring in Big Bend National Park Fact Sheet – https://npshistory.com/publications/bibe/brochures/air-quality-2006.pdf
BRAVO Study Part 1 – https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16350368/
BRAVO Study Part 2 – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2004JD005609
Georgia Tech/Goddard Global Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation Transport that looks at Asian air pollution in the United States – https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2003JD003642
Bao et al., Comparative analysis of the impact of rising temperatures on ozone levels in China and the United States, Clean Air, September 2, 2025. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44407-025-00023-8