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I had no idea contrails actually caused that much warming, compared to the exhaust.

Likewise. In fact, I was under the opposite impression because of the benefit that sulfur enriched shipping exhaust had for our climate [0]. It looks like these clouds are thinner and don't have the same impact as that, though. While I felt that the featured article linked to their favorite site aggressively (four links to contrails.org), it looks like the google site is legitimate [1]. I couldn't find a recent [2] paper on NoAA about contrails, but presumably others have studied it.

[0] https://cpo.noaa.gov/the-unintended-consequences-of-reducing...

[1] https://sites.research.google/gr/contrails/

[2] https://csl.noaa.gov/news/2011/101_0714.html

> In fact, I was under the opposite impression because of the benefit that sulfur enriched shipping exhaust had for our climate.

It isn't quite accurate to state that ship tracks have/had a "benefit" on our climate. Their existence creates a transient decrease in OLR and increase in albedo. If anything, they simply masked some GHG-induced warming that had a much longer half-time, and cleaning up ship emissions has "unmasked" some of that hidden warming. But, again, the warming was already committed.

The benefit was that they cooled the climate.

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