But that is a lie. CO2 was air polutant 30 years ago 20 years ago and basically forever.
It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.
It is only in the post-truth society of right wing anti-climate influencers that apparently someone tries to redefine the terms to exclude it.
But yeah, more familiar pollutants are dirty or caustic or radioactive, and chew holes in things or give you lung diseases or poison the wildlife, things like that, so it was a little jarring. Though I suppose we had CFCs, they didn't do anything directly harmful either.
> 2.2.4 Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g. by air pollution).
Help me parse this according to your understanding that "CO2 was an air pollutant 30 years ago." If CO2 is a subcategory of "air pollution," then it makes no sense to list "air pollution" as an example of "other environmental factors." It wouldn't be grammatical. The report uses this basic sentence structure, referring to "CO2 enrichment" as one thing in distinction to "other environmental factors" including "air pollution" several times. Explain to me how that's consistent with your position?
It has been a pollutant as soon as it has started to be emitted at large scale through combustion, in particular of fossil fuels.
People who deny it are usually very brain-washed by far-right/alt-right propaganda, which tries to hammers into their brains that "it's just the same stuff that you exhale when you breathe".
They don't understand (or rather, they haven't been told!) that the scales are incommensurate.