You're actually talking about sulphur dioxide (SO2). Sulphur is a solid. I did a quick google and found this. Sulphur dioxide is described as an indirect greenhouse gas because it contributes to aerosol formation. It is also a potent source of acid rain.

Yeah, that's what I thought. But chemistry is not my forte.

"John F. Clauser, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on quantum mechanics, has decided to sign the World Climate Declaration of Clintel with its central message “there is no climate emergency”. Clauser is the second Nobel Laureate to sign the declaration, Dr. Ivar Giaever was the first. The number of scientists and experts signing the World Climate Declaration is growing rapidly and now approaching 1600 people." https://clintel.org/nobel-prize-winn...e-declaration/

As a Physicist I find this news depressing. He should respect the expertise of the climate scientists as much as he expects to be respected for his expertise in Physics.
The thing that gives me hope is that only 1600 people have signed on to this misinformation engine, some of them scientists. There are 8.8 Million scientists in the world, so at most 0.0182% of the scientists in the world are that stupid or programmed.

All I can say on Clintel is I hope they are right but it seems prudent to not assume so especially if they are wrong. Humans are not evolved with long term threat assessment at the forefront, much like the cliche example of slowly raising the temperature of a pot of water in which a frog lives. The tendency to pseudoscience is also a real threat and that tendency needs to be outed and dealt with however we can learn to do so, but at the very least, risking the impact of losing just a few harbor cities to rising ocean levels, although certainly a potent wake up call, may come too late for avoiding subsequent serious catastrophe.

Part of the value in the whole climate change issue is feeling the need to learn far more about how global climate actually works. Discovering cheap, abundant, clean energy and moving away from dirty fossil fuels serves many purposes including those.

It looks very much like pandering to vested interests. Does Clauser make money from big oil?

It's not that simple. The frontier between science and pseudoscience is a rather porous one and ideas tend to move in both directions (though afterwards everyone keeps quiet about it and pretends it didn't happen). Continental drift was pseudoscience when I was growing up. It was rather like flying saucers: those who believed in it did so passionately but no geologist of the time took it seriously. Now it is science and no geologist doubts it. On the other hand, the luminiferous ether has followed phlogiston out of the door.

Sometimes you even get a circular motion. When I was a child, it was widely believed by doctors that rotten teeth acted as "sceptic foci" spreading disease throughout the body. So dentists were quick to remove the teeth of old people and replace them with dentures. Then it was decided that that was pseudoscience and there are no such things as sceptic foci. The only thing that rotten teeth cause is gum disease. But a few months ago, the New Scientist had an article on a bacterium which lives in diseased gums and can also invade the brain and cause the misfolding of proteins which is at the root of several kinds of dementia. Septic foci return!!

That's one of problems with using "science" as a vague catch-all buzzword.

Science is not knowledge, it is a process for trying to acquire knowledge.

Scientists can and do speculate - but their thoughts are not science, and nor are they pseudoscience.

Pseudoscience is not a lack of science, it is the presence of false/pretend science.

Ideas which have yet to be scientifically tested are not pseudoscience, unless people are pretending to have applied scientific method.

Ideas which have been tested but were rejected are also not pseudoscience, unless people are misrepresenting results and/or performing invalid tests.

It's not relevant if later experiments revisit a previously rejected idea, and discover new evidence which cause it to be accepted.

Science is not the knowledge, it is the method of discovery.

Thank you, boughtonp. You beat me to it.

In some ways scientific conclusions is a bit like the old joke about software being either beta, obsolete or both. It's all about the odds.

Say the same for the climate activists. Follow the money. Right now 'climate change' (which climate always will change over time) it is the 'hot' buzzward that brings in the cash. Cash cow right now, so people jump on that bandwagon like crazy. So it goes. Whether climate goes warming ... or cooling ... the climate change people have it covered .

I think it is important to note that human burned fossil fuel began dumping tons of CO2 into our atmosphere well over 100 years ago. Those aware of climate science began warning about long term effects almost 100 years ago and that concern remained entirely fringe and unsupported until beginning sometime around 60 years ago. It didn't reach lawmakers' interest until roughly 20 years ago, and even then that was a very insubstantial minority. No appreciable m0ney being made at that time.

As of 15-20 years ago, any "bringing in of the cash" was chump change at best. It was even chump change relative to just one Big Oil tax break in the US - The Oil Depletion Allowance - aka Extreme Pork. Big Oil spent millions by the turn of the 21st Century and followed the Tobacco Industry Playbook to spread FUD to keep their (Top 5 corporations net income) $150,000,000,000.00 /per year income flowing.

The first serious money in alternatives to fossil fuel (excepting early nuclear) started becoming publicly on the market sometime around 2003 but met extreme resistance and took huge hits, nearly going bankrupt, and steadily losing money until in 2012, focus migrated from the Roadster to the Model S Sedan. Note that by this time General Motors completely abandoned the Chevrolet Volt, not a sign of deep pockets to harvest.

Completely aside from the issue of Climate Change, as mentioned in the article under discussion, cheap, abundant, clean energy is absolutely necessary in the global economy because the people that will bear the brunt of the economic pain are middle class and lower families.

So tell me where all this windfall climate change profit is, compare quantities to more than a century of Big Oil gains, and who benefits most and who gets a wrinkle in their multi-billion dollar bank accounts from the switch away from fossil fuel?

I am 80 years old, lived and living in 3 regions of very different climate of the earth. I can tell you that they all heat up. People who say otherwise are either : 1- not living long enough 2- dumb as a door knob 3- get paid to lie.
My "scientific" detector : my shirt. Quebec ~1960, no way you can go out in September without a heavy overcoat.

It is a common but grievous error to confuse climate with weather. Weather is localized and short term. Climate is large scale, in this case, global, and long term. The connection is that over time Climate affects Weather but what is affected or how is not necessarily in the same manner. Changing wind and ocean currents due to a global increase in temperature averages can cause both local warming in one area, while cooling on average in a previously warmer locale. Assuming the whole planet behaves as your area does is the definition of "provincial".

We know for a fact that large volcanic eruptions alter both climate and weather. We know that CO2 and particulate matter is what volcanic eruptions produce that causes such changes largely because of the obvious and short term weather changes that track the degree of those products. Human products dwarf volcanic products by orders of magnitude but worldwide rather than more concentrated around one location in a sudden burst... but we produce those materials continuously and have for over a century. Can anyone imagine that has no effect?

I've noticed a lot of confusion in the last weeks between the reasons wildfires start and the way they behave afterwards. Many people seem to think that if the fires were started by arsonists, that explains everything. Actually it doesn't explain anything because there have always been idiots who thought that starting fires was fun. Also there have always been people who behaved carelessly, having barbecues and not putting the fire out properly, or throwing empty bottles out of car windows to lie around and turn into solar lenses.

But in the past, such fires were easily put out because they did not burn very hot and they certainly did not change the weather conditions around themselves. A wildfire usually burned for two or three days only and could easily be isolated by creating firebreaks. Now wildfires burn for weeks at incredibly high temperatures. They create localised storms with multiple lightning strikes that start new fires, surrounded by hurricane-force winds that can carry burning brands for miles.

We never had a forest fire that could consume a whole island the size of Maui. Say what you like, something has changed.