Hairspray

The Economist reports the growing scientific likelihood that the globe is indeed warming (“Changing science,” The Economist, December 10, 2005). “That the climate is warming now seems certain,” the magazine concludes. This may even be due to human activity, not just to the increase in the sun’s heat output in recent years (caused by unusual sunspot activity).

But if so, environmentalists may be partly to blame. It turns out that aerosols, of the sort that were systematically banned a couple of decades ago, promote cloud formation, and could have counteracted the effects of “greenhouse gases.”

And even now, it would be one heck of a lot cheaper than Kyoto simply to lift the ban on aerosols, and let them do their thing.