Well...shit! What do we do now?

Seriously. I am cooking in this freakin' 62 degree heat this morning.

I have long stopped using hairspray because I was told that the propellants in it were harming the ozone layer and polluting our skies.

(Oh...and because I am now bald, but mostly because I didn't want to pollute our skies)

And I've stopped using fireplaces...because I was told all of that smoke contributed to global warming.

(Oh...and because I no longer live in a home that has a fireplace, but mostly because I didn't want to contribute to global warming)

Now what?

GOODBYE air pollution and smoky chimneys, hello brighter days. That's been the trend in Europe for the past three decades - but unfortunately cleaning up the skies has allowed more of the sun's rays to pierce the atmosphere, contributing to at least half the warming that has occurred.

Since 1980, average air temperatures in Europe have risen 1 °C: much more than expected from greenhouse-gas warming alone. Christian Ruckstuhl of the Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science in Switzerland and colleagues took aerosol concentrations from six locations in northern Europe, measured between 1986 and 2005, and compared them with solar-radiation measurements over the same period. Aerosol concentrations dropped by up to 60 per cent over the 29-year period, while solar radiation rose by around 1 watt per square metre (Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1029/2008GL034228).

"The decrease in aerosols probably accounts for at least half of the warming over Europe in the last 30 years," says Rolf Philipona, a co-author of the study at MeteoSwiss, Switzerland's national weather service.

I give up. Living as a California Eco-Weenie is just too freakin' hard...and too damn competitive.

(HT for all of the green hilarity to Hot Air Headlines)