It might have seemed in 2025 that every piece of bad news for the global climate and energy transition had some sort of connection to President Donald Trump. If only it were so simple.

In fact, there are plenty of negative factors well away from the White House that have damaged our chances of tackling global warming, and many might have been ignored amid the drumbeat of more high-profile news. For the past few years, I've been trying to highlight some of these neglected issues that we should be worrying more about. Here's my summary of three troubling developments that flew below the radar:

One huge success for the environment in recent years has been the reduction in emissions of particulates in many parts of the world — in China, from shipping, and in urban areas of developed countries. Right? Well, kinda. While the fall in sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and ozone has been an unquestioned benefit for human health, more evidence has emerged over the past year pointing to how it's accelerated the pace of global warming and contributed to more volatile rainfall. 

Such particulates help to reflect sunlight back into space and affect the formation of water droplets in clouds. With fewer of them about, more sunlight reaches the ground to warm the planet, and storms can become more violent. Changes in cloud brightness driven by fewer particulates over the past two decades may have contributed about half as much to the world's climate imbalance as carbon dioxide emissions, according to one study published in November. That means that we may be........

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