Cutting short-lived emissions such as soot spewed from trucks and methane belched from cattle will do little as a short-term fix for global warming, a new study says.

Previous modeling work indicated that such cuts could shave about 1 degree Fahrenheit from human-caused warming by 2050, enough to buy the world time to wrench the energy economy away from oil, coal and natural gas — major sources of the long-term heat-trapping gas carbon dioxide.