Industrial activities add aerosols of all kinds to the atmosphere, but do not add aerosols to the stratosphere. Volcanos do. either way, they settle out, some sooner than others.
Industrial activity is covered in the following link, quote "Human activities can have a similar cooling effect. Coal tends to contain substantial amount of sulfur, so that burning of coal for heat and power releases SO2. Such pollution does not reach the stratosphere, so the added SO2 has a fairly short atmospheric lifetime; however, the mass of emissions is large enough that a substantial cooling effect "
www.sciencedirect.com
This can be tied into your early point regarding the cooling in the period 1940-1960. I located (and subsequently lost) links identifying the WW II effort and mass use of coal and industry to increased aerosols in the atmosphere which were a temperature reducing mechanism.
The link I provided will raise questions on the input of volcanoes I am sure, but remember that this can be incuded in modelling as cycles are pretty well known and volcanoes do expel aerosols constantly, not just during eruptions.
This cooling was written up in a National Geographic article in November 1976. "What's Happening to our Climate?". Like most articles, it tries to balance the discussion.
You dismissed Lower Ponte's book, But you should go back and read the preface by climatologist Dr. Reid Bryson.
The debate on your part is starting to focus on the period 1940-1979, so we need to address in more detail the situation and known position around this time.
I would point out that the warming of the planet can be scientifically traced back to 1896 (Svante Arrhenius) investigations whereas the cooling became a snapshot in a ten-year area of the 70s.
1958 - Atmospheric CO2 measurements commence for the first time and lead to new fields of science.
1958-60 - Punch card computer modeling of Earth’s climate system are being developed.
1960 - Understanding of human based aerosols begins.
1960s - Climatic cycles confirmed against Earth's orbit.
In the space of a decade we have new technology, new fields, access to masses of new data and early computing facilities to pull reporting together. As to how to report clearly and correctly is very much open to interpretation and any position generated from this data would take a significant time to review and disprove, especially if only a few had access to computing to actually generate positions.
1971 - It was not all about reporting cooling in the 70s with a paper by Stephen Schneider and Ichtiaque Rasool,
science.sciencemag.org
Quote "t is projected that man’s potential to pollute will increase six- to eightfold in the next 50 years. If this increased
rate of injection of particulate matter in the atmosphere should raise the present global background opacity by a factor of 4, our calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5°C. Such a large decrease in the average surface temperature of Earth, sustained over a period of [a] few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an ice age. However, by that time, nuclear power may have largely replaced fossil fuels as a means of energy production. "
1971- A paper by Earl Barrett had a position of "the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere was on track to take 340 years to double " but we are on course to achieve that far sooner.
1974 - "William Kellogg and Stephen Schneider" produce a paper estimating a half degrees Celsius warming by 2000 from the result of CO2 emissions.
1975/6 - We come to Reid Bryson... Although throughout his career he appeared not to believe in Global Warming his original position of "aerosol cooling would dominate over CO2 warming " can now be reported as a warming phase as we have factored out the aerosols (see above and previous posts)
Another quote from a paper "Since 1940, the effect of the rapid rise of atmospheric turbidity appears to have exceeded the effect of rising carbon dioxide, resulting in a rapid downward trend of temperature. There is no indication that these trends will be reversed, and there is some reason to believe that man-made pollution will have an increased effect in the future.” "
1975 - The NSA report I referred to early which was mis-quoted and taken by the media whilst giving significant air time to the popularist theory of an ice age sets a trend in the population to distrust science, and scientists cannot be trusted - Of course this is completely untrue... The media if anything as always is the issue...
I propose that new information and a fast way to process in the late 1950s accurately took a position generated by the industrialisation for WW II. The information was taken on face value as the influence of aerosols was not known at that time and they could not anticipate that the damage caused by said aerosols would result in them being banned in the late 70s/ early 80s.
It has taken time for these aerosols to clear which masked the impact of CO2, first identified as a warming gas with respect to the climate some 125 years ago.
The cooling position was picked up by the media whilst those showing the issue of warming was not as exciting which implanted a generation that expected an ice age and lost faith in science on the subject of cliamate which we still suffer today.