CO₂ is inherently dirty, except where it happens naturally. See for example: https://iere.org/carbon-dioxide-an-air-pollutant/

CO2 is plant food. It's amazing how the spin has affected so many generations. Much much worse than that for the environment are particulates from incomplete combustion, NOx from poor combustion, et cetera.

> CO2 is not inherently "dirty", so I'd argue that if the headline is advocacy minded, it's probably working against itself.

This derailing tactic is working against us all. You're trying to nitpick how a term is used, without acknowledging that the term is imprecise as is. It's not relevant whether we call carbondioxide "dirty" or not; man-made emissions of it are a huge problem.

I'm not sure the problem is how 'dirty' a source is, whatever you think that means. What's important is how much that source increases the net carbon content in our atmosphere. Unless you're burning wood (which is a vanishingly small proportion of all carbon release) you're releasing carbon that was bound on geological timescales, which is massively changing that balance.