#cfcs

In the 1980s, scientists concluded that if current trends continued the ozone layer that protects our planet would be nearly destroyed in a couple of decades. 

What followed was a massive international effort to ban or severely reduce use of chlorofluorocarbons--and the reason you probably haven’t heard much about the hole in the ozone layer lately is because those efforts worked. Rather than seeing the ozone layer completely destroyed by 2050, it is instead well on its way to full recovery.

Sometimes it seems impossible that our world could severely limit or halt our reliance on fossil fuels when they are such an ingrained part of modern life. In the 1980s, when scientists started sounding the alarm about a hole in the ozone layer, it seemed similarly impossible that the world would come together and agree to limit their use of chlorofluorocarbons.

It was not easy, but they did it, and we are living in a better world as a direct result of all those who took action to protect our planet from the threat of impending environmental disaster.

Study: The ozone hole is healing, thanks to global reduction of CFCs

New results show with high statistical confidence that ozone recovery is going strong.

Jennifer Chu | MIT News

:D Objectopia!

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HELLO MY BELOVEDS!

In 1995, federal officials seized 4000 pounds of an illegal substance in a Miami port. The substance had a street value of $32 million. What substance do you think it was?

I asked this question to ~40 people today and yesterday, and all of them answered with some form of illicit drugs (most commonly cocaine). And, of course, all of them were astonished to learn that the substance in question was not drugs--it was freon.

Freon is a propellant and cooling agent that was commonly used in refrigerators, car air conditioners, aerosol sprays, some household cleaning solvents, etc. But in the 1960s, we learned that it was hella bad for the environment. Freon is the brand name of a CFC--chlorofluorocarbon--which is basically an arrangement of elements that just so happen to substantially contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer.

In 1987, the U.S. joined 139 other nations in signing the Montreal Protocol, in which the signing nations committed to reducing their CFC production by 50% by 1998; eventually, as the Antarctica ozone hole crisis increased attention on the issue of CFCs, the signing nations amended the Montreal Protocol to change the commitment to eliminating CFC production altogether by 1996.

In order to make progress towards this goal, Congress passed a freon tax in 1990. And, well, some Americans took this whole "new taxes? new regulations??" thing about as well as you'd expect.

Which brings us back to our opening scene--a 1995 freon bust, where a woman was arrested for smuggling $32 million worth of freon into the U.S. (Fun fact - this sting was called Operation Cool Breeze, lol.) The freon black market arose simply because it was cheaper to use freon than the more expensive synthetic alternatives. And this desire for cheaper coolants/propellants was so significant that in 1998, the Justice Department estimated that the value of South Florida's underground freon market was equal to that of the area's underground narcotics market. The Justice Department also estimated that about 20 million pounds of illegal freon were smuggled into the U.S. in 1996 alone. But relatively few busts, such as the one I opened with, were ever made, because the government's environmental enforcement agencies and mechanisms--as is true with many other regulatory enforcement mechanisms--was and is underfunded, under-resourced, etc.

The lesson here? A pretty simple one that we've heard a thousand times before - Greed leads private corporations to go to extremes to evade regulations. We need to fund/equip our agencies properly so that they actually have the power to hold corporations accountable to regulations that protect individuals (including indirectly through the environment).

Thomas Midgely, Jr, from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, invented ozone depleting chlorofluorocarbons as well as lead additive in gasoline. He was stricken with poliomyelitis at 51 and turned his attention to medical devices. He developed a pulley system to lift an invalid from bed, but became entangled in the device and died of strangulation. Midgley died three decades before the ozone-depleting effects of CFCs in the atmosphere became widely known.

Sorry, Earth, The Ozone Layer Isn't Healing Itself After All

“Owing to global warming, there are suggestions that the tropopause has risen and will continue to rise, the troposphere has warmed, and these phenomena may have an effect on ozone concentrations in the lower stratosphere. Furthermore, greenhouse gas-induced climate change appears to be causing an increase in upwelling in the tropics, which could decrease stratospheric ozone there, according to simulations. The exact mechanism responsible for these changes has yet to be identified, but the data is clear: the "100% recovery by 2100" prediction didn't include these results. With this new understanding, that recovery may be stalled or pushed out to extremely long timescales, and global warming may be exacerbating or even causing this trouble.”

More than 25 years ago, humanity banded together to accept the Montreal Protocol: a promise to eliminate CFCs and stop destroying the ozone layer. As aerosol use changed, things appeared to improve. Our measurements of the ozone in the upper stratosphere, particularly over human-populated areas, was increasing again, and it looked like the ozone layer was recovering. But more recently, we began measuring not only the upper stratosphere, but the ozone density in the lower stratosphere and the troposphere. What we’ve just found is shocking and disappointing: there is no net recovery of ozone in our atmosphere. The decreases in lower stratospheric ozone offset any increases in the other layers, meaning that the ozone layer isn’t recovering, after all. While scientists aren’t sure why, there’s one key ingredient that might be the unexpected culprit: global warming.

When scientists first learned recently that CFCs were being emitted into the atmosphere in violation of the Montreal Protocol, they could generally identify the source or sources as somewhere in East Asia. Now, they are pinpointing those sources to factories in China.

CFCs are the chemical that, when discharged into the atmosphere, destroys the ozone layer that protects us.

Excerpt:

Last month, scientists disclosed a global pollution mystery: a surprise rise in emissions of an outlawed industrial gas that destroys the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer.

The unexpected increase is undermining what has been hailed as the most successful international environmental agreement ever enacted: the Montreal Protocol, which includes a ban on chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and which was expected to bring a full recovery of the ozone layer by midcentury. But the source of the pollution has remained unknown.

Now, a trail of clues leads to this scrappy industrial boomtown in rural China.

Interviews, documents and advertisements collected by The New York Times and independent investigators indicate that a major source — possibly the overwhelming one — is factories in China that have ignored a global ban and kept making or using the chemical, CFC-11, mostly to produce foam insulation for refrigerators and buildings.

China has the world’s largest polyurethane foam market, making up about 40 percent of global consumption. And China accounted for nearly all East Asian production of CFC-11 and similar chemicals before they were banned.

China’s struggle to eradicate CFC-11 embodies the hurdles it faces in cleaning up after decades of frenetic industrial expansion, when officials often treated pollution as a necessary price of prosperity. But it also has consequences far beyond the nation’s borders.

Researchers said in a study published last month that a rise in emissions of CFC-11 was jeopardizing the effort to repair the ozone layer, which protects people and crops from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays.