Emissions of banned, ozone-depleting chemical CFC-11 have climbed 25% since 2012

I have to constantly remind myself that it's probably lost or I misplaced it or something.

This week on Everest: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi1lmwJDyrG/

But frankly, for the amounts involved [1], there's no reason Montreal or Paris shouldn't have included monitoring and paid for it by penalties on violators.

Edit: After reading some summaries of Montreal compliance, it seems the general thinking is (a) it would be too hard to get agreement on monitoring & penalties in the initial draft & (b) self reported monitoring, in cooperation with UN agencies, tallied against general atmospheric measurements would reveal major discrepancies.

Not sure how this one slipped through the cracks.

[1] E.g. USD$10M/yr for NASA carbon monitoring research http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-qui...

This is not correct, and we can't attribute changes to ozone that precisely with the wide natural, seasonal variations.

"A U.S. observatory in Hawaii found CFC-11 mixed in with other gases that were characteristic of a source coming from somewhere in eastern Asia"

This was probably from the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, best known for its CO2 monitoring: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/

I don't think this can be overstated. True or not, the common belief held by most people in the US is that older Freon based systems are better than modern systems. This is due in part to the high cost and lower efficiency of those systems when they started showing up in the early 90s. As such many people chose to hold on to their older systems and maintain them.

The last two houses I have owned each had HVAC systems dating back to the 70s and early 80s and each had slow leaks that required refilling each year. The cost to refill a system has steadily increased but it is still under $500.

Modern chillers are not compatible with older furnaces so replacing your AC unit requires replacing your entire HVAC system. Prices start at around $4000 and many homes in the United States are multi system. We were quoted $12000-18000 to replace the two systems in our home last year.

Given the cost disparity between maintaining a 40 year old system and replacing it, what do you think most people would choose?

The original paper takes a stance on this.[1]

> It seems unlikely that the increased CFC-11 emissions are related to faster releases from banks or from inadvertent production. Increases in bank-related emissions are thought possible from the demolition of buildings that contain CFC products, although these emissions are expected to be small and only slowly increase over time 22 . Furthermore, an increase in CFC emissions resulting from the decommissioning of buildings is anticipated to occur initially in developed countries in which most CFC-11 was used in the 1970s. However, atmospheric measurements suggest, for example, a decline in US emissions from 2008 to 2014, which is consistent with inventories 23 (a qualitative update suggests no substantial increases in emission after 2014). If reported production values are accurate, our results would require a doubling in the fractional release rate from CFC banks over the past 15 years and a substantial increase in emissions from banks since 2012, both of which seem improbable (Fig. 2b; Extended Data Fig. 9)

> ... These considerations suggest that the increased CFC-11 emissions arise from new production not reported to UNEP’s Ozone Secretariat, which is inconsistent with the agreed phase-out of CFC production in the Montreal Protocol by 2010.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2

Wow.

It doesn't matter if alternatives exist now; someone made that huge purchase back then, they're not going to destroy all of their stock unless they're caught or afraid of being caught.

That's not a bad investment opportunity.

Freon prices in HVAC maintenance have risen dramatically in the past couple years. According to the technician who serviced my mom's system Monday, it was $100/lb last year and is $170/lb this year.

There's a black market because laymen flip out if you tell them you're refilling their A/C with propane/butane and lubricants.

In the 1980's, the Soviet Union had an estimated growth-rate of CFC production at 18% annually (estimated because they couldn't be bothered to measure it themselves accurately) which by 1990 would've accounted for 50% of global CFC production.

From [1, PDF]: "These reactions occur continually whenever solar ultraviolet radiation is present in the stratosphere."

[1] https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/2010/twentyq...

”The scientists don’t know exactly who, or where, that person would be. A U.S. observatory in Hawaii found CFC-11 mixed in with other gases that were characteristic of a source coming from somewhere in eastern Asia, but scientists could not narrow the area down any further”

Plus, it's probably some private black-market dealer, not a bad state actor.

My father here in SA had a tank of CFC gas when he was an air conditioner repairman.

The article I read didn't discuss anything about the effect on the climate. AFAIK the primary concern isn't about direct effects on climate, but the loss of the ozone layer lets through vastly more UV light, which has a sterilizing effect on the oceans and is extremely harmful to human health. The fact that this did not have a big economic impact (the way action on climate change could) also means that it's been less controversial to actually do something about it.

It's also OK to ask questions, in some vein to what you do here, but your comment is accusatory and poorly informed. You are simply assuming everyone is wrong, based merely on superficial, self-described "kid logic". Sometimes people are wrong, so that's OK to question, but in this, you've taken it a bit far. There is a lot of well-established science on the effect of CFCs on the Ozone layer. It's pretty much cut-and-dried--much better established, even, than smoking causes cancer. Other posters have replied with actual facts, but I just wanted to post a note that would maybe contextualize the shock of getting a highly negative rated comment and maybe help make it clear to onlookers why we prefer informed discussion here.

>Although the CFC molecules are indeed several times heavier than air, thousands of measurements have been made from balloons, aircraft and satellites demonstrating that the CFCs are actually present in the stratosphere. The atmosphere is not stagnant. Winds mix the atmosphere to altitudes far above the top of the stratosphere much faster than molecules can settle according to their weight. Gases such as CFCs that are insoluble in water and relatively unreactive in the lower atmosphere (below about 10 kilometers) are quickly mixed and therefore reach the stratosphere regardless of their weight.

[0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chlorofluorocarbo...

That's the first Google result for searching "Chlorofluorocarbon heavier than air".

The reason they have the strongest effect there, and not locally where they're produced or globally in the stratosphere, is because the stratosphere is very dry and only in the extreme cold of a polar winter can stratospheric clouds form. The particles in these clouds catalyse the reactions that allow a each free chlorine molecule to destroy many ozone molecules.

That's also why the hole is worse in the Antarctic. It is colder and has more polar stratospheric clouds.

And the only reason there is any disagreement at all is because billionaires and corporations pay for disinformation. They amplify the tiny number of scientists that disagree, and fund conferences and media to push this false story. Why? Because oil and gas companies make money on climate inaction. So they spend marketing money to sow doubt. There’s no significant organic climate doubt- the push comes from oil and gas funding.

Watching “Merchants of Doubt” is a good start because oil and gas company disinformation on climate follows the same playbook as tobacco and asbestos companies used.

Anyway, note that the atmosphere isn't perfectly partitioned by mass (or do you run on Nitrogen?) and that the poles naturally tend to have less ozone for other reasons.

It's bizarre that you give more credence to your reasoning from limited facts than to the conclusions published by people trying to do real science. Here's an "earth scientist" answering your question:

https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/GG/ASK/ozonehole.html

I’m sure there much more reading material out there than just the two Wikipedia pages you linked. Try the following for some more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

Until I read the parent comment, my working theory was that CFC production was never backed by politically powerful aged billionaires and despotic states in the way that carbon production currently is. But it strikes me that the real reason is probably that the problem was identified and addressed back in the 1980s, before the internet gave a platform to everyone who wrongly believed them self to be an expert. Its useful to be reminded that things were once (for good or bad) different.