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Scientists Race To Find Who is Pumping a Dangerous Gas Into the Atmosphere (theoutline.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: When the research was published in Nature on May 16, it was like a bomb dropped. A greenhouse gas is billowing into the atmosphere from a source somewhere in East Asia that no one can identify at a rate scientists have never before seen, and it's ignited a scientific dash to get to the bottom of it. All countries are supposed to comply with the rules laid out in the 1987 Montreal Protocol, which banned the production of CFCs -- chlorofluorocarbons, which deplete the ozone layer and contribute to global warming -- with only temporary exception of a few economically developing countries. If everyone fulfills their end of the deal, the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere should gradually wane over the course of several decades. CFC levels plummeted through the 1990s, and then stagnated between 2002 and 2005. But in in 2014, mysterious toxic plumes of CFC-11 -- a type of CFC -- began to drift across the Pacific Ocean. Stephen Montzaka, a chemist who studies and monitors CFCs for The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), was shocked.
Without a doubt. The only problem is how to pin it to them. The political will also isn't there to pin it to them - too much money changes hands in the West on the back of Chinese goods being traded and we've become far too dependent on the Chinese for trinkets and future ewaste.
If we're going to get a handle on the environmentally destructive nature of capitalism then we're going to have to legislate that environmental capital be a real thing in all UN nations. That is that when you pollute the environment that you are held financially accountable for the costs required to remove it from the environment.
This tragedy of the commons has been going on far too long.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
You know when you "recycle" all those old fridges and freezers.
And it costs a bucket to throw them away.
And then a market starts up around a slightly cheaper way to do it.
And the company just takes your equipment, ships it abroad, to someone who just signs off that it's being disposed of properly (but who doesn't care because it's not his life he's hurting).
And then the abroad country, not having any care at all for such things as they get a nice backhander to bury a bit of rubbish, just throws it in landfill..
Yeah... there. That's where I'd start.
Like when you GPS-track waste electronics and find out it almost all ends up in landfill in India, China, etc. and isn't even processed at all.
From my quick checking it looks like uranium enrichment releases CFC 114. The CFC detected here is CFC 11. So unless there is a process of enrichment that releases CFC 11 that I didn't stumble upon it looks like this isn't due to uranium enrichment.
You can't save much if UV burns the shit out of everything.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
I wouldn't bet on "most people" knowing that CFCs are also greenhouse gases. I consider myself pretty well-read, and that was news to me -- to me the issue with CFCs was always ozone.
But now I know. If I had been a journalist writing the piece, I would have clarified the issue.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
See: https://www.express.co.uk/news... "SCIENTISTS have concluded a spike in banned chemicals which threatens to cause fresh damage to the ozone layer can be traced to badly recycled air conditioning units and fridges in China."
I consider myself pretty well-read
Did you read TFA?
If I had been a journalist writing the piece, I would have clarified the issue.
From TFA: "As greenhouse gases, CFCs are also thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide"
How could it be more clear?