12 ms·

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

162 points by ytNumbers 8y ago

rdtsc 8y ago
> also because alternatives exist, making it hard to imagine what the market for CFC-11 today would be. Well I've heard of someone who was stockpiling and was planning to sell banned Freon. That was years ago. There is a black market for it because equipment that uses it doesn't simply work on newer approved stuff. If I randomly heard about it, chances are there are more insantces of it. And if there is demand someone probably spun up a factory to make it.
- NedIsakoff 8y ago
  CFC-11 is cheaper then alternatives. If I'm a shady factory owner making cheap fridges for shady countries, who is gonna complain?
  - evek 8y ago
    Shady countries? Those are people and regular families...
    - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
      Why does that idea repulse you? We see it regularly with countries high on the corruption scale. And given what we know about the tragedy of the commons, it makes sense to make money on a global tragedy (CFCs). I (a CFC producer) can make more than the loss everyone takes. Transparency International tries to uncover "shady" countries. You can see the results here: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017 https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... To be honest, a good chunk of Europe and North America aren't terrible. There's room to be better. I'll let the data determine your decision. Edit: Boy, the groupthink is strong in here. -1 for actually questioning bad practices in corrupt governments, and providing data and a tie-in to a likely phenomenon why.. And I attract trolls. Sigh.
      - SanityIsRare 8y ago
        Honestly, as a third-world citizen, I just can't fathom why anyone here would give a shit about ozone layer. We are extremely dismissive of those issues here because we care about the future of humanity and Earth a lot less that first-world populace. We have no incentive to protect the Earth so that children of first-worlders can live healthily in 2050 whenever. You fucked us all up with colonialism and whatnot, and you still keep exploiting us like mad (not hyperbole - I get to see it). I guess payback will be sweet.
        Retric 8y ago
        Impact would be larger on the third world than the first. Increased sunscreen use when outside and lower crop yields.
        frockington 8y ago
        Playing the victim is probably the worst approach to take as it benefits nobody. And the irony behind your hope for payback is that the third world people will be hit the hardest by any environmental disaster
        StopCensoringMe 8y ago
        At what point does it turn from "playing the victim" to "being the victim"? I swear, you people will do anything to justify your oppression. I don't care, as long as it hurts you too then I'm totally okay with it.
        hollerith 8y ago
        You're probably lying about being a third-world citizen because you think the lie makes your comment more persuasive.
        jessaustin 8y ago
        Your optimism seems misplaced. Historically, winners thrive and losers disappear. If we're going to burn for what we're doing, it probably won't be in this world.
    - SanityIsRare 8y ago
      I live in one of those "shady" countries and I wish that I was never born.
      - kbutler 8y ago
        Please get help to realize your value and the opportunities you have to contribute positively to your area and the world. You can be a force for good if you choose. This assumes you're not just trolling, but actually, it applies if you are trolling as well.
        SanityIsRare 8y ago
        You made most of my waking life miserable and now you have guts to ask me to push your interests forward by labeling it "force for good" and ask me to do value-searching to find my inner Stockholm-syndrome. Go f*ck yourself.
      - reitanqild 8y ago
        > I live in one of those "shady" countries You keep mentioning this. Were you born there or did you move there?
    - ataturk 8y ago
      It's just China doing it. Why is this any mystery? What is mysterious is why the media can't just tell us the truth.
    - TelAvivHacker 8y ago
      You're both right! There are regular people and regular families living under very corrupt and "shady" government regimes.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    > CFC-11 is cheaper then alternatives. Is it actually cheaper to manufacture CFC-11 over other refrigerants? Since it's being done illegally, obviously no royalties or licensing would be involved. It's just a matter of actual cost to manufacture.
  - rdtsc 8y ago
    Not sure why you're downvoted. But in general that's probably the attitude. Can't say if it is just cheaper, but it is more efficient. It has a high boiling point, so you don't need as high of a pressure. That means can design the installation with less tolerances, not as powerful of a compressor etc. Moreover if you already have setup that works, you don't have to spend money to retrofit it.
- kissickas 8y ago
  Similarly, I know of someone who was manufacturing a CFC in the US before it was banned. He sold huge stockpiles to South American buyers in advance of the treaty taking effect, making more money then than before simply due to selling such a large volume in such a short time. 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.
  - CompelTechnic 8y ago
    It is interesting to see how the current dwindling stockpiles of R-12 are being treated. See this ebay listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/R-12-Refrigerant-3-Du-Pont-Freon-Cans-Usa-made-Genuine-12oz-Cans/222541511616?hash=item33d081fbc0:g:oaEAAOSwv95Z32Sv https://www.ebay.com/itm/R-12-Refrigerant-3-Du-Pont-Freon-Ca... I'm sure that every person buying cans on ebay is either a certified technician or buying them "solely for the purpose of reselling them to an EPA certified technician".
- cptskippy 8y ago
  > Well I've heard of someone who was stockpiling and was planning to sell banned Freon. 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.
  - jaclaz 8y ago
    Casually I was just speaking about this with my HVAC technician yesterday and he told me that here (Italy) the raise was even steeper, something like 2.5 or 3 times over the last two-three years (cannot remember the actual prices he told me).
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >There is a black market for it because equipment that uses it doesn't simply work on newer approved stuff. There's a black market because laymen flip out if you tell them you're refilling their A/C with propane/butane and lubricants.
  - rhombocombus 8y ago
    Aren't there documented cases of r600 explosions when used in non r600 equipment? I mean, my chest freezer uses butane, but it was built for it. My refrigeration training is limited so I am genuinely curious, I was always taught to NEVER mix refrigerants or attempt a retrofit like that, but I could be wrong/ignorant.
caf 8y ago
I've got a shiny dollar that says they're in the northern hemisphere.
- ethor 8y ago
  There seem to be some trails pointing towards SE asia. From the article: ”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”
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- simonh 8y ago
  You mean along with 88% of the world's population?
Fjolsvith 8y ago
Then someone, somewhere needs to make ozone.
- youngbullind 8y ago
  And get it up to the ozone layer, because at ground level it's a pollutant which causes lung damage.
  - cptskippy 8y ago
    Falcon 9s?
- mdpopescu 8y ago
  It continues to amaze me that (some) people (appear to) believe we have a fixed quantity of ozone and once that's depleted, we're in trouble. 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/twentyquestions/Q2.pdf https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/2010/twentyq...
  - epx 8y ago
    Yeah but every chlorine atom up there is a nanomachine that destroys all ozone molecules it can touch, and it lasts one century in average. So, given enough, no amount of ozone generation can compensate.
    - Fjolsvith 8y ago
      It seems to me, looking at the chemical reaction whereby a chlorine atom breaks Ozone into two O2 molecules and then two O2 molecules form Ozone, that it actually increases the amount of O2 that is available for forming Ozone.
tpeo 8y ago
The overall, just-worrying-factor of this aside, I think it's rather surprising that "someone, somewhere" is putting up CFC-11 in the atmosphere and somehow the only way people got a hold of this was by looking at the ozone layer. If that's indeed the case, that would be a reminder that though there's a lot of information about a lot of stuff nowadays, much of what matters to us can still be going on on completely in the dark. EDIT: Alternatively, and more innocently, this could be due to the end of the life-cycle of several appliances in Second/Third World countries -- or maybe even First World (do you know anyone with an aging fridge?). While a lot of people might have done away with their old fridges a long while ago, those that didn't might be seeing them all fail nearly at the same time.
- ethbro 8y ago
  It costs money to monitor. 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-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-qui...
- kbutler 8y ago
  > somehow the only way people got a hold of this was by looking at the ozone layer. 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/ https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/
- cptskippy 8y ago
  > Alternatively, and more innocently, this could be due to the end of the life-cycle of several appliances in Second/Third World countries -- or maybe even First World (do you know anyone with an aging fridge?). 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?
RobertRoberts 8y ago
Can someone summarize how CFCs achieve the result of depleting the ozone layer? When I was a kid someone pointed out that CFCs were quite heavy and it was not possible to make it up to the ozone layer. Also, my kid logic considered the science experiment where the teacher showed us a basketball with a light shining through a peg-board onto. At the polls the circles were elongated, thus demonstrating how less light (therefore less radiation) hits the poles. The fact that the hole in the ozone layer is only at the poles, and according Wikipedia [0], the ozone layer absorbs "97 to 99 percent of the Sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light" [0]. And that I have never heard of any prevailing wind patterns [1] that would send _all_ of the CFCs in the world to one or two locations, means I have questions... Two facts seem to make me think there's a flaw in blaming CFCs for the ozone hole. 1) It may simply be a naturally occurring phenomenon because there simply is less ultra violet radiation there. (ie, ozone may exist in part because of ultraviolet radiation, not in spite of it) 2) If CFCs are causing the hole, then shouldn't there be holes right above the factories that make the stuff? (or some similar localized affect first before a distant one?) Another science experiment from 7th grade, our teacher sprayed a scented mist in the corner of the room. And described the process that eventually (because of entropy) the mist would disperse evenly throughout the room. Claiming a gas would collect in one spot is to claim that the scented mist would disperse and then regather, which is a similar claim to the CFCs. Sure pollution air can gather, but it's in valleys, not the sky. Consider all the pollution from really polluted cities and factories all over the world, I've never once heard a distant affect claimed from some of these cesspools, yet, somehow CFCs pollute unlike any other gas/chemical known to man? I don't believe in magic, so there has to be an experiment done to show how CFCs get to the south pole and fly straight up thousands of feet, and then, and only then, do they react with the ozone... something is amiss. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds
- plantain 8y ago
  Thunder storms very quickly lift particles sometimes as high as 60,000ft, and there's other phenomena such as mountain lee waves that are mixing air in excess of 120,000ft, well into the Ozone layer.
DiabloD3 8y ago
Ozone production is tied to solar activity disproportionately, and the 11 year cycle between the solar maximum and the solar minimum effect ozone measurements. We are currently at solar minimum, and we are also possibly headed into a grand solar minimum (an extended period of low solar activity). Zaelke also does not seem to have published a paper on his findings, and all of his quotes in this article are largely political-oriented fluff. The latest thing I can find with anything that has his name on it is from 2009, and only discusses the Montreal Protocol in relation to lowering CO2 emissions. So, the article just tells us CFC-11 detectors detected something (which may or may not be CFC-11), but cannot tell us how much, where, or how it effected climate activity during a time of natural low ozone production. Also, this does not discuss if this was production, or just older appliances breaking down or being taken apart for recycling improperly. Without a paper, we cannot tell how they accounted for this.
- titzer 8y ago
  > how it effected climate activity during a time of natural low ozone production. 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.
  - rhodrid 8y ago
    Crops don't like it much either. Same with trees.
- DangerousPie 8y ago
  The paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2
donttrack 8y ago
How big a factory would you need to do this? I mean that sounds like some pretty low hanging fruit right there for the evil scientists out there, who wants to destroy human kind.
- IshKebab 8y ago
  Not many people really want to destroy all human kind including themselves.
titzer 8y ago
Welcome to the long tail of hyper-optimizing Capitalism and the tragedy of the commons. If someone, somewhere, perceives an economic advantage in producing something banned or destroying something hard to replace, they will try it. Thinking through not only the regulatory regime but enforcement protocols necessary to maintain 100% bans on some activities, we're in for a mess in the long haul.
- krona 8y ago
  What in particular has the production of CFC gas got to do with capitalism? 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.
  - titzer 8y ago
    Maybe I am using capitalism in too broad a sense: I meant to express that if the use of CFC gives one competitor an advantage over another, they may go right ahead and do it, regardless of the consequences. Capitalism constantly prides itself on how great competition is, but competition actually makes this problem worse, not better.
    - pc86 8y ago
      If by "too broad a sense" you mean "incorrectly," then sure.
      - titzer 8y ago
        "An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." --Oxford Did you have a different definition in mind?
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
FrozenVoid 8y ago
Related: Shrinking Ozone layer: https://qz.com/1199846/earths-ozone-layer-is-still-shrinking-and-scientists-dont-know-why/ https://qz.com/1199846/earths-ozone-layer-is-still-shrinking... dichloromethane: https://www.earth.com/news/dangerous-threat-ozone-layer/ https://www.earth.com/news/dangerous-threat-ozone-layer/
DangerousPie 8y ago
Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2
matte_black 8y ago
If this is true and we found the place where it was being produced, could we be justified in destroying the facility by missile strike in order to save the world?
- jessaustin 8y ago
  How about just having police visit? They're more likely to apprehend the owners of the facility (you know, the actual culprits) and to preserve evidence of exactly what has occurred. Also in many nations they are less likely than a "missile strike" to kill everyone present.
  - matte_black 8y ago
    Sure, but what if the corruption goes very high up, and the police do nothing? Or it’s an uncooperative rogue state? Do we just let the ozone burn?
    - jessaustin 8y ago
      Sometimes it's quite difficult to remind oneself that those with inexplicably martial attitudes are more likely to be deluded victims of the war media than actual employees of the military-industrial complex.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  That would be a horrible idea (hopefully Trump wouldn't think it was a good idea). The accord relies on international cooperation. If we flew a missile into, say, China - setting aside all the other international implications of that - they could easily say "well screw you" and spin up 100 more factories. Plus, it's probably some private black-market dealer, not a bad state actor.
nimbius 8y ago
As an engine mechanic, Hanlons Razor comes to mind. We once had a "thief" in our garage who was stealing expensive welding gasses and getting away with it. Sometimes she would steal whole tanks, other times she would siphon tanks until they were almost dry. We took to naming her Shirley. After about a month we caught the culprits. The tank theft was due to a manager in another location who was greedily stealing our gas bottles without filing the correct paperwork, to use at his location. The other thief was a gas safety relief system that measures tank temperature and pressure, and preemptively vents the contents if theres an irregularity. One of its 2 post sensors had died and the alarm for it was just being silenced by our cleaning crew.
- Clubber 8y ago
  That's the most insidious thing about theft. Your mind starts blaming the innocent people you know (friends or colleagues) and you convince yourself someone is doing it and start treating them differently. I have to constantly remind myself that it's probably lost or I misplaced it or something.
- ISL 8y ago
  The insurrection of the safety valves is real. This week on Everest: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi1lmwJDyrG/ https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi1lmwJDyrG/
tom_ 8y ago
Now I know I'm old, because the headline refers to CFCs by symptom than by name... (Wikipedia article about the guy behind them, no one-trick pony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.)
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  >In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. This was the eventual cause of his own death when he was entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55 Wow.
  - rangersanger 8y ago
    Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history”,[19] and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed “an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny”.[20]
  - lainga 8y ago
    He died as he lived: by regrettable inventions.
towndrunk 8y ago
What about rockets like SpaceX etc. and volcano's erupting like in Hawaii? What effect do those have on the ozone?
- y0y 8y ago
  I'm not sure, but they don't produce CFC-11. That is what is being measured, and its effects on the ozone are well-established.
- jimmy1 8y ago
  What does that have to do with a nation violating an international accord to stop producing CFC emissions?
  - towndrunk 8y ago
    I was actually just curious.
    - jimmy1 8y ago
      My apologies!
epx 8y ago
China, obviously.
bb101 8y ago
China? Pertinent parallels with this part of Chai Jing's censored talk "Under the Dome"[1] (worth watching the whole thing actually). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM&t=42m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM&t=42m23s
PerilousD 8y ago
Back of the envelope calc says this is about the weight of say a dozen passenger cars or say 1 passenger car (weight) per month over a year? Doesn't sound like a major industrial operation to me and how many tons are STILL out there in old air conditioners and refrigerators that could be leaking?
- caf 8y ago
  You're out by a factor of 1000.
  - PerilousD 8y ago
    Yeah you're right - sorry about that - need to buy a much bigger slide rule :-)
aaron695 8y ago
East Asia - Code for China One assumes they aren't stupid and factor in all the releases from recycling and all the buildings there being demolished. One fridge can have 500 grams in it. A building must have a shitload and let's say you work out a way to recycle the insulation rather than burying it, then it'd cause a rapid rise, but this should be known. But assuming it's new, the 13000 tonnes "leaked". So much much more must be being made for the final product, unless it's a byproduct from some 'new?' industry. It's not like the Ozone people haven't made huge mis-calculations before ;) It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
new299 8y ago
Does anyone have an idea of how difficult it would be to create a sensor network to monitor for CFCs? What would the PPM at source be? Quick googling suggests that there are sensors that can detect down to 1000PPM [1], but I'd guess you'd need something substantially lower than that. [1] https://docs-apac.rs-online.com/webdocs/15a6/0900766b815a66db.pdf https://docs-apac.rs-online.com/webdocs/15a6/0900766b815a66d...
- sp332 8y ago
  Around 200 parts per trillion in the atmosphere in general. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/it-seems-someone-is-producing-a-banned-ozone-depleting-chemical-again/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/it-seems-someone-is-... At the source it might be high enough.
_bxg1 8y ago
Everybody's saying China, and, well, maybe. But what about North Korea? Despite China having a reputation for shady business practices, the Chinese government at least often gives the environment a higher priority than the US does. Also, North Korea probably has tons of outdated hardware, I would guess, and little respect for the outside world. God help us if it is North Korea. Things are delicate enough as it is, with the peace treaty and the nuclear situation.
- kevin_b_er 8y ago
  Either are possible, but China has more manufacturing that doesn't care about the consequences and has shown a history of this.
- Synaesthesia 8y ago
  Heck it could be South Africa - it has a larger economy and population than NK AFAIK. (Or at least equal economy) My father here in SA had a tank of CFC gas when he was an air conditioner repairman.
  - _bxg1 8y ago
    The data suggested southeast Asia

162 points by ytNumbers 8y ago

> also because alternatives exist, making it hard to imagine what the market for CFC-11 today would be. Well I've heard of someone who was stockpiling and was planning to sell banned Freon. That was years ago. There is a black market for it because equipment that uses it doesn't simply work on newer approved stuff. If I randomly heard about it, chances are there are more insantces of it. And if there is demand someone probably spun up a factory to make it.

NedIsakoff 8y ago
CFC-11 is cheaper then alternatives. If I'm a shady factory owner making cheap fridges for shady countries, who is gonna complain?
- evek 8y ago
  Shady countries? Those are people and regular families...
  - crankylinuxuser 8y ago
    Why does that idea repulse you? We see it regularly with countries high on the corruption scale. And given what we know about the tragedy of the commons, it makes sense to make money on a global tragedy (CFCs). I (a CFC producer) can make more than the loss everyone takes. Transparency International tries to uncover "shady" countries. You can see the results here: https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017 https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept... To be honest, a good chunk of Europe and North America aren't terrible. There's room to be better. I'll let the data determine your decision. Edit: Boy, the groupthink is strong in here. -1 for actually questioning bad practices in corrupt governments, and providing data and a tie-in to a likely phenomenon why.. And I attract trolls. Sigh.
    - SanityIsRare 8y ago
      Honestly, as a third-world citizen, I just can't fathom why anyone here would give a shit about ozone layer. We are extremely dismissive of those issues here because we care about the future of humanity and Earth a lot less that first-world populace. We have no incentive to protect the Earth so that children of first-worlders can live healthily in 2050 whenever. You fucked us all up with colonialism and whatnot, and you still keep exploiting us like mad (not hyperbole - I get to see it). I guess payback will be sweet.
      - Retric 8y ago
        Impact would be larger on the third world than the first. Increased sunscreen use when outside and lower crop yields.
      - frockington 8y ago
        Playing the victim is probably the worst approach to take as it benefits nobody. And the irony behind your hope for payback is that the third world people will be hit the hardest by any environmental disaster
        StopCensoringMe 8y ago
        At what point does it turn from "playing the victim" to "being the victim"? I swear, you people will do anything to justify your oppression. I don't care, as long as it hurts you too then I'm totally okay with it.
      - hollerith 8y ago
        You're probably lying about being a third-world citizen because you think the lie makes your comment more persuasive.
      - jessaustin 8y ago
        Your optimism seems misplaced. Historically, winners thrive and losers disappear. If we're going to burn for what we're doing, it probably won't be in this world.
  - SanityIsRare 8y ago
    I live in one of those "shady" countries and I wish that I was never born.
    - kbutler 8y ago
      Please get help to realize your value and the opportunities you have to contribute positively to your area and the world. You can be a force for good if you choose. This assumes you're not just trolling, but actually, it applies if you are trolling as well.
      - SanityIsRare 8y ago
        You made most of my waking life miserable and now you have guts to ask me to push your interests forward by labeling it "force for good" and ask me to do value-searching to find my inner Stockholm-syndrome. Go f*ck yourself.
    - reitanqild 8y ago
      > I live in one of those "shady" countries You keep mentioning this. Were you born there or did you move there?
  - ataturk 8y ago
    It's just China doing it. Why is this any mystery? What is mysterious is why the media can't just tell us the truth.
  - TelAvivHacker 8y ago
    You're both right! There are regular people and regular families living under very corrupt and "shady" government regimes.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  > CFC-11 is cheaper then alternatives. Is it actually cheaper to manufacture CFC-11 over other refrigerants? Since it's being done illegally, obviously no royalties or licensing would be involved. It's just a matter of actual cost to manufacture.
- rdtsc 8y ago
  Not sure why you're downvoted. But in general that's probably the attitude. Can't say if it is just cheaper, but it is more efficient. It has a high boiling point, so you don't need as high of a pressure. That means can design the installation with less tolerances, not as powerful of a compressor etc. Moreover if you already have setup that works, you don't have to spend money to retrofit it.
kissickas 8y ago
Similarly, I know of someone who was manufacturing a CFC in the US before it was banned. He sold huge stockpiles to South American buyers in advance of the treaty taking effect, making more money then than before simply due to selling such a large volume in such a short time. 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.
- CompelTechnic 8y ago
  It is interesting to see how the current dwindling stockpiles of R-12 are being treated. See this ebay listing: https://www.ebay.com/itm/R-12-Refrigerant-3-Du-Pont-Freon-Cans-Usa-made-Genuine-12oz-Cans/222541511616?hash=item33d081fbc0:g:oaEAAOSwv95Z32Sv https://www.ebay.com/itm/R-12-Refrigerant-3-Du-Pont-Freon-Ca... I'm sure that every person buying cans on ebay is either a certified technician or buying them "solely for the purpose of reselling them to an EPA certified technician".
cptskippy 8y ago
> Well I've heard of someone who was stockpiling and was planning to sell banned Freon. 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.
- jaclaz 8y ago
  Casually I was just speaking about this with my HVAC technician yesterday and he told me that here (Italy) the raise was even steeper, something like 2.5 or 3 times over the last two-three years (cannot remember the actual prices he told me).
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>There is a black market for it because equipment that uses it doesn't simply work on newer approved stuff. There's a black market because laymen flip out if you tell them you're refilling their A/C with propane/butane and lubricants.
- rhombocombus 8y ago
  Aren't there documented cases of r600 explosions when used in non r600 equipment? I mean, my chest freezer uses butane, but it was built for it. My refrigeration training is limited so I am genuinely curious, I was always taught to NEVER mix refrigerants or attempt a retrofit like that, but I could be wrong/ignorant.

caf 8y ago

I've got a shiny dollar that says they're in the northern hemisphere.

ethor 8y ago
There seem to be some trails pointing towards SE asia. From the article: ”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”
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
simonh 8y ago
You mean along with 88% of the world's population?

Fjolsvith 8y ago

Then someone, somewhere needs to make ozone.

youngbullind 8y ago
And get it up to the ozone layer, because at ground level it's a pollutant which causes lung damage.
- cptskippy 8y ago
  Falcon 9s?
mdpopescu 8y ago
It continues to amaze me that (some) people (appear to) believe we have a fixed quantity of ozone and once that's depleted, we're in trouble. 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/twentyquestions/Q2.pdf https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/2010/twentyq...
- epx 8y ago
  Yeah but every chlorine atom up there is a nanomachine that destroys all ozone molecules it can touch, and it lasts one century in average. So, given enough, no amount of ozone generation can compensate.
  - Fjolsvith 8y ago
    It seems to me, looking at the chemical reaction whereby a chlorine atom breaks Ozone into two O2 molecules and then two O2 molecules form Ozone, that it actually increases the amount of O2 that is available for forming Ozone.

tpeo 8y ago

The overall, just-worrying-factor of this aside, I think it's rather surprising that "someone, somewhere" is putting up CFC-11 in the atmosphere and somehow the only way people got a hold of this was by looking at the ozone layer. If that's indeed the case, that would be a reminder that though there's a lot of information about a lot of stuff nowadays, much of what matters to us can still be going on on completely in the dark. EDIT: Alternatively, and more innocently, this could be due to the end of the life-cycle of several appliances in Second/Third World countries -- or maybe even First World (do you know anyone with an aging fridge?). While a lot of people might have done away with their old fridges a long while ago, those that didn't might be seeing them all fail nearly at the same time.

ethbro 8y ago
It costs money to monitor. 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-quietly-cancels-nasa-research-verifying-greenhouse-gas-cuts http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-qui...
kbutler 8y ago
> somehow the only way people got a hold of this was by looking at the ozone layer. 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/ https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/
cptskippy 8y ago
> Alternatively, and more innocently, this could be due to the end of the life-cycle of several appliances in Second/Third World countries -- or maybe even First World (do you know anyone with an aging fridge?). 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?

RobertRoberts 8y ago

Can someone summarize how CFCs achieve the result of depleting the ozone layer? When I was a kid someone pointed out that CFCs were quite heavy and it was not possible to make it up to the ozone layer. Also, my kid logic considered the science experiment where the teacher showed us a basketball with a light shining through a peg-board onto. At the polls the circles were elongated, thus demonstrating how less light (therefore less radiation) hits the poles. The fact that the hole in the ozone layer is only at the poles, and according Wikipedia [0], the ozone layer absorbs "97 to 99 percent of the Sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light" [0]. And that I have never heard of any prevailing wind patterns [1] that would send _all_ of the CFCs in the world to one or two locations, means I have questions... Two facts seem to make me think there's a flaw in blaming CFCs for the ozone hole. 1) It may simply be a naturally occurring phenomenon because there simply is less ultra violet radiation there. (ie, ozone may exist in part because of ultraviolet radiation, not in spite of it) 2) If CFCs are causing the hole, then shouldn't there be holes right above the factories that make the stuff? (or some similar localized affect first before a distant one?) Another science experiment from 7th grade, our teacher sprayed a scented mist in the corner of the room. And described the process that eventually (because of entropy) the mist would disperse evenly throughout the room. Claiming a gas would collect in one spot is to claim that the scented mist would disperse and then regather, which is a similar claim to the CFCs. Sure pollution air can gather, but it's in valleys, not the sky. Consider all the pollution from really polluted cities and factories all over the world, I've never once heard a distant affect claimed from some of these cesspools, yet, somehow CFCs pollute unlike any other gas/chemical known to man? I don't believe in magic, so there has to be an experiment done to show how CFCs get to the south pole and fly straight up thousands of feet, and then, and only then, do they react with the ozone... something is amiss. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds

plantain 8y ago
Thunder storms very quickly lift particles sometimes as high as 60,000ft, and there's other phenomena such as mountain lee waves that are mixing air in excess of 120,000ft, well into the Ozone layer.

DiabloD3 8y ago

Ozone production is tied to solar activity disproportionately, and the 11 year cycle between the solar maximum and the solar minimum effect ozone measurements. We are currently at solar minimum, and we are also possibly headed into a grand solar minimum (an extended period of low solar activity). Zaelke also does not seem to have published a paper on his findings, and all of his quotes in this article are largely political-oriented fluff. The latest thing I can find with anything that has his name on it is from 2009, and only discusses the Montreal Protocol in relation to lowering CO2 emissions. So, the article just tells us CFC-11 detectors detected something (which may or may not be CFC-11), but cannot tell us how much, where, or how it effected climate activity during a time of natural low ozone production. Also, this does not discuss if this was production, or just older appliances breaking down or being taken apart for recycling improperly. Without a paper, we cannot tell how they accounted for this.

titzer 8y ago
> how it effected climate activity during a time of natural low ozone production. 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.
- rhodrid 8y ago
  Crops don't like it much either. Same with trees.
DangerousPie 8y ago
The paper is here: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2

donttrack 8y ago

How big a factory would you need to do this? I mean that sounds like some pretty low hanging fruit right there for the evil scientists out there, who wants to destroy human kind.

IshKebab 8y ago
Not many people really want to destroy all human kind including themselves.

titzer 8y ago

Welcome to the long tail of hyper-optimizing Capitalism and the tragedy of the commons. If someone, somewhere, perceives an economic advantage in producing something banned or destroying something hard to replace, they will try it. Thinking through not only the regulatory regime but enforcement protocols necessary to maintain 100% bans on some activities, we're in for a mess in the long haul.

krona 8y ago
What in particular has the production of CFC gas got to do with capitalism? 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.
- titzer 8y ago
  Maybe I am using capitalism in too broad a sense: I meant to express that if the use of CFC gives one competitor an advantage over another, they may go right ahead and do it, regardless of the consequences. Capitalism constantly prides itself on how great competition is, but competition actually makes this problem worse, not better.
  - pc86 8y ago
    If by "too broad a sense" you mean "incorrectly," then sure.
    - titzer 8y ago
      "An economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." --Oxford Did you have a different definition in mind?
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]

FrozenVoid 8y ago

Related: Shrinking Ozone layer: https://qz.com/1199846/earths-ozone-layer-is-still-shrinking-and-scientists-dont-know-why/ https://qz.com/1199846/earths-ozone-layer-is-still-shrinking... dichloromethane: https://www.earth.com/news/dangerous-threat-ozone-layer/ https://www.earth.com/news/dangerous-threat-ozone-layer/

DangerousPie 8y ago

Link to paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2

matte_black 8y ago

If this is true and we found the place where it was being produced, could we be justified in destroying the facility by missile strike in order to save the world?

jessaustin 8y ago
How about just having police visit? They're more likely to apprehend the owners of the facility (you know, the actual culprits) and to preserve evidence of exactly what has occurred. Also in many nations they are less likely than a "missile strike" to kill everyone present.
- matte_black 8y ago
  Sure, but what if the corruption goes very high up, and the police do nothing? Or it’s an uncooperative rogue state? Do we just let the ozone burn?
  - jessaustin 8y ago
    Sometimes it's quite difficult to remind oneself that those with inexplicably martial attitudes are more likely to be deluded victims of the war media than actual employees of the military-industrial complex.
_bxg1 8y ago
That would be a horrible idea (hopefully Trump wouldn't think it was a good idea). The accord relies on international cooperation. If we flew a missile into, say, China - setting aside all the other international implications of that - they could easily say "well screw you" and spin up 100 more factories. Plus, it's probably some private black-market dealer, not a bad state actor.

nimbius 8y ago

As an engine mechanic, Hanlons Razor comes to mind. We once had a "thief" in our garage who was stealing expensive welding gasses and getting away with it. Sometimes she would steal whole tanks, other times she would siphon tanks until they were almost dry. We took to naming her Shirley. After about a month we caught the culprits. The tank theft was due to a manager in another location who was greedily stealing our gas bottles without filing the correct paperwork, to use at his location. The other thief was a gas safety relief system that measures tank temperature and pressure, and preemptively vents the contents if theres an irregularity. One of its 2 post sensors had died and the alarm for it was just being silenced by our cleaning crew.

Clubber 8y ago
That's the most insidious thing about theft. Your mind starts blaming the innocent people you know (friends or colleagues) and you convince yourself someone is doing it and start treating them differently. I have to constantly remind myself that it's probably lost or I misplaced it or something.
ISL 8y ago
The insurrection of the safety valves is real. This week on Everest: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi1lmwJDyrG/ https://www.instagram.com/p/Bi1lmwJDyrG/

tom_ 8y ago

Now I know I'm old, because the headline refers to CFCs by symptom than by name... (Wikipedia article about the guy behind them, no one-trick pony: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.)

CompelTechnic 8y ago
>In 1940, at the age of 51, Midgley contracted poliomyelitis, which left him severely disabled. This led him to devise an elaborate system of strings and pulleys to help others lift him from bed. This was the eventual cause of his own death when he was entangled in the ropes of this device and died of strangulation at the age of 55 Wow.
- rangersanger 8y ago
  Environmental historian J. R. McNeill opined that Midgley “had more impact on the atmosphere than any other single organism in Earth’s history”,[19] and Bill Bryson remarked that Midgley possessed “an instinct for the regrettable that was almost uncanny”.[20]
- lainga 8y ago
  He died as he lived: by regrettable inventions.

towndrunk 8y ago

What about rockets like SpaceX etc. and volcano's erupting like in Hawaii? What effect do those have on the ozone?

y0y 8y ago
I'm not sure, but they don't produce CFC-11. That is what is being measured, and its effects on the ozone are well-established.
jimmy1 8y ago
What does that have to do with a nation violating an international accord to stop producing CFC emissions?
- towndrunk 8y ago
  I was actually just curious.
  - jimmy1 8y ago
    My apologies!

epx 8y ago

China, obviously.

bb101 8y ago

China? Pertinent parallels with this part of Chai Jing's censored talk "Under the Dome"[1] (worth watching the whole thing actually). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM&t=42m23s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM&t=42m23s

PerilousD 8y ago

Back of the envelope calc says this is about the weight of say a dozen passenger cars or say 1 passenger car (weight) per month over a year? Doesn't sound like a major industrial operation to me and how many tons are STILL out there in old air conditioners and refrigerators that could be leaking?

caf 8y ago
You're out by a factor of 1000.
- PerilousD 8y ago
  Yeah you're right - sorry about that - need to buy a much bigger slide rule :-)

aaron695 8y ago

East Asia - Code for China One assumes they aren't stupid and factor in all the releases from recycling and all the buildings there being demolished. One fridge can have 500 grams in it. A building must have a shitload and let's say you work out a way to recycle the insulation rather than burying it, then it'd cause a rapid rise, but this should be known. But assuming it's new, the 13000 tonnes "leaked". So much much more must be being made for the final product, unless it's a byproduct from some 'new?' industry. It's not like the Ozone people haven't made huge mis-calculations before ;) It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

new299 8y ago

Does anyone have an idea of how difficult it would be to create a sensor network to monitor for CFCs? What would the PPM at source be? Quick googling suggests that there are sensors that can detect down to 1000PPM [1], but I'd guess you'd need something substantially lower than that. [1] https://docs-apac.rs-online.com/webdocs/15a6/0900766b815a66db.pdf https://docs-apac.rs-online.com/webdocs/15a6/0900766b815a66d...

sp332 8y ago
Around 200 parts per trillion in the atmosphere in general. https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/it-seems-someone-is-producing-a-banned-ozone-depleting-chemical-again/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/05/it-seems-someone-is-... At the source it might be high enough.

_bxg1 8y ago

Everybody's saying China, and, well, maybe. But what about North Korea? Despite China having a reputation for shady business practices, the Chinese government at least often gives the environment a higher priority than the US does. Also, North Korea probably has tons of outdated hardware, I would guess, and little respect for the outside world. God help us if it is North Korea. Things are delicate enough as it is, with the peace treaty and the nuclear situation.

kevin_b_er 8y ago
Either are possible, but China has more manufacturing that doesn't care about the consequences and has shown a history of this.
Synaesthesia 8y ago
Heck it could be South Africa - it has a larger economy and population than NK AFAIK. (Or at least equal economy) My father here in SA had a tank of CFC gas when he was an air conditioner repairman.
- _bxg1 8y ago
  The data suggested southeast Asia