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CFC ban bought us time to fight climate change, say scientists
- poorjohnmacafee 5y agoExcept CFCs are still on the uprise [1] [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1193-4 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1193-4 They sit straight in the middle of the atmospheric window, unlike CO2 which overlaps with water vapor (at around 15 microns). Hence this is perhaps an even more serious problem.
- blululu 5y agoThe Montreal Protocol (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol) Is one of the few examples of an effective international environmental agreement. In some sense all subsequent international treaties seek to emulate it with less success. The fact that it was a somewhat niche set of compounds and the fact that patents related to these substances were expiring is probably a large part of why this worked. Trying to replicate the economic conditions for such an agreement is a good starting point.
- mncharity 5y agoOr alternately, in timelines where the ozone hole is mitigated too early, without a world-culture-impacting ozone hole catastrophe and its amelioration, human civilization then lacks the training to recognize and mitigate the following larger and more challenging global warming catastrophe? IIRC, for many years concern about CFC environmental impact, and recognition of their ozone hole connection, was a bus-factor-one very-uphill effort. I've wondered if they every thought "maybe if I'd worked on something else, and recognition and mitigation had been delayed, then maybe..."