We haven't.
But that's changing for the better, and maybe that means we might actually have a chance to beat the Climate Change thing too.
Restoration of the Ozone Layer Is Back on Track, Scientists Say
Rogue emissions from China of ozone-depleting chemicals had threatened to delay recovery by a decade. But the emissions were stopped, according to a U.N.-backed report.
The protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere could be restored within several decades, scientists said Monday, as recent rogue emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals from China have been largely eliminated.
In a United Nations-sponsored assessment, the scientists said that global emissions of CFC-11, a banned chemical that has been used as a refrigerant and in insulating foams, had declined since 2018 after increasing for several years. CFC-11 and similar chemicals, collectively called chlorofluorocarbons, destroy ozone, which blocks ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can cause skin cancer and otherwise harm people and other living things.
The scientists said that if current policies remained in place, ozone levels between the polar regions should reach pre-1980 levels by 2040. Ozone holes, or regions of greater depletion that appear regularly near the South Pole and, less frequently, near the North Pole, should also recover, by 2045 in the Arctic and about 2066 in Antarctica.
“Things continue to trend in the right direction,” said Stephen A. Montzka, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one of the report’s authors. Dr. Montzka led a 2018 study that alerted the world that CFC-11 emissions had been increasing since 2012 and that they appeared to come from East Asia.
Investigations by The New York Times and others strongly suggested that small factories in Eastern China disregarding the global ban were the source.
The new emissions had threatened to undermine the Montreal Protocol, the treaty negotiated in the 1980s to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons in favor of more benign chemicals after it was discovered that chlorofluorocarbons were depleting atmospheric ozone.
At the time the head of the United Nations Environment Program, which oversees the protocol, called illegal production of CFC-11 “nothing short of an environmental crime which demands decisive action.” Dr. Montzka and others had said the rogue emissions, if they continued, could delay recovery of the ozone layer by as long as a decade.
The future of the Amazon. Some Brazilian scientists studying the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Amazon fear that the rainforest, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, may become a grassy savanna in a matter of decades — with profound effects on the climate worldwide.
Biodiversity agreement. Delegates from roughly 190 countries meeting in Canada approved a sweeping United Nations agreement to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 and to take a slew of other measures against biodiversity loss. The agreement comes as biodiversity is declining worldwide at rates never seen before in human history.
The start of a new age? A panel of scientists took a step toward declaring a new interval of geological time: the Anthropocene, or age of humans. The amended timeline of Earth’s history would officially recognize that humankind’s effects on the planet had been so consequential as to bring the previous geologic period to a close.
A tiny nation’s diplomatic moves. Rising sea levels threaten the very existence of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu and its population of just over 300,000 people. The country’s president now wants a top international court to weigh in on whether nations are legally bound to protect others against climate risks.
Transition to renewables. Worldwide, growth in renewable power capacity is set to double by 2027, adding as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, according to the International Energy Agency. Renewables are poised to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by early 2025, the agency found.
A landmark deal at COP27. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of climate talks by agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the greenhouse gases from wealthy nations. The deal represented a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at the U.N. summit in Egypt.
But follow-up studies showed that emissions were declining, a sign that the Chinese government was successfully cracking down on the new CFC-11 production. The report said the rogue emissions had most likely delayed ozone layer recovery by a year.
The Chinese CFC-11 was very likely used as a blowing agent in making foam insulation. During foam production, some of the CFC-11 escapes into the atmosphere, where it can be detected and measured, but much of it is contained within the foam as it hardens.
In this way, the researchers said, the Chinese rogue production had contributed to the “banks” of chlorofluorocarbons that were produced worldwide before bans went into effect and are in foams as well as refrigeration equipment and fire-extinguishing systems. These existing chemicals are not yet in the atmosphere, but are being released slowly through foam deterioration and destruction, leaks or other means.
Dr. Montzka said the size of the Chinese contribution to the banks was not known. “But if the banks have been built up substantially, that would add a few more years to that expected delay in recovery,” he said.
Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization, said the elimination of the rogue emissions was another example of the success of the protocol, which is generally considered to be the most effective global environmental pact ever enacted.
Atmospheric monitoring, which is required by the protocol, detected the problem, Mr. Zaelke said, and brought it to the attention of the treaty’s directorate. “Without admitting guilt, the offending parties got their act together,” he said. “And the measurements are back where they should be.”
Under the protocol, assessments like the one issued Monday are required at least every four years. In addition to NOAA scientists, contributors included researchers with NASA, the World Meteorology Organization, the United Nations Environment Program and the European Commission.
The new assessment was the first to consider the effects on ozone of a potential type of climate intervention, or geo-engineering, meant to cool the atmosphere. The method, called stratospheric aerosol injection, would use airplanes or other means to distribute sulfur aerosols high in the atmosphere, where they would reflect some of the sun’s rays before they reach the surface.
The idea has drawn fierce opposition. Among other objections, opponents say that intervening in the climate in this way could have severe unintended consequences, potentially altering weather patterns worldwide. But many scientists and others say that at the least, research is needed, because warming may reach a point where the world becomes desperate to try such an intervention technique, perhaps temporarily to buy time before greenhouse gas reductions can have a significant effect.
David W. Fahey, director of NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory and a co-chairman of the protocol’s scientific assessment panel, said that some studies had shown an impact on ozone of sulfur aerosols, so the assessment team was given the task of looking into it.
The protocol “exists to protect the ozone layer, and we’ve done a pretty good job of it in dealing with ozone-depleting substances,” he said. Looking at stratospheric aerosol injection, “is in our wheelhouse,” he added.
There is a lot of uncertainty in their findings, Dr. Fahey said, but the basic message is that trying to cool the planet by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit), say, through the use of sulfur aerosols, would have some effect on ozone. But it “will not destroy the ozone layer and create catastrophic consequences,” he said.
“We actually already knew that because Mount Pinatubo did the experiment for us,” he said, referring to the huge volcanic explosion in the Philippines in 1991 that sent enormous amounts of sulfur gas into the stratosphere, creating an aerosol haze akin to a geo-engineering effort.
That eruption temporarily cooled the planet by about 0.5 degree Celsius, Dr. Fahey said. But the ozone layer did not collapse. “It has resilience,” he said.
Turns out, China - unsurprisingly - has been telling us all (including the Chinese government) to take a flyin' fuck at a rollin' donut.
But that's changing for the better, and maybe that means we might actually have a chance to beat the Climate Change thing too.
Wish for luck
and then
work your ass off.
Restoration of the Ozone Layer Is Back on Track, Scientists Say
Rogue emissions from China of ozone-depleting chemicals had threatened to delay recovery by a decade. But the emissions were stopped, according to a U.N.-backed report.
The protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere could be restored within several decades, scientists said Monday, as recent rogue emissions of ozone-depleting chemicals from China have been largely eliminated.
In a United Nations-sponsored assessment, the scientists said that global emissions of CFC-11, a banned chemical that has been used as a refrigerant and in insulating foams, had declined since 2018 after increasing for several years. CFC-11 and similar chemicals, collectively called chlorofluorocarbons, destroy ozone, which blocks ultraviolet radiation from the sun that can cause skin cancer and otherwise harm people and other living things.
The scientists said that if current policies remained in place, ozone levels between the polar regions should reach pre-1980 levels by 2040. Ozone holes, or regions of greater depletion that appear regularly near the South Pole and, less frequently, near the North Pole, should also recover, by 2045 in the Arctic and about 2066 in Antarctica.
“Things continue to trend in the right direction,” said Stephen A. Montzka, a research chemist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and one of the report’s authors. Dr. Montzka led a 2018 study that alerted the world that CFC-11 emissions had been increasing since 2012 and that they appeared to come from East Asia.
Investigations by The New York Times and others strongly suggested that small factories in Eastern China disregarding the global ban were the source.
The new emissions had threatened to undermine the Montreal Protocol, the treaty negotiated in the 1980s to phase out the use of chlorofluorocarbons in favor of more benign chemicals after it was discovered that chlorofluorocarbons were depleting atmospheric ozone.
At the time the head of the United Nations Environment Program, which oversees the protocol, called illegal production of CFC-11 “nothing short of an environmental crime which demands decisive action.” Dr. Montzka and others had said the rogue emissions, if they continued, could delay recovery of the ozone layer by as long as a decade.
The future of the Amazon. Some Brazilian scientists studying the concentration of carbon dioxide in the Amazon fear that the rainforest, one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on Earth, may become a grassy savanna in a matter of decades — with profound effects on the climate worldwide.
Biodiversity agreement. Delegates from roughly 190 countries meeting in Canada approved a sweeping United Nations agreement to protect 30 percent of the planet’s land and oceans by 2030 and to take a slew of other measures against biodiversity loss. The agreement comes as biodiversity is declining worldwide at rates never seen before in human history.
The start of a new age? A panel of scientists took a step toward declaring a new interval of geological time: the Anthropocene, or age of humans. The amended timeline of Earth’s history would officially recognize that humankind’s effects on the planet had been so consequential as to bring the previous geologic period to a close.
A tiny nation’s diplomatic moves. Rising sea levels threaten the very existence of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu and its population of just over 300,000 people. The country’s president now wants a top international court to weigh in on whether nations are legally bound to protect others against climate risks.
Transition to renewables. Worldwide, growth in renewable power capacity is set to double by 2027, adding as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the past two decades, according to the International Energy Agency. Renewables are poised to overtake coal as the largest source of electricity generation by early 2025, the agency found.
A landmark deal at COP27. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries concluded two weeks of climate talks by agreeing to establish a fund that would help poor countries cope with climate disasters made worse by the greenhouse gases from wealthy nations. The deal represented a breakthrough on one of the most contentious issues at the U.N. summit in Egypt.
But follow-up studies showed that emissions were declining, a sign that the Chinese government was successfully cracking down on the new CFC-11 production. The report said the rogue emissions had most likely delayed ozone layer recovery by a year.
The Chinese CFC-11 was very likely used as a blowing agent in making foam insulation. During foam production, some of the CFC-11 escapes into the atmosphere, where it can be detected and measured, but much of it is contained within the foam as it hardens.
In this way, the researchers said, the Chinese rogue production had contributed to the “banks” of chlorofluorocarbons that were produced worldwide before bans went into effect and are in foams as well as refrigeration equipment and fire-extinguishing systems. These existing chemicals are not yet in the atmosphere, but are being released slowly through foam deterioration and destruction, leaks or other means.
Dr. Montzka said the size of the Chinese contribution to the banks was not known. “But if the banks have been built up substantially, that would add a few more years to that expected delay in recovery,” he said.
Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, a Washington-based research and advocacy organization, said the elimination of the rogue emissions was another example of the success of the protocol, which is generally considered to be the most effective global environmental pact ever enacted.
Atmospheric monitoring, which is required by the protocol, detected the problem, Mr. Zaelke said, and brought it to the attention of the treaty’s directorate. “Without admitting guilt, the offending parties got their act together,” he said. “And the measurements are back where they should be.”
Under the protocol, assessments like the one issued Monday are required at least every four years. In addition to NOAA scientists, contributors included researchers with NASA, the World Meteorology Organization, the United Nations Environment Program and the European Commission.
The new assessment was the first to consider the effects on ozone of a potential type of climate intervention, or geo-engineering, meant to cool the atmosphere. The method, called stratospheric aerosol injection, would use airplanes or other means to distribute sulfur aerosols high in the atmosphere, where they would reflect some of the sun’s rays before they reach the surface.
The idea has drawn fierce opposition. Among other objections, opponents say that intervening in the climate in this way could have severe unintended consequences, potentially altering weather patterns worldwide. But many scientists and others say that at the least, research is needed, because warming may reach a point where the world becomes desperate to try such an intervention technique, perhaps temporarily to buy time before greenhouse gas reductions can have a significant effect.
David W. Fahey, director of NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory and a co-chairman of the protocol’s scientific assessment panel, said that some studies had shown an impact on ozone of sulfur aerosols, so the assessment team was given the task of looking into it.
The protocol “exists to protect the ozone layer, and we’ve done a pretty good job of it in dealing with ozone-depleting substances,” he said. Looking at stratospheric aerosol injection, “is in our wheelhouse,” he added.
There is a lot of uncertainty in their findings, Dr. Fahey said, but the basic message is that trying to cool the planet by 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degree Fahrenheit), say, through the use of sulfur aerosols, would have some effect on ozone. But it “will not destroy the ozone layer and create catastrophic consequences,” he said.
“We actually already knew that because Mount Pinatubo did the experiment for us,” he said, referring to the huge volcanic explosion in the Philippines in 1991 that sent enormous amounts of sulfur gas into the stratosphere, creating an aerosol haze akin to a geo-engineering effort.
That eruption temporarily cooled the planet by about 0.5 degree Celsius, Dr. Fahey said. But the ozone layer did not collapse. “It has resilience,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment