Pyramids puncture pungent ply; perpetrators pinpointed
July 9, 2018 6:34 AM   Subscribe

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are industrially-useful molecules that, in high Antarctic clouds, destroy the atmospheric ozone that protects us from much of the sun's ultraviolet rays. In one of environmentalism's clearest success stories, 196 nations agreed to the Montreal Protocol banning CFC use, and the ozone layer gradually began to replenish itself. But recently...

Scientists led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association discovered that the atmospheric concentration of CFCs had begun to rise again.
But with emissions on the rise, scientists suspect someone is making the chemical in defiance of the ban.

“Somebody’s cheating,” Durwood Zaelke, founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development and an expert on the Montreal Protocol, said in a comment on the new research. “There’s some slight possibility there’s an unintentional release, but … they make it clear there’s strong evidence this is actually being produced.”

...

“They’re going to find the culprits,” Zaelke said. “This insults everybody who’s worked on this for the last 30 years. That’s a tough group of people.”
In a report released today, the EIA has tracked down the mystery source of CFCs.
posted by a snickering nuthatch (21 comments total) 23 users marked this as a favorite
 
The more I read stories like this, the more convinced I become that the end is nigh. Seriously, if the pursuit of the almighty dollar (in this case the almighty yen) comes at the expense of life on Earth, and people still move forward, as a species I think destruction is hardwired. We poisoning ourselves, or water, our food, and our very air. Is there anything we're not making more unlivable?

Our science fiction was supposed to be a warning.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:43 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


Fuckers.
posted by pracowity at 6:44 AM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


(the Chinese currency is called the renminbi)
posted by Merus at 6:46 AM on July 9, 2018 [11 favorites]


Or slightly more conveniently, the yuan

(which is the primary unit of it)
posted by atoxyl at 7:00 AM on July 9, 2018 [7 favorites]


The really disturbing part from the Guardian report is the sheer brazenness of the plant owners:
“We were dumbfounded when out of 21 companies, 18 of them across China confirmed use of CFC-11, while acknowledging the illegality and being very blasé about its use,” said Avipsa Mahapatra at the EIA. Furthermore, the companies said the use of CFC-11 was rife in the sector. “It was very clear. These companies, again and again, told us everybody else does this,” she said.

[...]

A representative of one company, Aoyang Chemical Co, in Dacheng, Hebei province, told the EIA that 99% of its foams used CFC-11, bought from “shady and hidden” factories in Inner Mongolia. Another, from the nearby Wan Fu Chemical Co, said it was easy to avoid inspections: “When the municipal environmental bureau runs a check, our local officers would call me and tell me to shut down my factory. Our workers just gather and hide together.”
It seems that we are the swamp that we must drain.
posted by runcifex at 7:01 AM on July 9, 2018 [2 favorites]


You know, out of all Thomas Midgley and General Motors' gifts to the world's environment, I'm not sure if I'm a bigger fan of CFCs or leaded gasoline.
posted by signal at 7:25 AM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


Amazing investigation.

"Everybody else was doing it!" will be humanity's epitaph.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 7:26 AM on July 9, 2018 [23 favorites]


> cjorgensen: "Our science fiction was supposed to be a warning."

I see it more as a form of gallows humor.
posted by signal at 7:26 AM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]




(the Chinese currency is called the renminbi)
posted by Merus at 9:46 AM on July 9 [2 favorites +] [!]


Or slightly more conveniently, the yuan

(which is the primary unit of it)
posted by atoxyl at 10:00 AM on July 9 [1 favorite +] [!]


Or CNY if you happen to be an FX trader.
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:33 AM on July 9, 2018


"Everybody else was doing it!" will be humanity's epitaph.

I heard the Fuckwit for Resources and Northern Australia on tonight's Q&A offer the opinion that Australia's record high retail electricity prices are because we're just too stubborn to burn more coal just like all those people in other countries keep doing.

Apparently this also explains the tendency of South Australian electricity pylons to blow over in unprecedented windstorms; they'd never do that if the electricity flowing through their wires was proper heavy coal-fired electricity instead of this fluffy lightweight windy nonsense the South Australians insist on building more of.
posted by flabdablet at 8:37 AM on July 9, 2018 [10 favorites]


I don't mean to downplay the effect of companies and countries cheating, but a long, long time ago I used to work on launchers and it was a well known secret that solid rocket boosters are terrible for the ozone layer. I'm glad to see that the issue is being publicized.
posted by eye of newt at 9:31 AM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't know what to feel (ok I do, it's anger), I do know ppl who are specifically working to meet my country's compliance targets within the PU and refrigerant industries, and just the level of selfishness being reported here.... Ugh.
posted by cendawanita at 12:21 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]




The issue of SRBs causing ozone degradation is somewhat different; that's something that deserves study, given the potential for more rocket launches in the future and the possible opportunity right now to influence what fuels they use (some amount of government carrot/stick-ing could probably greatly affect what fuels are used for upper stages, and thus what gets emitted into the stratosphere—I think the alumina can be reduced if it's replaced with silicone instead, in some cases). With CFCs, the studies have all been done, basically everyone agreed that the shit's real bad, alternatives exist, we should use the alternatives, everyone was onboard. Except, apparently, some plastic foam producers in China who want to make an extra few bucks at the rest of the planet's expense.

One hopes that the Chinese central government's response to being internationally embarrassed is swift and decisive. They didn't screw around with the melamine baby food issue a decade ago (although it was still probably inadequate given what happened), at least once it rose to the level of international incident that the corrupt local authorities couldn't keep a lid on; this seems like the same sort of pattern, but the damage is of course externalized to the entire planet and not just to an unfortunate random selection of children (and a lot of very angry parents demanding justice). Human societies are, just in general, not good at dealing with diffuse externalities like that, compared to ones with distinct and identifiable victims/harm.

Supposedly the demand for plastic insulating foam is dominated by the US, although the growth market is in Asia. But that might give the US leverage, assuming CFC emissions are something we care about (doubtful, but an opportunity to put a stick in China's eye might appeal to the current leadership for other reasons); a very sudden embargo on foam imports from China could cause a supply chain shock going all the way back to the chemical producers. If their margins are particularly thin, that could even put some of them out of business temporarily. However, without better local enforcement, especially wherever the actual chemical manufacturing is occurring, there's no reason why it wouldn't just restart again.
posted by Kadin2048 at 2:51 PM on July 9, 2018 [6 favorites]


Not to minimize the short-sighted profit-over-planet attitude of these companies, but it's not just a Chinese problem, or limited to CFCs. Volkswagen went to great lengths to create a technological cheat that increased the appeal of their diesel cars at the expense of the environment.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:29 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


I don't see the problem here. Why should I pay my sewer bill when I can shit in your yard for free?
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 5:12 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


It's times like these that I take comfort in the fact that the Earth, and the life on it, will survive whatever intensely stupid human activity finally wipes us out. It might just be some extremophile bacteria, but something will survive and the Earth will spin on and gradually erase the skidmark we left on it.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:19 PM on July 9, 2018 [3 favorites]


I hate that our quite energy-efficient , but made in China deep freezer has had a not-insignificant effect on the ozone layer. The Montreal protocol is an unalloyed good.
posted by rockindata at 7:57 PM on July 9, 2018


I genuinely can't tell if this is better or worse than if we'd found out it was cryptocoin miners CFC-cooling their stupid internet money mills.
posted by MarchHare at 9:58 PM on July 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


Volkswagen went to great lengths to create a technological cheat

Don't worry, its not just VW. Nissan said they were doing such also.
posted by rough ashlar at 5:52 AM on July 10, 2018


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