Celebration time: 25 years since the discovery of the ozone hole
Posted by Mike on Thu 6 May 2010Categories: Climate change , News | 1 Comment
Scientists are celebrating – it’s the 25th anniversary of the discovery of a hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic. A strange cause for celebration you may think, but as the ozone layer protects us from 90 per cent of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, we could be a lot hotter if it had gone undetected!
— ozone_depletion1
In 1985, Joseph Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin, reported that the amount of ozone seen in the spring above the Antarctic had declined significantly year-on-year since the late 1970s. They linked this depletion in ozone to the use of industrial solvents and a rise in the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as refrigerants and propellants and their subsequent release into the atmosphere.
The Montreal Protocol in 1987, as well as support from chemical manufacturers and the public, led to the phasing out of CFCs, halons and carbon tetrachloride by 2000, and methyl chloroform by 2005. It is predicted that if the Montreal Protocol restrictions are followed, Antarctic springtime ozone levels could return to 1950s levels by 2080. The subsequent reduction in CFCs has also had a positive effect on climate change as they are potent greenhouse gases.
Mike Brown
Sun 9 May 2010 at 3:06 pm
While it’s great to see the ozone depletion issue getting some attention, there is a lot more that we need to learn from the 25 years experience of responding to this problem than the popular reporting of the anniversary suggests.
The Montreal Protocol has been effective in reducing the concentration of chlorine in the stratosphere, but when the governments of the world banded together and passed ‘environmentally friendly’ legislation to curtail a source of man-made pollution that threatened the health of the entire planet they wilfully ignored the strong representations from Greenpeace International (and a handful of others) that hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs were a really bad idea if you are worried about global warming. Back then, very few people were; but governments certainly did know then that HFCs have huge Global Warming Potentials, and that the natural refrigerants (air, ammonia, CO2, hydrocarbons and water – the “friendly five”) held substantial potential to meet our cooling needs, if not the greed of the fluorochemical industry’s shareholders.
Since then, the ‘extreme green’ alarmists who were sounding the alarm about global warming have been proved right, and the responsible end of the refrigeration and air conditioning industry has made huge strides in commercialising future proof climate friendly refrigerant solutions. Predictions that HFCs would accumulate rapidly, and pose a serious threat to the climate have been stongly vindicated by scientific observations and projections.
The most pertinent and topical questions we need to be asking now are these:
- Will the Parties to the Montreal Protocol, at their meetings this year in Geneva in June and Nairobi in November, take decisive action to redress the colossal mistake of adding significant quantities of some of the most potent global warming gases known to the atmosphere?
- Will the Parties reach agreement on the proposals to include HFCs in the Montreal Protocol, and take firm measures to rapidly reduce production and consumption, and to use the financial mechanisms of the agreement to cease further funding of HFC projects in developing countries, and rapidly improve the roll-out of, and training in, proven and market ready equipment and systems utilising natural refrigerants in both developing and developed countries?
- Will the Parties take urgent action on the long-standing discussions on the need to improve the environmentally sound management of existing “banks” of ozone depleting and very high global warming potential substances by ensuring appropriate levels of funding, regulation, incentives and enforcement to achieve the level of recovery and destruction of the gases sitting in equipment that represent among the cheapest and most immediately effective sources of emissions abatement necessary to prevent runaway climate change, and to buy vital time to address the more difficult challenges of reducing emissions from other sources? On current indications, much more needs to be done much more quickly if we are to stand a chance of capturing and safely disposing of this climate ‘time bomb’ before it leaks out of our fridges and air conditioners.
Yes, the story is complex, and unfamiliar to most people and policymakers, but it cannot be ignored any more. The problem is not yet fixed – we have a long way to go, the need for action is now more urgent than ever.
Fortunately for us all, the natural refrigerants industry stands ready to deliver climate friendly systems as soon as regulators, investors and consumers/end users start paying serious attention to the need to phase out the use of HFCs, and to demand the use of cooling solutions which will not cook the planet.