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

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

#41

Post by titzer »

krona wrote: post #31
titzer wrote: post #15

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.

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.

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.

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

#42

Post by js8 »

krona wrote: post #31
titzer wrote: post #15

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.

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.

> What in particular has the production of CFC gas got to do with capitalism?

Not of CFC in particular, but the production in general does.

There is an argument of David Graeber somewhere that socialist economies were effectively places where workers (who had benefit of full employment and government guarantees) didn't have to work very hard, so the resulting national product was lower. There was, albeit implicit, social contract saying that it's OK to work maybe 6 hours a day, because the state economy is bad anyway.

Capitalism, being more efficient in, among other things, getting people to work hard, also causes bigger strain on natural resources (actually pretty much any resource).

If people were willing to chill out more and work less, then perhaps there would be less fridges and less freons produced.

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

#43

Post by crankylinuxuser »

evek wrote: post #39
NedIsakoff wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CFC-11 is cheaper then alternatives. If I'm a shady factory owner making cheap fridges for shady countries, who is gonna complain?

Shady countries? Those are people and regular families...

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_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.

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

#44

Post by jessaustin »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #38
jessaustin wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To address just the light-through-the-pegboard objection, recall that the earth's axis is tilted with respect to the ecliptic. This results in the polar regions receiving long days of sunlight during the summer: at the pole itself the sun doesn't set for six months. It's possible that even less-direct sunlight would have a more pronounced effect over such a long duration.

You are addressing a theory I have though, not established science. Even if the sun get's 24 hours of sun, you can see from many photos of this event the sun is extremely low in the sky. Just from having kids at the pool I can tell you the difference in UV amounts between even noon and 3pm is _dramatic_.

I'm just pointing out that the physical intuition you have from looking at a pegboard is incomplete. That's not the only way, either. The ozone layer is above all terrain and 99% of the atmosphere, so it receives direct unfiltered sunlight. Neither time of day nor latitude is relevant at this altitude. The only thing that blocks the sun is the rotation of the earth, which as we've observed has different effects in polar regions than in e.g. the equatorial region.

Gosh physical intuition can be misleading! It's almost as if it would be better to take actual measurements of sunlight, like many scientists have done.

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

#45

Post by RobertRoberts »

caf wrote: post #32
RobertRoberts wrote: post #6

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 (t…

CFCs don't concentrate at the poles. The reason they have the strongest effect there, and not locally where they're produced or globally in the stratosphere, is because the stratosphere is very dry and only in the extreme cold of a polar winter can stratospheric clouds form. The particles in these clouds catalyse the reactions that allow a each free chlorine molecule to destroy many ozone molecules. That's also why t…

That seems like a valid explanation for the "start" of a hole if there was a continuous stream of _only_ CFCs and chlorine.

Doesn't the ozone gas itself get blown around in the wind also? Wouldn't this mean that ozone would eventually fill the hole back up unless there was a steady stream of CFCs/chlorine to that one spot?

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

#46

Post by brorfred »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #12
plantain wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do thunder storms do that consistently year after year to the same location with only one type of pollutant? Cause I've never heard of any other kind of pollution pooling at the poles, why only CFCs? Also, if mountains do it, then why aren't there ozone holes above mountains?

As others have said earlier in the thread – CFC's doesn't pool at the poles. The processes that creates ozone holes require certain conditions (extreme cold and darkness) that only occur by the poles. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion)

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

#47

Post by puzzlingcaptcha »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #24
desdiv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are heavier than air, so how do scientists suppose that these chemicals reach the altitude of the ozone layer to adversely affect it? >Although the CFC molecules are indeed several times heavier than air, thousands of measurements have been made from balloons, aircraft and satellites demonstrating that the CFCs are actually present in the stratosphere. The atmosphere is not stagnant. Winds…

That article says this: "Because CFCs are so long-lived in the lower atmosphere, there is ample time and opportunity for them to become well mixed and eventually to reach the stratosphere." They all go to one place? Consider the plastic patch in the Pacific, even there, there are currents that move everything there. I've never heard of currents in the air that push everything to the south pole, and then straight up.…

"Why has an “ozone hole” appeared over Antarctica when ozone-depleting substances are present throughout the stratosphere?" [PDF]

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/2010/twentyq...

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

#48

Post by Reason077 »

krona wrote: post #31
titzer wrote: post #15

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.

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.

Yes, the Soviets left behind a pretty awful environmental legacy. Emphasising production and growth without regards to the environmental cost is not a unique feature of capitalism.

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

#49

Post by RobertRoberts »

mhneu wrote: post #29
amirmc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be trying to refute models of complicated atmospheric processes based on (necessarily) over-simplified high school physics. I’m sure there much more reading material out there than just the two Wikipedia pages you linked. Try the following for some more: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

As you provide links remember that a prominent argument used by climate-change-deniers is this heavier than air fake argument. https://www.ourcivilisation.com/ozone/king.htm Some history here https://books.google.com/books?id=Va-BAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA61&lpg=P... But this form of the denial disinformation is pretty old and perhaps surprising it’s being discussed today. Ed: but aha, it looks like the Christian Coalition site…

As I mentioned before, I've haven't read any of their stuff. All of my questions are 30 years old, and only thought to ask this here because I didn't even know there was any controversy on this subject.

But I guess asking logical questions is frowned upon if someone else disagrees with the establishment and if you even ask the same questions is automatically guilt by association.

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