Ive said time and again our spending billions and trillions on crazy enviormental schemes are worthless and wont do a bit of good because most everyone else wont.
A NASA image shows the ozone hole over Antarctica in 2006. (Photo: AP)
Some alarming news from the stratosphere.
Chinese foam manufacturers are releasing an ozone-destroying chemical into the air that goes against an international agreement meant to fix the
ozone layer, scientists announced in a
study Wednesday.
The chemical is a chlorofluorocarbon known as trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), which the world agreed to phase out starting in 2010. But just in the past six years, emissions of CFC-11 have increased by around 7,000 tons each year, and the source is eastern China, the study suggests.
Located up in the stratosphere, the
ozone layer acts like a sunscreen, blocking potentially harmful ultraviolet energy from reaching our planet's surface. Without it, humans and animals can experience increased rates of skin cancer and other ailments such as cataracts.
(The naturally occurring ozone high up in the atmosphere is the "good" ozone and is in contrast to the "bad" ozone near the surface, which is man-made pollution that can cause respiratory problems.)
"It was unexpected when we saw that, starting around 2013, global emissions of one of the most important CFCs suddenly began to grow,” said study lead author
Matt Rigby, an atmospheric chemist at the
University of Bristol in England.
The new study said that two provinces in eastern China – Hebei and Shandong – appear to be a major source of the CFC-11 emissions. Researchers used air-monitoring equipment in Japan and South Korea to detect the Chinese emissions.
Scientists first discovered the dramatic thinning in Earth's protective ozone layer in the 1970s and also the infamous "ozone hole" over Antarctica. They determined the production of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), used in refrigerators and aerosol sprays, caused the problem.
In the late 1980s, 196 countries signed the Montreal Protocol, a treaty that limited
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...cs/3767724002/ production of CFCs around the world. Businesses soon came up with safer alternatives for spray cans and refrigerators.
But any increase in emissions of CFCs will delay the time it takes for the ozone layer, and the Antarctic ozone hole, to recover.