montreal treaty bak

<div>zombied? on rename; prevent synch</div><div>
</div><div>see mkt based solutions: recall montreal protocol bush reagan success half time and cost; Romneycare--> Obamacare<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">invisible hand of miracle free mkt only works if ppl have access to accurate info; ratings agencies do the analysis</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">but post trump earth2 we no longer believe in experts/facts</div><div></div><div>---<span style="" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" background-color="background-color" transparent="transparent" font-variant-numeric="font-variant-numeric" normal="normal" font-variant-east-asian="font-variant-east-asian" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" white-space="white-space" pre-wrap="pre-wrap">Meese and Hodel opposed treaty, but SoS Schultz and Baker made it clear to Reagan if the treaty failed, the courts would force the EPA to put on unilateral and strict limits that would hurt US economic competitiveness; Watt Gorsuch, beef, Sagebrush Rebel Wise use=<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bush-had-a-lasting-impact-on-climate-and-air-policy/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bush-had-a-lasting-impact-on-climate-and-air-policy/</a> obitno lnxBush Had a Lasting Impact on Climate and Air PolicyThe late 41st president started the national climate assessment and enacted policies to target acid rain
By Scott Waldman, E&E News on December 3, 2018Bush Had a Lasting Impact on Climate and Air Policy
The late President George H.W. Bush is the reason why President Trump has been asked about climate change in the last week more than at any other time in his presidency.
Through legislation he signed in 1990, Bush started the National Climate Assessment, a sweeping study documenting climate change’s impacts on the United States. The Trump administration released the latest iteration on Black Friday and has since downplayed its definitive body of research, making false claims about its accuracy and inadvertently drawing more attention to the clear science that shows Americans will be increasingly at risk as a result of climate change.
Bush’s presidency came during a different time, when bipartisan actions to reduce greenhouse gases and other pollutants seemed possible, observers said. The very existence of the NCA is a reminder that Republicans in Washington once crafted aggressive climate policy.
“We know that the future of the Earth must not be compromised,” Bush told the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1990. “We bear a sacred trust in our tenancy here and a covenant with those most precious to us—our children and theirs.”
Bush died Friday in his Houston home. He was 94.
It was during Bush’s presidency that the federal government stepped up its work on global warming and established an ongoing account of the latest research into how the country would be affected by climate change. Bush was also president during the development of the Montreal Protocol, which drastically cut the chlorofluorocarbons that were destroying the ozone layer.
Through a 1989 presidential initiative, Bush established the U.S. Global Change Research Program, a program encompassing 13 federal agencies that seeks to understand the changing Earth system. The following year, he signed into law the Global Change Research Act of 1990, which mandated that the National Climate Assessment come out every four years.
Top Bush aides recognized that climate change was a serious issue that would require a policy response, according to a series of formerly classified memos released to The Washington Post in 2015 by the National Security Archive.
“If the climate change within the range of current predictions actually occurs, the consequences for every nation and every aspect of human activity will be profound,” acting assistant secretary of State Richard Smith wrote in a 1989 memo.
Thirty years ago, crafting international agreements to address climate change was a Republican concern. Bush’s presidency was a different era for Republican environmental policy, but also a turning point that shifted away from aggressive actions, said William Reilly, who served as EPA administrator under Bush.
“Bush did everything anyone could have asked of on him on climate except commit to stabilization,” he said. “He committed to very substantial research budget to major investments by NASA on upper atmospheric ozone monitoring and on climate monitoring. NOAA was well-funded.”Bush’s actions on climate change came after what may be his strongest environmental legacy, the signing of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. The revisions to the act changed the way the country regulates several key pollutants.
“Building on Congressional proposals advanced during the 1980s, the President proposed legislation designed to curb three major threats to the nation’s environment and to the health of millions of Americans: acid rain, urban air pollution, and toxic air emissions,” EPA states on its website. “The proposal also called for establishing a national permits program to make the law more workable, and an improved enforcement program to help ensure better compliance with the Act.”
Significantly, the amendments targeted acid rain that was destroying forests and lakes, dramatically reducing the pollution that caused the problem to such an extent that it is no longer a major issue in the United States.
But the political capital Bush spent on the Clean Air Act diminished his work on climate policy, Reilly said. At the Group of Seven meeting in Paris in 1989, environmental groups trashed Bush for not committing to a stabilization of greenhouse gases, Reilly recalled.
That convinced Bush that pushing too far on environmental policy would hurt him politically with his base while failing to win any converts on the other side.
“That was kind of the beginning of Bush’s disillusion about his likely winning popularity by things he did in the environment,” Reilly said. “From the point of view of the environmentalists, he was Reagan’s vice president. And he did the Clean Air Act, he got really nothing for it ... Bush decided finally, and the people around him had decided long before, that the environment would not work for him politically.”
Since Bush left office, his Republican predecessors, George W. Bush and Trump, have been increasingly hostile to climate science and have resisted meaningful policy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Much of their criticism has centered on the economic costs of environmental policy, a stance that environmental groups have widely denounced.
The latest National Climate Assessment shows that climate change will kill more Americans, displace thousands and cost tens of billions of dollars annually. Democrats have touted the findings as evidence that the government needs to craft significant climate policy and have promised to use its revelations in court cases challenging the administration. Some Republicans have acknowledged that the report requires action from Washington, as well, but most have questioned its findings without presenting any evidence to the contrary.
Trump has said he doesn’t “believe” the report. The United States was the only country at the Group of 20 meeting this weekend to refuse to sign a statement reiterating support for the Paris climate accord (see related story).
By contrast, the late Bush was able to craft bipartisan environmental policy that has had a lasting effect, said Jason Bordoff, a former Obama administration energy and climate policy aide and the founder of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
“From promoting cap and trade to curb acid rain to an international agreement protecting the ozone layer to climate change research, President George H.W. Bush was part of a Republican tradition of support for environmental protection, science and bipartisan cooperation that unfortunately is too rare these days,” he said.
Environmental groups have been some of the harshest critics of George W. Bush and Trump. By contrast, they issued a number of statements of praise for the environmental legacy left by George H.W. Bush.
“By cutting pollution from cars, trucks, power plants and other sources, the measures have sharply reduced toxic chemicals in the air we breathe, dangerous ozone and the acid rain that was destroying American forests,” said Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “The measures decreased asthma attacks, bronchitis, heart disease and other ills, preventing some 200,000 premature deaths and 20 million lost days at work or school every year to deliver up to $90 in public health benefits for every dollar invested in compliance.”
Bush was capable of seeing that protecting the economy and the environment did not have to be in contrast, said Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who worked with Bush to help pass the bipartisan Clean Air Act amendments as well as ratify the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Krupp said Bush deserves credit for curbing acid rain pollution that was devastating Northeastern forests in the 1980s. He noted that sulfur dioxide pollution, which caused the acid rain, has been cut 88 percent since 1990.
“He knew that our country matters far more than political party or personal ambition, and that the national interest demands that we protect America’s precious natural heritage,” Krupp said in a statement. “And he knew that there is no inherent conflict between environmental progress and economic progress, because the well-being of the nation requires both.”
Reporter Robin Bravender contributed.
Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.=<div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">// cooling BS</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">picked why? what expertise? baggage? </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On back-to-back nights during Florida’s Hurricane Ian nightmare, Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham cast doubt on climate science</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Special PROGRAMS</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CLIMATE & ENERGY</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">PUBLISHED 09/30/22 </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In response to Hurricane Ian, Fox News primetime shows sought to mislead viewers about how climate change is affecting hurricanes, using bad faith and often-repeated climate denier talking points. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">More than 2.6 million people were without power across the state on Thursday morning, as extreme flooding left many residents trapped in their homes and on top of cars. At a press briefing, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis called Ian a “500-year flooding event” and added, “The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that has been done is historic. … We've never seen a flood event like this, we've never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.” There were at least 21 confirmed deaths as of Friday morning, but that number is expected to rise as recovery efforts continue.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fox primetime shows recycle debunked or irrelevant talking points on climate</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Meanwhile, Fox personalities attempted to gaslight viewers into complacency by describing any hurricane coverage that mentioned climate change as “alarmist.” Fox also cherry-picked information about the relationship between climate change and hurricanes to imply that the two are not related. Climate scientists and media outlets have acknowledged that there is not enough evidence to support the theory that climate change will increase the frequency of hurricanes. However, there is evidence suggesting that higher ocean and air temperatures are causing hurricanes and storms to intensify more rapidly instead of weakening as they approach landfall, as happened with Ian. Hurricanes are also absorbing more moisture and dumping more rain on affected areas. Fox ignored this crucial connection or refuted it all together. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On September 27, Tucker Carlson called severity warnings leading up to the storm a “scam” on Tucker Carlson Tonight. But the next day, he called Hurricane Ian “a catastrophe” and a “national disaster,” adding, “People will certainly be killed.” Carlson then tried to use an exchange between CNN’s Don Lemon and Jamie Rhome, the deputy director of the National Hurricane Center, to push his agenda. Carlson used Rhome’s reluctance to link climate change to specific events to suggest that for political reasons, the media is more concerned about climate change than actual climate scientists are. However, Rhome clearly agreed that climate change is having an impact on storms, which is consistent with mainstream reporting on the issue. In fact, on September 28, CNN meteorologist Tom Sater reiterated Rhome’s point and added, “Since 1950 there have been seven landfall hurricanes in Florida that were a category 4 or 5 … the first 4 were each in a different decade. The last three — all in the last 5 years.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On September 29, Carlson devoted a good chunk of his show to ranting about climate change as well. He was obsessively focused on hurricane frequency, arguing that somehow, a decrease in the numbers of storms would cancel out the plethora of other evidence indicating that the storm events themselves are intensifying. After citing a NOAA research overview highlighting that hurricanes are predicted to become more intense, Carlson went on to insist that “the claim is never proven,” and that “there’s no science behind these claims.” Later in the segment, he implied that humans cannot influence weather events because “they’re called natural disasters. … they’re products of nature, God is in charge.” </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div>He then discussed Hurricane Ian with Candace Owens, who has a long history of climate change denial. Owens reiterated that climate change does not exist because “if there was no human beings that walked the face of the planet, there would continue to be hurricanes, like there would continue to be blizzards, and like there would continue to be tornadoes.” She also used several other environmental concerns such as the hole in the ozone layer, which has diminished because of the Montreal Protocol, and ocean acidification, which remains a concern due to climate change, to try and argue that “they’ve been wrong over and over and over again.”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Video </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">CitationFrom the September 29, 2022, edition of Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On September 28 edition of The Ingraham Angle, frequent Fox News guest and climate contrarian Michael Shellenberger and host Laura Ingraham told viewers that their personal experiences with extreme weather were untrustworthy and invalid. Ingraham implied that concerns about climate change only exist because people “feel that the ocean is warmer … but a feeling is not fact.” Shellenberger falsely claimed that hurricanes are “not intensifying right now, so any perception that hurricanes are more intense is just a perception fed by that relentless alarmist media.” Guest Mollie Hemmingway, editor-in-chief of The Federalist, later claimed that “the left” is pushing a “conspiracy theory” that “man-made climate change is the cause of hurricanes. … There’s just no evidence for this theory that people keep holding.” Hemmingway said this despite the fact that no one is claiming that climate change is the primary cause of hurricanes, rather it is one factor making them more dangerous.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Video file</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Video CitationFrom the September 28, 2022, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hemmingway and Shellenberger also latched onto the idea that hurricane frequency is apparently the only metric that should concern the public, glossing over the very real dangers of threats like higher rainfall rates, which is the main factor that drives deaths and damage during a hurricane. They were fixated on the number of hurricanes that have occurred over different periods of time, using various irrelevant data points to unsuccessfully support their climate denial. They also downplayed damage caused by storms by saying that nowadays more people live in the areas most affected by hurricanes. Shellenberger first said that damage caused by hurricanes “has not increased at all” but then claimed that the increase in damage is due to the fact that “there’s more wealth in harm’s way,” going on to claim that the extreme weather events of the last several decades represent “an incredible success story for America,” because, in his telling, they could have been worse. </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Before Ian made landfall, Sean Hannity hosted his favorite climate denier Joe Bastardi to emphasize that hurricane frequency in Florida has not increased. On September 28, Hannity said that the media should not discuss climate change because “this is hurricane season and during hurricane season, you usually have hurricanes like we did a hundred years ago.” Fox News contributor Lara Trump insisted that the Democrats' “marketing arm, the mainstream media” is “now trying to claim that one of the quietest hurricane seasons in 30 years is somehow due to climate change.” Finally, former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee, who was a guest on the show, said that people should reject the established science of climate change and instead of “worshipping that which is created rather than the creator … get back to the simple things of science and real faith and trust in God.” </div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The public is beginning to increasingly understand the dangers of climate change and the need for actions that not only reduce climate-causing emissions, but make our communities less vulnerable to the climate impacts that are already happening. But as the public and more media outlets are starting to connect extreme weather to the need for climate action, Fox News coverage seeks to break those links.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">THE LATEST...</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Fox News host: “Americans are going to have to start strapping up and exercising their Second Amendment rights”</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">09/30/22 5:30 PM EDT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Climate denial abounds on Fox as Hurricane Ian devastates Florida</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">09/30/22 2:52 PM EDT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Pagination</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Current page1</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">…</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Next page</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">IN THIS ARTICLE</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Climate deniers</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Related</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Climate denial and near climate silence has marred national TV news coverage of Hurricane Ian</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">09/30/22 1:48 PM EDT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Right-wing media manufacture outrage over CNN host Don Lemon discussing relationship between climate change and strengthened hurricanes</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">09/29/22 1:53 PM EDT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As Hurricane Ian hits Florida, Fox News undermines climate change</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">09/27/22 11:15 PM EDT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">----</div></div>=<a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/18/bush-sr-cabinet-was-worried-about-climate-change-27-years-ago" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/18/bush-sr-cabinet-was-worried-about-climate-change-27-years-ago</a>12/15The <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2015/12/12/historic-climate-agreement-should-spook-fossil-fuel-markets-and-escalate-clean-tech-investment" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">agreement that was hammered out in Paris</a> at the recent climate talks will be a great step forward towards addressing the growing threat of climate change. But lost amongst the applause for the accord is a question that needs to be answered: Why did it take so long, and are we too late?Two weeks ago, <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">memos from the George H.W. Bush administration were released</a> that detailed conversations between Bush Sr.’s cabinet members, where they discussed the growing threat of global climate change…27 years ago.<a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/261935-memos-show-george-hw-bush-admins-worry-over-climate-change" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">The Hill</a> has posted parts of those conversations:“Global climate change is the most far reaching environmental issue of our time,” a 1989 memo from Acting Assistant Secretary of State Richard J. Smith said. “If the climate change within the range of current predictions actually occurs, the consequences for every nation and every aspect of human activity will be profound.”Writing to Secretary of State James Baker, Smith said, “As you yourself stated we cannot wait until all the uncertainties have been resolved before we act to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare for whatever climate change we are already committed to.”Those conversations took place over 27 years ago, and in the present day, leaders in the United States are still having debates about climate change. And not just about how to act, but we’ve regressed to the point that we are <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/09/3729959/mark-steyn-said-some-weird-things-at-this-hearing/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">still debating whether or not the problem even exists</a>.But Bush Sr. was not the first Republican president to understanding the growing threat of climate change. The newly released memos also tell us that the problem was discussed among Ronald Reagan’s cabinet members.These two Republicans were then followed by Democrat Bill Clinton (whose vice President, Al Gore, has been one of the leaders in the United States pushing for action on climate change), then by Republican George W. Bush, and finally by Democrat Barack Obama.And it wasn’t until the summer of 2015 — more than 30 years after the first U.S. presidents were warned about the dangers of growing emissions — that we got our first real set of rules to reduce our carbon emissions in a meaningful way.So why did it take so long when both Reagan and Bush Sr. were advised of the threats?The <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">memos shed some light</a> on the fact that both men, and their respective advisors, were actually trying to accomplish something with regards to climate change action:In connection with the Montreal Protocol (negotiated in 1987 and put into effect in 1989), both Reagan and Bush 41 showed a clear desire to tackle environmental concerns and to lead the global community in that effort, according to the documents. Protests by the Domestic Policy Council, led by Attorney General Edwin Meese, and other agency heads led Reagan to step in to ensure adoption of the final set of U.S. objectives for the treaty. Bush basically shared his predecessor’s views on entering office in January 1989.Both presidents’ secretaries of state, George P. Shultz and James A. Baker III, played key roles in blocking efforts by other Cabinet secretaries to frustrate implementation of more environmentally friendly policies. For example, memos for senior State Department officials in today’s posting note that “Global climate change is the most far reaching environmental issue of our time” and that notwithstanding the need for continued research, “We simply cannot wait – the costs of inaction will be too high.”Republicans have rightfully taken a lot of heat for their <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/10/3729732/ted-cruz-and-science-have-a-rocky-relationship/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">refusal to accept the science</a> behind climate change, but clearly this wasn’t always the case.Unfortunately, this new information only raises more questions than it answers. For example, Bush Sr. built on the success of Reagan’s Montreal accord, so why did Bill Clinton drop the ball?George W. Bush’s father believed in climate change, so why did he refuse to acknowledge the threat until his last few years in office, and then he still refused to act? (He also pulled us out of the Kyoto Protocol.)And most importantly, why did Barack Obama — the first president to address climate change in both campaigns and since taking office — take seven years to give us an emissions reduction rule?We can blame obstruction from deniers or the influence of fossil fuel money all day long, and they do deserve a large share of the blame. But the politicians are not the main problem. The real problem lies with American voters. They are the ones who put science deniers in office, and they are the ones who are not demanding action.Voters hold all of the power in the United States, and until they realize this, we will continue to get watered down safety standards that pay lip service to the problem while the planet continues to burn.=MONTREAL<a href="https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;">https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/</a>Climate Change Policy in the 1980s</div><div>=
<div>icn 320 omg</div><header class="wrap " style="box-sizing: inherit; padding: 1em 3.125em 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="page-title" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.333;">Long Phased-Out Refrigeration and Insulation Chemicals Still Widely in Use and Warming the Climate</h1></header><div class="wrap main-content section equal-height-section-processed" style="box-sizing: inherit; clear: both; padding: 0px 3.125em 1em; margin: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="page-content col span_7_of_12" style="box-sizing: inherit; float: left; margin-left: 0px; width: 532.766px;"><div class="panel-pane pane-node-content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="pane-content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><article id="node-58800" class="node node-article node-promoted node-content-58800 full clearfix" about="/news/17032020/cfc-ozone-layer-short-lived-climate-pollutants" typeof="sioc:Item foaf:Document" role="article" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><header class="page-header article-header" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1em;"><h2 class="page-subtitle" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">New study concludes that “banked” CFCs have greenhouse gas impacts equal to all registered U.S. cars and slow the shrinking of the ozone hole.</h2></header></article></div></div></div></div><div>
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</div><div>starting decades ago, international governments phased out a class of chemical refrigerants that harmed the ozone layer and fueled global warming. Now, a new study indicates that the remaining volume of these chemicals, and the emissions they continue to release into the atmosphere, is far larger than previously thought.</div><div class="content" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" property="content:encoded" style="box-sizing: inherit;">The findings point to a lost opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions on a par with the annual emissions from all passenger vehicles in the United States, but also highlight a low-cost pathway to curb future warming, researchers say.<a href="https://nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15162-7" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">The study,</a> published Tuesday in Nature Communications, looks at "banked" volumes of three leading chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) chemicals whose production is banned but remain in use today in older refrigeration and cooling systems and in foam insulation. CFCs were phased out of production in developed countries <a href="https://ozone.unep.org/treaties/montreal-protocol/annex-group-i-chlorofluorocarbons-cfc-11-cfc-12-cfc-113-cfc-114-and-cfc" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">by 1996</a>, and in developing countries by 2010, under the Montreal Protocol because of the leading role they played in creating the so-called "ozone hole" in the atmosphere.Emissions from these remaining CFC sources were equivalent to 25 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from 2000 to 2020, the study concludes. Averaged over 20 years, that equals the emissions of 270 million automobiles per year according to the<a href="https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> EPA's greenhouse gas equivalency calculator</a>, more than<a href="https://www.bts.gov/content/number-us-aircraft-vehicles-vessels-and-other-conveyances" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> all registered U.S. passenger vehicles</a>.   "If we don't deal with these banks, they are going to be emitted and contribute to delaying ozone hole recovery and contribute to future warming," Megan Jeramaz Lickley, a researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences and lead author of the study said.   <h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Potent Emissions, Easy to Cut</h3>The Montreal Protocol is widely viewed as the world's <a href="http://www.igsd.org/initiatives/montrealprotocol/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">most successful </a>international environmental agreement for the significant reductions it has achieved in chemicals that deplete atmospheric ozone and warm the planet. The size of the ozone hole<a href="https://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> peaked in 2006</a> and is slowly shrinking, though scientists warn that the recent resumption in production of banned CFC-11 could <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13717-x" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">prolong the recovery</a>. Lickley and colleagues calculate that continued emissions from stored CFC banks will equal 9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from 2020 to 2100. That exceeds the greenhouse gas reduction the European Union pledged to make from 2019 to 2030 under the Paris Climate agreement, the study notes.The chemicals analyzed in the current study—CFC-11, CFC-12 and CFC-113—are <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/short-lived-climate-pollutants" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">short-lived climate pollutants, highly potent greenhouse gases that don't remain in the atmosphere for very long. The three CFCs are</a> <a href="https://www.ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/ghgp/Global-Warming-Potential-Values%20%28Feb%2016%202016%29_1.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">approximately 5,000 to 10,000</a> times more effective at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide and remain in the atmosphere for<a href="https://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/2691/2013/acp-13-2691-2013.pdf" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> roughly 55 to 110 years. In contrast,</a> carbon dioxide can remain in the atmosphere for centuries. Reining in even a small amount of CFC emissions can therefore have a big impact in addressing climate change over the scale of a human lifetime.  Reducing banked CFC emissions would also be relatively easy and inexpensive compared to efforts to reduce emissions from other sectors, Lickley said."For example, when you are taking down an old building, instead of knocking it down you could carefully remove the insulation and bury it," she said, which would prevent the release of CFCs into the atmosphere as the foam breaks down. Other emissions come from leaks in ageing cooling and refrigeration systems. Servicing or disposal of these older cooling systems can release a significant amount of CFCs when efforts aren't made to capture the chemical refrigerants.    "The size of these banks is large enough that it could be worth trying to carefully dispose of them instead of just allowing them to be emitted," Lickley said.  The current study combines both "top down" assessments, that judged the size of the CFC bank by measuring concentrations of those gases in the atmosphere, and "bottom up" calculations, based on industry reports of the continued use of CFCs as refrigerants and existing stockpiles of the chemicals. <h3 dir="ltr" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.333;">Urgent Accounting Corrections</h3>The new assessment pushes back by four years—from 2076 to 2080—scientists' estimate of when the ozone hole over Antarctica will fully recover."We've known that there was something wrong for 10 years with the assessments, and we haven't known where in the system it was wrong," said Neil Harris, professor of atmospheric informatics at Cranfield University in the U.K., who was not part of the study.In recent years, researchers have been trying to determine the sources of error in their accounting. One answer came in 2018, when atmospheric chemists noticed a cessation in the steady decline of CFC-11 concentrations in the atmosphere, suggesting new, illicit production. A <a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/22052019/cfc-mystery-banned-ozone-climate-pollutant-china-hebei-shandong-montreal-protocol-foam-coolants" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">subsequent study</a> published last year, determined the emissions were coming from eastern China, where <a href="https://content.eia-global.org/posts/documents/000/000/761/original/Blowing-It_CFC11_Report_EIA.pdf?1531089183" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">unlicensed factories</a> had resumed production of the banned chemical. Researchers estimated that emissions from the illicit production were equivalent to about 60 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, roughly 5 percent of the annual emissions from existing, banked CFCs. The current study also suggests that previously unknown, illegal production of another one of the chemicals, CFC-113, may have started in recent years, similar to the recent, illicit production of CFC-11. "The banks of CFC-113 are not large enough to explain the emissions of that gas—I think our study also points out a potentially new source of illegal CFC-113," Lickley said. "My hope is this raises some attention towards potentially illegal [production] of this gas as well."Harris praised the study for its combination of scientific and industry knowledge. "It's a mix of complicated atmospheric science and industry accounting and industry practice, some of which has been confidential in the past," he said.  "We are going to need more truly integrated studies of this type where the science community and industry and other bodies are actually working together." Avipsa Mahapatra, a climate campaign director with<a href="https://eia-global.org/" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;"> the Environmental Investigation Agency</a> said more needs to be done to reduce the banked CFC emissions. "For far too long, both the Montreal Protocol, as well as governments in different countries and policymakers at different levels, have pretty much turned a blind eye to this problem,"  Mahapatra said. "It's just simply unconscionable to repeat this mistake at a time the climate can ill afford. The climate crisis we are in today demands urgent global action ensuring that we search, reuse and destroy any of these important gases before they further leak into our atmosphere." Widening existing mitigation efforts to include reducing banked CFC emissions is critical in the fight against climate change, Mahapatra said. "We know for a fact that current climate pledges and actions are insufficient by a very wide margin to address the worsening climate crisis," she said. "To us, addressing refrigerant banks is one of the single greatest mitigation opportunities available and this paper further solidifies that."The study also suggests that previously unknown, illegal production of another of the chemicals, CFC-113, may have started in recent years, similar to the recent, illicit production of CFC-11 in China. "The banks of CFC-113 are not large enough to explain the emissions of that gas—I think our study also points out a potentially new source of illegal CFC-113," Lickley said. "My hope is this raises some attention towards potentially illegal [production] of this gas as well."</div></div></div></div><div class="tagged-with" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><label style="box-sizing: inherit; display: block; line-height: 1.2;">PUBLISHED UNDER:</label><div class="field field-name-field-topics field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topics/regulation" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">REGULATION</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-tags field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-items" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/tags/short-lived-climate-pollutants" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">SHORT-LIVED CLIMATE POLLUTANTS</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/cfcs" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">CFCS</a></div> <div class="field-item even" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/greenhouse-gas" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">GREENHOUSE GAS</a></div> <div class="field-item odd" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; padding-right: 0.5em;"><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/topic/climate-change" typeof="skos:Concept" property="rdfs:label skos:prefLabel" datatype="" style="box-sizing: inherit; background-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px;">CLIMATE CHANGE</a></div></div></div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><div>=</div><div><a href="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/ozone.html">http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/ozone.html</a></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">During the 1990s several think tanks began casting doubt on the evidence that a build up of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) were causing ozone depletion and an ozone hole over the antarctic each year.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/images/ozonehole.jpg" alt="ozone hole" class="leftImage" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 10px 15px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle; clear: left; float: left;" />The <a href="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/cato.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Cato Institute</a> published <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://store.cato.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&method=&pid=144018" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Eco-scam: The False Prophets of Ecological Apocalypse</a> by <a href="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/Bailey.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Ronald Bailey</a>. In it Bailey argues that scientists working for NASA have promoted the ozone depletion theory in order to bolster its budget. Like the critics of the global warming theory, and usually these are the same people, Bailey and others emphasise the uncertainties surrounding the theory and the natural fluctuations in ozone levels that occur over time:<a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; padding: 0px 20px; border: none; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">the impact of man-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) on the ozone layer is a complex question that turns on murky evidence, tentative conclusions, conflicting interpretations, and changing predictions....it turns out that ozone depletion, like the other environmental dooms analyzed here, is less a crisis than a nuisance....</blockquote><a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The think tanks also exaggerated the cost of dealing with the problem. The <a href="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/CEI.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI)</a>, argued that the phasing out of CFCs would cost “$44.4 to $99.4 billion over the next decade”.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The British <a href="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/tanks/IEA.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Institute of Economic Affairs</a> published A Contrarian View of Environmental Problems by Matt Ridley which argued that “global temperatures may actually be falling” and “the ozone layer is getting thicker, not thinner, over temperate latitudes.” This argument was meaningless since ozone depletion is occurring close to the Earth’s poles.<p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">A related criticism was that there had been no measured increase in UV radiation detected in cities in the US as a result of ozone depletion. These critics ignored the evidence of increases in UV radiation at ground level in Australia.<div class="topofpage" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: right top; text-align: right;">
</div><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(185, 61, 0); background-repeat: no-repeat;"><a name="scientists" id="scientists" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Scientists</a></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Since about 1993 a series of publications came out suggesting that ozone depletion was a scam or a hoax or at least grossly exaggerated. Most of these were based on the claims of a handful of scientists based at corporate-funded think tanks. Perhaps the most quoted of these is Fred Singer, executive director of the think tank, the <a href="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/environment/warming/SEPP.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP)</a>. SEPP has argued that global warming, ozone depletion and acid rain are not real but rather are scare tactics used by environmentalists.<a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"> He is an associate editor of <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">21st Century Science and Technology which, according to the journal <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Science, is published “by supporters of Lyndon LaRouche”.Maduro wrote a book entitled <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The Holes in the Ozone Scare: The Scientific Evidence That the Sky Isn’t Falling with writer Ralf Schauerhammer, published by <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">21st Century. In it they argued that most chlorine in the stratosphere comes from natural sources such seawater and volcanoes. Atmospheric scientists, however, pointed out that the chlorine from these sources is washed out of the air by rain long before it reaches the stratosphere whereas CFCs are not soluble in water.<div class="topofpage" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: right top; text-align: right;">
</div><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(185, 61, 0); background-repeat: no-repeat;"><a name="media" id="media" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Media</a></h3><a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Drawing on these few scientific ‘experts’, who prefer to publish their dissent in think tank and right wing publications rather than peer reviewed scientific journals, conservative and business magazines and radio talk back hosts, such as Rush Limbaugh, spread the idea that ozone depletion was not really a problem and that no action needs to be taken. For example <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Business Week quoted Fred Singer and Ronald Bailey it its article entitled <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">What’s Flying out the Ozone Hole? Billions of dollars in which it argued that “the propaganda of the Chicken Littles has prevailed over science—and the cost of needlessly replacing cooling equipment will be staggering.” Another <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Business Week article a year later quoted Fred Singer as saying that the CFC phaseout was “based mainly on panicky reactions to press releases... “ The articles were written by Paul Craig Roberts, the chairman of a Washington think tank  and a Distinguished Fellow of the Cato Institute.<a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The surge of backlash publications also reached the mainstream press. The <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">Washington Post reported that “the problem appears to be heading toward solution before [researchers] can find any solid evidence that serious  harm was or is being done.”<div class="topofpage" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: right top; text-align: right;">
</div><h3 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(185, 61, 0); background-repeat: no-repeat;"><a name="regulation" id="regulation" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: normal; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;">Delaying Regulation</a></h3><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">isn’t the first time that the media has serviced those seeking to discredit ozone depletion theories. In the 1970s when the connection between fluorocarbons from aerosol spray cans and ozone depletion were first made:<a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; padding: 0px 20px; border: none; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none;">the aerosol industry launched a PR campaign that emphasized ‘knowledge gaps’ instead of gaps in the Earth’s atmospheric shield. Industry press releases formed the basis for articles in numerous newspapers and magazines that questioned the ozone depletion ‘theory’, enabling aerosol spray manufacturers to buy additional time before their product was banned. In this case, industry profits were deemed more important than the prevention of skin cancer.</blockquote><a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">This time, think tanks and their scholars have provided the Republicans in Congress with the rhetoric to oppose a more general CFC phaseout. The Republicans have sought to retract US agreement to the terms of the Montreal Protocol, the international convention aimed at phasing out CFCs worldwide. And a bill was introduced to repeal the provisions of the Clean Air Act relating to production and use of CFCs. <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New Scientist reported in September 1995:<a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; padding: 0px 20px; border: none; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">America’s Republicans thumbed their noses at the vast majority of the world’s scientists last week by claiming there is no proof that CFCs are destroying the ozone layer. Without proof, they argued, there is no good reason why the US should rush to ban the manufacture of CFCs by the end of the year.</blockquote><a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 10px; padding: 0px 20px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">The appropriately named Republican, John Doolittle, told the House of Representatives Science Committee that ozone depletion was debatable, based on pseudo science and that “we’re not giving Mother Nature enough credit for being able to replenish the ozone layer.” He dismissed peer-review as “mumbo jumbo.” Also writing in <span style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">New Scientist, Jeff Hecht argued that:<a class="popup" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; outline: 0px; direction: ltr;"><img src="http://www.herinst.org/BusinessManagedDemocracy/images/ref.jpg" alt="reference" width="45" height="17" border="0" align="right" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 20px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; border: none; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: middle;" /></a><blockquote style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 20px 20px; padding: 0px 20px; border: none; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none;">What the Republicans are doing is playing lawyers’ games with science. They demand that theories that they consider inconvenient be proved beyond any doubt—something that is impossible in science... The theory is so widely accepted that is originators received a Nobel prize for chemistry. Yet the Republicans don’t like this because it implies the need to regulate industrial production of the harmful chemicals that damage the ozone layer.... If they could find a few scientists who weren’t 100 per cent convinced that CFCs depleted ozone, they seemed ready to abandon the Montreal Protocol.</blockquote></div><div></div></div><div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><article class="post-22720 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-climatechange category-uncategorized" style="margin: 0px 0px 40px; position: relative;"><header style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">OzoneGate</h1></header><div class="post-meta" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.8em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span class="small" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: lowercase;">by <span class="author vcard" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: capitalize;"><span class="fn" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;"><a class="eric" href="http://volokh.com/author/eric/" title="Posts by Eric Posner" rel="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Eric Posner</a> <span class="small" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: lowercase;">on <abbr class="date time published" title="2009-12-07T06:31:06-0500" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: dashed; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; cursor: help;">December 7, 2009</abbr>  <span class="small" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: lowercase;">in <span class="categories" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><a href="http://volokh.com/category/climatechange/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Climate Change</a>, <a href="http://volokh.com/category/uncategorized/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Uncategorized</a></div><section class="entry" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">In 1974, a pair of scientists published a paper claiming that chlorofluorocarbons, a compound used in refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosol spray cans, and other devices, migrated into the atmosphere, where they damaged the ozone layer.  The ozone layer protects human beings from some of the harmful effects of the sun; the predictable consequence of its loss would be millions of skin cancer cases.  The scientists’ work was hotly contested; it eventually gained support in the scientific community, but there were also dissenters.  EPA would later regulate the use of CFCs in aerosols, but it was clear that unilateral regulation by the U.S. government would not solve the problem.  CFCs manufactured and used in any country could damage the ozone layer.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">The American government turned to the Europeans, the other major manufacturers and users of CFCs.  Europeans, however, did not trust the science and expressed skepticism about the CFC theory.  After further scientific research established that an ozone hole had opened up above Antarctica, and that the likely cause was the emission of CFCs, the Americans dragged the still skeptical Europeans into a treaty regime that tightly regulated the use of CFCs and other ozone-depleting gases.  The Montreal Protocol is the most successful environmental treaty ever (the only successful environmental treaty?).  The hole has been gradually shrinking and is expected to disappear later this century.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">The odd part of this story is that, while not everyone agreed with the scientists who found the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and that indeed, like everything else, the link was uncertain, albeit likely, governments were able to agree on a treaty regime.  The leading supporters of a treaty were those tree-huggers in the Reagan administration, who were persuaded by a cost-benefit analysis that the benefits from a ban on CFC greatly exceeded the costs—with the benefits properly discounted given residual scientific uncertainty.  There were ozone skeptics, but no Ozone Skeptics.  There was a reasonable scientific theory but no models that got everything right all the time.  There was an observable hole (if you believed the scientists who measured it) but the physical processes that linked it to refrigerators and aerosol cans could obviously not be demonstrated to the public.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">Where were the Climate Skeptics back then?  Or was ozonegate, like <a href="http://volokh.com/2009/12/03/asteroidgate/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">asteroidgate</a>, a non-event because the climate is a “complex system” whereas, um….  Why didn’t “hierarchical and individualist” citizens find the Montreal Protocol “threatening to their identities”?  (Cf. <a href="http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/12/asteroidgate-the-rocket-not-the-asteroid-packs-the-punch.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Dave Hoffman </a>on asteroidgate.)  Were scientists more honest in those days?  Commentators more sober?  The public more credulous?</section><div class="fix" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; zoom: 1;"><div class="post-utility" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;" /></div></article><div class="post-entries" style="margin: -20px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: both;"><div class="nav-prev fl" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; float: left;"><a href="http://volokh.com/2009/12/07/physicists-ask-americal-physical-society-to-rescind-its-statement-on-global-warming-because-it-was-based-on-cheating-and-corrupted-work/" rel="prev" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;"><span class="icon-angle-left" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: none 0px 0px repeat transparent; text-decoration: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; display: inline; width: auto; height: auto; line-height: normal;"> Physicists Ask American Physical Society to Rescind Its Statement on Global Warming Because It Was Based on “Cheat[ing]” and “Corrupted” Work</a></div></div></div><div><a href="http://volokh.com/2009/12/07/ozonegate-and-climategate/">http://volokh.com/2009/12/07/ozonegate-and-climategate/</a></div><div>
</div><div><header style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="title" style="margin: 0px 0px 0.5em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.2em; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent;">OzoneGate and ClimateGate</h1></header><div class="post-meta" style="margin: 0px 0px 1.8em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 18px; vertical-align: baseline; background: rgb(255, 255, 255);">by <a class="jonathan" href="http://volokh.com/author/jonathan/" title="Posts by Jonathan H. Adler" rel="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Jonathan H. Adler</a> on <abbr class="date time published" title="2009-12-07T09:06:07-0500" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: dashed; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; cursor: help;">December 7, 2009</abbr> <abbr class="time published" title="2009-12-07T09:06:07-0500" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px 0px 1px; border-top-style: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-bottom-style: dashed; border-left-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-right-color: initial; border-bottom-color: rgb(153, 153, 153); border-left-color: initial; border-image: initial; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; cursor: help;">9:06 am</abbr> in <a href="http://volokh.com/category/climatechange/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Climate Change</a>, <a href="http://volokh.com/category/environment/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background: transparent; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">Environment</a></div><section class="entry" style="font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em;"><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">In his post below, <a href="http://volokh.com/2009/12/07/ozonegate/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Eric Posner asks</a> why ozone depletion and the phaseout of CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances did not produce the same degree of backlash as does global warming.<blockquote style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 50px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; quotes: none; position: relative;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-indent: 20px;">Where were the Climate Skeptics back then?  Or was ozonegate, like <a href="http://volokh.com/2009/12/2009/12/03/asteroidgate/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">asteroidgate</a>, a non-event because the climate is a “complex system” whereas, um….  Why didn’t “hierarchical and individualist” citizens find the Montreal Protocol “threatening to their identities”?  (Cf. <a href="http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/12/asteroidgate-the-rocket-not-the-asteroid-packs-the-punch.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Dave Hoffman </a>on asteroidgate.)  Were scientists more honest in those days?  Commentators more sober?  The public more credulous?</blockquote><p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">I would challenge some of Eric’s assumptions.  There were climate skeptics back then (indeed, some of the ozone skeptics back then are climate skeptics now) and “hierarchical and individualist” citizens (as represented by right-of-center authors, commentators, and think tanks) challenged the scientific claims.  Accepting his implicit assumption that the scientific case for a link between CFCs and ozone depletion at the time was no greater than for apocalyptic climate change today, there was still much less at stake, so the scientific debate had less salience, and there was less political controversy.  I’ll briefly expand on each point.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">First, there was significant skepticism about initial ozone depletion claims, skepticism that was echoed and amplified by those who opposed government regulation.  Questions about ozone depletion were raised in Dixy Lee Ray’s best-selling <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0895265443/amazon0156-20/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Trashing the Planet</a> and <a href="http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1895" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">echoed by Rush Limbaugh</a>.  In 1989, <em style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">National Review published the article “My Adventures in the Ozone Layer” by Dr. Fred Singer, a prominent skeptic of both ozone depletion concerns and climate change.  Early on, such skepticism was warranted, but as scientific evidence accumulated, many of those inclined toward skepticism accepted the basic claim that CFCs could and did cause ozone depletion.  Ronald Bailey’s 1993 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0312109717/amazon0156-20/" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Eco-Scam</a>, for instance, accepted the basic scientific claims and acknowledged that ozone depletion could have been a significant concern.  Still, even today there are pockets of skepticism related to ozone depletion, particularly about the contribution of certain chemicals, such as methyl bromide.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">Second, policies to control ozone depletion are not nearly as far-reaching or intrusive as policies to limit the emission of greenhouse gases.  CFCs and other ozone-depleting substances were always specialized chemicals.  They were in widespread use as coolants, but they still don’t compare to carbon dioxide, the most ubiquitous by-product of modern industrial civilization.  Buying new refrigerators and retrofitting car air-conditioners may be expensive or inconvenient, but it hardly compares to the sorts of measures contemplated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.   So it’s not surprising that there was less outrage or resistance to the scientific claims.  [This also highlights an important difference between climate change and <a href="http://volokh.com/2009/12/2009/12/03/asteroidgate/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; text-decoration-line: none;">Eric’s asteroid example</a>: the anti-asteroid rockets would presumably be financed by general tax revenues and provided as a public good, whereas climate policies will impose disproportionate costs and controls on specific sectors of the economy.]<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">Third, there’s an important wrinkle in the history of U.S. policy on ozone depletion that Eric omits.  Initially, the U.S. government was adamantly opposed to controlling CFCs, beyond the initial 1978 ban on their use in aerosol cans.  In the 1980s, however, the U.S. government did not support a CFC phase-out until industry was on board.  And industry was not on board until the leading CFC manufacturer, DuPont, faced significant competition for its patented CFC compounds and and was well-positioned to dominate the replacement market. When DuPont joined the call for a complete phaseout in 1988, the CFC trade industry still voiced some  skepticism about the science, but DuPont was ready to sell more expensive CFC substitutes — compounds for which there would have been no real market without the phaseout.  [For those interested, I summarized this history near the end of my 1996 article, <a href="http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/regv19n4/v19n4-4.pdf" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;"><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial;">Rent-Seeking Behind the Green Curtain</a>.]<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">In retrospect, the CFC phaseout was a good idea, but even assuming that the level of scientific certainty was no greater when the CFC phaseout was adopted than there is with climate change today, there are many important differences between the two policy debates.  First,there was less reason for skepticism to blossom into sustained political opposition because there was less at stake — the phaseout’s costs were concentrated on a few industries, not spread economy wide, and a CFC phaseout did not threaten regulatory controls on ordinary Americans.  Second, the potential economic benefits to dominant industry players meant powerful economic  interests supported the phaseout, interests that far outweighed those sectors likely to experience significant costs (and, in these sectors as well, groups rapidly emerged to capture the rents a phaseout could produce).  So there were powerful “bootleggers” to support the environmental “baptists.”  Third, the most significant effects of a phaseout were likely to be felt overseas, in those nations in which a CFC phaseout would diminish the availability of affordable refrigeration technologies, and those nations could be easily bought off.  I also think the nature of the CFC threat — a potential increased risk of skin cancer — generates more political traction than a change in temperature.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">Another important difference between ozone depletion and climate change, is that there was reason to believe that a near-total phaseout of CFCs was the only meaningful way to address the threat of ozone depletion, whereas there may be ways to address climate change concerns that don’t involve empowering a massive regulatory bureaucracy.  While most climate policy proponents advocate far-reaching regulatory programs, covering everything from industrial emissions and transportation to product design and land-use, there are alternative ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, atmospheric concentrations, or the threat of enhanced greenhouse warming (if not all three), ranging from revenue-neutral carbon taxes to technological fixes, to various forms of geoengineering.  Because there is a disproportionate emphasis on regulatory controls, some opponents of clmate policies suspect some climate policy advocates are as interested in imposing such controls as they are in saving the planet — as then-Senator Tim Wirth said some 20 years ago, global warming was an excuse to “do the right thing” even if the problem wasn’t real.<p style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px 0px 1.2em; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 1.5em; vertical-align: baseline; text-indent: 20px;">To reiterate my own views, I believe that human activity contributes to global warming, and that it is a serious concern (even if I don’t accept claims that global warming threatens human civilization).  ClimateGate is a real scientific scandal that may justify increased caution about some of the more definitive or apocalyptic statements about climate science, but I do not see it compromising the essential case for a human contribution to climate change.  My policy preference is for measures that do the most to address the actual threats posed by warming while minimizing consequent restrictions on liberty or the imposition of costs on those who have not contributed signficantly to the problem.  I think massive regulatory programs are ill-adivsed, and that proposed cap-and-trade programs will provide massive opportunities for rent-seeking while doing little to reduce actual emissions or enhance our capacity to deal with the problem.  On the other hand, I would welcome a revenue-neutral carbon tax, combined with other policies to enhance technological innovation, and believe that industrialized nations should help more vulnerable nations adapt to the inevitable, and at this point unavoidable, near to medium term effects of projected warming.  I’ve also argued (in <a href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=6B83C9C5B71539382B41003E75FADD77.tomcat1?fromPage=online&aid=5878664" style="background-image: initial; background-position: initial; background-size: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration-line: none;">this article</a>) that principled adherence to libertarian principles justifies greater action on climate change.</section></div><div>=</div></div><div>
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<div>see bush 41:</div><div><a href="http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/261935-memos-show-george-hw-bush-admins-worry-over-climate-change" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Hill</a> posted parts of those conversations:“Global climate change is the most far-reaching environmental issue of our time,” a 1989 memo from Acting Assistant Secretary of State Richard J. Smith said. “If the climate change within the range of current predictions actually occurs, the consequences for every nation and every aspect of human activity will be profound.”Writing to Secretary of State James Baker, Smith said, “As you yourself stated we cannot wait until all the uncertainties have been resolved before we act to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to prepare for whatever climate change we are already committed to.”Those conversations took place over 27 years ago, and in the present day, leaders in the United States are still having debates about climate change. And not just about how to act, but we’ve regressed to the point that we are <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/09/3729959/mark-steyn-said-some-weird-things-at-this-hearing/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">still debating whether or not the problem even exists</a>.But Bush Sr. was not the first Republican president to understanding the growing threat of climate change. The recently released memos also tell us that the problem was discussed among Ronald Reagan’s cabinet members.These two Republicans were then followed by Democrat Bill Clinton (whose vice President, Al Gore, has been one of the leaders in the United States pushing for action on climate change), then by Republican George W. Bush, and finally by Democrat Barack Obama.And it wasn’t until the summer of 2015—more than 30 years after the first U.S. presidents were warned about the dangers of growing emissions—that we got our first real set of rules to reduce our carbon emissions in a meaningful way.So why did it take so long when both Reagan and Bush Sr. were advised of the threats?The <a href="http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB536-Reagan-Bush-Recognized-Need-for-US-Leadership-on-Climate-Change-in-1980s/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">memos shed some light</a> on the fact that both men, and their respective advisors, were actually trying to accomplish something with regards to climate change action:In connection with the Montreal Protocol (negotiated in 1987 and put into effect in 1989), both Reagan and Bush 41 showed a clear desire to tackle environmental concerns and to lead the global community in that effort, according to the documents. Protests by the Domestic Policy Council, led by Attorney General Edwin Meese, and other agency heads led Reagan to step in to ensure adoption of the final set of U.S. objectives for the treaty. Bush basically shared his predecessor’s views on entering office in January 1989....<div><div>=</div><div>619</div><div>
</div><div>Scientists are zeroing in on the source of a powerful climate pollutant that was banned years ago but has mysteriously been increasing, with potentially damaging consequences for climate change.Months of tracking the pollutant's rise in the atmosphere had pointed investigators to Asia and then to eastern China. They announced on Wednesday that they had found at least 40 to 60 percent of the global increase in trichlorofluoromethane (CFC-11), a chlorofluorocarbon, was originating in and around the Chinese provinces of Shandong and Hebei.The emissions appear to be from new production of the chemical—in violation of the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a treaty under which countries had agreed to phase out ozone-damaging pollutants, including CFCs—the scientists write in <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1193-4" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold;">a new study</a> published in the journal Nature.</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </div></div></div><div>
<div><div class="views-field views-field-body" open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" style="overflow: inherit;"><div class="field-content">After decades of thinning, Earth's <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/ozone" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">ozone</a> layer is slowing recovering, the <a href="https://www.ecowatch.com/tag/united-nations" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">United Nations</a> (UN) said in a <a href="http://conf.montreal-protocol.org/meeting/mop/mop30/presession/Background-Documents/SAP-2018-Assessment-ES-October2018.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">report</a> released Monday, highlighting how international cooperation can help tackle major environmental issues.</div></div><div class="views-field views-field-disqus-comment-count" open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="float: left; margin-right: 15px;"></div><div class="views-field views-field-view-node" open="open" sans="sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="text-align: right; text-transform: uppercase;"><a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/11/05/un-healing-ozone-layer-shows-why-environmental-treaties-matter">READ MORE</a></div></div><div>
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</div><div>it is not every day you learn Congressional Republicans are excited to pass an Obama-era climate deal, but that seems to be the case when it comes to a treaty that would eliminate an obscure but potent greenhouse gas. <p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">On June 4, a group of 13 Senate Republicans sent a <a href="https://www.eenews.net/assets/2018/06/12/document_daily_01.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit; box-shadow: rgb(56, 187, 255) 0px -2px 0px inset; transition: color 0.1s ease-out 0s;">letter</a> to President Trump urging him to send them the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol for approval. Negotiated in 2016 under former President Obama and agreed on by leaders of 170 nations, the Kigali Amendment phases out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), substances developed for use in refrigerators and air conditioning units after the Montreal Protocol banned their ozone-destroying cousins, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), beginning in the late 1980s. :... then-Secretary of State John Kerry hailed it as “the single most important step we could take at this moment to limit the warming of our planet.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">But for the U.S. to be party to the agreement, it requires a two thirds majority vote in the Senate. And while the Trump administration voiced support for Kigali last year, E&E News <a href="https://www.eenews.net/climatewire/2018/06/12/stories/1060084145" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit; box-shadow: rgb(56, 187, 255) 0px -2px 0px inset; transition: color 0.1s ease-out 0s;">reports</a> that the effort to eliminate HFCs has since hit snags, most notably the Environmental Protection Agency, which under the leadership of Scott Pruitt is far more interested in <a href="https://earther.com/scott-pruitts-clean-car-rollback-could-have-global-cons-1824297591" rel="nofollow" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit; box-shadow: rgb(56, 187, 255) 0px -2px 0px inset; transition: color 0.1s ease-out 0s;">unwinding climate regulations</a> than implementing them.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Hence the recent Senate letter, which conspicuously makes no mention of climate change or Obama. To these Republicans, the Kigali Amendment is simply good business. The letter notes that it’s projected to add 33,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs and generate $4.8 billion in export revenues in the heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration industries. Failure to ratify the amendment, meanwhile, could cede these economic benefits to China.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“We urge you to send this amendment to the Senate for consideration,” the letter reads. “The impacted industries in our country played a major role in shaping this amendment and are supportive of its ratification and implementation.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.nrdc.org/experts/david-doniger" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit; box-shadow: rgb(56, 187, 255) 0px -2px 0px inset; transition: color 0.1s ease-out 0s;">David Doniger</a>, Senior Strategic Director at the NRDC’s Climate and Clean Energy Program, said he hoped the letter is a signal that the Senate will move quickly to ratify the amendment if and when Trump sends it their way (no word on when that might happen, though).<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“I think you’ll assume this will have general support from the Democrats,” Doniger told Earther. “What this letter signals is it’s also got substantial support from the Republicans and shouldn’t be controversial.”<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In Doniger’s view, the reason for that bipartisan support is support from the industry that’s being regulated. Unlike, say, the Paris Agreement, which is fundamentally at odds with the survival of the fossil fuel industry, replacements for HFCs will come from the cooling industry, and should help it prosper.<p style="box-sizing: inherit; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px auto 1.25rem; word-break: break-word; padding: 0px; line-height: 32px; max-width: 636px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">“This is an agreement focused on a small set of industries [that] has the expertise, engagement, focus, formula for success to deal with these refrigerants, blowing agents, [and] solvents in a focused way,” Doniger said. “They are content to treat this as an industrial sector agreement.”Although it wasn’t its intention at the time, implementing the Montreal Protocol has already had major climate benefits. A <a href="https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/2017GL074388" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-line: none; line-height: inherit; box-shadow: rgb(56, 187, 255) 0px -2px 0px inset; transition: color 0.1s ease-out 0s;">study</a> published last year found that the phase-out of CFCs and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) under the Montreal Protocol had, between 2008 and 2014, yielded about half the climate benefit of all other regulations enacted by the EPA<div></div><div>
</div><div>Saved From the Ozone HoleIs environmental science any different?Consider the men and women who <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/186/4160/205.citation" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">laid the scientific foundations</a> for the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. Established in 1985, that Convention protects us from the potentially devastating effects of ozone depletion. Today, the ozone hole is on the mend and scientists expect a full recovery in the coming decades — something that would not have happened without the work of the environmental scientists who first recognized threats to stratospheric ozone in the early 1970s.Scientists working at NASA and the University of California realized then that chemicals released into the atmosphere from supersonic transport planes and the space shuttle could react with ozone in the stratosphere and destroy it. Because of this threat, NASA began to fund studies of the chemical reactions involved. Meanwhile, Sherwood Rowland and Mario Molina at the University of California, Irvine, recognized that a certain class of chemicals known as chlorinated fluorocarbons, or CFCs, found in hairspray and other consumer products, had the potential to destroy ozone on a global scale.  At first, their predictions were viewed skeptically even by their colleagues: Could hairspray really end life on Earth as we knew it? That seemed an adventurous, if not outrageous, claim.In 1985, however, Joseph Farmer of the British Antarctic Survey announced the discovery of an area over Antarctica in which stratospheric ozone was dramatically diminished: the “ozone hole.” The following year, a team led by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientist Susan Solomon suggested that ozone was indeed being depleted by chlorine chemicals derived from CFCs in catalytic reactions on polar stratospheric clouds.In 1987, Harvard Professor James Anderson sent an experiment aloft in a NASA U-2 plane over the Antarctic, establishing by direct measurement that the ozone layer had been massively depleted there and that those depletions correlated with CFCs. This was a striking confirmation of the earlier hypotheses. Later, his team obtained similar measurements over the Arctic. All this research was NASA-funded.On the basis of this work, Republican President George H.W. Bush, Secretary of State George Schultz, and Assistant Secretary of State John Negroponte gave their support to the Montreal Protocol to the Vienna Convention and so committed the world to reducing, and later to phasing out, the use of CFCs. In 1988, with the president’s support, Congress ratified the Montreal Protocol.Susan Solomon has since been elected to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Academy_of_Sciences" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">U.S. National Academy of Sciences</a>, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Academy_of_Sciences" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">European Academy of Sciences</a>, and the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Academy_of_Sciences" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">French Academy of Sciences</a>. In 2008, she was <a href="http://content.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1733748_1733754_1735701,00.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">named</a> by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. James Anderson has won more prizes than you can count. In 1995, Rowland and Molina <a href="http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1995/press.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">shared</a> the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work on ozone depletion.If ozone science had been distorted, corrupted, or otherwise incorrectly done, none of them would have received such honors. More important, if the science had been wrong, we would be in dire straits right now because the ozone hole would not be recovering. Among other things, skin cancer rates in America would be about 60% higher than they are today. Livestock, crops, and wild plants and animals would have been affected, too.Bush, a Republican president, was not duped. He did the right thing and protected us from harm, but few people realize just how well the Montreal Protocol has worked and at what little cost. It was ratified by <a href="http://www.un.org/climatechange/blog/2012/09/most-widely-ratified-treaty-in-un-history-marks-silver-jubilee/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">197 nations</a> -—in other words, the whole world! — and production and consumption of ozone-depleting chemicals has fallen 98%.Not only did this cost very little as manufacturers quickly replaced ozone-depleting chemicals with new, less harmful products, but the world profited. The Protocol stimulated competition in technological innovation that reduced manufacturing costs, improved efficiency and safety, and lowered prices for consumers, while we avoided significant economic losses in agricultural and fishery yields and adverse human health impacts. The indirect health profits in terms of avoided cases of cancers and cataracts alone have been estimated at 11 times the direct costs of implementation.  And there was no net loss of jobs, although there was a shift to more skilled jobs carried out by better-trained workers <a href="http://www.unep.org/ozonaction/Portals/105/documents/publications/green-economy-report.pdf" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">under safer conditions</a>.As the risk of disruptive climate change became widely recognized in the 1990s, the ozone success story offered a model for how we might tackle climate change, especially as it refuted the familiar conservative claims that environmental protection restrains growth, hurts the economy, and leads to job loss, or that benefits accrue to polar bears but not people. But the Republican shift to the right was already underway. When it came to the subject of regulation, the GOP was on the road to rejecting any science that pointed in that direction.In the early part of the twentieth century, Republicans had been pioneers in environmental protection; in its middle years, they had worked with Democrats to pass bills like the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act.  By the 1980s, however, resistance to environmental measures that might limit private sector prerogatives was starting to overshadow their historic commitment to a safe and beautiful America. By the 1990s, regulation was seen as bad in principle, even when, as in the ozone case, it was clearly and demonstrably good in practice.Climate Science and the HoaxersThe ink on the Montreal Protocol was scarcely dry when ozone science was attacked as corrupt and politically motivated (in much the same way that environmental science is being attacked today). In 1995, Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher organized a hearing on “scientific integrity” meant to challenge such science.  Representatives of private industry and conservative think tanks began to claim that the science behind the Montreal Protocol was incorrect, that fixing the problem would be devastating to the economy, and that the scientists involved were exaggerating the threat to get more money for their research. Entered into the Congressional Record was the now-familiar claim that there was “no scientific consensus” on ozone depletion, shown to be completely false by the Nobel Prize awarded to Rowland and Molina only a few weeks later.</div><div>===</div><div>
</div><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol</a><div>
</div><div>Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (a protocol to the<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_the_Ozone_Layer" title="Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer</a>) is an international <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty" title="Treaty" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">treaty</a> designed to protect the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer" title="Ozone layer" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">ozone layer</a> by phasing out the production of numerous substances believed to be responsible for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion" title="Ozone depletion" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">ozone depletion</a>. The treaty was opened for signature on 16 September 1987, and entered into force on 1 January 1989, followed by a first meeting in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki" title="Helsinki" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Helsinki</a>, May 1989. Since then, it has undergone seven revisions, in 1990 (London), 1991 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nairobi" title="Nairobi" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Nairobi</a>), 1992 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen" title="Copenhagen" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Copenhagen</a>), 1993 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok" title="Bangkok" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Bangkok</a>), 1995 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna" title="Vienna" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Vienna</a>), 1997 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal" title="Montreal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Montreal</a>), and 1999 (Beijing). It is believed that if the international agreement is adhered to, the ozone layer is expected to recover by 2050.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-1" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[1]</a> Due to its widespread adoption and implementation it has been hailed as an example of exceptional international co-operation, with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kofi_Annan" title="Kofi Annan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Kofi Annan</a> quoted as saying that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol".<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-2" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[2]</a> The two ozone treaties have been ratified by 197 states and the European Union<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-ozone.unep.org-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[3]</a>making them the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_treaties_by_number_of_parties" title="List of treaties by number of parties" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">most widely ratified treaties</a> in United Nations history.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[4]</a><div id="toc" class="toc" style="border: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); padding: 7px; display: inline-block; zoom: 1; line-height: 19.2px;"><div id="toctitle" style="direction: ltr; text-align: center;">
</div><ul style="line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin: 0.3em 0px; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-1" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Terms_and_purposes" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">1 Terms and purposes</a><ul style="line-height: 1.5em; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 2em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: none;"><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-2" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Chlorofluorocarbons.28CFCs.29_Phase-out_Management_Plan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">1.1 Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) Phase-out Management Plan</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-3" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Hydrochlorofluorocarbons.28HCFCs.29_Phase-out_Management_Plan.28HPMP.29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">1.2 Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP)</a></li><li class="toclevel-2 tocsection-4" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Hydrofluorocarbons.28HFCs.29" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">1.3 Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)</a></li></ul></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-5" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#History" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">2 History</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-6" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Multilateral_Fund" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">3 Multilateral Fund</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-7" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Parties" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">4 Parties</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-8" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Effect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">5 Effect</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-9" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#25th_Anniversary_Celebrations" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">6 25th Anniversary Celebrations</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-10" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#See_also" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">7 See also</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-11" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#References" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">8 References</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-12" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#Further_reading" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">9 Further reading</a></li><li class="toclevel-1 tocsection-13" style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#External_links" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">10 External links</a></li></ul></div><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Terms and purposes<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2>The treaty<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-5" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[5]</a> is structured around several groups of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halogenated_hydrocarbon" title="Halogenated hydrocarbon" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">halogenated hydrocarbons</a> that have been shown to play a role in ozone depletion. All of these ozone depleting substances contain either <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine" title="Chlorine" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">chlorine</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromine" title="Bromine" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">bromine</a> (substances containing only <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorine" title="Fluorine" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">fluorine</a> do not harm the ozone layer). For a table of ozone-depleting substances see: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-6" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[6]</a>For each group, including group ST, the treaty provides a timetable on which the production of those substances must be phased out and eventually eliminated.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px;">Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) Phase-out Management Plan<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h3>The stated purpose of the treaty is that the signatory states "Recognizing that worldwide emissions of certain substances, including ST, can significantly deplete and otherwise modify the ozone layer in a manner that is likely to result in adverse effects on human health and the environment, ... Determined to protect the ozone layer by taking precautionary measures to control equitably total global emissions of substances that deplete it, with the ultimate objective of their elimination on the basis of developments in scientific knowledge ... Acknowledging that special provision, including ST is required to meet the needs of developing countries..."shall accept a series of stepped limits on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon" title="Chlorofluorocarbon" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">CFC</a> use and production, including:<dl style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px;"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">from 1991 to 1992 its levels of consumption and production of the controlled substances in Group I of Annex A do not exceed 150 percent of its calculated levels of production and consumption of those substances in 1986;</dd></dl><dl style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px;"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">from 1994 its calculated level of consumption and production of the controlled substances in Group I of Annex A does not exceed, annually, twenty-five percent of its calculated level of consumption and production in 1986.</dd></dl><dl style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-top: 0.2em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; line-height: 19.2px;"><dd style="line-height: 1.5em; margin-left: 1.6em; margin-bottom: 0.1em; margin-right: 0px;">from 1996 its calculated level of consumption and production of the controlled substances in Group I of Annex A does not exceed zero.</dd></dl>There was a slower phase-out (to zero by 2010) of other substances (halon 1211, 1301, 2402; CFCs 13, 111, 112, etc.) and some chemicals were given individual attention (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_tetrachloride" title="Carbon tetrachloride" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Carbon tetrachloride</a>; <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1-Trichloroethane" title="1,1,1-Trichloroethane" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">1,1,1-trichloroethane</a>). The phasing-out of the less active <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HCFC" title="HCFC" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">HCFCs</a> only began in 1996 and will go on until a complete phasing-out is achieved by 2030.<h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px;">Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) Phase-out Management Plan (HPMP)<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h3>Under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, especially Executive Committee (ExCom) 53/37 and ExCom 54/39, Parties to this Protocol agreed to set year 2013 as the time to freeze the consumption and production of HCFCs. They also agreed to start reducing its consumption and production in 2015. The time of freezing and reducing HCFCs is then known as 2013/2015.The HCFCs are transitional CFCs replacements, used as refrigerants, solvents, blowing agents for plastic foam manufacture, and fire extinguishers. In term of Ozone Depleting Potential (ODP), in comparison to CFCs that have ODP 0.6 – 1.0, these HCFCs have less ODP, i.e. 0.01 – 0.5. Whereas in term of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Warming_Potential" title="Global Warming Potential" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Global Warming Potential</a> (GWP), in comparison to CFCs that have GWP 4,680 – 10,720, HCFCs have less GWP, i.e. 76 – 2,270.There are a few exceptions for "essential uses", where no acceptable substitutes have been found (for example, in the past metered dose inhalers commonly used to treat asthma and other respiratory problems were exempt, but no longer as of 12/31/11.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-7" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[7]</a>) or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halomethane" title="Halomethane" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Halon</a> fire suppression systems used in submarines and aircraft (but not in general industry).The substances in Group I of Annex A are:<ul data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaauaaaanaqmaaabb8jblaaaablbmvex="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX" auow5qsojaaaaaxrstlmaqobyzgaaabnjrefucb1jyeabbqw="AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw" wlcagqeagpidyt0ivcsaaaaasuvork5cyii="); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">CFCl3 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichlorofluoromethane" title="Trichlorofluoromethane" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">CFC-11</a>)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">CF2Cl2 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichlorodifluoromethane" title="Dichlorodifluoromethane" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">CFC-12</a>)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">C2F3Cl3 (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFC-113" title="CFC-113" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">CFC-113</a>)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">C2F4Cl2(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFC-114" title="CFC-114" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">CFC-114</a>)</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;">C2F5Cl (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFC-115" title="CFC-115" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">CFC-115</a>)</li></ul>The provisions of the Protocol include the requirement that the Parties to the Protocol base their future decisions on the current scientific, environmental, technical, and economic information that is assessed through panels drawn from the worldwide expert communities. To provide that input to the decision-making process, advances in understanding on these topics were assessed in 1989, 1991, 1994, 1998 and 2002 in a series of reports entitled <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_assessment_of_ozone_depletion" title="Scientific assessment of ozone depletion" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Scientific assessment of ozone depletion</a>.Several reports have been published by various governmental and non-governmental organizations to present alternatives to the ozone depleting substances, since the substances have been used in various technical sectors, like in refrigerating, agriculture, energy production, and laboratory measurements<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-8" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[8]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-9" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[9]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-10" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[10]</a><h3 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom-style: none; line-height: 19.2px;">Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; font-weight: normal; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h3>Produced mostly in developed countries, HFCs replaced chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), that were phased out under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. HFCs pose no harm to the ozone layer because, unlike CFCs and HCFCs, they do not contain chlorine that depletes the ozone layer. But it has been established that HFCs are not innocuous either.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-11" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[11]</a> They are super-greenhouse gases with an extremely high global warming potential. This means they are capable of trapping enormous amounts of infrared radiations in the atmosphere and can cause a greenhouse effect a thousand times stronger than carbon dioxide. It has been four years since the issue of bringing HFCs under the Protocol's ambit was raised. Developed countries say that since the rise in the emission of super-greenhouse gases is a consequence of the phasing out of CFCs and HCFCs under the Montreal Protocol, the same agreement should monitor them. Developing countries like India, China and Brazil, however, say that the emission and regulation of greenhouse gases fall under the purview of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and HFCs already figure in the basket of six greenhouse gases under the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol" title="Kyoto Protocol" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Kyoto Protocol</a>. Developed countries following the Kyoto Protocol report their HFC emission data to UNFCCC; parties to the Montreal Protocol have no such obligation. At the root of this argument is a doubt. <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.downtoearth.org.in/content/climate-irrationality" data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaaoaaaakcayaaacnms="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAoAAAAKCAYAAACNMs" aaaavkleqvr4xn3pgqkamqhduxfqtu7kttkpd5ra8ainfartq2irxfwt2qedafttj2fspioe1ecoleuowwjgzyab="AAAAVklEQVR4Xn3PgQkAMQhDUXfqTu7kTtkpd5RA8AInfArtQ2iRXFWT2QedAfttj2FsPIOE1eCOlEuoWWjgzYaB" ikegorxxhqb="IkeGOrxXhqB" ua9bfcm0lazuh="uA9Bfcm0lAZuh" yiead="YIeAD" caqsz4kcmuaaaaasuvork5cyii="); padding-right: 13px; background-position: 100% 50%; background-repeat: no-repeat;" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: url(" xmlns:data="data">Developing countries are apprehensive</a> about the high cost of transition from HFCs to a safer option.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">History<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2>In 1973, the chemists <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Sherwood_Rowland" title="Frank Sherwood Rowland" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Frank Sherwood Rowland</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Molina" title="Mario Molina" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Mario Molina</a>, who were then at the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,Irvine" title="University of California, Irvine" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">University of California, Irvine</a>, began studying the impacts of CFCs in the Earth's atmosphere. They discovered that CFC molecules were stable enough to remain in the atmosphere until they got up into the middle of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratosphere" title="Stratosphere" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">stratosphere</a> where they would finally (after an average of 50–100 years for two common CFCs) be broken down by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet_radiation" title="Ultraviolet radiation" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">ultraviolet radiation</a> releasing a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorine" title="Chlorine" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">chlorine</a> atom. Rowland and Molina then proposed that these chlorine atoms might be expected to cause the breakdown of large amounts of ozone (O3) in the stratosphere. Their argument was based upon an analogy to contemporary work by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_J.Crutzen" title="Paul J. Crutzen" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Paul J. Crutzen</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harold_Johnston(chemist)&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Harold Johnston (chemist) (page does not exist)" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Harold Johnston</a>, which had shown that nitric oxide (NO) could catalyze the destruction of ozone. (Several other scientists, including<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Cicerone" title="Ralph Cicerone" class="mw-redirect" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Ralph Cicerone</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Richard_Stolarski&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Richard Stolarski (page does not exist)" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Richard Stolarski</a>, Michael McElroy, and Steven Wofsy had independently proposed that chlorine could catalyze ozone loss, but none had realized that CFCs were a potentially large source of chlorine.) Crutzen, Molina and Rowland were awarded the 1995 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_for_Chemistry" title="Nobel Prize for Chemistry" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Nobel Prize for Chemistry</a> for their work on this problem.The environmental consequence of this discovery was that, since stratospheric ozone absorbs most of the ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation reaching the surface of the planet, depletion of the ozone layer by CFCs would lead to an in increase in UV-B radiation at the surface, resulting in an increase in skin cancer and other impacts such as damage to crops and to marine phytoplankton.But the Rowland-Molina hypothesis was strongly disputed by representatives of the aerosol and halocarbon industries. The chair of the board of<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont" title="DuPont" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">DuPont</a> was quoted as saying that ozone depletion theory is "a science fiction tale...a load of rubbish...utter nonsense". <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Abplanalp" title="Robert Abplanalp" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Robert Abplanalp</a>, the president of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Precision_Valve_Corporation&action=edit&redlink=1" class="new" title="Precision Valve Corporation (page does not exist)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Precision Valve Corporation</a> (and inventor of the first practical aerosol spray can valve), wrote to the Chancellor of UC Irvine to complain about Rowland's public statements (Roan, p. 56.)After publishing their pivotal paper in June 1974, Rowland and Molina testified at a hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives in December 1974. As a result significant funding was made available to study various aspects of the problem and to confirm the initial findings. In 1976, the U.S. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_National_Academy_of_Sciences" title="United States National Academy of Sciences" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">National Academy of Sciences</a> (NAS) released a report that confirmed the scientific credibility of the ozone depletion hypothesis.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-NAS1976-12" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[12]</a> NAS continued to publish assessments of related science for the next decade.Then, in 1985, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Antarctic_Survey" title="British Antarctic Survey" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">British Antarctic Survey</a> scientists Farman, Gardiner and Shanklin published results of abnormally low ozone concentrations above Halley Bay near the South Pole. They speculated that this was connected to increased levels of CFCs in the atmosphere. It took several other attempts to establish the Antarctic losses as real and significant, especially after NASA had retrieved matching data from its satellite recordings. The impact of these studies, the metaphor 'ozone hole', and the colourful visual representation in a time lapse animation proved shocking enough for negotiators in Montreal to take the issue seriously.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-13" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[13]</a>Also in 1985, 20 nations, including most of the major CFC producers, signed the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Convention_for_the_Protection_of_the_Ozone_Layer" title="Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Vienna Convention</a>, which established a framework for negotiating international regulations on ozone-depleting substances. After the discovery of the ozone hole it only took 18 months to reach a binding agreement in Montreal.But the CFC industry did not give up that easily. As late as 1986, the Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy (an association representing the CFC industry founded by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont" title="DuPont" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">DuPont</a>) was still arguing that the science was too uncertain to justify any action. In 1987, DuPont testified before the US Congress that "we believe that there is no immediate crisis that demands unilateral regulation."[<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed" title="Wikipedia:Citation needed" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">citation needed</a>]<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Multilateral Fund<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2>The main objective of the Multilateral Fund for the Implementation of the Montreal Protocol is to assist developing country parties to the Montreal Protocol whose annual per capita consumption and production of ozone depleting substances (ODS) is less than 0.3 kg to comply with the control measures of the Protocol. Currently, 147 of the 196 Parties to the Montreal Protocol meet these criteria (they are referred to as Article 5 countries).It embodies the principle agreed at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 that countries have a common but differentiated responsibility to protect and manage the global commons.The Fund is managed by an Executive Committee with an equal representation of seven industrialized and seven Article 5 countries, which are elected annually by a Meeting of the Parties. The Committee reports annually to the Meeting of the Parties on its operations. The work of the Multilateral Fund on the ground in developing countries is carried out by four Implementing Agencies, which have contractual agreements with the Executive Committee:<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-14" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[14]</a><ul data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaauaaaanaqmaaabb8jblaaaablbmvex="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX" auow5qsojaaaaaxrstlmaqobyzgaaabnjrefucb1jyeabbqw="AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw" wlcagqeagpidyt0ivcsaaaaasuvork5cyii="); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Environment_Programme" title="United Nations Environment Programme" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">United Nations Environment Programme</a> (UNEP), through the UNEP DTIE <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNEP_OzonAction" title="UNEP OzonAction" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">OzonAction Programme</a>.</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Development_Programme" title="United Nations Development Programme" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">United Nations Development Programme</a> (UNDP).</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Industrial_Development_Organization" title="United Nations Industrial Development Organization" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">United Nations Industrial Development Organization</a> (UNIDO).</li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Bank" title="World Bank" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">World Bank</a>.</li></ul>Up to 20 percent of the contributions of contributing parties can also be delivered through their bilateral agencies in the form of eligible projects and activities.The fund is replenished on a three-year basis by the donors. Pledges amount to US$2.1 billion over the period 1991 to 2005. Funds are used, for example, to finance the conversion of existing manufacturing processes, train personnel, pay royalties and patent rights on new technologies, and establish national ozone offices.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Parties<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2>As of 29 December 2012, all countries in the United Nations, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cook_Islands" title="Cook Islands" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Cook Islands</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_See" title="Holy See" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Holy See</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niue" title="Niue" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Niue</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supranational_union" title="Supranational union" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">supranational</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union" title="European Union" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">European Union</a> have ratified the original <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal" title="Montreal" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Montreal</a> Protocol<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-15" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[15]</a> (see external link below), <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sudan" title="South Sudan" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">South Sudan</a> being the last country to ratify the agreement, bringing the total to 197. These countries have also ratified the first three amendments. The last two amendments had as of 26 February 2012 not been ratified by 3 and 9 members respectively.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-ozone.unep.org-3" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[3]</a><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">Effect<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2><div class="thumb tright" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); clear: right; float: right; margin: 0.5em 0px 1.3em 1.4em; width: auto; line-height: 19.2px;"><div class="thumbinner" style="min-width: 100px; border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); background-color: rgb(249, 249, 249); text-align: center; overflow: hidden; width: 252px; padding: 3px !important;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ozone_cfc_trends.png" class="image" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;"><img alt="" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Ozone_cfc_trends.png/250px-Ozone_cfc_trends.png" width="250" height="290" class="thumbimage" srcset="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Ozone_cfc_trends.png/375px-Ozone_cfc_trends.png 1.5x, //upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Ozone_cfc_trends.png/500px-Ozone_cfc_trends.png 2x" style="border: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); vertical-align: middle; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></a><div class="thumbcaption" style="border: none; line-height: 1.4em; text-align: left; padding: 3px !important;"><div class="magnify" style="margin-left: 3px; float: right; border: none !important; background-image: none !important;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ozone_cfc_trends.png" class="internal" title="Enlarge" style="text-decoration-line: none; display: block; background-image: none !important; border: none !important;"><img src="http://bits.wikimedia.org/static-1.22wmf12/skins/common/images/magnify-clip.png" width="15" height="11" alt="" style="vertical-align: middle; display: block; border: none !important; background-image: none !important;" /></a></div>Ozone-depleting gas trends</div></div></div>Since the Montreal Protocol came into effect, the atmospheric concentrations of the most important chlorofluorocarbons and related chlorinated hydrocarbons have either leveled off or decreased.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-16" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[16]</a> Halon concentrations have continued to increase, as the halons presently stored in fire extinguishers are released, but their rate of increase has slowed and their abundances are expected to begin to decline by about 2020. Also, the concentration of the HCFCs increased drastically at least partly because for many uses (e.g. used as solvents or refrigerating agents) CFCs were substituted with HCFCs. While there have been reports of attempts by individuals to circumvent the ban, e.g. by smuggling CFCs from undeveloped to developed nations, the overall level of compliance has been high. In consequence, the Montreal Protocol has often been called the most successful international environmental agreement to date. In a 2001 report, NASA found the ozone thinning over Antarctica had remained the same thickness for the previous three years,<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-17" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[17]</a> however in 2003 the ozone hole grew to its second largest size.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-18" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[18]</a> The most recent (2006) scientific evaluation of the effects of the Montreal Protocol states, "The Montreal Protocol is working: There is clear evidence of a decrease in the atmospheric burden of ozone-depleting substances and some early signs of stratospheric ozone recovery."<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-19" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[19]</a>Unfortunately, the hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFCs, and hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, are now thought to contribute to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropogenic_global_warming" title="Anthropogenic global warming" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">anthropogenic global warming</a>. On a molecule-for-molecule basis, these compounds are up to 10,000 times more potent greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide. The Montreal Protocol currently calls for a complete phase-out of HCFCs by 2030, but does not place any restriction on HFCs. Since the CFCs themselves are equally powerful greenhouse gases, the mere substitution of HFCs for CFCs does not significantly increase the rate of anthropogenic global warming, but over time a steady increase in their use could increase the danger that human activity will change the climate.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-20" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[20]</a>Policy experts have advocated for increased efforts to link ozone protection efforts to climate protection efforts.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-21" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[21]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-22" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[22]</a><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-23" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[23]</a> Policy decisions in one arena affect the costs and effectiveness of environmental improvements in the other.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">25th Anniversary Celebrations<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2>The year 2012 marked the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Montreal Protocol. Accordingly, the Montreal Protocol community organized a range of celebrations at the national, regional and international levels to publicize its considerable success to date and to consider the work ahead for the future.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-24" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[24]</a> Among its accomplishments are: The Montreal Protocol was the first international treaty to address a global environmental regulatory challenge; the first to embrace the “precautionary principle” in its design for science-based policymaking; the first treaty where independent experts on atmospheric science, environmental impacts, chemical technology, and economics, reported directly to Parties, without edit or censorship, functioning under norms of professionalism, peer review, and respect; the first to provide for national differences in responsibility and financial capacity to respond by establishing a multilateral fund for technology transfer; the first MEA with stringent reporting, trade, and binding chemical phase-out obligations for both developed and developing countries; and, the first treaty with a financial mechanism managed democratically by an Executive Board with equal representation by developed and developing countries.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-25" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[25]</a>Within 25 years of signing, Parties to the MP celebrate significant milestones; however, the job is not yet done and the current moment could not be more pivotal for accomplishing its vital mission. Significantly, the world has phased-out 98% of the Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS) contained in nearly 100 hazardous chemicals worldwide; every country is in compliance with stringent obligations; and, the MP has achieved the status of the first global regime with universal ratification; even the newest member state, South Sudan, ratified in 2013. UNEP received accolades for achieving global consensus that “demonstrates the world’s commitment to ozone protection, and more broadly, to global environmental protection”.<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol#cite_note-26" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none; white-space: nowrap;">[26]</a><h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); background-image: none; font-weight: normal; margin: 0px 0px 0.6em; overflow: hidden; padding-top: 0.5em; padding-bottom: 0.17em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(170, 170, 170); line-height: 19.2px;">See also<span class="mw-editsection mw-editsection-expanded" style="user-select: none; margin-left: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1em; display: inline-block; white-space: nowrap; padding-right: 0.25em; unicode-bidi: -webkit-isolate; direction: ltr;">[</h2><ul data:image="data:image" png="png" base64="base64" ivborw0kggoaaaansuheugaaaauaaaanaqmaaabb8jblaaaablbmvex="iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAUAAAANAQMAAABb8jbLAAAABlBMVEX" auow5qsojaaaaaxrstlmaqobyzgaaabnjrefucb1jyeabbqw="AUow5QSOjAAAAAXRSTlMAQObYZgAAABNJREFUCB1jYEABBQw" wlcagqeagpidyt0ivcsaaaaasuvork5cyii="); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 19.2px; margin: 0.3em 0px 0px 1.6em; padding: 0px; list-style-image: url(" xmlns:data="data"><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion" title="Ozone depletion" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Ozone depletion</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol" title="Kyoto Protocol" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Kyoto Protocol</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refrigerant" title="Refrigerant" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Refrigerant</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-134a" title="R-134a" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">R-134a</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_Gases" title="Greenhouse Gases" class="mw-redirect" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Greenhouse Gases</a></li><li style="margin-bottom: 0.1em;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vienna_Conference(1985)" title="Vienna Conference (1985)" style="text-decoration-line: none; background-image: none;">Vienna Conference (1985)</a></li></ul></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>