As an engine mechanic, Hanlons Razor comes to mind.<p>We once had a "thief" in our garage who was stealing expensive welding gasses and getting away with it. Sometimes she would steal whole tanks, other times she would siphon tanks until they were almost dry. We took to naming her Shirley.<p>After about a month we caught the culprits. The tank theft was due to a manager in another location who was greedily stealing our gas bottles without filing the correct paperwork, to use at his location. The other thief was a gas safety relief system that measures tank temperature and pressure, and preemptively vents the contents if theres an irregularity. One of its 2 post sensors had died and the alarm for it was just being silenced by our cleaning crew.
The overall, just-worrying-factor of this aside, I think it's rather surprising that <i>"someone, somewhere"</i> is putting up CFC-11 in the atmosphere and somehow the only way people got a hold of this was by looking at the ozone layer. If that's indeed the case, that would be a reminder that though there's a lot of information about a lot of stuff nowadays, much of what matters to us can still be going on on completely in the dark.<p>EDIT: Alternatively, and more innocently, this could be due to the end of the life-cycle of several appliances in Second/Third World countries -- or maybe even First World (do you know anyone with an aging fridge?). While a lot of people might have done away with their old fridges a long while ago, those that didn't might be seeing them all fail nearly at the same time.
Now I know I'm old, because the headline refers to CFCs by symptom than by name...<p>(Wikipedia article about the guy behind them, no one-trick pony: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr." rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.</a>)
China? Pertinent parallels with this part of Chai Jing's censored talk "Under the Dome"[1] (worth watching the whole thing actually).<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM&t=42m23s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6X2uwlQGQM&t=42m23s</a>
Link to paper: <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2" rel="nofollow">https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2</a>
Does anyone have an idea of how difficult it would be to create a sensor network to monitor for CFCs?<p>What would the PPM at source be? Quick googling suggests that there are sensors that can detect down to 1000PPM [1], but I'd guess you'd need something substantially lower than that.<p>[1] <a href="https://docs-apac.rs-online.com/webdocs/15a6/0900766b815a66db.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://docs-apac.rs-online.com/webdocs/15a6/0900766b815a66d...</a>
> also because alternatives exist, making it hard to imagine what the market for CFC-11 today would be.<p>Well I've heard of someone who was stockpiling and was planning to sell banned Freon. That was years ago. There is a black market for it because equipment that uses it doesn't simply work on newer approved stuff. If I randomly heard about it, chances are there are more insantces of it. And if there is demand someone probably spun up a factory to make it.
How big a factory would you need to do this? I mean that sounds like some pretty low hanging fruit right there for the evil scientists out there, who wants to destroy human kind.
Back of the envelope calc says this is about the weight of say a dozen passenger cars or say 1 passenger car (weight) per month over a year? Doesn't sound like a major industrial operation to me and how many tons are STILL out there in old air conditioners and refrigerators that could be leaking?
Welcome to the long tail of hyper-optimizing Capitalism and the tragedy of the commons. If someone, somewhere, perceives an economic advantage in producing something banned or destroying something hard to replace, they will try it. Thinking through not only the regulatory regime but enforcement protocols necessary to maintain 100% bans on some activities, we're in for a mess in the long haul.
If this is true and we found the place where it was being produced, could we be justified in destroying the facility by missile strike in order to save the world?
Everybody's saying China, and, well, maybe. But what about North Korea? Despite China having a reputation for shady business practices, the Chinese government at least often gives the environment a higher priority than the US does. Also, North Korea probably has tons of outdated hardware, I would guess, and little respect for the outside world.<p>God help us if it is North Korea. Things are delicate enough as it is, with the peace treaty and the nuclear situation.
Ozone production is tied to solar activity disproportionately, and the 11 year cycle between the solar maximum and the solar minimum effect ozone measurements. We are currently at solar minimum, and we are also possibly headed into a grand solar minimum (an extended period of low solar activity).<p>Zaelke also does not seem to have published a paper on his findings, and all of his quotes in this article are largely political-oriented fluff. The latest thing I can find with anything that has his name on it is from 2009, and only discusses the Montreal Protocol in relation to lowering CO2 emissions.<p>So, the article just tells us CFC-11 detectors detected something (which may or may not be CFC-11), but cannot tell us how much, where, or how it effected climate activity during a time of natural low ozone production.<p>Also, this does not discuss if this was <i>production</i>, or just older appliances breaking down or being taken apart for recycling improperly. Without a paper, we cannot tell how they accounted for this.
Can someone summarize how CFCs achieve the result of depleting the ozone layer?<p>When I was a kid someone pointed out that CFCs were quite heavy and it was not possible to make it up to the ozone layer. Also, my kid logic considered the science experiment where the teacher showed us a basketball with a light shining through a peg-board onto. At the polls the circles were elongated, thus demonstrating how less light (therefore less radiation) hits the poles.<p>The fact that the hole in the ozone layer is only at the poles, and according Wikipedia [0], the ozone layer absorbs "97 to 99 percent of the Sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light" [0]. And that I have never heard of any prevailing wind patterns [1] that would send _all_ of the CFCs in the world to one or two locations, means I have questions...<p>Two facts seem to make me think there's a flaw in blaming CFCs for the ozone hole.<p>1) It may simply be a naturally occurring phenomenon because there simply is less ultra violet radiation there. (ie, ozone may exist in part because of ultraviolet radiation, not in spite of it)<p>2) If CFCs are causing the hole, then shouldn't there be holes right above the factories that make the stuff? (or some similar localized affect first before a distant one?)<p>Another science experiment from 7th grade, our teacher sprayed a scented mist in the corner of the room. And described the process that eventually (because of entropy) the mist would disperse evenly throughout the room. Claiming a gas would collect in one spot is to claim that the scented mist would disperse and then regather, which is a similar claim to the CFCs. Sure pollution air can gather, but it's in valleys, not the sky.<p>Consider all the pollution from really polluted cities and factories all over the world, I've never once heard a distant affect claimed from some of these cesspools, yet, somehow CFCs pollute unlike any other gas/chemical known to man?<p>I don't believe in magic, so there has to be an experiment done to show how CFCs get to the south pole and fly straight up thousands of feet, and then, and only then, do they react with the ozone... something is amiss.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer</a><p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prevailing_winds</a>