In 1987 we signed the Montreal Protocol to ban CFCs, which were producing a hole in the ozone layer. In 1992 the ban was extended to HCFCs. Both of these are powerful greenhouse gases that trap sunlight and contribute to global warming. The amount of warming they cause is called "radiative forcing."
It took until 2021, a third of a century later, to start reducing the radiative forcing of HCFCs in the atmosphere. That's a combination of how long it took to actually get rid of HCFCs and how long it took for existing HCFCs to start breaking down.
A third of a century. And carbon dioxide, the primary cause of global warming, takes much longer to break down than HCFCs. This is why addressing climate change is so urgent. Even if we banned carbon emissions tomorrow, the earth would continue to warm for decades. And we're not anywhere close to banning carbon emissions.
The only hope for human civilization is some combination of global carbon capture and geoengineering. The resource wars have already begun.
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I'm puzzled by Kevin talking about carbon dioxide "breaking down". The main way that carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere is via photosynthesis. Is this what he means?
Also in water it becomes a weak acid, which can react with a number of chemicals and so also be removed from the atmosphere. The thing is, if we stop creating CO2 by burning fossil fuels, things will start getting better immediately.
That weak acid is also killing coral reefs.
So also is the rise in ocean temperatures. It's noticeable even to a tourist paddling around in a bay.
Agree. I live in Florida and some of the water is already over 90 degrees. It used to barely get that warm in August.
The weak acid dissolves the reefs, which releases more CO2.
Like all gases, carbon dioxide escapes into space at some rate. It doesn't so much break down as achieve equilibrium.
The rate at which gases escape to space is a non-linear inverse function of molecular weight. Helium (molecular weight 4) escapes quite rapidly from a body of Earth's mass, which is why there is essentially none in the atmosphere. Nitrogen has a molecular weight of 28 and oxygen has a molecular weight of 32; they escape quite slowly, which is why a planet that is billions of years old still has a substantial atmosphere. Carbon dioxide has a molecular weight of 44 and escapes very slowly.
Interesting. Obvious, but I never thought or read about those simple facts. Gravity!
Yes. The Equipartition theorem states that all molecular species will have the same amount of energy, which means -- all other things being equal -- that they will have the same amount of kinetic energy. Since kinetic energy varies directly as the mass but the square of the velocity, this means that while helium is four times as heavy as hydrogen, an individual molecule of hydrogen will move twice -- not four times -- as fast as an individual helium molecule.
The other thing you have to worry about is atmosphere being stripped by the stellar wind; Mars once had a dense atmosphere, quite possibly denser than Earth's, and lost it just about as quickly as Earth did back in the day. But Mars, being smaller, cooled quicker, and once its molten iron core solidified lost the magnetic field that protected it from solar bombardment. Once that happened, it lost it's atmosphere virtually instantaneously, as geologic time is reckoned.
Or so I've been told 🙂
An individual atom of hydrogen will move twice as fast as an atom of helium at he same temperature. A hydrogen molecule has a molecular weight of two and is half the mass of a helium atom.
True. Hence the 'all other things being equal', which among other things also includes energy bound up in vibratory and rotational modes, thus further limiting H2's (average) top speed.
On Edit: There's a good (physics) reason why the handle I go buy is 'Scent of Violets' 🙂
CO2 is drawn into long-term cycles in the biosphere, and more importantly into the ocean. Emissions to space are trivial. Equilibrium occurs as a function terrestrial uptake, ocean deposition of carbonaceous materials, tectonic subduction, and volcanic emissions. This really isn't an equilibrium state since all of these factors change over time.
CFC removal is critical because they do not interact with the biosphere and remain in the atmosphere for long periods of time. And, of course, ozone depletion is the most important reason to remove them.
But Kevin, carbon-spewing gas-guzzling ridiculously oversized pickup-truck-shaped vehicles are an essential symbol of American Manhood!
Why do libruls hate American Manhood so very much?
Why do you?
Only the emotionally underdeveloped and embarrassingly overcompensating version that has become the controlling ethos of the Republican Party.
Maybe because I get tired of seeing handicapped parking spots filled with gigantic high-boy pickups. If you can climb into a pickup that high, I have to wonder if you are really handicapped.
Will we tolerate the massive amounts of horse shit that will pile up in cities when we go back to horse and buggy????!!!!
Anyone have an estimate of how much time it will take to replace all the fossil fuel powered systems? Currently there is no battery powered aircraft. Do we have enough railroad infrastructure to handle long haul travel?? Will we put rails on the interstates???!!! Amazon will offer just next week delivery?!! The supply chain issues are interesting.
A return to the days of sail???!!
Why would we go back to horses?
There aren't going to be very many battery powered aircraft. The energy density of batteries is just too low for anything more than short flights at low speeds. For propellor driven aircraft, fuel cells are a serious possibility; between the fuel cells and the hydrogen tanks, such a propulsion system would be a bit bulkier and a bit heavier than a piston engine system of the same power output, but the efficiency of fuel cells makes it practical to design for longer range than is feasible with a piston powered airplane.
Large commercial turbo-props and jets can burn liquid hydrogen. Liquid hydrogen is a low gravimetric density fuel, which means the tanks on a long-haul aircraft would be bulky enough that retrofitting existing aircraft won't work. Engineers at both Boeing and Airbus have designed planes intended to burn liquid hydrogen, but there's a chicken and egg issue. Nobody's going to spend billions putting a new airplane into production without being assured of the availability of fuel, and nobody is going to put billions into large scale hydrogen production without an assured market.
Road transport will be BEVs, with maybe some fuel cells for heavy long-haul trucks. Ships will be powered by fuel cells. There's no reason to believe that transportation will slow down at all.
The transition away from fossil fuels will be completed as fast as possible, although overcoming the resistance of climate change deniers means the transition won't be completed as fast as, in principle, it could be.
> Currently there is no battery powered aircraft.
Already flying: https://www.beta.team/timeline/
If carbon emissions were kept constant, how much of an impact to global warming would the projected radiative forcing of the HCFCs have? Noticeable? That’s a pretty steep decline for the next 80 years.
Radiative forcing from CFCs is pretty much lost in the noise of other factors.
Thanks. That’s what I assumed but was too lazy to research it at the moment so figured I’d ask.
So urgent indeed that last Wednesday Kevin took a(another) not-quite 200 mile round trip in an ICE to take pictures: https://jabberwocking.com/lunchtime-photo-692/ On a whim:
The impact any one individual can make is not nearly significant enough to warrant any inconvenience or sacrifice. There’s no incentive. Meaningful change needs to be at a much larger scale.
Dick Cheney: "Conservation is a personal virtue."
Anything is a personal virtue if you say it is. It doesn’t mean it’s rational. Nothing I personally do will have a perceptible impact on climate change. I would support most legislation that will help. But I’m not going to start riding a horse when everyone else is still driving cars.
No more "Let it begin with me" eh?
What you've written comes across as suggesting individuals should do nothing until some "magic something" happens to affect everything at the same time. That no one should do the necessary unless it was individually sufficient.
Don't be fatuous. Keving could kill himself and everybody he knows, zeroing out the carbon emissions from hundreds/thousands of people, and it would do absolutely nothing to address climate change.
We are not going to personally conserve our way out of this crisis, and while being judicious about carbon emissions is a good thing, the only thing that is going to solve the problem is transitioning to a closed carbon cycle economy. Kevin isn't one of the people fighting against that transition (and arguably, he's one of the ones who helps), so I'm certainly not going to begrudge a man battling cancer from having an astrophotography hobby.
The timeline presented seems misleading
Yes, R22, an HCFC, was initially included in 1992 for phase out, but that only began phaseout planning.
Actual US phaseout began in 2010, with milestones in 2015, 2020, and 2030.
R22 could still be manufactured in the US up until 2020. I believe it can still be manufactured in China. So as the article literally says "it remain to be seen how rapidly total radiative forcing from HCFCs will fall"
also, we replaced with HCFCs with HFCs, which have 0 ODP, but over 1400 GWP.
For context, scroll down to the pie chart:
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/greenhouse-effect-101#gases
Basically, HFC's contribute about 2% to global warming., so that's how much it can be reduced if we completely remove them. Their contribution is a function of how much is in the atmosphere and how efficient they are in keeping the planet warm.
The next big thing would be to stop using natural gas and PLUG the WELLS. It currently contributes 16% to global warming, and it's level will quickly drop once we stop adding it to the atmosphere--there's lots of leakage....But that will only slow the rate of increase--we have to drop CO2 levels.
Yes, we need some green house gases, but with just the CO2 in the atmosphere, will reach a temperature steady state with poles melted and lots of desertification.
This is why addressing climate change is so urgent, but not urgent enough to stop bashing nuclear as a supposedly bad solution because we allegedly haven't figured out how to not cause a bunch of harm with the waste product?
Some internal consistency would be nice - either climate change is "so urgent", or it's not. Nuclear power is not a new technology that we're somehow incapable of operating safely, and nuclear waste is something that we figured out how to mitigate long, long ago. And even if we hadn't, its effects would be less harmful than the gigatons of CO2 being pumped into the air.
Is the horse dead yet?
Yes, yes, yes.... absolutely.
(and indeed emphasis on "allegedly" re waste)
Beyond internal consistency, logical awareness - although crisis is of course so often used now not in any real proper sense but to simply be a dramatic word for "something the writer cares about"
Indeed. Consistency is Queen. But then again and as folks know, consistency is something of a bugbear for me.
There is no inconsistency. Climate change is urgent. Nuclear takes so long to build as to be ineffective for addressing that urgency. And nuclear is expensive. Geothermal is a much cheaper alternative.
Funny, on another thread you suggested it was how to deal with nuclear waste. Throwing everything except the kitchen sink you can think of as an argument against nuclear power makes you a sad, ascientific, innumerate anti-nuke type. Grow up.
Also: still no word from you on how much dealing with intermittency issues is going to cost, both in materials _and_ the permitting process for that extra electrical wiring you're going to need. Sucks when the regulatory shoe is on the other foot, don't it 😉
How people respond to their own CO2 emissions is a lot like how a cigarette addicts respond to being told that smoking will kill them. "Well, this one cigarette won't kill me today" is what I have heard. But it is slowly killing you.
The subjects are not in fact comparable.
Cigarette smoke is a direct harm and smokers are in direct full control of a direct harm to their lungs.
CO2 is a fundamental part of both natural cycles and not a direct harm - and indeed for most individuals their individual level action is completely irrelevant to the global challenge, where the major drivers of human side emmissions are fundamentally in productive sectors where the individual is not a real component of the decision cycle.
Really the comparisons made between CFCs and CO2 are fundamentally fallacious given unlike CFC, CO2 is actually quite a natural as well as man-driven phenomena (and not in overall global time scales a "pollutant" given the fundamentalness of carbon in the life cycle - although certainly a huge danger to the ecosytem equilibruims which are best and even necessary for humanity at a population of 7 billion odd - the planet is not at risk from this, we as humanity in our present population are at risk.)
Question: Some (all?) fridges and freezers I see are now using methane for their refrigerant. It's a potent heat trapping gas, much more so than CO2. But
1) how does its heat trapping compare to Freon?
2) does it breakdown faster than Freon?
See NASA: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/methane/?intent=121#:~:text=Methane%20Basics&text=A%20molecule%20of%20methane%20traps,natural%20sources%20and%20human%20activities.
The link from Lounsbury reports
Methane (CH4) is a powerful greenhouse gas, and is the second-largest contributor to climate warming after carbon dioxide (CO2). A molecule of methane traps more heat than a molecule of CO2, but methane has a relatively short lifespan of 7 to 12 years in the atmosphere, while CO2 can persist for hundreds of years or more.
Also found this:
https://www.fluorocarbons.org/environment/climate-change/atmospheric-lifetimes/
Widely used HFCs have lifetimes of years or decades. Greenhouse Gases (GHGs) that are much shorter lifetimes than CO2 such as methane – CH4 (lifetime ~12 years) and some HFCs such as HFC-32 (lifetime ~5.2 years) and HFC134a (lifetime ~13.4 years) behave very differently to long-lived CO2:
This page
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-do-we-compare-methane-carbon-dioxide-over-100-year-timeframe-are-we-underrating
says:
The trouble is that the answer changes depending on how far in the future you look. Let’s say a factory releases a ton of methane and a ton of CO2 into the atmosphere today. The methane immediately begins to trap a lot of heat—at least 100 times as much as the CO2. But the methane starts to break down and leave the atmosphere relatively quickly. As more time goes by, and as more of that original ton of methane disappears, the steady warming effect of the CO2 slowly closes the gap. Over 20 years, the methane would trap about 80 times as much heat as the CO2. Over 100 years, that original ton of methane would trap about 28 times as much heat as the ton of CO2.
...and then there's this
“Global warming potential” (GWP) measures a greenhouse gas’s ability to trap heat for 100 years. Carbon dioxide has a global warming potential of one, and other greenhouse gases are measured against it: so methane, which has a GWP of about 25, traps roughly 25 times as much heat over 100 years. There are different types of CFC molecules, but because they are so good at trapping heat and they stick around for so long, their global warming potentials are between about 4,750 and 14,400.1
https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-concentration-cfcs-atmosphere-and-how-much-do-they-contribute-global-warming
So I guess methane is a MUCH better choice....much less heat retention and shorter half-life.
"After 30 years, chlorofluorocarbon ban finally starts working": MMM
Well I guess that I can finally understand Drum's bizarre and utterly incorrect insistance that base rate changes by Central Banks (framed as USFed) only start working after one year... - his mind processes things as if they are On/Off switch, binary results.
Of course the CFC Ban started working a long time ago, what has happened after 30 yrs roughly is that such working has resulted in a state that is net current reducation. That is NOT at all the same as "ban finally starts working" ... unless one is collapsing working to "end state result"
Environmental Totalitarianism here we come!
*Nice* chart! Thanks.