Pollution in China
is no surprise.
The US reduces it's own pollution
by offshoring manufacturing
to China, where fewer pollution
controls result in a net effect
of MORE global pollution !
Somehow, environmentalists
give China a "pass", until now:
Environmentalists were not
always CO2 haters -- they used
to focus on real pollution,
back in the 1960s and 1970s.
At its most depleted,
around the turn
of the 21st century,
the ozone layer
had declined
by about 5%.
Environmentalists
typically got hysterical
about pollution,
but that exaggeration
did get attention,
and prodded many
governments
to do something.
One environmentalist success
was promoting a substitute
for CFC-11, in air conditioners
and refrigerators.
Unfortunately, northeastern
China industries are emitting
large quantities of an
ozone-depleting gas into the
atmosphere, violating an
international treaty.
Since 2013, annual emissions
from northeastern China,
of the banned chemical CFC-11,
have increased about 7,000 tonnes,
scientists were reported in the
peer-reviewed journal Nature.
CFCs deplete the stratospheric
ozone layer, which protects us from
the Sun's ultra-violet radiation.
Chlorofluorocarbon-11
was widely used in the 1970s
and 1980s as a refrigerant,
and to make foam insulation.
The 1987 Montreal Protocol
banned CFCs and other aerosols
that chemically dissolve
the protective ozone
10 to 40 kilometers
( 6 to 25 miles )
above Earth's surface,
especially over Antarctica
and Australia.
Following the ban,
global concentrations
of CFC-11 declined
steadily until about 2012.
Last year scientists discovered
the pace of that slowdown
had dropped by half from
2013 to 2017.
The chemical does not
occur in Nature, but that
doesn't make emissions
easy to locate.
Reports last year from the
Environmental Investigation Agency
identified Chinese foam factories,
in the coastal province of Shandong,
and the inland province of Hebei,
which surrounds Beijing.
An international team of
atmospheric scientists
gathered additional data
from monitoring stations
in Japan and Taiwan.
"Our measurements showed
'spikes' in pollution when air arrived
from industrialized areas"
in China, said another lead author,
Sunyoung Park from
Kyungpook National
University.
"We didn't find evidence
of increased emissions
from Japan, the Korean
peninsula or any
other country,"
said Luke Western,
a post-doctoral researcher
at the University of Bristol.
Chinese authorities shut down
some of these facilities
without any explanation.
Two decades ago, CFCs,
more potent by far as
greenhouse gases than
carbon dioxide or methane,
were believed to account
for around 10% of man made
global warming.
"If emissions do not decline,
it will delay the recovery
of the Antarctic ozone hole,
possibly for decades,"
said Paul Fraser, an honorary
fellow the CSIRO Climate
Science Centre in Australia.
CFC-11 persists
in the atmosphere
for about half a century,
and still contributes
about a quarter of all chlorine
-- the chemical that triggers
the breakdown of ozone
-- reaching the stratosphere.
Today, the "hole in the ozone"
over the South Pole is showing
clear signs of recovery.
But a study last year found
that the ozone layer is
unexpectedly declining
in the lower stratosphere
over the planet's populated
tropical and mid-latitude regions.
Up to now, CFCs
and related molecules
mainly affected
the upper stratosphere,
and over the poles.
Last year's study identified
two possible culprits:
industrial chemicals
not covered by the
Montreal Protocol called
"very short-lived substances"
and climate change
( you just had to know
"climate change" would be blamed ! )
The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI)
aboard NASA's Aura satellite specializes
in finding "fingerprints" - signatures of
gases and particles that clutter
the atmosphere.
By measuring solar radiation
reflected from Earth's surface
and scattered by its atmosphere,
the OMI team derives important
information about aerosols
such as dust and smoke
and pollutants like nitrogen
and sulfur dioxide.
The team also estimates
ozone amounts in two areas