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The hole in the ozone layer is larger than it usually is at this time of the year, according to a team of EU scientists. The European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said Thursday the ozone hole is larger than the size of Antarctica. “Forecasts show that this year’s hole has evolved into a rather larger than usual one,” said the head of the EU satellite monitoring service, Vincent-Henri Peuch. The hole makes an appearance each spring season in the Southern Hemisphere. […] Experts believe the world will only be free of harmful ozone-depleting substances in 2060, when it’s hoped...

Emissions of a banned, ozone-depleting chemical are on the rise, a group of scientists reported Wednesday, suggesting someone may be secretly manufacturing the pollutant in violation of an international accord. Emissions of CFC-11 have climbed 25 percent since 2012, despite the chemical being part of a group of ozone pollutants that were phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. “I’ve been making these measurements for more than 30 years, and this is the most surprising thing I’ve seen,” said Stephen Montzka, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who led the work. “I was astounded by it, really.”...

In 1987, countries of the world agreed to the Montreal Protocol, a treaty designed to phase out chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, responsible for destroying ozone in the stratosphere. The protocol has worked as intended in reducing these substances, and early healing of the ozone “hole” over Antarctica has been subsequently hailed by scientists. But the study by Ball and his colleagues focused instead on the lower latitudes where the vast majority of humans live. There, the scientists found a relatively small but hard-to-explain decline of ozone in the lower part of the stratosphere, the layer of the atmosphere that extends from...

Negotiators from more than 170 countries on Saturday reached a legally binding accord to counter climate change by cutting the worldwide use of a powerful planet-warming chemical used in air-conditioners and refrigerators. -snip-While the Paris agreement included pledges by nearly every country to cut emissions of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels that power vehicles, electric plants and factories, the new Kigali deal has a single target: chemical coolants called hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, used in air-conditioners and refrigerators.-snip-And while the Paris pledges are broad, they are also voluntary, often vague and dependent on the political will of future world...

WASHINGTON — With energy legislation shelved in the United States and little hope for a global climate change agreement this year, some policy experts are proposing a novel approach to curbing global warming: including greenhouse gases under an existing and highly successful international treaty ratified more than 20 years ago. The treaty, the Montreal Protocol, was adopted in 1987 for a completely different purpose, to eliminate aerosols and other chemicals that were blowing a hole in the Earth’s protective ozone layer. But as the signers of the protocol convened the 22nd annual meeting in Bangkok on Monday, negotiators are considering...

The international treaty to protect the ozone layer turns twenty this year and claims success. But is there really reason to celebrate? Environmentalists have made many apocalyptic predictions over the past decades and, when they have not come to pass, have proclaimed that their preventive measures averted disaster -- as with the 1987 Montreal Protocol On Substances That Deplete The Ozone Layer (Montreal Protocol). The many lurid predictions of skin cancer epidemics, eco-system destruction and so on have not come true, and to Montreal Protocol proponents this is cause for self-congratulation. But in retrospect the evidence shows that ozone depletion...

In a few months, the last R-22 air conditioner will roll down the assembly line, as the industry completes the Herculean effort to redesign every product, retool every factory, and retrain every technician for the conversion to R-410A. Yet, even now, momentum is building to phase-out R-410A. Dumping R-410A would be even more ridiculous than phasing out R-22. R-22 was served a death sentence with the 1987 Montreal Protocol, created in response to reported thinning of the ozone layer. Urgency was based on the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985. We were told drastic action was required to...

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, said in July that it had found the "smoking gun" that caused the space shuttle Columbia to break apart as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere on Feb. 1: a piece of foam that had peeled off the external fuel tank and struck the shuttle's wing 1 minute and 22 seconds after liftoff. But many experts looking at the tragedy that killed seven astronauts say there is a deeper cause. They say that the metaphorical smoking gun should be painted green. Because of demands that the agency help to front for...

From error to error one discovers the entire truth.” Sigmund Freud. The Issue The US Congress is currently discussing the Obama climate change strategy and Cap and Trade. One part of the plan says, “Implement an economy-wide cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.” The term “greenhouse gas emissions” is either deliberately misleading or indicates complete ignorance of the science, or both. What they really mean is CO2, yet it is less than 4% of greenhouse gases and the human portion a fraction of that. Why do they want it reduced? It is not a pollutant...

WATERLOO, Ont. (Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2008) -- A University of Waterloo scientist says that cosmic rays are a key cause for expanding the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole -- and predicts the largest ozone hole will occur in one or two weeks. Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy who studies ozone depletion, said that it was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth's ozone layer is depleted by chlorine atoms produced by sunlight-induced destruction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere. But more and more evidence now points to a new theory...

Yes, kids, science is a wonderful thing. But not nearly as wonderful as climate modeling, which can perform supernatural miracles. Honest! Climate modeling can raise the level of the oceans (even without Obama's intervention), it can burn up the planet a hundred years from now, and Shazzam! -- the models can save us again -- all without leaving your video games, and without the benefit of the real-world data that you need for boring old regular science. At least, that's what Nature -- the oldest science journal in the world, going back to Isaac Newton -- now claims. According to...

The way in which scientific endeavors are pursued globally is marked by clear inequalities, said United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in a recent editorial. Noting that developing countries spend much less on scientific research and produce fewer scientists, Annan warned that this unbalanced distribution creates problems for both the scientific community in developing countries and for development itself. He further urged scientists and scientific institutions around the world to resolve this inequity and bring the benefits of science to all. How humanitarian. How enlightened. How hypocritical. In fact, for a large portion of the world's population, the U.N.'s wanton...

$573 Million Will Halve Developing Country CFCs ROME, Italy, December 2, 2002 (ENS) - Negotiators from 140 governments have adopted a $573 million funding package to halve the consumption and production in developing countries of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), the leading destroyer of the stratospheric ozone layer, by the year 2005. The CFCs will be reduced by 50 percent relative to a baseline of average 1995 to 1997 levels. CFCs have been used since the 1930s in refrigerators and air conditioners. They remain in the atmosphere for decades or even centuries. Exposure to UV-C and to too much UV-B can cause...