NASA | Ozone-Depleting Compound Persists
Katherine Boehrer of the Huffington Post brings our attention to wide-spread emissions of the international treaty banning carbontetrachloride emissions in, Ozone-Depleting Compound Found In Unexpected Concentrations Despite Ban,
New measurements have revealed that despite the Montreal Protocol, which limits the use of a variety of ozone-depleting chemicals, releases of carbon tetrachloride 4 continue. There should be zero emissions of the compound under the international agreement, but NASA measurements show an average of 39 kilotons are still emitted every year. That's about 30 percent of what peak emissions were before the substance was regulated. The Montreal Protocol, adopted in 1987, phased out the use of ozone-depleting chemicals, including CCl4, over time. After 2007, its more than 200 signatories reported no new emissions of CCl4.
The video above, released by NASA Goddard this week, explains the research by atmospheric scientist Qing Liang. "We are not supposed to be seeing this at all," Liang said in a NASA press release. "It is now apparent there are either unidentified industrial leakages, large emissions from contaminated sites, or unknown CCl4 sources."
Ozone in the stratosphere protects living things from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Ozone-depleting chemicals create a seasonal "ozone hole" over Antarctica, first noticed by scientists in 1985. Though the ozone layer has seen some recovery since the Montreal Protocol, the ozone hole still persists today. According to NOAA, if concentrations of ozone depleting chemicals continue to decline, we should see a complete recovery of the ozone layer.
While I do no generally favor using assassination drone, especially without permission in violation of sovereign borders in the spirit of making "cheap" and provocative rhetorical points what does it say about us a species that our government has invested billions of dollars and enormous resources through out the globe to track down individual terrorist but has apparently done nothing about wide scale assaults on our ecosystem?
Perhaps we need to empower a global environmental police force authorized to destroy sites that are emitting this most powerful catalyst of atmospheric destruction? When a drone detects illegal environmental terrorism, it can alert a network who could call residents and any innocent civilians in the plant and then it could be destroyed with cruise missiles or predator bombs an hour a later. (Snark alert!)
I hope it is obvious that I'm being snarky here to express my disgust at our warped values and lack of prioritization to confront the greatest sources of environmental terrorism with the same vigor we track down political "terrorists" who can barely hold a candle to the number of deaths, destruction, and true terror inflicted on our people, and ecosystem.
Should we not demand from our elected officials why our D.O.D. and White House situation rooms are not zooming in with satellites and intelligence drones to identify sources, political confront the offenders, and immediately eliminating the large scale ongoing violations of this international treaty with the same level of diligence we invested in finding local military commanders of terrorists organizations? Or even OBL?
Should we not be scientific an use at least an objective rank order of the threat assessments by number of people expected to die, and damage done to property, health, and ecosystems? By this measure how do we explain that we are diddling around with the little fish while letting the big fish swim by without so much as a blink?
7:35 AM PT: Does anyone know how to get a keyboard to correctly put the 4 in CCI4 in a subscript so it displayed properly?
7:57 AM PT: August 20, 2014 - RELEASE 14-224: Ozone-Depleting Compound Persists, NASA Research Shows