[tpeo]

The overall, just-worrying-factor of this aside, I think it's rather surprising that "someone, somewhere" 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.

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.

[ethbro]

It costs money to monitor.

But frankly, for the amounts involved [1], there's no reason Montreal or Paris shouldn't have included monitoring and paid for it by penalties on violators.

Edit: After reading some summaries of Montreal compliance, it seems the general thinking is (a) it would be too hard to get agreement on monitoring & penalties in the initial draft & (b) self reported monitoring, in cooperation with UN agencies, tallied against general atmospheric measurements would reveal major discrepancies.

Not sure how this one slipped through the cracks.

[1] E.g. USD$10M/yr for NASA carbon monitoring research http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/trump-white-house-qui...

[kbutler]

> somehow the only way people got a hold of this was by looking at the ozone layer.

This is not correct, and we can't attribute changes to ozone that precisely with the wide natural, seasonal variations.

"A U.S. observatory in Hawaii found CFC-11 mixed in with other gases that were characteristic of a source coming from somewhere in eastern Asia"

This was probably from the Earth Systems Research Laboratory, best known for its CO2 monitoring: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/obop/mlo/

[cptskippy]

> 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?).

I don't think this can be overstated. True or not, the common belief held by most people in the US is that older Freon based systems are better than modern systems. This is due in part to the high cost and lower efficiency of those systems when they started showing up in the early 90s. As such many people chose to hold on to their older systems and maintain them.

The last two houses I have owned each had HVAC systems dating back to the 70s and early 80s and each had slow leaks that required refilling each year. The cost to refill a system has steadily increased but it is still under $500.

Modern chillers are not compatible with older furnaces so replacing your AC unit requires replacing your entire HVAC system. Prices start at around $4000 and many homes in the United States are multi system. We were quoted $12000-18000 to replace the two systems in our home last year.

Given the cost disparity between maintaining a 40 year old system and replacing it, what do you think most people would choose?

[dsfyu404ed]

Older Freon based systems are much less picky about system condition than systems with newer refrigerant and in practice that makes them much more reliable because you can just top them up and keep going. They're also much more easily user serviceable so anyone doing their own service just keep repairing them.

[Paul-ish]

> 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.

The original paper takes a stance on this.[1]

> It seems unlikely that the increased CFC-11 emissions are related to faster releases from banks or from inadvertent production. Increases in bank-related emissions are thought possible from the demolition of buildings that contain CFC products, although these emissions are expected to be small and only slowly increase over time 22 . Furthermore, an increase in CFC emissions resulting from the decommissioning of buildings is anticipated to occur initially in developed countries in which most CFC-11 was used in the 1970s. However, atmospheric measurements suggest, for example, a decline in US emissions from 2008 to 2014, which is consistent with inventories 23 (a qualitative update suggests no substantial increases in emission after 2014). If reported production values are accurate, our results would require a doubling in the fractional release rate from CFC banks over the past 15 years and a substantial increase in emissions from banks since 2012, both of which seem improbable (Fig. 2b; Extended Data Fig. 9)

> ... These considerations suggest that the increased CFC-11 emissions arise from new production not reported to UNEP’s Ozone Secretariat, which is inconsistent with the agreed phase-out of CFC production in the Montreal Protocol by 2010.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2