Can We Slow Global Warming By Phasing Out Super-Pollutant HFCs? (msn.com)
- Reference: 0180706424
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/01/31/054224/can-we-slow-global-warming-by-phasing-out-super-pollutant-hfcs
- Source link: https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/climate-change/why-companies-are-phasing-out-these-super-pollutants-despite-trump/ar-AA1Vjm3s
> [4][M]ore than 170 countries — including the U.S. — have agreed to act on this one solution. That solution: phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and other cooling systems that heat the atmosphere more than almost any other pollutant on Earth. Pound for pound, HFCs are hundreds or even thousands of times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
>
> Companies are replacing HFCs with new gases that trap much less heat. If you buy a new fridge or AC unit in the United States today, it'll probably use one of these new refrigerants — and you're unlikely to notice the difference, according to Francis Dietz, a spokesperson for the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group representing U.S. HVAC manufacturers... But that invisible transition is one of the most important short-term tactics to keep Earth's climate from going catastrophically off-kilter this century. HFCs are powerful super-pollutants, but the most common ones break down in the atmosphere within about 15 years. That means stopping emissions from HFCs — and other short-lived super-pollutants such as methane — is like pulling an emergency brake on climate change.
>
> "It's really the fastest, easiest and, some would say, the only way to slow the rate of warming between now and 2050," said Kiff Gallagher, executive director of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative, a business that advises companies and cities on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The only other solution that comes close to the speed and scale of slashing HFCs would be dimming the sun, a [5]much more controversial and potentially dangerous option ... [P]hasing out HFCs now "would buy us a little bit of time to develop other solutions that maybe take longer to implement," said Sarah Gleeson, a climate solutions research manager at Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that models how much different strategies would slow climate change. It could also keep the planet from crossing dangerous climate tipping points this century.
[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/climate-change/why-companies-are-phasing-out-these-super-pollutants-despite-trump/ar-AA1Vjm3s
[2] https://yangyangxu.weebly.com/uploads/8/8/2/1/88214376/dreyfus2020_assessment-benefits-efficient-cooling.pdf
[3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/11/12/carbon-emissions-global-high-us-eu/
[4] https://ozone.unep.org/all-ratifications
[5] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2025/12/03/stardust-make-sunsets-geoengineering-startups/
My dudes (Score:2)
We can't get everyone in the country to agree that hungry children should be fed. We are not going to be able to slow global warming.
To tackle the kind of problems we're facing we would need fundamental changes and I just don't see any of that happening before the problems basically wreck civilization.
The billionaires know global warming is a problem and they're building bunkers and buying up water rights. They are literally preparing for the crisis they caused and could effortlessly stop.
Re: (Score:2)
"Your 'hungry children' are some of the fattest because of that shit."
Citation please. It would be far more accurate to say they are NONE of the fattest.
HFCS is terrible for health, exactly as terrible as sugar. "Ya'll" restarting "the sugar exports" is more of "that shit".
Re: My dudes (Score:2)
HFCS is cheap, so companies put it in bread, soup, and other places it doesn't belong because people love that shit.
Re:My dudes, we're farked (Score:1)
Yes sir, and since we gave up our power and wealth to these evil people, we're fucked and they know it; indeed just look at all the greedy selfish people being led around by their greed by those who stole all our capital. Thanks to Nixon for a fiat currency and the Republican party for selling out America, although few politicians have any integrity and those who do, like Bernie Sanders, never survive a corrupt party process. When the rich control the political parties they control who we elect, which is wh
Old news (Score:4, Informative)
Of course it would help. Just look at a refrigerant chart for global warming potential. A lot of the older ones have already been phased out to reduce ozone depletion potential, but their replacements were almost as bad in terms of global warming potential, which we weren't as worried about at the time.
For example, R-12's high ozone depletion potential also had an extremely high global warming potential, but its replacements like R22 and later R134a are still relatively high for global warming potential. These are being replaced with R600a (isobutane, which is flammable) and R1234yf, which is a blend of gases that have very different maintenance requirements due to partial pressures (one gas can leak out over time but leave the others, making the mixture less efficient and then you'd have to purge and replace the entire charge, not just top it up). It's a complex issue.
As we know more about these gases, hopefully we can resolve this... Obviously the sooner, the better.
Thought this was done... (Score:2)
Years ago, when we realized that the ozone layer in the atmosphere was disintegrating due to HFCs. The ozone layer has mostly recovered since then.
Re:Thought this was done... (Score:4, Informative)
It was CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) not HFCs that were destroying the ozone layer. And yes, the human race stopped using them after the 1987 Montreal Protocol was created, and the ozone layer recovered. HFCs don't destroy ozone, but they are greenhouse gases.
What decade is this headline from? the 80s? (Score:2)
in any case, if even the medium impacts of global warming are true, those of us alive to see them are screwed because we simply haven't done enough soon enough
Re: (Score:2)
> Because soon there will be major disasters and and loss of life and land as the ice sheets melt.
A note, the ice caps are indeed going to melt if global warming continues long enough... but not "soon".
Not this century, anyway. IPCC prediction for sea level rise by 2100 is 0.43-0.84 meters. There are some outlier cases that are slightly higher, but not complete melting.
See [1]https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chap... [www.ipcc.ch]
[1] https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-4-sea-level-rise-and-implications-for-low-lying-islands-coasts-and-communities/
I can't be the only one (Score:2)
I didn't even realize that High Fructose Corn syrup was a Super Pollutant.
Bad for the planet too? (Score:1)
> Can We Slow Global Warming By Phasing Out Super-Pollutant HFCs?
Wow, I knew high-fructose corn syrup was a dietary problem, but ...
There Will Always Be a Super Pollutant (Score:2)
When I was growing up refrigerators and cars used Refrigerant 12, also known as Freon or CFC-12. It was non-flammable, efficient, nominally non-poisonous and safe, and easily made. It was even a critical ingredient in asthma inhalers. It had one problem, however. It was a Super Pollutant that punched tiny holes into the ozone layer. (It was only later, after the ozone problem was solved by banning CFCs, did global warming numbers begin to pop up next to replacement refrigerants like HFC-134a as well as hi
Every reduction in greenhouse gas emissions helps. (Score:2)
I wouldn't advocate for not taking any measure that's feasible. That said, some of the language is... exuberant. Nothing in the article says anything about the actual quantities involved.
For instance, if the worst HFC is 1,000 times as heat-trapping as carbon dioxide but we're dumping a million times as many pounds of it into the air, the "emergency brake" is measurable but statistically insignificant. Also, since HFCs are 100s or 1000s of times more heat-trapping, what's the breakdown? 1000s sounds