• Climate Change

DC Appeals Court Restores a Portion of Obama Administration Climate Rule

• CFCs
• climate change
• DC Court of Appeals
• HFCs
• Kavanaugh
• Obama Administration

In 2017, in a case about a regulation banning the use of hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs issued by the Obama Administration, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. struck down one part of the rule saying it went beyond their what was permissible under the Clean Air Act. 

Why This Matters:  HFCs are a very potent greenhouse gas – as we have written recently, they have a global warming potential of 1000 to 3000 times that of carbon dioxide, and their use has increased exponentially since they were introduced in 1990.

• Climate Change

CFCs Could Be Making The Arctic Warm Faster

• Arctic melting
• CFCs
• climate change
• ozone hole
• permafrost

According to a new study published in the Journal Nature late last month, chlorofluorocarbon gasses (or CFCs), that were widely recognized for causing the ozone hole over the Antarctic, “could be responsible for up to half of the effects of climate change observed in the Arctic from 1955 to 2005.” 

Why This Matters:  It is especially relevant because another study released just yesterday in Live Science found that the rapid melting is reshaping the Arctic before the residents’ very eyes — Arctic permafrost can thaw so quickly that it triggers landslides, drowns forests and opens gaping sinkholes.

• Air

China Breaching International Ozone Treaty

• CFC-11
• CFCs
• China
• Montreal Protocol
• ozone hole
• ozone layer

According to a study recently published in the journal Nature, scientists have traced a recent spike in emissions of an ozone-destroying gas to plants northeast China, where they suspect the chemical is being produced and used in violation of the international treaty called the  Montreal Protocol that protects the Earth’s ozone layer.