Earth, it’s me, Frank. Now, who did this to you?

No country has been known to violate the Montreal Protocol in its 30 years of existence. Now scientists are hunting for the mysterious source of surging levels of trichlorofluoromethane, or CFC-11, which was once commonly used in refrigerators and spray cans and has industrial uses. Production of the banned gas should be near zero but recent findings showed an increase in the atmosphere of 25 percent since 2012. The scientists calculated an increase at about 13 billion grams per year in recent years. This evidence „strongly suggests“ a new source of emissions. The scientists don’t know exactly who, or what is responsible for this amount of emission. 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, but scientists could not narrow the area down any further. In addition to damaging to the ozone layer, CFC-11 is also a planet-warming greenhouse gas thousands of time more potent than carbon dioxide, scientists say.


Source:
Leslie Nielsen, O.J. Simpson: The Naked Gun 1 by David Zucker, 1988
reuters.com, Sebastian Malo, 18.05.2018
sueddeutsche.de, Hanno Charisius, 16.05.2018
washingtonpost.com, Chris Mooney, 16.05.2018