If we hadn’t stopped emitting the CFC gases that destroyed the ozone layer, the Earth would be burned now
The hole in the ozone layer is probably the most serious climate crisis humanity has ever resolved. In 1986, the Montreal Protocol banned the emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), industrial gases that break down the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere. Without ozone, global warming would be nearly triple the current rate.
Although the hole in the ozone layer has been closing for years, now a group of scientists published in the journal Nature what life on Earth would be like today if we had never stopped issuing CFCs.
The ozone layer is a vital part of the atmosphere ranging from approximately 15 to 50 kilometers in altitude. As its name implies, it is mainly made up of ozone, a molecule made up of three oxygen atoms. The ozone layer absorbs virtually all of the harmful ultraviolet radiation emitted by the sun, and changes in this layer can cause mass extinctions, as happened 360 million years ago.
CFC gases released chlorine into the atmosphere, which in turn decomposed the ozone, removing this natural radiation shield. This discovery has prompted scientists around the world to sound the alarm to stop this process. Before long, almost every country in the world agreed to stop emitting CFC gases, averting a climate catastrophe.
triple global warming
Lancaster University researchers explain that CFC gases have a dual effect on climate. First, CFCs are greenhouse molecules, just like carbon dioxide. Greenhouse molecules capture solar radiation by concentrating it on the ground. But not all molecules have the same greenhouse effect. Some CFCs have global warming potentials tens of thousands of times more powerful than CO2. According to the team, CFCs alone would have been enough to increase the planet’s global temperature by 1.7 degrees.
Some CFCs have global warming potentials tens of thousands of times more powerful than CO2
The other climate effect of CFCs has to do with their ability to destroy the ozone layer. If we had continued to emit CFCs, there would no longer be an ozone layer to protect us from ultraviolet radiation. In this situation, the plants could not grow and would no longer capture CO2, which would cause an effect equivalent to the emission of 690 gigatonnes of CO2. This would cause an additional 0.8 degree increase in global temperature. In addition, many other diseases related to overexposure to the sun, such as skin cancer, would occur.
The sum of these effects would add 2.5 degrees to the 1.1 degrees of warming we currently have, according to the latest IPCC report. A total number of 3.6 degrees of global warming would make the serious consequences of the climate change we have already experienced seem insignificant.
We were already able to prevent devastating climate change once. Now is the time to collaborate again so that the Earth scorched by CO2 only exists in hypothetical cases like the one in this study.