from Hacker News

Banned Ozone-Harming Gas Creeps Back, Suggesting a Mystery Source

by montrose on 5/17/18, 11:28 AM with 11 comments

  • by maxerickson on 5/17/18, 6:31 PM

  • by ChuckMcM on 5/17/18, 6:21 PM

    I find this story fascinating. The specific gas, CFC-11 is like old school, produced in '86 banned by '96. There are alternatives that are better today and not banned. So who fires up an old chemical plant to make this stuff?

  • by newnewpdro on 5/17/18, 7:07 PM

    My assumption is developing nations relive variations of the past of the developed nations, while adding some new mistakes of their own.

    In the industrial context, there's a whole bunch of worrying things that had to be learned not to do the hard way but were probably obvious and emergent discoveries making them likely to recur without sufficient intervention/education.

    At least our mistakes were made with relatively small population multipliers. Repeating them on the scale of China or India's population, there's massive potential for environmental harm the likes of which we've never seen.

  • by beat on 5/17/18, 6:31 PM

    The first thought that crossed my mind is bitcoin mines. Large mining operations using it as a better coolant.

    Could be nonsense, though, if there are better coolants available today that are legal.