Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts

Thursday 3 November 2016

Air-conditioning treath and HFCs extremely powerful heat-trappers

Ozone layer gmt de
Ozone layer gmt de (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One day the West had thought to have found the solution against an escalating threat to the climate and were pleased to change the refrigerators gases with hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) to save the ozone layer.

So when nations signed the Montreal Protocol in 1987 – which aimed to save the ozone layer by banning ozone-eating chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) from use in aerosols, refrigerators and air-conditioning units – few questioned the idea that ozone-friendly hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) would make a great substitute.

But although HFCs did not destroy the ozone layer, they were potent greenhouse gases.
After almost 30 years, and with the manufacture of HFCs rising globally by 7 per cent each year, that mistake is about to be put right.

Seven years and requiring many determined advocates — major Western governments, the small island nation of Micronesia, poor African nations that fear drought and even starvation and persistent environmental groups reached an accord in Kigali, Rwanda, in October following the ratification by enough countries of last year’s Paris agreement broadly reducing greenhouse gases to allow it to take effect, as well as a narrower agreement to limit emissions from aircraft. It completes a trifecta of diplomatic accords aimed at keeping the rise in global temperatures below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (two degrees Celsius) over the average preindustrial temperatures — a point beyond which the manifest consequences of climate change, including rising sea levels and droughts, are likely to become exponentially worse.

Despite obvious threats to their populations from rising sea levels and droughts, some developing countries like India pushed back hard, in part because their people were on the verge of being able to afford air-conditioners powered by HFCs.
Although they now make up only a small part of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, HFCs are extremely powerful heat-trappers and, if left unchecked, would make it hard not to exceed the 3.6 degree threshold. One factor driving the negotiations was the rapid growth of air-conditioning in nations like China and India.

HFCs were once seen as a technological godsend. They were developed in response to the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a global agreement requiring nations and manufacturers to find a substitute for chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, then the dominant refrigerant, which was destroying the planet’s ozone layer. The chemical industry replaced that chemical with HFCs, which don’t harm the ozone layer but, as it turned out, added greatly to global warming.

The richest countries, including the United States, will freeze production and consumption of HFCs by 2018; much of the rest of the world, including China, Brazil and all of Africa, will do the same by 2024; and a few nations, including India, will have until 2028. Several newer and less harmful refrigerants are available, although they may be more expensive in the short run. The timetable will allow poorer countries to wait until prices come down. But unlike the Paris agreement, which consists of voluntary pledges, this one will be mandatory, with trade sanctions for nations that do not comply.

Mattlan Zackhras, the minister-in-assistance to the president of the Marshall Islands, said in a statement
"It may not be entirely what the islands wanted, but it is a good deal," 
and expressed his hope
"We all know we must go further, and we will go further."
Erik Solheim, executive director of the UN Environment Program, said
"This is about much more than the ozone layer and HFCs. It is a clear statement by all world leaders that the green transformation started in Paris is irreversible and unstoppable."
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Thursday 30 July 2015

Rumours of problems in Roman Catholic Church

English: A photo of Cardinal George Pell I too...
English: A photo of Cardinal George Pell I took during his time in Rome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
For more than twenty years the roman Catholic Church had tried to turn back the clock to the conservative time before pope John XXIII.

After the first papal resignation in 600 years by choosing a cardinal from South America many perhaps expected the chosen one would continue the very conservative lines of the last popes. They also did not expect the new pope to be a man of the people also connecting social matters with economical and ecological and science matters.

Last year appointed to manage the Vatican's finances Australian Cardinal George Pell dared to speak out loud what others in their corners discussed with their fraternal brothers.

Many priests and bishops do find it is not the task of the church people to interfere with science, economical and ecological matters, whilst others do understand church people cannot be ignorant of what is happening in the world and of what is interfering with people's life and health.

Cardinal George Pell says that the Roman Catholic church has ‘no mandate’ to lay down doctrine on scientific matters and places his  concern among some high-ranking Catholics at the direction and tone of Francis’ encyclical on climate change last month.
In the encyclical, which carries the full authority of church teaching, the Pope said that the world risked becoming ‘an immense pile of filth’ and that ‘doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain.’

The Cardinal is the most senior Roman Catholic yet to sound a note of caution over the encyclical Laudato Si, which said that climate change is doing most harm to the world’s poor and argues that the world must take precautions against climate change at the summit to be held in Paris in December.

The Pope said in his own paper that
‘The church does not presume to settle scientific questions’
though Christians also can not ignore what is going on and should take on the right attitude.

The charismatic Pope Francis has gained lots of hearts, from Catholics but also from other believers and non-Christians. Where he shows up he is greeted more like “a rock star” and often we can see that he is doing his best to have a real contact with the people.

This popularity is for many a thorn in the eye. Also having this man not to mince the matter makes him in his own ranks a debatable figure.

But by conservatives the pope is losing popularity.

After Pope Francis was elected the leader of the 1.2 billion-member Roman Catholic Church in March 2013, he attempted to focus the church on a renewed sense of protecting the poor, on interfaith relations and on respecting gay and lesbian members of the church.
He was lauded in the American news media, with accolades including Time magazine naming him the Person of the Year in 2013.
The next time Gallup asked about Pope Francis, in February 2014, his favorability had swelled to 76%.

In the current poll, conducted July 8-12, Francis’ favorable rating declined, while his unfavorable rating increased to 16% from 9% in 2014…

Pope Francis’ drop in favorability is even starker among Americans who identify as conservative — 45% of whom view him favorably, down sharply from 72% last year.
This decline may be attributable to the pope’s denouncing of “the idolatry of money” and attributing climate change partially to human activity, along with his
 passionate focus on income inequality — all issues that are at odds with many conservatives’ beliefs. 
{Gallup: Favorable view of pope declines among Americans, especially conservatives > Read more: http://blogs.e-rockford.com/applesauce/2015/07/22/gallup-favorable-view-of-pope-declines-among-americans-especially-conservatives/#ixzz3hNeJk2eR }


In October shall take place the second synod on the family.
Benedict XVI’s promise not to interfere with the teachings of the new pope has been broken. Pope Emeritus slapped down his old adversary, Cardinal Walter Kasper, for suggesting that when the former pope was still Professor Joseph Ratzinger he supported Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics.

The world also sees the previous pope with his title and his white robe. That world also still gets signs from the previous pope that he is not yet death and that his visions stay standing. He also let others hear that he does not like it when certain cardinals, like the arch-conservative Raymond Burke, are sacked.

Many think the battle between reformers and conservatives will reach a bruising climax when cardinals and bishops convene in
Rome in three months’ time for a second synod on the family.

The progressive president of the German Bishops’ Conference, Reinhard Marx, and Gerhard Muller, the traditionalist head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s doctrinal watchdog bring debates which may already give a sign that some really know what they want and are not prepared to wait for the outcome of the synod.

The majority of German bishops support the introduction of Communion for the remarried. But just over the border, in Poland, the Polish episcopate has implied that it could never be accepted. This makes consensus at the synod highly unlikely.


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News about Pope Francis I his ideas and on debates about  climate change:



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Find also:

Senior cardinal breaks ranks by questioning the Pope’s authority
Schism at the Vatican

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Wednesday 15 May 2013

Pope Francis Raises Hopes for an Ecological Church

The new pope’s choice of the name Francis, to honour the Catholic Church’s patron saint of animals and the environment, has awakened the hopes of ecologists and others who are concerned about rampant consumerism and the deterioration of the planet.
The Basilica of Aparecida
The Basilica of Aparecida (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


In Latin America and Africa, “environmental problems are closely linked to poverty, with the poor living in areas that are the most vulnerable to climate change and the degradation of the soil,” he said.

Both environmentalists and bishops in Latin America criticise consumerism and urge people to follow a simpler lifestyle.
The pope’s homily was in line with the recommendations set forth in the final document of the 5th General Conference of the Council of Latin American Bishops in Aparecida, Brazil, in 2007.

Read more: Pope Francis Raises Hopes for an Ecological Church

Indigenous women fetching water from a well near San Cristóbal de las Casas in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas. Credit: Mauricio Ramos/IPS


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