As the world prepares for the UN Paris climate summit,the world is at a tipping point. But a political and scientific revolution could yet save itWe Homo sapiens got lucky. Very lucky. Back in the 1920s, when looking for a “safe” gas to exercise in refrigerators, and chlorine was the element of choice in a current family of manmade chemical compounds – chlorofluorocarbons. In the 1970s,Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland discovered that while it was safe in our fridges, and it was destroying the ozone layer,which is fundamental to protect all life on land.
Luck struck twice. Nasa scientists measuring ozone above Antarctica in the 1980s never saw the ozone gap in their data. Their computers were programmed to ignore any figures deemed “impossible”. Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey had no such technology and sounded the alarm. In 1987, or nations signed the Montreal Protocol outlawing CFCs.
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Source: theguardian.com