Global Warming on Free Republic
Posted on 08/09/2012 11:23:42 AM PDT by Lorianne
RANJIT NAGAR, India — When the United Nations wanted to help slow climate change, it established what seemed a sensible system.
Greenhouse gases were rated based on their power to warm the atmosphere. The more dangerous the gas, the more that manufacturers in developing nations would be compensated as they reduced their emissions.
But where the United Nations envisioned environmental reform, some manufacturers of gases used in air-conditioning and refrigeration saw a lucrative business opportunity.
They quickly figured out that they could earn one carbon credit by eliminating one ton of carbon dioxide, but could earn more than 11,000 credits by simply destroying a ton of an obscure waste gas normally released in the manufacturing of a widely used coolant gas. That is because that byproduct has a huge global warming effect. The credits could be sold on international markets, earning tens of millions of dollars a year.
That incentive has driven plants in the developing world not only to increase production of the coolant gas but also to keep it high — a huge problem because the coolant itself contributes to global warming and depletes the ozone layer. That coolant gas is being phased out under a global treaty, but the effort has been a struggle.
So since 2005 the 19 plants receiving the waste gas payments have profited handsomely from an unlikely business: churning out more harmful coolant gas so they can be paid to destroy its waste byproduct. The high output keeps the prices of the coolant gas irresistibly low, discouraging air-conditioning companies from switching to less-damaging alternative gases. That means, critics say, that United Nations subsidies intended to improve the environment are instead creating their own damage.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, that Al Gore, he’s such a SMAAA—RRT man!
Where’s the proof? It’s all theory pushed by the Left to control.
It’s all a bunch of BS IMO.
Whatever. All I know is that our AC runs way better with Freon than the other stuff and that you can get Freon for cheap in Mexico.
Apparently no one at the UN every took an elementary economics course. I’m waiting to cash in on credits for methane - I’ll swear off refried beans and laugh all the way to the bank.
You can get the original Freon in the US still, and even use it with a $20 open-book-test-available-online EPA license.
Freon is *maybe* 1.5x the price of that crap 134a stuff.
Those who believe in “government solutions” will never learn that someone with an incentive will beat a bureaucrat every time.
Global Warming on Free Republic
Its true, I brought a life time supply already. Discount outlets like Big Lots are overflowing with the stuff.
The law of unintended consequences, the bane of socialists. Forces of nature, market forces and human nature are always working against them.
R-22 is the refrigerant in question here. According to Wikipedia, the U.S. has banned any new manufacture of it to comply with the Montreal Protocol, whereas in China and India combined, manufacture has nearly doubled in the past 20 years. Of course, when a company can greatly increase its profits by selling carbon credits for destroying the by-product HFC-23, there is great incentive to make as much R-22 as possible. There is even greater incentive to make as much by-product HFC-23 as possible and then destroy it.
Morons. R22 has an infinitesimal ODP (Ozone depletion potential) and no doubt is equally as culpable as all the other supposed culprits in AGW (in libs imagination only, that is). So methinks that, aside from driving production outside the US, the greenie-weenies may have finally done a good thing here (helped increase production of a good product, plus caused capitalistic thumbs to be inserted in liberal eyes).
Actually, your home air conditioner runs off of R-22, which is not Freon. That was a tradename for R-12, which was used in residential refrigerators and cars. It's illegal to manufacturer R-22 in the U.S. and thanks to actions by the EPA, the price has skyrocketed. Worse, it's all a big sham. Read this...
This doesn't show up as a tax, but it is one. It's inflating the cost of air conditioning for homeowners, just as the minimum efficiency standards are a hidden tax. Washington has mandated air conditioning efficiency levels that are not economically justified in most of the U.S.
The EPA and DOE are both out-of-control. The fluorescent lights that are in most office buildings are about to be banned...
U.S. Dept. of Energy bans older fluorescent lamps from market
Our country and economy is being destroyed from within. We would go to war with a foreign power that damaged us the way the EPA and DOE have done.
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