3 As long as they stay inside our air-conditioners and refrigerators, HCFCs are harmless coolants, colorless and odorless. But when they leak into the air, they become what scientists call fluorinated greenhouse gases, or F-gases.
4 Unfortunately, leaks are normal. Most residential air-conditioners have natural leakage of 5% per year, according to the UN. Poor maintenance can increase that to 50%. And if the machine is dumped without recovering the coolant, the figure jumps to 100%.
5 A report published earlier this year shows that in a worst-case scenario F-gases could be responsible for as much as 45% of total global warming by 2050, and Asia will be the main contributor.
6 "F-gas emissions in developing countries are projected to be as much as 800% greater than in developed countries in 2050," reports a climate scientist working under Guus Velders of the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
7 Alarm bells have not stopped ringing since his report came out in June, and the race is now on to deploy substitutes for F-gases which otherwise will wipe out much of the potential benefit of whatever agreements emerge from climate talks in Copenhagen next month.
8 The UN agencies involved with climate change knew all along that F-gases had high global-warming potential, but they said the amounts involved were so small that they wouldn't have a significant impact.
9 The chemical companies also knew of the dangers, but they continued to lead their shareholders to believe that F-gases were good for the environment.