Global warming: Ozone pact helped cool the planet

The UN’s Montreal Protocol coincidentally applied a small brake to the planet’s warming.

PARIS: A slowdown in global warming that climate sceptics cite in favour of their cause was partly induced by one of the world’s most successful environment treaties, a study said on Sunday. The UN’s Montreal Protocol, designed to phase out industrial gases that destroy Earth’s protective ozone layer, coincidentally applied a small brake to the planet’s warming, it said. Without this treaty, Earth’s surface temperature would be roughly 0.1 degrees Celsius higher today, according to its authors. “Paradoxically, the recent decrease in warming, presented by global warming sceptics as proof that humankind cannot affect the climate system, is shown to have a direct human origin,” according to the paper, published in the journal Nature Geoscience.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 11^th,2013.