Climate Detectives

Abstract

I remember well the first time that I heard about climate change. When I lived in Montreal between 1987 and 1988, a couple of elderly men regularly visited the restaurant where I worked as a waiter. One gentleman (whose name I unfortunately cannot remember) gave me a complete dossier laying the groundwork for reducing CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons), due to the significant depletion of the ozone layer detected in polar latitudes (especially in Antarctica). In the afternoon I read it without understanding much of it, partly because I had not yet started my university studies that would give me the tools to understand the chemical reactions involved in this phenomenon, and partly because my level of English (why deny it?) was regrettable. But what I did realize was that human beings could create a problem in Russia or the United States that could be reflected in the southernmost part of the Southern Hemisphere. At that time, I remember that there was also talk of acid rain and Scandinavian forests being affected by the clouds from Great Britain. There were even futuristic films (very bad, by the way), in which there were areas where the trees were frazzled by the effect of the acid and the protagonists drove along in cars slashed by a rain halfway between radioactive and acidic (to supply extra morbid detail).