Recall the days of Ozone hole scares … where the Freon in our AC units was treated like poison to the planet and warnings of sheep in Argentina and Antarctica all getting cataracts filled the pages of the broad sheets or beamed from TV shows like The Nature of Things.
Massive sweeping measures were taken worldwide to reduce chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and with the same zeal and certainty that warmists show, “scientists” told us it’d take decades for the bans and reductions to even begin to have an effect. We were warned to “change” our ways before it was too late. Since then, the Ozone Hole pushers have moved on to other things … from Rain Forest deforestation to the biggest canard of all time … AGW.
Here’s the latest on Ozone Holes … seems like the whole hole-frenzy may have just been a mound of hooey after all:
Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy who studies ozone depletion, said that it was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer is depleted by chlorine atoms produced by sunlight-induced destruction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere. But more and more evidence now points to a new theory that the cosmic rays (energy particles that originate in space) play a major role.
Just wondering … what is the junk they put in AC units now … and why must I pay to have old units “safely” depressurized?
This situation is intolerable! Parliament should be immediately recalled to pass legislation banning cosmic rays from hitting the earth. Municipalities can do their part by declaring themselves “cosmic ray free zones”.
Old story of “panic” (the only ones panicked were the naiive, critical-thinking-impaired, crisis-seeking journalists – same as today but multiplied 10-fold these days and the usual easily-led non-thinkers and useful idiots).
Yes, you and I are going to die eventually. The trick from the alarmists is to convince us that it’ll happen sooner than we’d like. Fear is a great motivator and manipulator but clear-thinking people have to figure out the difference between shit and shinola.
[Simpsons mental image: Old man rages at cloud]
I suggest we initiate a government program to provide head sized condoms for LIberals.
Tell em it’s good for the environment (it is) and they should put them on and leave them on until the feeling of panic goes away.
It’s always been the same hand-puppet show; the changing faces of the hand-puppet represent nothing more than a calculated periodic refreshing of the tactical distractor to leverage the survival-ensuring inbuilt human reflex to advert attention to that which is new or changed and away from longer-term, backgrounded considerations.
The latest, loudest cause du jour, at any point in time, is all too often part of a long-term strategy to deflect public attention from what the other hand, the one not operating the puppet, is working toward – and what that hand is up to is usually far worse, and far more subversive, and far more real than any fictional horror dangled for our distraction.
Not to say, with respect to “the environment”, that we shouldn’t tread lightly on the earth as best we can – we should – but rather that it doesn’t seem at all likely that a sincere mission to do so is what the presented distraction is actually about.
now is the moment
now is the moment when the seas cease to rise.
now is the moment.
no worries mates. Obama will save us even from the past indescretions. 8>P
Whatever happened to the acid rain scare? Did we all become acidified and just not know it? How did we ever survive that crisis?
Clearly you folks need to read the article. It states that cosmic rays make CFCs and HCFCs more reactive, not that cosmic rays are responsible for the hole in the ozone layer.
P.S. We survived the acid rain scare because of joint US-Canada action to effect the necessary equipment changes in those industries that were responsible.
Don’t forget cal2, they’ve also got the Righteous Wind At Their Back ™.
Foster: Actually, several studies showed that Acid Rain was overblown … so the whole thing was quietly put to bed.
http://www.argee.net/Thrawn%20Rickle/Thrawn%20Rickle%2036.htm
surely the cause of ozone depletion was the BPA in my dental fillings. We are all going to die and its all BPA.
Foster: You miss the point. For decades now they’ve been telling us that they knew exactly how ozone depletion works. Now this. Clearly, somebody is jealous of all the global warming research dollars and want a cut … I suggest none of them know what’s going on. It’s a constant scam to create fear, and from that, research dollars. It’s a short step from there to green-Marxists using the scare for their ends because these always lead to ever more government and control.
Paul: No, as Foster points out, the process is quite clear. Atomic Cl acts as a catalyst to remove O3. TO quote from the authors that you link to:
….. we proposed a new
scenario for the formation of the ozone hole: Transfer of electrons produced by cosmic rays and
trapped in PSC ice to adsorbed organic or inorganic chlorine-containing molecules leads to
large enhancements in dissociation of these molecules in the winter lower polar stratosphere [8, 12]. The resulting Cl− ions can produce Cl atoms by photodetachment or react with other
species on ice surfaces to produce Cl2 that then dissociates to destroy O3, …
So it doesn’t matter how you slice it, without the CFC’s there would be no “hole”.
Regards,
John
wanna know about acid rain? Ask the Germans and their forestless landscape, in particular the schwarzwald.
As John notes above, ozone depletion is a real scientific phenomenon. It can be proven in a lab. Acceptable substitutes for CFCs were found.
AGW is entirely different. It is not proven. There are no models that have accurately predicted what is happening. It’s my opinion that the change in the earth’s temperature is caused primarily by solar activity. In any case, there is no affordable substitute for the current carbon fuel economy.
Articles like this one discredit the argument against AGW. If the politics are removed, the science is unclear on AGW. The science of ozone depletion is fact. I am a skeptic, not a Luddite.
John, you ignore the fact that for decades “science” has told us it knows exactly what the chemical process was … but now, guess what, they didn’t know and a knew theory with more horrors comes along. You’re dodging the fact that the science was flawed. And no, I don’t accept that a controlled lab experiment can be applied directly to something as complex as the atmosphere.
But now, right on schedule, will come a flood of new research dollars and fear mongering … all to do with Ozone, and new supranational controls. The Ozone boyz must have been getting lonely.
By the way … what’s the score on Argentine and Australian sheep going blind … by now, it was supposed to be impossible to raise sheep in far southern zones. I’m sure you recall the endless weeping and moaning. I do, because I was stupid enough to teach my students about the coming horrors … all with the help of CBC domcumentaries that I actually tested them on.
By the way John: I missed you last point that no natural ozone hole could exist. My understanding of the literature is that the ozone hole fluctuates naturally, and that CFC’s increase the fluctuation … but, that increased UV creates that much more ozone as it acts on oxygen. Am I wrong in this assumption?
Ozone Depletion in the High Latitude Lower Stratosphere: 1979-1990 Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 96, No. D2, Feb. 20, 1991, pp. 2921-2937.,
Tim Horton’s will shortly announce Ozone Hole doughnuts as part of a new initiative to lure Dion voters away from Starbucks.
The new refrigerants are not ozone depleting, since they break down long before they reach the upper atmosphere. The old CFC’s were extremely stable and didn’t break down.
But the new ones have a global warming potential of 2000 or so times CO2, so there is a push to come up with a system that uses CO2 for the common uses.
Derek
Paul: You are correct that there are natural ozone depleting chemicals. However the term “the hole” has a strict definition of an ozone reading less than 220 DUs. I do not believe that the natural effect was enough to lower the reading to this level.
Regards,
John
Next time I’m near the South Pole, I’ll be sure to pack my 10 million SPF skin lotion.
Cheers
Hans-Christian Georg Rupprecht, Commander in Chief
Frankenstein Battalion
2nd Squadron: Ulanen-(Lancers) Regiment Großherzog Friedrich von Baden(Rheinisches) Nr.7(Saarbrucken)
Knecht Rupprecht Division
Hans Corps
1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”
I put Duracool in my ACs when I have to, because Duracool is just propane purified to a very high degree and it’s more heat transfer efficient than R134 and only about 1/2 of Duracool is required to fill the system. It works at lower pressure and lasts longer due to larger size molecules than that of R134. No retrofitting is required from R12 or R134 systems to work with duracool – just evacuate old stuff if it’s still there and fill with Duracool. The truck owners use nothing but Duracool, it means something, eh? And it’s a Canadian product from Alberta, BTW.
May I ask then … why must we pay to decomission old AC units, including the ones that don’t use Freon. I’ve always assumed its because there is some toxic or environmental issue. Perhaps the lubricants?
What’s the deal?
John: It’s my understanding that UV depletes naturally in the extreme Southern zones because of unique circumstances, like extreme cold, spring sunshine, and high altitude ice clouds … which CFC’s accelerate under certian conditions that exist only in the antarctic springtime. (I’m trying to recall what I used to read in the early 90’s.)
I also read somewhere (who knows 15 years later), that when the “hole” grows, the angle of the sun prevents much UV from penetrating to the surface. Summertime though, when the “hole” is healed, produces the highest levels of UV natually, but that no evidence has ever shown increased UV radiation striking the earth’s surface because of ozone depletion.
I’m still smarting though, from teaching my charges that not only sheep in the Falklands would go blind, but that crops in the Southern zones would not grow … and all because credible sources said it would be so. We taught it like gospel truth.
I’ve always been concerned about the science behind the “ozone hole” scare. The ozone layer wasn’t even recognized until very few years before the furor over “holes” started to develop. Therefore, there’s no baseline data to show us what is “normal”. For all anyone knows, there may have been holes (thin spots actually) for millenia.
I have no problem accepting that chlorofluorocarbons have an affinity for O3 ; that is demonstrable. What isn’t know is what the ozone layer was like before we started throwing the freon around. I thought at the time that the “science” with no baseline data was a pretty crappy effort, and I still do.
Am I missing something here? If anyone has specific expertise (or even a good link) to prove that I’m FOS, I’d like to hear from you.
“Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy who studies ozone depletion, said that it was generally accepted for more than two decades that the Earth’s ozone layer is depleted by chlorine atoms produced by sunlight-induced destruction of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere. But more and more evidence now points to a new theory that the cosmic rays (energy particles that originate in space) play a major role.”
And how does that work? A bit of background to John & Foster’s comment —
“For the past two decades, scientists have known that human-made chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the major destroyers of the atmosphere’s protective ozone layer. Atmospheric scientists have proposed that ultraviolet light breaks down CFCs, releasing active chlorine, which tears apart ozone molecules. But during the months when ozone depletion is greatest, giant clouds of ice particles–so-called polar stratospheric clouds–block the ultraviolet rays. Experts have not completely solved this piece of the ozone destruction puzzle, but according to one theory, the clouds harbor active chlorine molecules. Yet it’s not clear how the chlorine would come to be separated from the CFCs in this ultraviolet-free environment.
Leon Sanche and Qing-Bin Lu of the University of Sherbrooke in Canada now believe that cosmic rays–high-energy radiation from deep space–may be breaking down the CFCs buried in the polar clouds. The two studied ozone and cosmic ray data taken by ground stations, balloons, and satellites, and found some surprising relationships. Ozone depletion seemed to be greatest at altitudes and latitudes of high cosmic ray ionization intensity. What’s more, they found a strong correlation between the variation of global ozone levels and the intensity of cosmic rays during the period from 1979 to 1992. This evidence motivated Sanche and Lu to look for a mechanism connecting cosmic rays with CFC breakdown.È
http://focus.aps.org/story/v8/st8
Paul: “UV depletes” – ozone maybe? Anyway, ozone depletes naturally all over the world. As you say there are some special circumstances that take place in the antarctic that would act to enhance any reduction. But it does not seem likely that levels would get down to 220 DU under natural conditions. But of course we don’t have any measurement of O3 levels before reduction became a concern.
The sheep incident is a good example of a story that gets started but no one checks into. I was a report from a newpaper and never – as far as I know – reported by scientists.
In regards to an increase in UV, that has been measured and linked to the hole. See http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118954926/abstract
Regards,
John
BTW, they have known for a year or so that the whole chemistry of the Montreal Protocol was wrong since they just got around to attempting to experimentally verify it:
“NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory apparently did these experiments only recently. Their experiments were probably not trivial and required some low-temperature engineering. What is their result for the rate of photolysis of Cl₂O₂?
It is almost ten times smaller than needed for the existing ozone hole theories.
That’s a huge problem. But only Markus Rex of Potsdam was brave enough to look at the ozone depletion theory with these new data. A lot of things have obviously changed. A dramatic conclusion is that
At least 60% of observed ozone depletion is due to an unknown [at the time] mechanism”
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/09/ozone-hole-theory-faces-lab-problems.html
Science marches on as green religion is frozen in time.
The long hours of ozone attacking spring sunshine are similar at both poles but ozone depletion over the South Pole is much greater. I was wondering, since the evil pipples of the north are the greatest emitters of CFCs, why the big hole is so far away from where CFCs are released?
Then while staring at my souvenir snow globe from the Smithsonian, it struck me like a sack of hammers! Gravity that’s why. Just like little flakes of snow CFCs eventually sink to the bottom of the globe. They accumulate there and attack Gaia’s chastity belt of ozone like a horde of Vikings breaching a convent’s walls. Evil Northern pipples never change their ways.
It’s either that or the fact that, the seasonal polar stratospheric clouds which facilitate ozone-destructive reactions, are common in the super-cold South but rare in the more-moderate North.
http://junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.html
DDT
CFC’s
Y2K
Global Warming
What’s next?
the continuing p.t. barnum moments.
Yet another inconvenient truth that Suzuki and Gore cannot refute;
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/10/22/sea-ice-approaching-the-edge-of-normal-standard-deviation/
When the ozone-hole issue was developing in the 1980s, I noticed that the chemical companies were advertising and lobbying like crazy against the idea. Then, all of a sudden they went very, very quiet. It was about that time that they announced the development of CFC alternatives that were much more expensive.
The CFC argument never had much to it. Fact is, the molecules are far too heavy to travel up into the atmosphere, much less the ozone layer. Ozone is created by sunlight interacting with oxygen and it has a very short half-life (5-20 minutes), i.e., the time it takes for half of it to decay. Ozone layers grow at the arctic and antarctic poles in winter precisely because there is so little sunlight hitting the “ozone layer” in winter, so very little ozone can regenerate. Those of us that live in northern climes should understand that.
Mexico actually increased production of R12 and sold it in bulk to anyone willing to pay the new and inflated price.It simply moved underground and any mechanic worth his salt knew where to get it to recharge your air conditioning system.