The Ozone Hole Revisited
In the comments to my Flood Insurance post, Straightarrow pointed to the hole in the ozone layer as an example of how climate scientists perpetrated a fraud on the world. After all, he says, this was a big deal and now we never even hear about it. It’s a good question. Fortunately, there’s a good answer.
The reason we don’t hear about ozone anymore is because it’s a solved problem. There’s no need for further action, so you no longer hear the calls to action. The hole is still there, but it’s size peaked in 2000. Scientists believe it will heal itself in the next 50 years or so.
The reason the hole is closing is becuase international agreements brought down CFC usage enough to make a real difference. The 1985 Vienna Convention and the 1989 Montreal Protocol are really good examples of how international cooperation can work. Even if we don’t meet the 2010 target of eliminating CFC production, we’ll be ok.
Contrary to the ozone hole being an example of chicken little hysteria (or scientists conspiring to lie in return for grant money), it’s actually a success story. You can see an ozone timeline if you scroll down this page. Read what the NOAA says about ozone. It’s one of the few times science saw a threat, raised a cry, and the world (eventually) responded.
September 27th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
It’s one of the few times science saw a threat, raised a cry, and the world (eventually) responded.
Have you read Carl Sagan’s Billions and Billions? He has a great chapter on this. Basically, what you saw then was a lot like what you see now with global warming, where business interests and chemical producers worked hard to obfuscate the science, and succeeded in blocking meaningful action for a long time. Then, one of the big chemical companies (Dow or 3M, I forget which) admitted that CFCs were indeed a serious problem, and oh, by the way, they just happened to have an exclusive patent on an effective and far-less-harmful replacement (HCFCs). Even then, it wasn’t until some large corporate interest had a profit motivation in fixing the problem that something finally got done.
September 27th, 2006 at 6:26 pm
R-134a has been around forever. Neither it nor R-12 had an active patent when we yanked R-12 for R-134a in most car a/c units.
Now It might be true that the special lubricants that the crappy R-134a junk needs were patented, but I’d like to see the link first. That’s part of what makes R-134a crappy, special non-compatible lubricants (as well as the need for special hoses, the inherent inefficiency, etc)
The real scam was the FUD over hydrocarbon refrigerants. They would have been a drop in replacement for R-12, and they would have been both cheaper to make and also more efficient, (less power usage in those window mounted units), than either R-12 or R-134a.
Finally after years, the drop-in hydrocarbon refrigerants are on the market. Assuming you are willing to buy them in in bulk cans. Assuming you are willing to get the EPA Refrigerant Certification, which is an open book test at ~$20 or so. Assuming you are willing to track down the non-standard fittings. and loctite them to your car.
However, the fun is not over yet, because R-134a happens to be a powerful greenhouse gas. I’m predicting a future Greenpeace backlash against R-134a will have us all converting over to hydrocarbon refrigerants, just like much of the rest of the world already has.
The best part, of course, is the fact that there isn’t any data anywhere that supports the idea that the very heavy R-12 molecules somehow manage to violate the laws of physics and drift upwards into the upper atmosphere for even a chance to destroy teh ozone.
September 27th, 2006 at 7:05 pm
Mischief, take a look at this page. It explains pretty well why the whole CFCs are too heavy argument isn’t worth much.
If debunking the claim that CFCs cause ozone holes were as simple as sending up a balloon and measuring CFC levels, don’t you think somebody would have done it? As it turns out, people did it a bunch of times and each time they found CFCs up there.
The air we breathe is not stratified by weight. There’s lots of heavy molecules up there and light ones down here because wind mixes it all up.
Thank goodness the laws of physics are safe for another day!
September 27th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
There’s a few holes in the link you provided. If freon is causing all the ozone damage, and it’s evenly distributed in the atmosphere, why is the hole bigger only near the south pole? Why not the north poll? Would the fact that there is a volcano spewing sulfur in the very dry air near the south poll be a factor? is it possible that the very dry air near the south pole allows stuff up into the upper atmosphere near the south pole, instead of being rained out? Doesn’t the hole get larger and smaller with the change in the seasons? What did you say again about an even distribution of freon via the winds?
What I’m saying is that no-one have taken some special freon that has special isotope tracer molecules in them, released them, and then detected the special freon in the upper atmosphere. That would be pretty conclusive proof that they were getting up there and also give you data on how long it took, the average life before it broke down, and other interesting stuff. If they had a higher incidence of tagged freon near the south pole during certain months they could also place blame squarely, and solely on freon, instead of some other phenomenon.
September 27th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
left this part off:
I support the switch to hydrocarbon refrigerants, they’re safe, cheap, efficient, and no one thinks they do a number on teh ozone.
September 27th, 2006 at 8:09 pm
NASA:
The ozone hole was discovered through British ground-based observations in the mid-1980s, but analysis of TOMS data indicates it has existed since at least 1979. Most recently, TOMS data showed record levels of ozone depletion over Antarctica in 1993.
Emphsis mine. That also means they can’t prove it wasn’t always there to some extent. Or perhaps there’s another phenomenon partly responsable.
Wikipedia:
The volcano has been continuously active since 1972 and is the site of the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. The crater is home to one of the very few permanent lava lakes in the world.
Again, emphasis mine. Not proof, but warrants some suspicion. CFCs may still be bad, but please, save the gutter science.
Anyone remember those sheep in Chile supposedly blinded by UV-B from teh ozone hole that later turned out to have pink eye? Environmentalism can be a religion, and I’m sick of being called a heretic for being a skeptic.
September 28th, 2006 at 10:23 am
Nobody is calling you a heretic, but your arm-chair skepticism is a bit much. Denigrating all this work as “gutter science” is a cheap slap and you’ve done nothing to back it up.
First you claim that CFCs are too heavy to get up there– it would violate the laws of physics! When you find out you’re wrong and that CFCs are uniformly distributed in the atmosphere, you change the subject to volcanos.
CFCs are man-made. If it’s up there, it got there through our activity. We don’t need to tag anything to know we put it there. Do you really think nobody thought to ask these questions ever before?
Skepticism is healthy. Extremist skepticism is a crutch to salve your ego and let you be comfortable in your beliefs. Cynism really can be taken too far.
September 28th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
I’m still trying to find hard data that supports uniformly distributed CFC in the entire atmosphere. The page you linked to shows a graph that’s not uniform and is for R-11. It references print media that I can’t access.
“Uniformly” is a relative term, and no, I’m not yet convinced. However, if you are correct, I then put forth the decidedly non-uniform hole over the south polar latitudes as an example. This hole is not uniform in either location or season. This was not an attempt to divert the subject.
Green research is where the grants are. We saw the same thing during the Reagan years, except it was the “war on (some) drugs”. Remember the faked brain scans? Also, after Surgeon General C. Everett Koop mailed out AIDS prevention info to every US address (a very un-Reagan like move) he was directed to do a study about the risks of abortion. Mr. Koop is extremely pro-life, but he disappointed the administration again by not skewing the results to the study. It’s actually much safer for a woman to have an abortion rather than to carry to term.
A significant portion of NASA’s budget is funding for the “Mission to Planet Earth”. Is it too far a stretch to think that perhaps the gravy train might stop if they didn’t echo the doom and gloom line?