Guest Post by Richard F. Cronin
August 3, 2017
After 31 years working for E.I. DuPont de Nemours here is my understanding about “ozone depletion” — the warm-up act for anthropogenic CO2-induced “global warming”. Even the proponents of human-induced “ozone depletion” are starting to realize that the thinning of the ozone layer is a natural phenomenon that just waxes and wanes.
http://www.theozonehole.com/2017ozonehole.htm
Ozone (O3) is produced in the stratosphere by the intense solar radiation causing photo-dissociation of the di-atomic oxygen molecule (O2). The oxygen singlet (- O) is a powerful oxidizing agent and readily reacts with another O2 molecule to yield ozone. Ozone is not produced during the dark polar winters and its lowest point is in the early spring. The ozone layer is renewed by the sunlit polar summers.
Molina and Rowland published in 1974 and their core premise is that heavier-than-air chloro-fluoro carbons (CFCs) convect upwards using a “one dimensional diffusion model”, where they photo-dissociate due to ultraviolet radiation in the band of 2000 Angstroms to yield ozone -destroying chlorine and bromine. Molina and Rowland also stated that CFCs do not dissolve in water, so they are not scrubbed out by rain at lower elevations. However, it is known that organo-halogens adsorb on dust particles and aerosols which are scrubbed out by rain in the troposphere. Finally, volcanoes emit CFCs as well as copious amounts of hydrofluoric acid (HF), hydrochloric acid (HCl) and hydrodrobromic acid (HBr) which carry up to the stratosphere. (Ian Plimer, et al). See “Heaven and Earth” by Ian Plimer, University of Adelaide. There is always some equilibrium presence of these molecules, in trace quantities.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/RG013i001p00001/full
Click here for Atmospheric aerosols in the Earth System
Quoting from references at Berkeley – University of California:
“Molina’s research pointed to just one possible fate for the CFCs: they would remain in the atmosphere for a long time — somewhere between 40 and 150 years — before they drifted high enough for solar radiation to split off a highly reactive chlorine atom from the CFC molecule. This chlorine atom could then react rapidly with ozone, destroying the ozone molecule and depleting the ozone layer. Molina’s hypothesis consisted of three main points, each requiring its own tests:
- CFCs break down to produce chlorine. Scientists can recreate the intense solar radiation found in the upper atmosphere in their labs. Shining this lab-made solar radiation on CFCs and then looking for chlorine would provide evidence either for or against this idea.
- Chlorine atoms destroy ozone. Finding chlorine atoms and the products of the chlorine-ozone reaction in the ozone layer would support this idea.
- This is causing significant ozone depletion. The validity of this point could be examined by analyzing worldwide atmospheric ozone levels over time. Since CFCs remain in the atmosphere for so long before they break down, the effects might not be immediately measurable, and many years’ worth of monitoring might be needed to see how ozone levels are changing.”
http://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/cfcs_checklist
This final test is the sticking point for CFCs being long-lived in the upper atmosphere. Observations have been made since 1987 and the Antarctic “ozone hole” just waxes and wanes. Moreover, the industrialized regions of the Northern Hemisphere are logically the greatest emitters of CFCs, so why isn’t the Arctic “ozone hole” more pronounced than Antarctica ?
Antarctica has a larger “ozone hole” (actually it’s a thinning) due to emissions of Mt. Erebus and the southern volcanoes of Chile, like Mt. Calbuco. Moreover, the powerful circumpolar winds circling Antarctica effectively seal off the South Pole from ozone that has been produced in the sunlit regions of the mid-latitudes during the Antarctic winter. The circumpolar winds relent in the spring and summer, allowing mid-latitude ozone to leak into the Antarctic.
The volcanoes of Iceland influence the chlorine and bromine presence in the Arctic, but less than the Antarctic. The Arctic does have a polar vortex, but nothing like the circumpolar winds of Antarctica. Ergo, there is continuous leakage of ozone produced in the northern mid-latitudes into the Arctic.
Another natural phenomenon affecting the ozone layer is the inversion of the geomagnetic field at the polar regions which exposes the ozone layer to the ionized solar wind and coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The power of this ionized stream is observed in the aurora borealis. Ozone is ripped off by the tons and tons. Any activity of trace CFCs, chlorine or bromine is dwarfed, although the halogens are the variable actors.
DuPont argued the issue about the Freons@R until the 1980s and finally realized that they had been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion. Ergo, DuPont management figured: “Why fight ’em ? Join ’em”. So DuPont jumped on the band wagon, shed the perfectly innocuous and efficacious Freons@R, and threw the Company behind the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
DuPont, ICI, and Allied Chemical (now Honeywell) had an oligarchy in the “ozone depletion substitutes”. Great PR, brand new captured market, govt support, and a relaxed schedule to make the conversion to the substitutes. Not only the Freon@R substitutes, but a large market in custom lubricants for new “ozone friendly” refrigeration equipment. Freon@R and most of the old Freon@R compounds are compatible with mineral oil.
Now the schedule mandated by the Montreal Protocol decrees that refrigerants must be entirely “chlorine free”. The only substitutes are fluorinated compounds which are entirely stable under solar radiation. The new refrigerant for automobile air conditioners is R-1234yf, far more costly than the current R-134a, with EPA tradeable credits as an offset (taxpayer dollars). Although stable to solar radiation, R-1234yf is toxic and can be flammable. A ruptured air conditioning reservoir would be exposed to the hot engine. Daimler, Volkswagon, and BMW are reluctant to use it in their automobiles and are opting for CO2-based refrigeration.
The 1987 Montreal Protocol is entirely self-reporting and nobody can audit anything (just like Anthropogenic CO2). The only countries that nominally comply are the U.S., Canada, the EU and Australia (?).
All the refrigeration equipment based on the original Freons@R was ripped out and sold around the developing world. They still run, supplied by China, Eastern Europe, India and just about every other nation with an industrial chemicals capacity. The majority of air conditioning units in the U.S. are “dry shipped” to be filled with R-22 by a “licensed contractor”, allegedly from “recycled R-22” inventories.
You can buy carbon tetrachloride and all the old Freons@R on e-Bay or Amazon, allegedly from “recycled” sources. There are no substitutes for Halons@R used for fire suppression on aircraft and data centers, yet we never seem to run out. Carbon tetrachloride is deemed to be only “man-made” like the CFCs and is banned under the Montreal Protocol but carbon tetrachloride is emitted by the gigaton from volcanoes, hydrothermal vents and weathering biomass (Gordon Gribble – Dartmouth, see link).
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=freon+12
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783211993224
Of course, most recently, the Antarctic “ozone hole” has been “healing” somewhat. Even those who believe that human existence and technological betterment must be sharply curtailed — acknowledge the quieting of Chile’s Mt. Calbuco had “something” to do with it, but mostly they repeat the mantra that thru concerted national cooperation under the Montreal Protocol we have saved the world. Man’s industrial efforts are still deemed to be the causation of any undesired variations in the planet’s biome.
http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6296/269
No one in the scientific community dare rebuke the “received wisdom”. If they do so, they are ostracized, lose tenure, shut out of grant funding, cannot be published in mainstream science journals, and declared to be co-conspirators in destroying the planet. Open source publishers in China (MDI), India (OMICS International) and the developing world have surpassed traditional western science publishers. Indeed, the western science community has been subject to a new version of the McCarthy Red Scare, complete with deliberate intimidation.
But — Whooo-hooo !! Now we have defeated Chlorine and Bromine. We have “saved the ozone layer”. Now onto the war on Carbon !!
If you declare war on elements of the Periodic Table, you gonna lose.
Climate Change Sanity 
See also
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2748016
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2757711
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2612810
Pingback: The Myth of Man-made Ozone Depletion | Principia Scientific International
“Volcanic Halocarbons” by Timothy Casey at Geology-1011 website
Fluorine is the sixteenth most common Earth element, constantly discharged by volcanoes and seafloor rifts. Lightning is the major source for Ozone with hundreds of strikes PE second. Ozone is reactive with a half-life of thirty minutes. Ozone has been used a safe water disinfectant in Paris and two thousand cites for over a hundred years. DuPont supported the Montreal Protocol to force new, pricey patents.
We have been systematically lied to about everything, forever.
Reblogged this on 4timesayear's Blog.
Scientists have complicated too much a very simple issue as periodic ozone decreases in Antarctica. Chemistry has nothing whatsoever to do in ozone destruction. The process is entirely dynamic. Briefly explained: 1) When two ozone molecules touch each other they become 3 oxygen molecules. 2) The strong winds inside the stratospheric Polar Vortex stir the atmosphere violently making ozone molecules collide against themselves. Hence the decrease in ozone concentrations.
Now some known facts: CFC have been found at its highest elevation at about 32 km at about 10 parts per TRILLION volume (F-12), while F-11 reaches 29 km at 0.1 ppT. It is known that CFC can only be dissociated by strong UV radiation in the band corresponding to UV-C, wavelengths shorter that 290 microns –not found below 45 km altitude. CFCs are not dissociated by UV radiation in Earth’s atmosphere, as shown in ozone measurements taken worldwide outside Antarctica. Ozone levels are naturally and cyclically variable and, in average, have remained stable since the first ozone measurement began in the 20s.
Now some use of reasoning: 1) Decrease in the Antarctic ozone process starts about August, when there is no UV radiation present in the stratosphere, much less in the ground. 2) By a reduction to the absurd method, let’s suppose there are plenty chlorine, nitric, fluorine, bromine, etc molecules out there that were formed when the sun was reaching the stratosphere in summer. It is clear that the ozone chemical destruction should have started when the stratosphere was warmer than the -82ºC (and much less) existing during the winter night, a temperature that makes chemical reactions almost impossible or at least so slow that couldn’t explain the fast ozone reductions sometimes seen in 24 hours.
Strangely, then, ozone reduction does not occur when there a lots of chlorine molecules, or bromine and nitric compound molecules but begins in the middle of the most dark night, against all chemistry and physics laws. However, the ozone depletion begins precisely when the Polar Vortex is formed and stirs the atmosphere. Hence, no chemical reactions occur in the ozone “hole” issue. It is a purely dynamic and natural process.