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the agenda
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The worldwide Freon Ban was signed into law to reduce the deterioration of the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. Ozone is what protects all life on Earth from the harmful affects of solar radiation - skin cancer for humans and other life forms, crop deterioration, and many other serious environmental affects. Freon-12 decomposes ozone, thus making life on the Earth's surface defenseless. However, the ozone hole is five times larger now than it was when the Freon Ban was passed.
The Freon Ban has cost an estimated $1 trillion to date, predominantly in the replacement of large air conditioning devices called chillers. Every major building in the industrialized world has had to replace these systems. That's the law.
The new chillers, and all other refrigerating apparatus, operate at least 25% less efficiently using the new "zone friendly" freon. So, every air conditioned building in the world is paying at least 25% more for their utility bills, in addition to the typical six or seven figure cost of the new equipment itself.
In the years to come, additional types of freon will be phased in, each at a cost of $1 trillion, and presumably each operating at a lower efficiency than the previous brand. The civilized nations of the world are willing and able to support this cost, if it does in fact save the ozone layer. Yet, what if refrigerants are NOT the culprit? What if we are paying these galactic sums and the environment is not helped at all?
The arguments against the Freon ban were once the gist of best selling expose books. These aguments are now more than that, but arguments to save our fragile environment and to spend the trillions of dollars in more productive ways.
There are many questionable issues about the efficacy of the Freon ban, and the role refrigerants actually play in the deterioration of the ozone layer. Any one of these issues would be justification to disallow the ban immediately, and to investigate the issues more thoroughly. Here are two of the more important issues:
(1) Freon is four to ten times heavier than air. How can a gas so heavy make it fifteen miles into the thin upper atmosphere to damage the ozone layer?
(2) There are microbes in the soil that decompose Freon within 24 hours. How to they survive that? How can the Freon molecules make the 10,000 mile journey to the South Pole from the United States and the other major industrialized nations in the northern hemisphere that use most of the refrigerants?
Finally, NASA tried to send a satellite into orbit in September 2001, specifically to study the ozone layer. The rocket exploded after launch, and NASA has no plans to put another satellite in orbit. The government evidently wants this whole issue to just go away.
© 2004 by bill clark
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