From: jbodnar@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (John Bodnar)
Newsgroups: austin.general
Subject: Re: More CFC's and the ozone layer
Date: 27 Jan 1993 04:48:07 GMT
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
Distribution: world
Reply-To: jbodnar@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (John Bodnar)
NNTP-Posting-Host: mickey.cc.utexas.edu

According to billc@zippy.UUCP (Bill Carter):
>   Which form of "chloride ion" are you referring to?

Bill, please read a chemistry text.  The chloride ion is symbolically
denoted as Cl-.  There is only one kind of chloride ion!  Anything else is
not a chloride ion.  Please get this straight.  There are no other "forms"
of the chloride ion.

>   Please cite your
>   reference for the amount of it being emitted by Mount Erebus.  The
>   eruptions must be fairly intermittant, because I noticed that NASA
>   recently sponsored a test of the Dante robot in Erebus's crater.

The Erebus estimates and reference appear in the writings of Dixy Lee Ray
and others (I'll dig up the others if you wish).  Erebus erupts regularly,
but not with any sort of explosive impact.  Besides, the Dante robot (you
know, Dante's "Inferno") is designed for high temperature/high pressure
operation.  Mount Erebus wouldn't be a problem for it unless it were
erupting with extreme explosve force.

>   What
>   causes the ozone hole recently detected over the Arctic each spring?
>   Is there an Erebus up there?

Atmospheric chlorine.  It's the same polar vortex phenomenon that occurs in
Antarctica, except the Arctic hole is short lived because the Arctic warms
up more quickly than Antarctica.

>   There are many natural processes which influence the production
>   of ozone. I did not forget that volcanos are among them.  Nothing I have
>   read suggests that volcanos are the cause of the recent ozone depletion.
>   Are you asserting that all of the changes in the ozone layer are due
>   to natural causes? If so, please cite references.

Bill, do you understand this or not?  Chloride ion in the atmosphere bonds
with ozone to form ClO- (an unstable chlorine oxide).

IT DOESN'T MATTER WHETHER THE CHLORIDE ION COMES FROM NATURE OR MAN.

Chloride ions from either source will react in the same fashion.

Now, with that said, let me bring back my numbers from last time.

(1) MAN'S ANNUAL CHLORIDE EMISSIONS FROM CFC PRODUCTION AND USE

    750,000 tons

(2) EVAPORATED CHLORIDE FROM THE OCEAN (annually)

    600,000,000 tons

(3) CHLORIDE EMISSIONS FROM PASSIVE OUT-GASSING (annually)

    36,000,000 tons

(4) VOLCANIC CHLORIDE EMISSIONS (annually)

    anywhere from a few million tons to several hundred million tons

DO YOU SEE MY POINT?

It doesn't matter where the chloride ion comes from.  It will react with
ozone.  Nature produces more chloride ion than man.  If you want to lay
blame on ozone depletion, blame nature.  Man is only responsible for about
1/1000th of the chloride ion found in the atmosphere.  There is no
difference between the chloride ion resulting from natural processes and
that resulting from man's industry.

>   John Gribbin, PhD, writes in his book "The Hole in the Sky" that
>   "UV-B causes sunburn, and people who are exposed to more UV-B are
>   more likely to develop certain forms of skin cancer, including one
>   called malignant melanoma, which is often fatal".  UV-B is the range
>   of frequencies blocked by ozone.  Gribbin also mentions that excess
>   UV-B reduces the effectiveness of the immune system and damages DNA.

Bill, you really shouldn't use Gribbin as a reference.

I did some checking on Gribbin, and he is a "science writer" NOT a
scientist.  I don't know what his Ph.D. is in, but I certainly doubt it's
in any field of science or engineering.

Furthermore, Gribbin does not appear in any of the following publications:

  o "Who's Who in Science and Engineering"

  o "Who's Who in Science and Research"

  o "Who's Who in Science in Europe"

  o "American Men and Women of Science"

What's more, Gribbin doesn't list his Ph.D. in any of his qualifications.
This makes you wonder if his Ph.D. (if he even has it) is in any field
related to what he writes about.

Gribbin has been writing popular fluff pieces since the mid 70's.  He was
one of the first people to warn of an ice age by the year 2000!  Now
Gribbin is writing on global warming.  This guy can't decide what to write
about!

He's written at least 10 books since 1975 most within a year or two of each
other.  I could only find one article by him in any scientific publication
in the last 15 years.  This proves that he doesn't spend much time
researching his topics.

Hell, even Stephen Schneider, the High Priest of Global Warming (and a real
scientist) speaks disparagingly of Gribbin's oversimplification of the
global climate phenomena.

The problem with Gribbin and his ilk is that they offer up hastily written
and shabbily researched doom and gloom predictions.  People like you then
read this sort of uninformed clap trap and take it as gospel.

I stand by my previous assertions that malignant melanoma is unrelated to
UV light exposure.

>   I agree that you would get greater exposure to the Sun's radiation
>   at the equator than you would at the poles.  What is your point?
>   And as for New Zealand, it appears to be within the zone of influence
>   associated with the Antarctic ozone depletion.  That's visible even
>   in the satellite pictures.

No it isn't.  The Antarctic ozone whole is almost entirely contained over
the continent.  New Zealand is too far to the north to be affected.

>   Plants and animals which live at high
>   latitudes are not adapted to the UV levels found at the equator, they
>   would soon die there and not just from the heat.  Increased levels of
>   UV-B at Punta Arenas, Chile are already having a noticable effect
>   on vegetation, sheep and goat herds, and the incidence of malignant
>   melanomas among humans.

Alan Teramura at the University of Maryland has been studying the effects
of UV light on plants and animals.  He quite clearly concludes that life on
earth is adapted to UV light.  If it weren't, we wouldn't be here!  To
quote him, "even at 20-percent decline in ozone, we are not going to burn
up all plants on the surface of the Earth or kill all of the people.  We
wouldn't see wilting or fruits dropping unripened from their vines."

>   According to my sources there are many catalysts involved in the
>   ozone equation, some natural and some manmade.  Chlorine is one of
>   them.  The catalysts affect the state of equalibrium.  Why don't you
>   know this?

Bill, you don't know what you're talking about.  Chlorine is NOT a
catalyst; it's a reactant.  UV light is a catalyst.  It provides the energy
to break ozone down into O2 + O, to produce ozone from O2 + O, and to break
CFCs down into chlorine ions and other molecules.  Simply adding chlorine
to the atmosphere does not affect the rate at which the reaction proceeds.

>   Amazing.  Dixy Lee must not have noticed the series of measurements
>   taken by Jim Anderson from the National Scientific Balloon Facility
>   in 1976, the 33 balloons launched in Antarctica in 1986 by the
>   National Ozone Expedition (NOZE 1) sponsored by NASA, NOAA, and the
>   Chemical Manufacturers Association.  She must have overlooked the
>   dozens of DC-8 and ER-2 flights over Antarctica conducted in 1987
>   by NOZE 2.

And I suspect that they're the same studies which prove the atmospheric
chloride concentration is 60 times higher than anything that can be
attributed to man.  Dr. Ray has cited some of these studies when arguing
that you cannot even begin to seriously attribute chloride in the
atmosphere to anything man has done.

-- 
John Bodnar                          : Friends don't let friends use Windows!
The University of Texas at Austin    : 
Internet: jbodnar@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu : OS/2 and Rush Limbaugh!  Succeeding
UUCP: ....!cs.utexas!ut-ccwf!jbodnar : despite the media's best efforts!
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