Can Chlorofluorocarbons help me convince others on Ozone depletion and therefore Global Warming?
People don’t believe that what we put into the air is really going to effect the ozone layer. But in the 1970’s didn’t we stop CFC’s from entering the atmosphere because of ozone depletion? Can’t it be proven from these CFC’s that global warming is caused by mankind? Didn’t certain ozone depletion take place where high CFC’s were released?
I’m not here to convince anyone, I’m really just looking for an answer.
July 15th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
CFC’s are the reason for global warming of coarse like fossil fuels
July 15th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
chlorofluroWHAT?!?
comi…
July 15th, 2010 at 3:06 pm
CFC’s were phased out in the 1990’s
Not everyone believes that CFC’s are mainly responsible for ozone depletion because CFC levels in the upper as high as ever, yet ozone depletion is reversing.
Ozone is claimed to be a greenhouse gas. The IPCC considers that ozone depletion causes global cooling.
July 15th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
Global Warming and Ozone Depletion are two separate environmental issues.
In the former, CO2 and methane reflect infrared radiation back down to the earth.
In the latter, ozone refects ultraviolet radiation from the sun back into space. CFCs indirectly reduce the amount of the ozone present in the upper atmosphere.
July 15th, 2010 at 4:32 pm
In the 70’s many of the scientists and academics swore by “Global Cooling” — that an ice age was imminent. What ever happened to that?
In modern times, we –still– can’t predict the weather tomorrow with any reasonable amount of reliability; yet you are willing to believe they can tell you with absolute certainty what is happening with respect to global temperations over the last 300 years — and that they know it with such precision (correct to the tenth of one degree).
Why do we listen to these guys? They are just a bunch of cultish quacks, always predicting that the sky is falling.
Look at the NOAA’s predictions of hurricane activity in the U.S. in 2006. That there was going to be something like five times as many hurricanes that year as the one preceding. And that some of those hurricanes would be more severe than Katrina. And all this was due to global warming.
They made these ridiculous predictions every two months. And when they were wrong, it didn’t matter. They still adhered to their exaggerated estimates. And giving lame reasons when they were wrong, such as “We didn’t expect subsaharan layers the last quarter to affect oceanic temperature.” Sadly 2006 was well within the average for the preceding 50 years in terms of hurricane activity. No apology from the NOAA was ever issued.
I’m not saying that the greenhouse effect isn’t going on. I am saying take what you are hearing with a huge grain of salt. A lot of science degrees are being doled out at universities these days without reservation. And the “true” scientists are usually not in front of the camera pushing out some parade of horribles.
July 15th, 2010 at 4:41 pm
There was an international agreement called the Montreal Protocol (similar to the Kyoto Protocol for global warming) in which the countries involved agreed to phase-out the use of CFCs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montreal_Protocol
Since then the hole has been shrinking
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/16/2092527.htm
Though it will take a long time to fully close because CFCs have a long lifetime in the atmosphere, and less developed countries are still using CFCs.
However, while the hole in the ozone layer is a somewhat similar kind of problem to global warming (human emissions causing an environmental problem), the two issues are basically unrelated scientifically.
July 15th, 2010 at 5:20 pm
whos Chlorofluorocarbons
i had to copy nad paste that name
July 15th, 2010 at 5:27 pm
This paper is from 1996, but it contains a nice explanation:
http://www.ias.ac.in/resonance/Mar1996/pdf/Mar1996p54-65.pdf
“The principal greenhouse gases in our atmosphere are: (i) Carbondioxide (CO2), (ii) Methane (CH4), (iii) Nitrous oxide (N2O), (iv) Ozone (O3) and (v) halocarbons. Halocarbons are compounds of carbon and halogens (chlorine, bromine and fluorine). Some refer to them as the chlorofluorocarbons, or the CFC’s. Of late, another class of carbon compounds, the hydrogenated CFC’s (HCFS) are also in the category of greenhouse gases. We will refer to them collectively as the halocarbons. Halocarbons are inert gases with a long life of 50 to 100 years.”
“Stratospheric ozone depletion
Ozone has a dual impact in the lower stratosphere (25 km). Firstly, the depletion of ozone by halocarbons implies less absorption of solar radiation by ozone, due to which more of it reaches the earth. This has a warming effect. But, less ozone also implies less absorption of outgoing infrared radiation. This cools the stratosphere. And, a cooler stratosphere emits less infrared radiation to the troposphere below. The net effect is one of cooling. Around 20-25 km, the cooling process usually dominates.”
There’s a chart that seems to imply that CFCs have 4000-8500X more”global warming potential” (per unit mass of gas) in the next 100 years than CO2. Fortunately there’s much less volume/mass of CFCs in the air, and I believe their manufacture has been stopped. (Developing countries were able to use them for some time after developed countries stopped.) However it will take decades for their presence and influence to subside.
Mankind halting the use of CFCs, without the disasterous effects predicted for world economies, is considered a model for how we can approach carbon reductions.
NASA’a Dr. Hansen compares and contrasts the situation of CFCs and global warming in slides 42-45 of his presentation here:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/gustavus_3oct07.pdf
July 15th, 2010 at 6:07 pm
CFC’s that were released in the 70’s are still destroying O3 (ozone molecules) today. So yes CFC’s are PART of the problem we have with global warming. But of course there are many other factors that i am too lazy to list because i have listed them a million other times before this.