The ozone hole and the law of unintended consequences
Remember that ozone hole and all the brouhaha it engendered? Here’s a piece about the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the hole’s opening, and the circumstances of its more-or-less closing.
The cause of the thing appeared to be the increasing use of CFCs in aerosols. The cure seemed relatively straightforward: there was a supposedly single cause and an easy fix, since adequate substitutes were available.
Ah, the good old days—a textbook case of environmental intervention that solved a thorny problem, and was done with virtually unanimous global cooperation and approval, a record that AGW activists can only envy. But in one of those twists of fate, it turns out that the fix could be contributing to global warming:
Ozone itself is a greenhouse gas. A thinner ozone layer not only reduced heat trapped over the region, it helped stir circumpolar winds, which in turn created sea spray that formed reflective, cooling clouds.
“It’s very difficult to quantify the impact on a global scale, but I think the evidence suggests filling the hole will have a regional effect on the Antarctic, possibly leading to more warming for the bulk of the Antarctic,” Shanklin said. “That could drastically change predictions about global sea level change.”
Be careful what you wish for.
As for the entire CFC-ozone hole connection itself—there are, of course, so-called “deniers;” just Google something like “ozone hole natural fluctuations” and you’ll see what I mean. Before AGW and Climategate, I wouldn’t have given them much credence, and I still have no idea whether they are just cranks or whether they are onto something. But one of the casualties of the AGW struggle has been my faith not only in the ability of scientists to understand, predict, and intervene successfully in such complex systems, but their credibility and intentions in advocating how to do so.
I don’t get no respect. My wife only wants sex twice a week.
I guess it could have been worse.
Two or three other guys she cut off entirely!
Excellent observation about scientists. Read “The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy” for an introduction into bandwagon science. Mark Twain put it this way “In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the old Oolitic Silurian Period, must a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have their streets joined together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. “
Marvelous Mark Twain! Thanks, Bob
And just think, Twain made all these calculations and predictions before Al Gore invented the internet. He would have a field day with our current idiots savant.
When a prophet’s prophecies fail, he’s called a false prophet.
When a certain scientist’s predictions fail, he’s called the greatest scientist ever (Darwin) and his mediocre achievements are (I’m gonna go out on a sarcastic limb here) obamacized.
The question of evolution’s truth is not simple unless you’re part of the hegemony: then, even doubting the theory is perilous.
But the following indicates something is rotten in the state of Denmark: lack of parsimony is ignored; contradictions and failed predictions are incorporated; the theory grows ever more complex and unmanageable; confirmation bias seeks confirming evidence and precludes contrary evidence.
The end result is science as a whole suffers. The new “clerics” are worse than the Inquisition and Catholic Chuch ever were. What the truth is, I don’t know, but I do know no-one is allowed to simply ask, “could it be wrong.”
An animus against God has not enabled but disabled the investigation which belongs to science, which, really, should not be biased against God one way or the other. But is had become so. Extraordinarily so–and the present example before us illustrates that science has become unhinged from its objectivity.
everybody go dig through your mom’s bathroom cabinet and find the rusty old bottles of aqua-net – STAT!! the earth needs you!!
I’ll always believe in science as a remarkable discipline of discovery. Scientist? Apparently they can be had like any liberal schmuck sitting on a city council.
“”find the rusty old bottles of aqua-net””
I recall my mom saving the world with Alberto VO5.
I found the CFC-ozone connection plausible because chlorine radicals derived from CFCs were reported to destroy ozone catalytically by acting (IIRC) as O atom carriers, viz.,
O3 + Cl –> O2 + ClO
ClO + O3 –> 2 O2 + Cl
Thus, according to this mechanism, a relatively small proportion of Cl radicals in the upper 0atmosphere could well catalyze the destruction of a lot of ozone. (Think match to gasoline.) Moreover, replacing CFCs with other refrigerants/propellants was easy, cheap, and straightforward. Prudence suggested doing so, even without absolute certainty about the effect.
Contrast this with AGW. First, and most importantly, the effect of CO2 is stoichiometric, not catalytic; that is, its warming contribution is a linear function of its partial pressure. (Think the distance you can drive as a function of how much gasoline is in your tank.) Since anthropogenic CO2 is only 3% of the total, it’s hard to believe the effect would be all that large. So the existence of the threat is questionable.
Second, the measures proposed to counter this potential threat were neither easy, nor cheap, nor straightforward. Quite the opposite, in fact.
For these technical reasons I supported elimination of CFCs, but have opposed the proposed measures to combat AGW.
In addition to the technical reasons, of course, AGW was self-evidently being used as a vehicle to justify socialist hegemony over the economy. The happy coincidence between the measures proposed to combat AGW and those advocated for decades by socialists on other grounds invited the suspicion that the socialists hadn’t just taken advantage of a real issue but rather might have generated a spurious one to advance their own aggrandizement.
Occam, there is a happy coincidence between ANY problem and the measures set forth by our current nincompoops to combat that problem . . . and measures advocated by socialists. Conclusion: Our current nincompoops are socialists.
There is a measure, however, I agree with, not because it reduces AGW, but because our national security is so compromised: We should seek alternate energy sources in the same manner as the Manhattan Project. Maybe. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like its happening fast enough through the market system.
Curtis, absolutely right.
Risk management through diversification. Petroleum, nuclear, and whatever alternatives we can come up with. Single sourcing is a recipe for disaster.
The problem is that China is still cranking out CFC, and will be until the end of the year.
While CFC use has indeed been essentially non-existent in the West for years and years, CFC use has been alive and well world-wide.
I’m afraid that I’m one of those “CFC deniers” (well, skeptics), because the numbers are very dodgy here. Sort of like with CO2 driven Thermageddon.
Oops, got to go – it’s the UPS man dropping off my weekly bushel basket of Oil Company cash …
Well, I was going to point out what borepatch said – we tend to think of it as a massive drop in CFC because we did it. That simply isn’t true.
If CFC’s were responsible for the hole then it would be larger today than other. Globally we are producing more than ever because several *really* large countries do not care.
It was, at least, quite plausible as OB pointed out. Even back then there were harder issues – one such thing is how much heavier the CFC’s are than the mix of compounds we call “air” along with the amount needed to account for the amount of damage. The other was that we had no data to go back on, we had assumed there was no hole, learned to map it, saw a hole, and freaked out.
Then, as in AGW, much of the defense of the theories were lame at best. For instance the general defense is that dust is MUCH heavier than the mix of gases we call “air” yet goes into the upper atmosphere. So anyone that thought that simply being heavier means it couldn’t get up there was stupid (along with a sly look your way and a rolling of eyes at the simpleton). Anyone that told me that was *immediately* written off as either a person that didn’t have remotely enough knowledge in fluid dynamic or was simply a liar. The way two fluids (in this case two gasses) interact is *totally* different than they way particulate move in a fluid. If you do not know the difference take a *really* large breath on a dusty road, cough a bit, and move on. Then go take a *really* large breath of freon and then spend the last few seconds of your life in contemplation that they didn’t react the same (hint, freon is enough heavier than “air” that you can’t expell it from your lungs and you VERY quickly suffocate).
Basically really large red flags appear to me when people who know better (I had no illusions that the researcher being interviewed didn’t under stand the difference between fluid dynamics and particulate matter suspended in a fluid – that left lying), if that was the strong argument then you knew it had to be crap otherwise. I also have to note that when people are expecting garbage in and gold out that they are wrong too (or rather their conclusions can net be trusted) – how did we know that it wasn’t a tiny hole and our earlier assumptions were incorrect?
But then, like AGW, within the real walls of scientific thought there is a great deal of skepticism. It is only in the political world that it is a Done Deal (and I do not necessarily mean politics as in govt, but even politics as getting your name in the press, prestige amongst funding agencies, etc). The problem here is that the further they promote junk “science” the harder the eventual fall will be – the hole in the ozone kinda petered out as few really cared about the new CFC regulations, in fact I would generally feel that it *helped* us. AGW is not such a thing.
Do a web search on “Mt. Erebus”…
30 years after ozone hole panic lots of new information emerged that allows to assess this scare as a simplistic overreaction to a very limited and incomplete knowledge. A great natural variability of atmospheric ozone concentrations became obvious, just as powerful negative feedback mechanisms restoring them to this variable norm. If this information was availiable then, Montreal protocol would never be signed. This unneeded massive intervention destroyed a mountain of money which could find much better use.
A general principle can be learned from these two feats of environmental panic, having, indeed, many common features – AGW and ozone depletion: Nature is robust and resilent, it can not be seriously disturbed globally by human intervention and has lots of negative feedback mechanisms to cope with any disturbances. The mere fact that biosphere survived for billions of years against terrible acts of natural pollution and imbalances, becaming in the process more and more stable, is sufficient evidence for this assertion.
Apparently the propellant in my Albuterol emergency asthma inhaler was either cfc based or otherwise deemed harmful to the Earth. As a result, they now use some other propellant, and the cost of those inhalers has shot up from under ten dollars to over thirty. Thanks, environmentalists!
Two important industries, at least, were destroyed by universal ban on production of CFC: refrigeration and airosole cans for thousands of products, from cosmetics to medicines. All alternative propellants and refrigerants turned out to be more expensive and less efficient. Freezers produced in 1970s had 1 cm thick walls; now they use 1 inch standard and need more electricity for the same job. But even more serious were consequencies for air conditioners, since they used more power. Hardly this had any effect on ozone hole: if initial theories were true, these CPC already released into atmosphere must have reside here for centuries, so if they were the reason for ozone hole expansion, it could not have shrunk. But it did, by this mere fact debunking all the theories behind the ban.
Douglas, my new inhalers are also nowhere nearly powerful enough–I find it tough, when really needing my rescue inhaler, to get enough albuterol as far as my lungs. Mostly I end up with a mouthful of mist, while sucking away like mad. The damned environmentalists who made these things mandatory should be made to use them.
One of the academic docs on the FDA panel that voted to remove the *bad* Albuterol propellant for environmental reasons subsequently published a statement of regret, in the New England Journal I think, because the new formulation was too expensive for many of his pediatric asthma patients. I guess he has a Medicaid practice.
Despite all the existential threats that are always about to doom the human race, the freeways keep getting more crowded.
Regarding CFC’s, I agree with Occam above in that there were simple solutions/alternatives that could prevent harm if in fact it existed. But I never understood how CFC’s would somehow only damage the ozone in one area of the world. Wouldn’t it thin equally throughout? Granted, this is a basic observation, and I suppose there are ways to explain it, but all seem like circumlocution.
The history of environmental science and its engineering applications is a history of unintended consequences. From CFCs to pesticide bans (DDT) to the introduction of strange species for pest control (the cane toad in Australia is perhaps the best example), to flood control measures in the Mississippi basin, results have often been very different than what the “brilliant minds” who planned them intended. This history, and the sobering knowledge that we just don’t know that much about how to effectively control complex systems like the environment, should give pause to the current crop of AGW advocates. The old Hippocratic saying of “first, do no harm”, should be their Prime Directive. But, as with most true believers, they’re probably beyond help.
AGW was practically invented to reverse all the actions the environmentalists took in the 1970s to clean up the world. Use biodegradable packaging instead of non-biodegradable packaging that was filling up our landfills? Congratulations, assholes, you’re turning it into greenhouse gases instead of sequestering the products of fossil fuels in the ground where they belong… better spend more money to turn it into biochar, which is engineered to be as non-biodegradable as possible. Add catalytic converters to cars to eliminate smog? Oops, you turned it into carbon dioxide instead, which is going to kill the planet any day now. We need to spend even more money to force people to drive electric cars instead, even though that makes the electrical demand add even MORE CO2 to the atmosphere in the long run, at least until we force all the coal and gas power plants out of business… then we can start rationing electricity, maybe even use our absolute control over the entire supply to force people to obey our enlightened rule over every aspect of life.
And, now, the ozone hole turned out to be a good thing, and we need to simply shut down all refrigeration units everywhere because running them either requires CFCs (which damage the ozone layer) or non-CFCs (which don’t damage the ozone layer), and either case is a BAD THING when you consider you’re powering your AC units and refrigerators with EVIL ELECTRICITY GENERATED BY FOSSIL FUELS.
Is it any surprise that those of us that fought to save the environment from the actual, visible, and scientifically provable devastation caused by toxic wastes, are now concerned about trying to either undo our efforts or take the option we sought to avoid (eliminating all technology because the human race isn’t “worthy”) based on a bunch of computer predictions that might as well be astrological charts for all the accuracy they’ve demonstrated in the past?
> But one of the casualties of the AGW struggle has been my faith not only in the ability of scientists to understand, predict, and intervene successfully in such complex systems, but their credibility and intentions in advocating how to do so.
Which plays into their deeper game. One of the chief objectives of The Postmodern Left is to undermine and destroy all faith in Western Culture, and its heritage of Greek thought and idea.
Undermine science (or your willingness to rely on scientists to inform you of it), and you knock out one more supporting element of the entire Greek-based concept of Truth.
And if there is no Truth, then they are free to redefine “reality” in any way they want.
Postmodern Liberalism is a pernicious, evil, cancerous, and suicidal meme. It cannot and will not allow Western Culture to survive.
The real object to blame here is reporters and the media.
They are the ones who select which scientists to listen to, and which ones to ignore.
They are the ones who elevated cranks and charlatans to the mantle of “reputable scientists”.
The reputable scientists are still out there, and have been saying “Now Just Wait a Minute!!” all along.
> When a certain scientist’s predictions fail, he’s called the greatest scientist ever (Darwin) and his mediocre achievements are (I’m gonna go out on a sarcastic limb here) obamacized.
Oh, GEEZ.
Like I said, the whole goal is to render the entire concept of science untrustworthy and believed specious.
Look, you nits. I grasp that you don’t understand what science even IS, much less how it WORKS.
I also grasp that you fail utterly to understand how it might be that an expert could EASILY refute Twain’s argument (well formed though it is) even though you are FAR TOO CLUELESS to even guess where it might be wrong.
One thing you have to grasp, however — the whole structure of science is interlocking. Knock out one piece, and many others fail as well.
Many of the precepts tying to evolution work into a VAST ARRAY of other sciences, which have FAR more empirical support than evolution does. If you claim evolution is utterly wrong, then you also claim those related sciences are utterly wrong, despite the facts that support THEM. Two more obvious arenas would be epidemiology and forensics (hardly a complete list, but two really obvious ones). If you claim those two don’t work, then why do all the statistics that epidemiology explains actually exist? Why do forensic scientists have sufficient shrift to their say that they can convict people in court?
Science and technology ALL INTERLOCK in ways you cannot begin to grasp. And that they are largely right is blatantly sitting before you.
The computers compute, the TVs televise, the planes fly, THE MAGIC FRIGGIN’ WORKS.
But trust me — just because it’s all magic to you doesn’t mean it’s magic to everyone.
Trust me — there ARE people who actually know what they are talking about. You, and the people who are telling you to listen to THEM don’t.
The charlatans and quacks aren’t the ones promoting evolution, which SAYS NOTHING ABOUT GOD WHATSOEVER.
The charlatans and quacks are the ones attempting to make idiotic arguments that God is REQUIRED to exist because He’s clearly too incompetent to do what He so clearly wants to do, and thus evolution IS NOT capable of explaining where things came from… THAT requires — utterly requires — the existence of a supreme being in its place.
Because the fact is, EXACTLY like those pushing AGW, the ones pushing Creationism have something to gain from your belief.
Me? I believe God is competent.
He clearly does not want to PROVE His existence to us — if He did, then all He need do is open up the skies and go, “Here I Am, Stupid!!”.
QED — for some reason we do not grasp, He wants us to believe in Him based on faith alone.
So the universe He designed CANNOT require Him to exist in order for it to be here, or else He would be proven to exist.
So the universe MUST have an alternative self-explanation built into it which does not presuppose His existence.
All current evidence suggests that that alternative explanation is some variant of evolution. Pieces of it are wrong, but the whole is trending towards accuracy.
One of your chief failings is your inability to grasp that “wrongness” is not, in many cases, an absolute, but a spectrum:
Asimov’s Axiom, after the noted author Isaac Asimov, describe the issue in his book of essays, The Relativity of Wrong. A statement that equates two errors is wronger than wrong when one of the errors is clearly wronger than the other. As Asimov put it:
**** “When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.”
Something that is wronger than wrong is therefore more wrong than something that is not even wrong.
The idea that evolution’s errors make it equate to a flat-out demonstrably dunderheaded notion like ID meets that description — it’s wronger than wrong
Scientific method as we know it has its limitations: it can not in principle adequately describe systems beyond certain complexity treshold. Real complexity is not reducible to primitive elements. This is essentially the same “knowledge problem”, discovered by August von Hayek in application to economics: central planning can not be efficient because nobody can have all necessary information about state of economy. Network of market has this information, but it is distributed among thusands agents and can be proceeded only by this network itself. The same is true in respect of economy of Nature, that is, life in general: no mechanical model which humans can invent give it due treatment. Ways of life, just as ways of markets, are not explainable in a framework of any theory.
I can recall doing a project on the Ozone layer in grade school. My father, eager to help got a hold of the PEMD ozone measurement data from the UN, which had some 50 years of measurment data from airports and other stations all over the world. We did a statistical analysis, and found that the world levels of ozone were well within the statistical variation of the levels over time. There didn’t seem to be any correlation to increasing CFC usage.
Needless to say my project was exiled to the back corner of the room, and was the only one that didn’t get to go to the district competition.