In 1974, a pair of scientists published a paper claiming that chlorofluorocarbons, a compound used in refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosol spray cans, and other devices, migrated into the atmosphere, where they damaged the ozone layer. The ozone layer protects human beings from some of the harmful effects of the sun; the predictable consequence of its loss would be millions of skin cancer cases. The scientists’ work was hotly contested; it eventually gained support in the scientific community, but there were also dissenters. EPA would later regulate the use of CFCs in aerosols, but it was clear that unilateral regulation by the U.S. government would not solve the problem. CFCs manufactured and used in any country could damage the ozone layer.
The American government turned to the Europeans, the other major manufacturers and users of CFCs. Europeans, however, did not trust the science and expressed skepticism about the CFC theory. After further scientific research established that an ozone hole had opened up above Antarctica, and that the likely cause was the emission of CFCs, the Americans dragged the still skeptical Europeans into a treaty regime that tightly regulated the use of CFCs and other ozone-depleting gases. The Montreal Protocol is the most successful environmental treaty ever (the only successful environmental treaty?). The hole has been gradually shrinking and is expected to disappear later this century.
The odd part of this story is that, while not everyone agreed with the scientists who found the link between CFCs and ozone depletion, and that indeed, like everything else, the link was uncertain, albeit likely, governments were able to agree on a treaty regime. The leading supporters of a treaty were those tree-huggers in the Reagan administration, who were persuaded by a cost-benefit analysis that the benefits from a ban on CFC greatly exceeded the costs—with the benefits properly discounted given residual scientific uncertainty. There were ozone skeptics, but no Ozone Skeptics. There was a reasonable scientific theory but no models that got everything right all the time. There was an observable hole (if you believed the scientists who measured it) but the physical processes that linked it to refrigerators and aerosol cans could obviously not be demonstrated to the public.
Where were the Climate Skeptics back then? Or was ozonegate, like asteroidgate, a non-event because the climate is a “complex system” whereas, um…. Why didn’t “hierarchical and individualist” citizens find the Montreal Protocol “threatening to their identities”? (Cf. Dave Hoffman on asteroidgate.) Were scientists more honest in those days? Commentators more sober? The public more credulous?
Tom T. says:
The problem wasn’t treated in a way that would provoke a backlash. It was treated as a scientific problem and not a lifestyle issue. The solution was to ban CFCs and substitute something else to work the same devices. This issue was never framed as an existential crisis requiring a re-ordering of society sufficiently significant to provoke a backlash. There was no tax imposed to mitigate the effects of CFCs.
This isn’t meant as a criticism of the way the current climate-change issues have been handled; it’s obviously easier to substitute away from CFCs than from carbon in general. Also, it’s probably the case that the switch away from CFCs did impose extra manufacturing costs that functioned like a tax. But it’s all about the framing of the issue.
December 7, 2009, 6:58 amPersonFromPorlock says:
Oh, come on. There’s just no comparison between the cost of replacing CFCs and the sort of world-changing regulation the warmists propose. Of course people are giving the latter the gimlet eye… and noticing that the new problem has, strangely, the old solution – more government.
And where were the ‘OzoneGate’ e-mails revealing shoddy practices? Or the shoddy practices themselves, which spawned a dispute on substance long before the e-mails became known?
Really, you’ve got to do better than this if you want to be taken seriously.
December 7, 2009, 7:17 amnewrouter says:
if they really wanted to do science the ban on cfcs would be lifted for 10 years to see if the “ozone hole” returns.
December 7, 2009, 7:36 amPeteP says:
First off, the was no Internet. The ‘alternative media’ didn’t exist like it does today.
Second, it wasn’t a multi-trillion dollar issue
Third, they weren’t running around talking about changing the core lifestyle of Western culture ( such as energy use, diet, etc ).
December 7, 2009, 7:36 amvic says:
mr posner:
coming back for more punishment- do you not learn?
December 7, 2009, 7:55 amG.R. Mead says:
As the treads of irony grind on, crunching all underneath …
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/01/ozone-antarctica
December 7, 2009, 8:06 amBrett says:
Interesting questions. Aside from the differences in the size of the problem itself and the number of interests involved, there is more public dialogue and its characteristics have changed. The public circulation of demands for justification is thicker and much more intense than it was twenty or thirty years ago.
I think that this gives rise to some new heuristics: an increasing expectation that information be made available immediately, freely, and in a form that can be easily accessed, and more subtly, that it be presented in such a fashion that is relatively easily digestible by the non-specialist. To the extent that these conditions don’t obtain, information appears less trustworthy.
It has always been easier and quicker to state a demand for justification (ask a truth claim to be cashed in) than to do scientific research. But now the demand for justification has properties that satisfy the heuristic, but scientific research itself doesn’t.
Just a quick thought; could be wrong.
December 7, 2009, 8:18 amOperationCounterstrike says:
PersonfromPorlock has it right. The CFC lobby is nothing, relative to the energy lobbies.
December 7, 2009, 8:19 amTim McDonald says:
I hate to come across as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist, but it seems to me that about the time all Dow’s patents on R-12 and R-14 were expiring, we had to quit using those due to the hole in the ozone layer. But no problem, Dow labs has this brand new, patented, handy dandy R134a and this new pag oil, which will work fine, and with small modifications can even be used in older units! Step right up to the counter folks, we just happen to have manufactured thousands of tons of this stuff, and have it available to ship for the new model year!
It is not proof, but it sure is a funny coincidence isn’t it?
December 7, 2009, 8:22 amFedya says:
Oh, God, not the f***ing -gate suffix again….
December 7, 2009, 8:22 amCountDuckula says:
I think it’s just another reason that harmful chemicals were easier to phase out. If Dow hadn’t been about to bring new chemicals to market, they would have opposed regulation more forcefully, and it might not have happened, or been slower/weaker.
December 7, 2009, 8:34 amL Nettles says:
Next up DDTgate, but then only poor people died.
December 7, 2009, 8:36 amdearieme says:
I thought at the time that the case for the CFC ban wasn’t proven, but that on balance a ban might well have been the wise thing to do. The evidence wasn’t open-and-shut, but it was far stronger than the AGW evidence, and the cost of action far, far less. I don’t know that the ozone hole theory is yet proven – http://www.theozonehole.com/cosmicray.htm
The other atmospheric schemozzle at about that time was Acid Rain, in particular the claim that Acid Rain with origins in Britain was devastating Scandinavian forests. The evidence struck be as pretty thin; I understand that it is now widely viewed as a hypothesis that’s been rejected. But it’s still cost the British a lot of money.
A salient characteristic of the AGW case is that it’s not only based on very little evidence, but it seems that some of the evidence is fraudulent, thus inviting distrust of all of the evidence. After all, if there’s good evidence, why lie?
December 7, 2009, 8:37 amDavid Schwartz says:
I again have to protest the ridiculousness of this kind of comparison, just as I did with asteroidgate. It’s the equivalent of “you agreed with me when I said two plus two was four, why this completely different response when I claim two plus three is nine?”
How can you possibly try to understand the reasons behind the different responses without looking at the differences in the merits of the claims responded to and the evidence marshalled to support them?
December 7, 2009, 8:38 amM. Gross says:
The whole Ozone Hole “debate” at the AGW debate are actually kind of similar. Both rely on very fragmentary data records (Data for the ozone hole started in 1979) both involved a ban based on this same small data set, and both failed to accurately match predictions:
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/
Also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ozone_cfc_trends.png
Notice how ozone hole size and severity completely fail to correlate with actual changes in CFCs. They’ve already had to revise original estimates as to “ozone hole recovery” upwards significantly, and I suppose if it holds steady for another 10 years, will have to do so again.
Opposition to the Montreal Protocol was somewhat muted since the companies who made R-12 quickly realized the treaty would mean they get to sell new systems all over again (R-134a was not a true drop-in replacement.)
December 7, 2009, 8:39 amMartybegan says:
The ease of the CFC ban can be attributed to the fact that finding replacements, while not insignificant was relatively easy from a scientific and economic standpoint.
What AGW proponents are asking for is a reduction in a process, energy from the combustion of organic compounds (fossil fuels)that is much more difficult to replace without severley impacting our ways of life. In addition a majority of them also do not like the one method of generating electricity that is even remotely capable of replacing fossil fuel based generation, fisson. Currently the sustanible methods of energy production all have flaws, that while with time may be eliminated, still prevent them from taking over for oil/coal/gas power generation.
December 7, 2009, 8:43 amCountDuckula says:
I would disagree that fission is remotely capable of replacing fossil fuels.
December 7, 2009, 8:45 amwm13 says:
Rhetorical, disingenuously asked, questions like Prof. Posner’s are not worth answering, but there actually are a couple questions worth consideration by those who aspire to lead the examined life.
Sociology. When do “scientific” claims win easy, broad acceptance, and when do they not? Compare the “population bomb” and “global warming/climate change” episodes on the one hand, and the CFC/ozone and DDT episodes on the other.
Literary Criticism. What role does “science” play in left/liberal and liberaltarian political rhetoric? Compare the role accorded to “mainstream science” in political discourse concerning malpractice litigation, high school biology curricula, and “medical” marijuana legalization. Can a set of principles be discerned, or is the discourse under examination merely bricolage, using whatever rhetorical tools come to hand?
December 7, 2009, 8:51 amMartybegan says:
France seems to have done a pretty good job. Also note I said for “electricity generation” not as an overall power source. Gasoline/Diesel is still the king when it comes to transport power generation.
December 7, 2009, 8:52 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
I disagree. As long as the questions are asked in good faith, i.e., not continued once they have been satisfactorily answered and not used out of context, it is good to ask seemingly obvious questions. All kinds of holes in what people think they know show up when you do that.
Sunspots, on the other hand …
December 7, 2009, 9:03 amThe Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » OzoneGate and ClimateGate says:
[...] Archives « OzoneGate [...]
December 7, 2009, 9:06 amBrett says:
Maybe they did, and we didn’t hear about it as much. (Rush Limbaugh panned CFC/ozone efforts but his message wasn’t amplified the same way back then.) Or maybe identity formation has changed somewhat. Little bits of information can be included in a political identity (and confirmed with more information) much more quickly now.
December 7, 2009, 9:07 amBlue says:
Professor Posner, I recommend that you read up on the concept of “orders of magnitude.”
December 7, 2009, 9:07 amJim N. says:
What about all the computer scientists that spread fears of Y2K? Remember everything electronic was going to grind to a screeching halt at midnight? Planes falling out of the skies, trains running out of control, computers crashing all over the world. The billions spent on Y2K preparation?
Y2KGate!!!!!!!
December 7, 2009, 9:08 amCountDuckula says:
France has done a “pretty good job” because France is a country of 1/5th our population whose people use, per capita, 60% of the electricity we use. The idea that you could run the United States on 80% nuclear power (as France does) is problematic.
December 7, 2009, 9:19 amLTC John says:
I sure hope I am in error, when I detect a bit of a sneering tone to these remarks. That would be unworthy of the poster and this site.
December 7, 2009, 9:31 amody says:
Co2 in the atmosphere is primarily natural.
CFC’s were primarily anthroprogenic.
That difference is sifgnicant and answers your question.
What we are supposed to believe is that our additional 3% of Co2 in the atmosphere is going to cause the planet to warm.
Also CFC’s have strong greenhouse tendencies. Co2 does not.
You are comparing apples to oranges. Anyone familiar with the science knows this.
December 7, 2009, 9:43 amCDU says:
Actually, the rise in CO2 is about 35% over pre-industrial levels.
December 7, 2009, 9:47 amTamerlane says:
As I remember it, there was a significant scientific controversy over the theory of ozone depletion via CFCs and it played out in the scientific community, the media, and policy making circles. I can remember having heated debates weith friends over the science. The difference was, as other posters have pointed out, that the science was conducted openly and honestly and — since far less money and inconvenience was involved and key industry players could actually make a profit off the treaty — a good international policy was readily adopted.
If Professor Posner is trying to point out how much better scientists and policy makers behaved then than the AGW hysterics are behaving now, then I think he’s made a bit of a point.
December 7, 2009, 9:47 amody says:
Should have said “CFC’s and other minor gases”.
December 7, 2009, 9:47 amlgm says:
At the time right wing Volokh level lawyers were screaming that ending CFCs would devastate the economy, that the science was uncertain, and that the whole thing was a leftist/Marxist plot. They were on the same page with the Wall Street Journal editorials.
It turned out that the science was correct — ending CFCs is closing the ozone hole. The economy survived just fine. The scientists who found the ozone hole and its explanation are still investing their retirement savings in the stock market.
This one example does not prove that conservative lawyers are always wrong and the scientific community is always right. But as Mr. Spock would say, it is “fascinating”.
December 7, 2009, 9:49 amody says:
CDU,
“Actually, the rise in CO2 is about 35% over pre-industrial levels.”
Would you explain how that relates to what I said?
This is the problem with even talking about this issue. You are trying to make it sound as if my statement in inaccurate, but your point is unrelated.
At the best you could have said, “Some scientist think it is around 5%.”
December 7, 2009, 9:51 amCDU says:
You said there has been a three percent increase, I pointed out you were off by about an order of magnitude. That seems pretty related to what you said.
December 7, 2009, 9:56 amody says:
CDU,
I am in a hurry so I don’t mean to be impolite, just quick.
“You said there has been a three percent increase, I pointed out you were off by about an order of magnitude. That seems pretty related to what you said.”
Yes and by doing so you have shown that you don’t understand my point because you are most likely not familiar with the science.
You are still conflating two separate issues.
About 97% of the Co2 in the atmosphere is natural about 3% is man-made.
You can argue that about 95% of it is natural and 5% is man-made if you want and I would only say that there is certainly a margin for error in our measurements.
Your point is still unrelated to mine.
There are plenty of websites out there that will help you to understand the science.
December 7, 2009, 10:10 amDuracomm says:
The policy response to ozone depletion was relatively focused and technically straight forward.
Unlike the policies designed to fight global warming which impact every aspect of society and are, despite the best intentions of their proponents, already causing immense environmental destruction.
December 7, 2009, 10:15 amPalm oil: the biofuel of the future driving an ecological disaster now
gil.o says:
The United States has 14 times the area of France (seventeen, if you include Alaska). Thus you could get about three times as much fission energy (per person) here as in France.
December 7, 2009, 10:32 amAriel says:
There are a couple of key differences between the CFC scenario and the AGW one:
Widespread: CFCs were nowhere near as widespread as carbon. They powered aerosol cans and that’s it. Even assuming that there was no other technological substitute for aerosols, we could easily live without aerosol cans altogether. Sure, we wouldn’t have Pam, but we would be able to adjust.
Ease of substitution: It was relatively easy to substitute away from CFCs, and everyone knew it at the time. That’s not true of carbon.
Amount of control: If you wanted to control every aspect of someone’s life, you wouldn’t want control over their CFC production. On the other hand, if you can control people’s carbon usage, you can control who travels how far. If this were really the crisis it was made out to be, folks would not be flying private jets to Copenhagen. Maybe they would fly commercial, or maybe they would even use this funny technology thing called the Internet to do a video conference. But they’re doing it this way because they know that by having control over carbon, they can determine who travels, and how much they travel. This is about re-establishing aristocracy, not about carbon. The same prescription of more government control was involved when the same group of scientists thought global cooling the issue, suggesting more about their motives.
December 7, 2009, 10:40 amCDU says:
Actually, I didn’t understand your point because you expressed it rather poorly.
December 7, 2009, 10:43 amMark Buehner says:
You can’t possibly be equating the cost of switching from CFCs to reducing our carbon output to levels last seen a century ago? Its about the difference between losing 20 bucks playing bingo and gambling away a corporation playing the markets.
Whats astonishing is how suddenly the alarmists are massively downplaying the level of sacrifice they are asking for. As if the trillions of dollars in taxes and regulations are equivalent to avoiding spray on deodorant or other simply lifestyle changes. Its utterly disingenuous, and in today’s atmosphere on that issue, that’s not a good idea. I believe the metaphorical tar and feathers are being prepared for those who insist on continuing the kabuki theater on this subject. For goodness sake, be straight, we are being asked to make probably the greatest intentional economic sacrifice in the history of civilization. Stop pretending its like going from plastic to paper.
December 7, 2009, 10:49 amody says:
“Actually, I didn’t understand your point because you expressed it rather poorly.”
I would suggest that anyone who understood the science would understand my point.
December 7, 2009, 10:57 amgeokstr says:
Let’s assume just for a moment that you are 100% correct about the inadequcy of nuclear power to fuel our needs for electricity in the US.
Why are you still opposed 100% to even any use of nuclear power at all, as part of an overal energy strategy? The left has no transition strategy whatsoever to get us from our current energy usage pattern to their utopian green paradise that doesn’t require a radical restructuring of the world’s economy and power structure.
If you were actually proposing more free-market solutions to “AGW”, at least in part, we might have some reason to believe that leftwing political ambitions that would never get passed in a messy democracy weren’t driving most of this BS.
December 7, 2009, 11:00 amCurt Fischer says:
I don’t understand your point, and I would suggest that I know far more about the science than the average Joe. So what, exactly, is your point?
December 7, 2009, 11:21 amflyovertard says:
“CDU says:
ody: What we are supposed to believe is that our additional 3% of Co2 in the atmosphere is going to cause the planet to warm.
Actually, the rise in CO2 is about 35% over pre-industrial levels.”
Um, a rise from 280ppm to 390ppm is exactly a change from 0.028% to 0.039% (or 0.03% to 0.04% if you like to round numbers). Percent change by volume is what matters from an overal atmospheric response to forcings.
- Cheerios, with milk, and bananas
December 7, 2009, 11:22 amNathaniel says:
I haven’t read all of the comments, but I’ve read most of them and they tend to focus on the scale of the two problems. Global warming is billed as a much greater threat, and also requires (according to most proponents) far greater sacrifices.
While this is true, I think that it doesn’t really explain the difference in how the two were treated. And the difference I see is this: simplicity.
The thesis of ozone depletion is far simpler. This chemical is bad. When it goes into the atmosphere it destroys the ozone. The end.
Global warming, on the other hand, requires predicting the behavior of a complex system. Complex is the new word for “chaotic”, and what it really means is that there is so much interdependence in the climate that very small differences in input can lead to great differences in output. You know, the whole “butterfly flaps its wings in Rio and a hurricane hits Tokyo” example.
This means that the simplistic claim “Carbon leads to global warming” is much, much harder because rather than a more or less direct connection (as exists between CFCs and ozone) you have a mind-bogglingly complex system sitting between the input and the output.
That complexity is fundamentally the catalyst behind all of the controversy.
December 7, 2009, 11:55 amJohn Moore says:
Flyovertard..
What counts in terms delta in forcing is percent change, which is around 35%.
I have no idea where the 3% number came from.
The .03% to .04% is meaningless in the context of radiative forcing – it is the ratio of those two numbers that counts, not the difference.
December 7, 2009, 12:02 pmlgm says:
I am equating the ratios: (Predicted cost)/(actual cost). You guys had a ratio of about a hundred last time. Here’s guessing you are just as wrong this time.
December 7, 2009, 12:08 pmdearieme says:
“..because France is a country of 1/5th our population whose..”: I often see the excuse made that something that works well elsewhere can’t work in the US because the US is too big. An obvious remedy suggests itself.
December 7, 2009, 12:21 pmPintler says:
I don’t know the relative amounts, but there were other uses: metalworking cutting fluids, fire suppression in computer rooms et al., refrigeration, and probably other I have never heard of.
December 7, 2009, 12:22 pmDavid Sucher says:
Many of the solutions to climate change are worth doing for reasons totally unrelated to climate change such as national security through decreased use of foreign oil, better physical health, more interesting (i.e. walkable) cities and so on.
Odd that there is so much focus on climate change as a driver of lifestyle change when there are so many other good reasons for us to make such adjustments.
December 7, 2009, 12:31 pmDoc Merlin says:
It never actually went away.
December 7, 2009, 12:38 pmflyovertard says:
JM – Yes and no – The delta can be important but not always.
If you throw a marble in the ocean you can say you caused a rise in sea level. If you throw a second marble in the ocean you can say you doubled that rise.
December 7, 2009, 12:40 pmTim says:
And China has over 3x our population. Watch them build modern nuclear plants and laugh at us for not doing so sooner.
If that were true, we wouldn’t need any fancy taxes or social engineering to make it happen–the market would already be moving that direction.
The focus is on the forced change, not the change itself. If someone tells us that they don’t like modern inventions or innovation, we tell them to opt out (Amish) or get over it (everyone else, basically).
December 7, 2009, 12:44 pmOdy says:
Approx 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, 21% is oxygen, and 1% is argon.
Co2? It’s between 100 and 700 parts per million or .01 to .07%.
Of that Co2 about 97% of it in the atmoshpere occurs naturally, the other 3% is man-made.
December 7, 2009, 1:08 pmSara says:
Huh? National security and resource independence are not supplied by markets.
December 7, 2009, 1:44 pmBen Kalafut says:
“Of that Co2 about 97% of it in the atmoshpere occurs naturally, the other 3% is man-made.”
Where do you get that stuff? Ian Plimer? Or did you just make it up? Do you not know how to do the math comparing 280 to 380 PPM?
If the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is up over 30% from pre-industrial levels, your claim doesn’t make a bit of sense.
See http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/how-do-we-know-that-recent-cosub2sub-increases-are-due-to-human-activities-updated/
December 7, 2009, 2:40 pmfor an explanation of how we know where the CO2 in the atmosphere comes from. It isn’t controversial, really. But I suppose if you Just Make Things Up like this, you can distract from the real issues, such as that which Posner just brought up ellipticly…
John Moore says:
The 3% could be right (I *strongly* doubt it), but it wouldn’t make any difference. What we can assert with reasonable confidence is the 37% increase in atmospheric CO2 since the start of the industrial age is caused by man.
It is that 37% increase that is relevant.
December 7, 2009, 3:02 pmTim says:
Huh? National security and resource independence are not supplied by markets.
I don’t know how you can suggest that our use of foreign oil (a market transaction) is a national security issue, so long as they are willing to sell from us and we are willing to buy. It’d seem that two nations, even if they hate each other, would be far less willing to fight if they need each other’s money. This concept of “resource independence,” then, when not required by political necessity (war for example) is nothing but a value judgment on your part, and one that I don’t share with you (and I doubt that any large proportions of libertarians would disagree with me).
Additionally, I suspect there are a lot of people who would disagree with you on the more general idea that markets do not provide national security. Some suggest that interconnected benefits to trade result in a net gain in security. The most famous one I know of is Thomas Friedman’s “Golden Arches Theory” which, while since revised, makes the basic intuitive point I’m trying to make.
If people universally valued green energy, “more interesting” cities, or virtually anything else for that matter, markets would provide it. The trouble with markets is that they give people what they actually want, not what someone like you thinks they ought to want. It would seem that your goal should be changing those people’s minds first.
December 7, 2009, 3:10 pmOdy says:
Ben,
It is ironic that you link to the same site as those people involved in ClimateGate.
“If the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is up over 30% from pre-industrial levels, your claim doesn’t make a bit of sense.”
Still talking about two different things, but I will speak to your issue instead.
So you are certain the ART for Co2 is a well established fact?
So you are certain that we have a model that accurately predicts the natural fluxations of Co2?
December 7, 2009, 3:29 pmAllan Walstad says:
Re “Asteroidgate”, the first few commenters demonstrated pointedly how misplaced the analogy was. Now the same for “Ozonegate,” both by commenters on this thread and by Adler on his post. Enough.
December 7, 2009, 3:30 pmJoshua R. Poulson says:
Scientists were NOT necessarily more honest in those days, but the real hucksters were busy banning DDT.
December 7, 2009, 4:12 pmguy in the veal calf office says:
So now we have a professor deploying “um” as grammatical shorthand for some meaningful point or another (and scare quotes to boot).
I’m hoping that Professor Volokh pulls down the OED and gives us some genesis….
December 7, 2009, 4:35 pmnewrouter says:
if cfcs are really the problem with the “ozone hole” then lifting it’s ban for 10 years should confirm this. if you don’t want to do that then you are not doing science. repeat repeatability
December 7, 2009, 6:01 pmElliot says:
They were there then, and the climate skeptics are here now. The difference in their numbers and intensity is a function of the size, cost, and extent of the remedial action the alarmists demand.
Is there some larger point yu are trying to make?
December 7, 2009, 6:21 pmTim McD says:
OK, atmospheric CO2 and the carbon cycle for dummies. The human portion of the entire carbon cycle accounts for around 3 percent. The contention of the alarmists is that the increase from 280 or to to 370 or so is due to the human portion of the carbon cycle over the past (pick a number) years. The contention of the skeptics is that it may or may not be due to human activity (usually, they claim that the CO2 rise may be a following indicator, caused by the ocean warming – like carbonation outgassing from a soda as it gets warm). The problem is, no one knows. And we really should be finding out! Spending the last 20 years making graphs that scare people but have no relation to reality has not helped any. We need real research and real answers, and we don’t need people who will sex up graphs in charge of getting the answers!
But if yall will quit talking past each other, you will live longer. High blood pressure kills!
December 7, 2009, 6:55 pmBrian K says:
do you believe that HIV causes AIDS?
if so, then how can you reconcile your two statements? there has never been a study done whereby healthy individuals were purposely given HIV to monitor disease progression for obvious ethical/moral reasons.
if not, kudos for consistency, however it does not speak well of your ability to interpret scientific research.
December 7, 2009, 7:45 pmSara says:
I think you are in part naive and in part wrong. Foreign nations sell if it is in their interest and often demand more than just money. The US isn’t just willing to buy, it needs to.
December 7, 2009, 8:16 pmEli Rabett says:
There is considerable confusion about the patent situation.
http://www.imcool.com/articles/aircondition/refrigerant_history.htm
is a useful summary of the early history. Suffice it to say that the original patents on R-12 (or CFC 12) were issued in the 1930s and had long run. What was left in the 1970s were patents on production methods and several of the larger chemical companies each had their own.
Among other stupidities, the ozone issue became entangled in Star Wars. On the one hand opponents of Star Wars claimed that the missile tests would screw up the ozone layer, and the proponents became antis (same thing happened with the Shuttle) which accounts for at least some of the George Marshall Institute’s involvement as well as that of such worthy associated as Fred Singer.
December 8, 2009, 12:40 amSandy Mcgrath says:
The big banks and Wall Street took billions in bailout money from taxpayers and then turned it into huge profit. An insider’s club report showed last week how the big banks made a huge power grab that allowed them to grow unchecked.
Banks strategies – Now I could understand why we never could trust our broker..We can’t beat the big banks, but we can join them.
May 14, 2010, 2:53 pm