Well, in economical theory a free market will ensure that the company/person that the co2-unit is most valuable for, get's it.
Does it? Think about how these proposals for emissions CO2-units are to be handled: they are handed out to the current polluters, presumably for nothing or a small fee. Those polluters can sell them, reaping an unearned profit (monopoly rent). A new company with a more-efficient process would have to wage a political fight to get CO2-units before they could go into fair competition with the old, less-efficient company; the alternative is to pay the old company a fee for doing nothing. This restricts entry into the market and creates further inefficiencies.
You should realize that selling or buying actually creates value.
Creating monopolies by government fiat destroys value.
Alt 1: No trade. US = no profit. Japan = 2 x 100 = 200$.
Alt 2: Trade. US buys 100 co2-unit for 300$. Japaneese earns 300$. US-firm earns (100 x 10) - (300) = 700$. Overall: 1000$.
You forgot the unearned $300 paid to the Japanese firm. Situation with $3/unit carbon tax:
Japanese firm's profit goes to -1$/product, and goes out of business.
American firm picks up the Japanese firm's market share, making $7/product over greater volume. Total economic output increases by $8 times the Japanese firm's former market size.
It is the elimination of the least-efficient producers (creative destruction) which is the beauty of the tax scheme. Subsidies are crippling.
Also, the protocol is not so socialistic because it creates incentive for nations to reduce emissions.
No, it's socialist because it creates an artificial (and easily forged, mind you) good, exchangeable for cash, and attempts to distribute it on a per-capita basis. Why is that so hard to understand?
While dictatorships can sell (if no embargos exist) extra quotas for the amount of emissions they have cut, morally concious countries don't have to do business with them at all.
So the morally-unencumbered countries buy those credits instead, perhaps at a discount. The dictators still get money for doing nothing, just like they skim international aid payments today.
Kyoto Protocol just creates another way the rest of the world can motivate even dictatorships to cut emissions. It's a carrot and stick scheme for the whole world.
All clue-challenged people repeat after me:
UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
Keep saying this until it finally dawns on you that you can create the same economic incentive (even in dictatorships!) without adding incentives for corruption, rent-seeking and other dysfunctional behaviors.
What you want to do for the benefit of the world is to drive production to those producers who create the least damage in the process; that's what comparative advantage is all about. International cross-subsidies are irrelevant to this and only add opportunities for fraud and corruption, undermining the legitimacy of the system; they should be avoided like the plague.
I don't see how the creation of a redundant international currency (carbon emissions credits) and the socialist distribution of same is a good thing.
... if a developing nation can manage to keep its emissions under their limit, they can "sell" the extra amounts on the global market to nations that are having trouble meeting their limit.
My rebuttal to this is mostly contained in this response.
The Kyoto Protocol creates a capitalistic incentive for the reduction of pollution where there were none.
So does a straight $X/ton carbon-emissions tax. What is the international subsidy regime good for?
With this capitalistic incentive, developing nations will be as encouraged as first world nations to force pollution restrictions on factories, even those owned by global companies.
The corrupt governments of developing nations will also be encouraged to
Sell credits that their people need, for the benefit of the elite (think Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Il).
Fail to account for emissions, selling something they don't have anymore (and who's to know?).
Graft and corruption are the poisons of the third world, and you want to make MORE opportunities for them? You're either hopelessly naive, insane or part of the corrupt class yourself.
How does this excuse the creation of an international regime which has the direct consequence of paying them (more) to do it? Remember, we used to have economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa; would you want your money going to pay Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or whatever band of thugs is running Ivory Coast?
A CO2-market will make sure that the company that can make most of a co2-unit, buys it.
A uniform carbon tax does that too. What is the trans-national subsidy good for?
It's the best way for the world as a whole.
That doesn't follow from anything I've ever seen on the subject. There are a lot of people who think an international welfare regime is a good thing, but their arguments in its favor on the basis of either climate policy or economic policy ring false. It's a cover for another agenda, and that's why it meets resistance.
Kyoto-style restrictions on nations create incentives to move production to countries where there are unfilled quotas, no matter how much more wasteful the move might be. If production of widgets in the USA emits.75 tons CO2 per thousand and production in Botswana emits 2.5 tons per thousand, quotas could still force a producer to move to Botswana.
This lies at the core of the problem with Kyoto: it attempts to create a socialist "one person, one unit" system regardless of comparative advantage. The other problem is the international trading scheme for emissions; dictators in impovershed nations (with little carbon emission) would have one more way to collect fees from rest of the world and continue oppressing their people. The appropriate fix would be a mandated world-wide carbon emissions tax which is collected by each government, the level to be set by treaty. Anything else leaves perverse incentives which will be abused, no matter how much the socialists (aka "progressives") believe otherwise ("reality-based", my ass).
Any scientist worth anything would at least look for some evidence for or against rather than dismissing out of hand like the lot of you.
Really? Do you think that scientists go looking for evidence in favor of geocentrism every time somebody raises a claim that Earth is unique and thus central? How about phlogiston? Spontaneous generation? "The Great Flood"?
There are a few points which scientists have to use to concentrate attention on those things that are actually worthwhile:
Untestable claims are worthless; they cannot lead to further discoveries.
Claims which have been tested and failed are complete wastes of time. (This is not the same as having been tested and found ambiguous, such as effects below the threshold of current systems of measurement, e.g. gravity waves.)
Any and all evidence must be examined closely to be certain that it is not due to confounding effects or merely experimental error.
Without that you wind up going nowhere.
Science is supposed to be a tool for discovery, not a religion like some of you make it out to be.
Science is a mechanism for uncovering new knowledge by generating hypotheses for test, testing them, and refining hypotheses based on the results. A hypothesis such as "psychic teleportation" which has no known physical mechanism and no existence proof (which would prove that there are unknown mechanisms at work) is of no further interest to science; these claims have been raised, examined, found wanting and dismissed.
Are all studies that reach a dead end a waste of money or do they provide us with valuable insight?
There is no point in repeating research which has reached negative conclusions just because some people wish that reality was not as it is. This goes double for leeches who just want to suck at the public teat.
Conversely, if we used greenhouse gasse to trap the sun's heat, if the sun drops in output, there will be less to trap, and the "warmest" blanket of greenhouse gasses will not be enough to keep the earth warm.
Maybe not; I've read (though I cannot find via Google) that the Mars Society has investigated the possibility of using gases such as SF6 to create a runaway greenhouse effect on the Red Planet. If we can create a substantial atmosphere on that cold orb using 20th century chemistry, we can certainly keep Earth warm enough.
On the other hand, if the Sun was so variable that we needed such measures, I don't think I'd want to use something that takes as long to break down as sulfur hexafluoride. Orbital mirrors would do the job just as well, give more light for useful purposes such as photosynthesis, and could be deactivated in hours to years rather than decades.
The problem with using "reactive watts" is that somebody is going to add them to real watts to get a faulty answer; 800 watts plus 600 VARs is 1000 volt-amps, not 1400.
So far as I'm concerned, anyone who's sizing a wire either knows this distinction and uses it correctly or is practicing outside their area of competence. (Yes, IAAEE.)
No, that's 200 volt-amps reactive, or VARs. Watts are always real power, because a watt is a joule per second and joules are real, not imaginary, energy.
If you really want to get confused, exchange watts and VARs in some critical calculation. And don't try to build anything based on the results, okay?
Letting two FBI agents, one on a criminal investigation and one on a terrorism investigation, share information -- does that strike you as controversial?
It should. It means that the terrorism investigator can pull all kinds of information without reasonable cause and hand it to the criminal investigator. This effectively guts the erstwhile Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search.
This would be one thing if the ability to use such information was strictly limited to terrorism cases, but it's not. It essentially gives government a whole new set of tools to get anyone they really want to get, and they don't even have to hide the wiretaps and other (once illegal) searches and intercepts any more.
If the cost of saving your life is more than the future profits they'll make off your health insurance payments, it's in the HMO's interest to let you die.
Change a couple of words in that and see how it turns out:
If the cost of saving your life is more than the future taxes we'll make off you, it's in the government's interest to let you die.
Disturbingly true, isn't it? Especially for the old and the highly impaired.
You can argue that the HMO, by not having to take life-insurance, Social Security disability and death benefits and the like into account is just externalizing some of the costs of its decisions. This is true, but it does not mean that it is not rational or even essential to cut losses; you could make the HMO pay those excess costs and you'd still have a point where it makes the most sense to withdraw care.
People already do that when they're paying their own bills; they may have the money for treatment, but they'd rather leave it to their family. This is not so different.
The question is, is it worth creating a market for abortions just to further the research?
I can't tell if you're brainwashed or just trolling. If that's your honest picture of what embryonic stem-cell research entails, somebody has lied to you up, down and sideways.
Here's what really happens:
Woman is treated with ovary-stimulating drugs to get several ova at once.
Ova are removed from the body using a needle.
Ova are fertilized in a Petri dish.
Fertilized ova are allowed to divide and are observed for proper development.
At this point the process can take one of 3 branches:
The dividing ball of cells, now called a blastocyst, is implanted in a woman's uterus. (It may be the same woman, maybe not.)
The blastocyst, which has never been inside a woman and has never been part of a pregnancy (no abortion even possible) is broken up for its component cells.
The blastocyst may be treated with cryoprotectants and frozen for later use.
IVF procedures usually yield several ova at once (I believe the average is 6), and most people don't want to risk triplets or more so doctors only implant one or two blastocysts at a time. The rest get parked in liquid nitrogen so that the woman doesn't have to go through the ovulation procedure again. Once the couple has had the children they want there are often frozen blastocysts left over. Something has to happen to them eventually, and that something usually involves thawing out and going down the drain. Donating a few thousand a year to laboratories for stem-cell research is certainly better than just being flushed.
But as for your comment about other fissonable materials...as far as I am aware, we only know how to use uranium and plutonium.
We also know how to use thorium; Th-232 can be bred to U-233 (a fissionable isotope) in a light-water reactor. The breeding ratio (the amount of fuel generated per unit burned) is about 1.02 according to what I've read, but that's enough to make one reactor self-fuelling as long as you have thorium to feed it.
I consider that a solved problem; what interests me right now are the prospects for bootstrapping a thorium breeder with some other fuel.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Unibodies are stronger and stiffer than a body to be mounted on a frame, because the unibody is the sole structure for the vehicle. Whether the roof pillars are strong enough to withstand a rollover on either type is another matter.
There's a simple (and cleaner, albeit not cheap) alternative to mountains of gypsum:
Convert powerplants to IGCC.
Cold-scrub fuel gas, removing sulfur as H2S.
Oxidize H2S to elemental sulfur.
Melt sulfur with hot water and pump into deep rock formations (maybe along with CO2 as hot soda water).
And it would be gone. Would that make you happy?
You want a little education? I'll balance it.
on
Can Coal Be Green?
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've been studying the matter lately, and this is about what I get:
Coal was, is, and will be the nastiest large-scale source of energy we've got.
The USA has no short-term alternatives to coal to supply electric power.
Oxygen-blown IGCC systems are a way (possibly THE way) to drastically reduce the amount of nasty stuff released by coal combustion.
The molten ash is quenched and removed as a foamy, glassy substance.
Sulfur (as H2S) and about 30% of the carbon of the coal (as CO2) is removed by cold gas scrubbing, which allows that fraction of the carbon to be sequestered at minimal cost.
Mercury emissions are reduced by about 50% without other measures. (AFAIK nobody has proposed activated-carbon scrubbing of the fuel gas to remove mercury; if it works under reducing conditions, it should be even more effective to scrub a small volume of fuel gas than a huge volume of combustion gas.)
Repowering a steam plant via IGCC nearly triples the output and raises the thermal efficiency by about 20%.
We better stabilize CO2 or we are going to seriously mess up the environment. We already have examples of difficulties; downwind of major cities the concentration hits 600 ppm, and nasty species like ragweed are "fertilized" much better than more desirable species. Now imagine the whole world being like that...
Of course we can regulate it away. The CO2-free alternatives are there, all we have to do is make the emitter of each kg of CO2 pay enough to pay for its removal and the problem will solve itself.
The people who make their money from coal are going to fight such measures tooth and nail, and they have the money to obstruct and delay for decades. And don't forget setting up web sites to propagandize!
That's a partial list, but it should give food for thought.
I leave lots of room, only to have some idiot in a Honda Accord or Civic pull out right in front of me. Do you want to die? I don't want to kill you, but if you hit your brakes, I won't have much of a choice.
Speaking as a driver of a car slightly bigger than an Accord, I would much rather be in front of you than behind you. When I am in front of you, my vision is not blocked by your over-height vehicle and oh-so-macho dually fender flares, and my dodging options in dicey situations include going ahead rather than being stuck in a sandwich by your low acceleration and trailing traffic.
What really irritates me is when people towing trailers refuse to obey the posted lane restrictions, causing huge traffic backups by bottling up traffic in all lanes to their speed. Those people ought to be pulled over and have their keys confiscated until the end of rush hour.
Considering that we didn't start measuring the biggest hole, over Antartica, until 1970, that's a huge jump to say that we know for certain the hole was man-made.
Measuring the entire hole requires satellite scanners, which of course we didn't have until the launch of Nimbus 4. But the measurements of Antarctic ozone go back to 1956, and measurements of ozone over the Northern hemisphere go back much further; the discovery of the ozone layer was around 1880, and the measurements of atmospheric ozone go back to the 1920's. We know something has changed since then, even if we can't completely quantify it because historical data isn't as extensive as we have today. Denying it is only possible if you are ignorant or dishonest.
We also have excellent models for the mechanisms of ozone destruction, including laboratory verification of catalysis on the surfaces of droplets and ice crystals. If you don't think that this meets the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, let alone a preponderance of the evidence, is there anything that could possibly convince you? Anything?
I accept something as a fact when the evidence in its favor is such that it is unreasonable not to. Ozone depletion is one of those things.
I suggest you read this page first.
He's written similar screeds before. But consider his qualifications to make such claims. Look at his bio; he's an engineer, not a researcher. He writes to persuade and entertain, not for peer-reviewed publication.
He may even write to mislead. Looking at that page, I notice a hugely incorrect graph about halfway down. It's titled "Atmospheric sources of chlorine", which is misleading for two reasons:
What gets into the atmosphere is irrelevant; what matters is what gets to the stratosphere.
Most of those sources emit chloride, not CFCs or even elemental chlorine.
Those two points are crucial, because chloride is very soluble in water (another substance that is ubiquitous in the troposphere, as well as constituting the majority of volcanic gas emissions) and washes out very quickly. Anything which doesn't get to the stratosphere or falls out again quickly isn't going to damage ozone very much. The reason that CFC's are hazardous is that they are not water-soluble and are so stable that almost nothing in the lower atmosphere can break them down; they can diffuse past the cold-trap which keeps the stratosphere so dry and then release their halogens in elemental rather than ionic form into the ozone layer itself. The reason we have moved to HCFC's is that molecules with hydrogen can be broken down in the troposphere and won't accumulate indefinitely.
Don't believe me? Here's the graph of CFC-11 concentration, (see the bottom of the page) and this page (tables 4, 5 and 6) details the reasons why the statements made by Hogan are wrong.
But hey, if you want to follow an ozone-depletion denialist or a platygean I can't stop you. But I will point at you and laugh at every opportunity.
Of course, you could always go back to using sulfur dioxide or ammonia as the working fluid in your refrigerator (yeah, right); CFC's were used because they didn't kill people when they leaked. Some European hardware, not being constrained by ill-considered safety regulations as we are in the USA, uses isobutane to this very day.
Aerosol spray cans with fluorocarbon propellants were invented in 1943, but didn't really take off until 1953 with the invention of the modern valve by Robert Abplanalp (mis-spelled on that page). CFC propellants were banned in the US in 1978, a mere 35 years later.
26 years after that, we are still having problems from our carelessness. Do you begin to see the virtue of caution?
Eastern Europe (the Soviet Bloc) used to have the worst pollution in the world. We are talking cities in twilight at mid-day because of coal smoke, things like that. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union most of the sources of this pollution have closed, and the environment has improved radically.
China has not had this improvement. Beijing still relies on coal burned in individual coal stoves for domestic space heat, and some cities emit so much soot that the lack of light reduces agricultural production downwind.
Basically, China is a pretty sucky place to live. There were times when it was much better than the West (like the Dark Ages), but this isn't one of them.
If I have the details right, global warming is a threat to ozone for two reasons:
As the IR opacity of the atmosphere goes up, the depth of the troposphere (the part where heat is transferred by convection instead of radiation) increases. This cuts into the size of the stratosphere and decreases the amount of air in it, and thus the ozone it can hold.
As the IR opacity of the troposphere increases, the stratosphere cools and conditions become more favorable for the formation of the ice crystals which are the most damaging catalysts for the destruction of ozone.
Aside from the expense of making the attempt (can you imagine the size of the water sprays you'd need to cool volcanic steam emissions and keep them from getting into the stratosphere?), it just isn't that important. Volcanic emissions of sulfur aerosols fall out of the atmosphere within months, and their impact is quite limited; free halogens liberated from halocarbons have residence times measured in years, if not decades.
Slashdot Mirror
Japanese firm's profit goes to -1$/product, and goes out of business.
American firm picks up the Japanese firm's market share, making $7/product over greater volume. Total economic output increases by $8 times the Japanese firm's former market size.
It is the elimination of the least-efficient producers (creative destruction) which is the beauty of the tax scheme. Subsidies are crippling.
- UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
- UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
- UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
- UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
- UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
- UNIFORM $X/TON CARBON TAX
Keep saying this until it finally dawns on you that you can create the same economic incentive (even in dictatorships!) without adding incentives for corruption, rent-seeking and other dysfunctional behaviors.What you want to do for the benefit of the world is to drive production to those producers who create the least damage in the process; that's what comparative advantage is all about. International cross-subsidies are irrelevant to this and only add opportunities for fraud and corruption, undermining the legitimacy of the system; they should be avoided like the plague.
- Sell credits that their people need, for the benefit of the elite (think Robert Mugabe or Kim Jong Il).
- Fail to account for emissions, selling something they don't have anymore (and who's to know?).
Graft and corruption are the poisons of the third world, and you want to make MORE opportunities for them? You're either hopelessly naive, insane or part of the corrupt class yourself.This lies at the core of the problem with Kyoto: it attempts to create a socialist "one person, one unit" system regardless of comparative advantage. The other problem is the international trading scheme for emissions; dictators in impovershed nations (with little carbon emission) would have one more way to collect fees from rest of the world and continue oppressing their people. The appropriate fix would be a mandated world-wide carbon emissions tax which is collected by each government, the level to be set by treaty. Anything else leaves perverse incentives which will be abused, no matter how much the socialists (aka "progressives") believe otherwise ("reality-based", my ass).
There are a few points which scientists have to use to concentrate attention on those things that are actually worthwhile:
- Untestable claims are worthless; they cannot lead to further discoveries.
- Claims which have been tested and failed are complete wastes of time. (This is not the same as having been tested and found ambiguous, such as effects below the threshold of current systems of measurement, e.g. gravity waves.)
- Any and all evidence must be examined closely to be certain that it is not due to confounding effects or merely experimental error.
Without that you wind up going nowhere. Science is a mechanism for uncovering new knowledge by generating hypotheses for test, testing them, and refining hypotheses based on the results. A hypothesis such as "psychic teleportation" which has no known physical mechanism and no existence proof (which would prove that there are unknown mechanisms at work) is of no further interest to science; these claims have been raised, examined, found wanting and dismissed. There is no point in repeating research which has reached negative conclusions just because some people wish that reality was not as it is. This goes double for leeches who just want to suck at the public teat.On the other hand, if the Sun was so variable that we needed such measures, I don't think I'd want to use something that takes as long to break down as sulfur hexafluoride. Orbital mirrors would do the job just as well, give more light for useful purposes such as photosynthesis, and could be deactivated in hours to years rather than decades.
So far as I'm concerned, anyone who's sizing a wire either knows this distinction and uses it correctly or is practicing outside their area of competence. (Yes, IAAEE.)
If you really want to get confused, exchange watts and VARs in some critical calculation. And don't try to build anything based on the results, okay?
This would be one thing if the ability to use such information was strictly limited to terrorism cases, but it's not. It essentially gives government a whole new set of tools to get anyone they really want to get, and they don't even have to hide the wiretaps and other (once illegal) searches and intercepts any more.
If the cost of saving your life is more than the future taxes we'll make off you, it's in the government's interest to let you die.
Disturbingly true, isn't it? Especially for the old and the highly impaired.
You can argue that the HMO, by not having to take life-insurance, Social Security disability and death benefits and the like into account is just externalizing some of the costs of its decisions. This is true, but it does not mean that it is not rational or even essential to cut losses; you could make the HMO pay those excess costs and you'd still have a point where it makes the most sense to withdraw care.
People already do that when they're paying their own bills; they may have the money for treatment, but they'd rather leave it to their family. This is not so different.
Here's what really happens:
- Woman is treated with ovary-stimulating drugs to get several ova at once.
- Ova are removed from the body using a needle.
- Ova are fertilized in a Petri dish.
- Fertilized ova are allowed to divide and are observed for proper development.
At this point the process can take one of 3 branches:- The dividing ball of cells, now called a blastocyst, is implanted in a woman's uterus. (It may be the same woman, maybe not.)
- The blastocyst, which has never been inside a woman and has never been part of a pregnancy (no abortion even possible) is broken up for its component cells.
- The blastocyst may be treated with cryoprotectants and frozen for later use.
IVF procedures usually yield several ova at once (I believe the average is 6), and most people don't want to risk triplets or more so doctors only implant one or two blastocysts at a time. The rest get parked in liquid nitrogen so that the woman doesn't have to go through the ovulation procedure again. Once the couple has had the children they want there are often frozen blastocysts left over. Something has to happen to them eventually, and that something usually involves thawing out and going down the drain. Donating a few thousand a year to laboratories for stem-cell research is certainly better than just being flushed.Except to the blind zealots.
I consider that a solved problem; what interests me right now are the prospects for bootstrapping a thorium breeder with some other fuel.
Sorry, but you're wrong. Unibodies are stronger and stiffer than a body to be mounted on a frame, because the unibody is the sole structure for the vehicle. Whether the roof pillars are strong enough to withstand a rollover on either type is another matter.
- Convert powerplants to IGCC.
- Cold-scrub fuel gas, removing sulfur as H2S.
- Oxidize H2S to elemental sulfur.
- Melt sulfur with hot water and pump into deep rock formations (maybe along with CO2 as hot soda water).
And it would be gone. Would that make you happy?- Coal was, is, and will be the nastiest large-scale source of energy we've got.
- The USA has no short-term alternatives to coal to supply electric power.
- Oxygen-blown IGCC systems are a way (possibly THE way) to drastically reduce the amount of nasty stuff released by coal combustion.
- The molten ash is quenched and removed as a foamy, glassy substance.
- Sulfur (as H2S) and about 30% of the carbon of the coal (as CO2) is removed by cold gas scrubbing, which allows that fraction of the carbon to be sequestered at minimal cost.
- Mercury emissions are reduced by about 50% without other measures. (AFAIK nobody has proposed activated-carbon scrubbing of the fuel gas to remove mercury; if it works under reducing conditions, it should be even more effective to scrub a small volume of fuel gas than a huge volume of combustion gas.)
- Repowering a steam plant via IGCC nearly triples the output and raises the thermal efficiency by about 20%.
- We better stabilize CO2 or we are going to seriously mess up the environment. We already have examples of difficulties; downwind of major cities the concentration hits 600 ppm, and nasty species like ragweed are "fertilized" much better than more desirable species. Now imagine the whole world being like that...
- Of course we can regulate it away. The CO2-free alternatives are there, all we have to do is make the emitter of each kg of CO2 pay enough to pay for its removal and the problem will solve itself.
- The people who make their money from coal are going to fight such measures tooth and nail, and they have the money to obstruct and delay for decades. And don't forget setting up web sites to propagandize!
That's a partial list, but it should give food for thought.What really irritates me is when people towing trailers refuse to obey the posted lane restrictions, causing huge traffic backups by bottling up traffic in all lanes to their speed. Those people ought to be pulled over and have their keys confiscated until the end of rush hour.
We also have excellent models for the mechanisms of ozone destruction, including laboratory verification of catalysis on the surfaces of droplets and ice crystals. If you don't think that this meets the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, let alone a preponderance of the evidence, is there anything that could possibly convince you? Anything?
I accept something as a fact when the evidence in its favor is such that it is unreasonable not to. Ozone depletion is one of those things.
He's written similar screeds before. But consider his qualifications to make such claims. Look at his bio; he's an engineer, not a researcher. He writes to persuade and entertain, not for peer-reviewed publication.He may even write to mislead. Looking at that page, I notice a hugely incorrect graph about halfway down. It's titled "Atmospheric sources of chlorine", which is misleading for two reasons:
- What gets into the atmosphere is irrelevant; what matters is what gets to the stratosphere.
- Most of those sources emit chloride, not CFCs or even elemental chlorine.
Those two points are crucial, because chloride is very soluble in water (another substance that is ubiquitous in the troposphere, as well as constituting the majority of volcanic gas emissions) and washes out very quickly. Anything which doesn't get to the stratosphere or falls out again quickly isn't going to damage ozone very much. The reason that CFC's are hazardous is that they are not water-soluble and are so stable that almost nothing in the lower atmosphere can break them down; they can diffuse past the cold-trap which keeps the stratosphere so dry and then release their halogens in elemental rather than ionic form into the ozone layer itself. The reason we have moved to HCFC's is that molecules with hydrogen can be broken down in the troposphere and won't accumulate indefinitely.Don't believe me? Here's the graph of CFC-11 concentration, (see the bottom of the page) and this page (tables 4, 5 and 6) details the reasons why the statements made by Hogan are wrong.
But hey, if you want to follow an ozone-depletion denialist or a platygean I can't stop you. But I will point at you and laugh at every opportunity.
My misteak [sic]
Of course, you could always go back to using sulfur dioxide or ammonia as the working fluid in your refrigerator (yeah, right); CFC's were used because they didn't kill people when they leaked. Some European hardware, not being constrained by ill-considered safety regulations as we are in the USA, uses isobutane to this very day.
26 years after that, we are still having problems from our carelessness. Do you begin to see the virtue of caution?
China has not had this improvement. Beijing still relies on coal burned in individual coal stoves for domestic space heat, and some cities emit so much soot that the lack of light reduces agricultural production downwind.
Basically, China is a pretty sucky place to live. There were times when it was much better than the West (like the Dark Ages), but this isn't one of them.
- As the IR opacity of the atmosphere goes up, the depth of the troposphere (the part where heat is transferred by convection instead of radiation) increases. This cuts into the size of the stratosphere and decreases the amount of air in it, and thus the ozone it can hold.
- As the IR opacity of the troposphere increases, the stratosphere cools and conditions become more favorable for the formation of the ice crystals which are the most damaging catalysts for the destruction of ozone.
HTH. HAND.Aside from the expense of making the attempt (can you imagine the size of the water sprays you'd need to cool volcanic steam emissions and keep them from getting into the stratosphere?), it just isn't that important. Volcanic emissions of sulfur aerosols fall out of the atmosphere within months, and their impact is quite limited; free halogens liberated from halocarbons have residence times measured in years, if not decades.