NationStates Jolt Archive

For serious players, please follow this link:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal/start=65

and add your support for the banning of Chlorofluorocarbons. The amount of strain they cause the ozone layer each year is frightening.

Thankyou

If you wish to, you can discuss your opinions on the topic in this thread. I will be happy to answer any questions you have.

Hello dog :D :D :D :shock: sorry

Srry Mutant Dog but banning those would only work for the U.N and i think thats something people don't understand. The majority of the nations are NOT in the U.N. Therefor banning chloroflourocarbons would only cut donw a small bit of Ozone depletion but wouldn't make any big dent.

Even if the only difference this would make to the environment is a small dent, it is still worth passing the proposal. Anyway, there are enough nations in the UN for this to make some kind of impression.

Digital World Declares that it will leave the UN if this comes to pass.

i think it'll make a difference even if it is a little one it should still be banned.

This is not a U.N thing, it is an international thing not a U.N thing :wink:

This is not a U.N thing, it is an international thing not a U.N thing :wink:

Proposals like this are the reason I won't join the UN. CFC's are not the problem. The "hole in the ozone layer" has always been there. Just because we recently discovered it doesn't mean that any human activity caused it. Actually, if the link were real, there are enough ozone (O3) molecules created at ground level to counteract the effect. Ozone is smog.

You are asking all UN member nations to completely gut their industries. There will be no more refrigeration. No more air conditioning. No more manufacturing of any kind. This is completely insane.

On second thought, I hope it passes. I can start smuggling refrigerants into all UN countries for a tidy profit.

Repeated Post.

Great servers. Ditto.

Digital World Declares that it will leave the UN if this comes to pass.

Go ahead and support this. I have a proposal for you. If this passes, I will smuggle CFC's into your country, albeit at an inflated price. You can sell electronic components to UN nations at extremely inflated prices, because they will not be able to produce them domestically. We will both win big. All you have to do is look the other way when the big cargo ships from Goryville show up.

Proposals like this are the reason I won't join the UN. CFC's are not the problem. The "hole in the ozone layer" has always been there. Just because we recently discovered it doesn't mean that any human activity caused it. Actually, if the link were real, there are enough ozone (O3) molecules created at ground level to counteract the effect. Ozone is smog.

I didn't know much about the ozone layer beyond the eco-crap shoveled down our throats as schoolchildren. In an effort to determine if your claims are true, I did some research and checking around. The result?

You haven't a bloody clue what you're speaking of.

First, the ozone hole (according to the EPA, really a thinning of at least 70%, or less than 200 Dobson units) in the Antarctic has not always been there; ice cores and isotope analysis of Antarctic ice cors has confirmed this. Second, this helpful graph indicates the changes in average ozone concentration in the Antarctic which, absent human activity, would not have occurred:

http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/tour_images/total_ozone.gif

Third, the following site explains the processes that create stratospheric ozone:

http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/part1.html

Ozone is a heavy gas, heavier than atmospheric oxygen and heavier than the nitrogen that comprises most of our atmosphere. It has somewhat of a tendency to sink and is kept in the upper atmosphere mostly by the virtue of the reactions that occur in the ozone layer region and stratospheric winds. Tropospheric ozone does absolutely no good- it can't reach the upper atmosphere because it's too heavy, it's too low to adequately protect against ultraviolet radiation, and it causes heavy damage to vegetation, skin, and lungs, and is actually a carcinogen due to the free radical each ozone molecule releases when it breaks down.

You are asking all UN member nations to completely gut their industries. There will be no more refrigeration. No more air conditioning. No more manufacturing of any kind. This is completely insane.

American industry does fine with restricted CFCs. CFCs are not necessary in industrial processes; they're nice, certainly, but hardly necessary. The EPA has some very, very handy information on that topic:

http://www.epa.gov/ozone/snap/lists/index.html

So, the ozone hole is natural. It grows and shrinks. To assueme that it is man-caused is arrogant. The United States does not do fine without CFC's. They are commonly used to clean electronic components, and used as refrigerants. R-12 used to be the CFC of choice, but it has been outlawed and replaced with R-134a. R-134a is still a CFC, just "not as bad" as R-12. Almost all refrigerants are CFC's, except ammonia. I do not want an ammonia refrigerator in my house thank you very much.

Besides, most "experts" think the hole has been there longer than CFC's have been in use.

CFC's are heavy. There is quite a bit of ozone at ground level. If ozone and CFC's react as stated by the EPA, then why doesn't the reaction occur at ground level?

My country will not stop producing any chemicals, and we will make them available for export to any UN countries that need them should this proposal pass.

The EPA is hardly a government agency I would like to quote. They are a bit of a joke. It is interesting to note that R-12 was outlawed just as the patent on that particular chemical was about to expire. R-134a, however, is patented.

If any of you would have taken this seriously enough to give reason to what you are posting, you would have checked multiple sources of information, instead of just one internet site.

Ozone (O3 : 3 oxygen atoms) occurs naturally in the atmosphere.

The earth's atmosphere is composed of several layers. We live in the "Troposphere" where most of the weather occurs; such as rain, snow and clouds. Above the troposphere is the "Stratosphere"; an important region in which effects such as the Ozone Hole and Global Warming originate. Supersonic jet airliners such as Concorde fly in the lower stratosphere whereas subsonic commercial airliners are usually in the troposphere. The narrow region between these two parts of the atmosphere is called the "Tropopause".

Ozone forms a layer in the stratosphere, thinnest in the tropics (around the equator) and denser towards the poles. The amount of ozone above a point on the earth's surface is measured in Dobson units (DU) - typically ~260 DU near the tropics and higher elsewhere, though there are large seasonal fluctuations. It is created when ultraviolet radiation (sunlight) strikes the stratosphere, dissociating (or "splitting") oxygen molecules (O2) to atomic oxygen (O). The atomic oxygen quickly combines with further oxygen molecules to form ozone:

O2 + hv -> O + O (1)
O + O2 -> O3 (2)
(1/v = wavelength < ~ 240 nm)
It's ironic that at ground level, ozone is a health hazard - it is a major constituent of photochemical smog. However, in the stratosphere we could not survive without it. Up in the stratosphere it absorbs some of the potentially harmful ultra-violet (UV) radiation from the sun (at wavelengths between 240 and 320 nm) which can cause skin cancer and damage vegetation, among other things.

Although the UV radiation splits the ozone molecule, ozone can reform through the following reactions resulting in no net loss of ozone:

O3 + hv -> O2 + O (3)
O + O2 -> O3 (2) as above

Ozone is also destroyed by the following reaction:

O + O3 -> O2 + O2 (4)

Those are the Chapman Reactions

But there was a problem with the Chapman theory. In the 1960s it was realised that the loss of ozone given by reaction (4) was too slow. It could not remove enough ozone to give the values seen in the real atmosphere. There had to be other reactions, faster reactions that were controlling the ozone concentations in the stratosphere.

After extensive testing, it was discovered that the only possible cause for this drop was in Chlorofluorocarbons. These substances are non-toxic, non-flammable, and non-reactive with other chemical compounds. These desirable safety characteristics, along with their stable thermodynamic properties, make them ideal for many applications--as coolants for commercial and home refrigeration units, aerosol propellants, electronic cleaning solvents, and blowing agents. Production and Use of Chlorofluorocarbons experienced nearly uninterrupted growth as demand for products requiring their use continued to rise.
Not until 1973 was chlorine found to be a catalytic agent in ozone destruction. Catalytic destruction of ozone removes the odd oxygen species [atomic oxygen (O) and ozone (O3)] while leaving chlorine unaffected. This process was known to be potentially damaging to the ozone layer, but conclusive evidence of stratospheric ozone loss was not discovered until 1984. Announcement of polar ozone depletion over Antarctica in March 1985 prompted scientific initiatives to discover the Ozone Depletion Processes, along with calls to freeze or diminish production of chlorinated fluorocarbons. A complex scenario of atmospheric dynamics, solar radiation, and chemical reactions was found to explain the anomalously low levels of ozone during the polar springtime. Recent expeditions to the Arctic regions show that similar processes can occur in the northern hemisphere, but to a somewhat lesser degree due to warmer temperatures and erratic dynamic patterns.


There are alternatives to CFC's. Many. Do your research next time.

Heh, But no, i wont support it.

While most of our civillian and bussiness classes wont be effected by this, it will leave digital world undefended.

More info on request only.

Heh, But no, i wont support it.

While most of our civillian and bussiness classes wont be effected by this, it will leave digital world undefended.

More info on request only.

How will banning Chlorofluorocarbons effect your defence directly?

Catholic Europe supports any proposal which seeks to improve the enviroment of the world that we live in. The UN is a great place to do this as we all need to work together in order for the enviroment to improve.

Catholic Europe supports any proposal which seeks to improve the enviroment of the world that we live in. The UN is a great place to do this as we all need to work together in order for the enviroment to improve.

Thankyou

...CFC's are heavy. There is quite a bit of ozone at ground level. If ozone and CFC's react as stated by the EPA, then why doesn't the reaction occur at ground level?



If you haven't yet bothered to read the information I posted, I will make it simple for you. Quite a bit is untrue; there is a relatively low amount of ozone at ground level, which after extensive research, was found to be harmless to human health. Chlorofluorocarbons are a compound which break down ozone molecules, which, also, have little or no effect on human health.

Now you are asking me why something harmless (and from what we can determine, useless) lingering at ground level, doesn't have the same reaction, when something else (CFC's - also harmless) is released - the answer is, it does. Ozone is broken down.

Does it matter? No - the ozone at ground level, doesn't pretect us the way the ozone in the sky does. The ozone in the sky filters out UV rays from the sun. So there you go - I answered your useless question, please think *really* carefully before you ask another.

Heh, But no, i wont support it.

While most of our civillian and bussiness classes wont be effected by this, it will leave digital world undefended.

More info on request only.

How will banning Chlorofluorocarbons effect your defence directly?

Digital World only has 6 F-15s remaining. We have moved on to, and are testing other products (Such as our Z-20s) The main weapon of these release a small amount of Chloroflu...

I wont say much as we have lost 1 Z-20 during the testing, and as such dont recommend ANY nation attempt to copy them.

It appears to me that you are afraid of anyone asking questions. Here is a challange for you. Name one commercially common refrigerant, other than ammonia, that is in common use that isn't a CFC. I don't know of any.

I love CFC's!!

They taste great! I put them on everything from Hot Dogs to Ice Cream! Nothing better than a little CFC with your meal.

Call me crazy, but isn't the preponderance of Ozone at lower levels actually pollution......... L.A. for example?? My suggestion then would be MORE pollution and Ozone production, not less! I will leave it to you "experts" to figure out how to get the supposed pollution into the right altitiude.....

Perhaps our good friends in the Oil Industry could design a gas/petrol that is lighter upon burning than regular "sea level" air. You know, mix a little helium in with it?? I'm sure if there is a dollar to be made, they of all people will figure it out. (Bastards anyway)

Have to go. Picking up some of that CFC ridden compressed electronic cleaner to clean my stereo system with. Going to go munch on some styrofoam also....... - Ciao

OOC: Ok, I'm carrying my Biology Textbook here, published in the year 2000... yes, it's four years out of date, and more evidence may have been gained since then, but for now, I'll list precisely what it itself says...

First off, the "hole in the ozone layer" is caused by a specific reaction between ozone and "radicals", the ones in particular which damage the ozone being NO (Nitrogen Oxide) and Cl (Chlorine).

The precise chemical reaction can be shown as follows:

Cl + O3 -> ClO + O2
ClO + O -> Cl + O2

In other words, we wind up up with it first breaking the Ozone down into oxygen, which is followed up by the oxygen in the ClO combination combining with a free Oxygen molecule, allowing the Chlorine to once again break down Ozone.

The above mentioned reaction is actually triggered by ultraviolet radiation, which in its huge quantities break down the CFC and releases the Chlorine radicals, thus causing the reduction in Ozone.

Now, the thing is, it generally takes around 5 years for surface generated pollutants to actually get into stratosphere, which causes a few major problems with the ozone layer information. Even if we were to wipe out all CFC's now, it would still take at least 20 years to have any effect. Now, the first effective reduction in CFC's was enforced in 1989, so it can as such be assumed that no change will be noticed until about 2009 at the earliest, meaning that any quotes that things are getting better because of a reduction in CFC's is pretty much arguable.

In addition, it can be noted that whilst the ozone "hole" is currently getting thicker, it is in fact spreading across a larger amount of area...

...Anyways, that's all for now.

If you haven't yet bothered to read the information I posted

You quoted the information as coming from the EPA, which is a political body, not a scientific one. I do not trust the EPA, or any studies they fund. If you have anything from a major university, or from the NSA, or a similar organization, I would be happy to read it. I am not wasting my time on politically motivated, biased studies.

Right. So you won't accept EPA studies but you will pay attention to the NSA. Silly me, for a moment there I thought you were merely ignorant. Now I know it was all a cunning ruse and you're providing light-hearted relief from serious discussion.

Frankly, I don't have time to list all the reasons why you're arguments are spurious, I merely direct you to any university that has conducted research in this field. I accept that global warming is controversial as the science supporting human-sourced climate change is not absolute (though very strong). However, with regards to this issue, I don't believe it's even being disputed by reputable scientific bodies.

Sax Russell
Speaker for Science

Look, you are defending the proposal. You want all memeber of the UN to change their laws. If you don't have time to defend that proposal, THEN DON'T MAKE IT, and don't get involved! I am not trying to convince anyone of anything. I want good reasons, on my terms, why I should do what you say I should do. That is not too much to ask. I included the NSA because I thought you might need a liberal organization to qoute to get anything in favor of your opinon. They aren't great, but I will read them. The EPA isn't worth my time. I have dealt with them in the past, and try to aviod doing so.

Basically your case comes down to maybe this might be a good idea for someone someday. I only want you to gut your economy for it. I won't do it, and I won't recommend to the dictator that he do it. He would have my head.

Science and Technology Minister
Goryville

The Rogue Nation of Greenspoint has seen evidence and heard arguments on both sides of the 'Hole in the Ozone' question, and we are not yet convinced that

1) the 'hole' is not naturally occuring.
2) the 'hole' isn't on an epoch-long cycle and liable to 'close' at any time.
3) CFC's are a contributing factor to the size or existence of the 'hole.'

In light of the lack of definitive evidence, being the freedom-loving Texans that we are, we default to the side of lesser government regulation and will not support this proposal.

James Moehlman
Asst. Manager ico U.N. Affairs

It appears to me that you are afraid of anyone asking questions. Here is a challange for you. Name one commercially common refrigerant, other than ammonia, that is in common use that isn't a CFC. I don't know of any.

Explain this post please.

It appears to me that you are afraid of anyone asking questions. Here is a challange for you. Name one commercially common refrigerant, other than ammonia, that is in common use that isn't a CFC. I don't know of any.

Explain this post please.

He's asking for commercial refrigerants that aren't CFCs.

http://www.thermo.com/eThermo/CMA/PDFs/Product/productPDF_16428.pdf
http://www.esmagazine.com/CDA/ArticleInformation/features/BNP__Features__Item/0,2503,84859,00.html
http://www.refrigerant-supply.com/RefrigerantReferencePages.htm

One word: Hydrofluorocarbons. There are questions about greenhouse problems, but it isn't a CFC and isn't ozone-reactive.
Also: Carbon dioxide. Water. Helium, even.
EDIT: R-410A, HFC-32 (a hydrofluorocarbon), HFC-152 (also a hydrofluorocarbon).

Do you support my proposal logarchy?

For serious players, please follow this link:

http://www.nationstates.net/cgi-bin/index.cgi/page=UN_proposal/start=65

and add your support for the banning of Chlorofluorocarbons. The amount of strain they cause the ozone layer each year is frightening.

Thankyou

Do you support my proposal logarchy?

Yes, actually, although automobile manufacturing isn't CFC-heavy. Even air conditioning systems are increasingly HFC-based.

I would have appreciated a measure that would provide funds for research into alternatives or gave aid to smaller countries with infant industries.

I followed the link to the refrigerants (third one) and must apologize. I didn't have my thermodynamics book in front of me when I made that post, and I was lumping HFC's in with CFC's. If HFC's are acceptable, they are a reasonable replacement for CFC's as refrigerants. I grant that. If this legislation encouraged the use of HFC's as replacements for CFC's, and didn't outright ban them, I might be able to support it. I am not familiar with all of the uses of this classification of chemicals, and so I am uncomfortable with a general ban. I know of a few, specialized uses for CFC's, and HFC's are not an acceptable subistiute. Allowances for these uses would have to be made in this legislation somehow.

I am also not convinced that the hole in the ozone layer is caused by CFC's. But, in the interest of not soiling my own nest, so to speak, I will be doing some research on replacing CFC's with HFC's in refrigeration applications. I think that can reasonably be done.

Will you ... apologise? :P

"Ah, the sweet, sweet smell of large amounts of O3...

Wait a sec,

CLASS, CLEAR THE LAB NOW ! " :wink:

The Rep of Komokom.