Date: Thu, 19 Dec 1996 20:37:38 +0100 (MET)
Subject: Re: M-G: "Ozone hole"


Siddharth C. wote, on 16.12:

>Rolf,
>
>I only have time now for a quick reponse. Regarding your main points,
>I will have to do some more research on the hard evidence and get back
>to you after some time. But here is a brief reply.

It suits me too that we make a certain "hole" in this debate.
I very much appreciate this discussion and do intend to get
back to it.

One factual point you made - in reply to my challenging you
ro quote data refuting "my" three points, from "The Holes
in the Ozone Scare", about there in fact being natural
chlorine in large amounts in the stratoshphere - did make it
necessary for me to reflect some more:

(Rolf, quoting on 14.12 without comment from bourgeois book
"The Holes in the Ozone Scare", 1992:)
>> "=A4 More than 600 million tons of chlorine are released
>> into the atmosphere every year by the evaporation of
>> seawater, which contains salt (sodium chloride, NaCl).
>> Although most of this chlorine is washed out by
>> precipitation, large amounts of it still reach the
>> stratoshpere, through the pumping action of thunder-
>> storms, hurricanes, typhoons, and other cyclonic
>> activity."

(Siddharth:)
>In what form is 600 million tons of chlorine released by sea water
>to the atmosphere? This sounds like a fabrication to me. If this huge
>amount of chlorine in its natural state was released by sea, then there
>would be no need to manufacture chlorine (a highly used industrial gas)
>by say the chlor-alkali process. All one would need to
>do would be to devise a method for skimming this chlorine from the
>atmosphere. This is not current practice.
>
>If the claim is made that 600 million tons of sodium chloride (NaCl) is
>emitted by the oceans in the form of particulate matter, then the
>situation is completely different. The Na and Cl atoms in salt are
>held together by extremely powerful electrostatic forces (called
>ionic bonds) so that even high temperatures would be unable to break
>the NaCl molecule into its constituent elements. Thus even if some
>particulate NaCl (there would have to be in the size range of less than
>1-10 microns since pareticles larger than this size would have been
>washed or settled out), they would remain as salt since the
>incoming solar radiation would be too weak to dissociate them.

Now that you're saying it - yes of course, that figure, 600 Mtons
of chlorine form dissociated salt in evaporated seawater, does
sound incredibly high. I know what a stable compound is commmon
salt, NaCl. The oceans of course are very large, but salt only
constitutes some 3% of them or so, of which only a small fraction
again can be expected to dissociate.

I shall have to check this out too.

Your posting at least shows me that I've been incautious on
this point. In theory, I know that the *bourgeois* forces combating
those ultra-reactionary "green" bourgeois ones are liable to
operate with faked data too, or rabbit punches, so to speak.
The Marxist forces opposing those "green" ultras must never do
so. Here, I didn't reflect on those "600 Mtons", as I should have
done.

There's a difficulty in that the Marxists in the world are
so extremely few, unorganised and comparatively very ignorant, on
many of those scientific/technical subjects of importance
concerning modern civilization and class struggle today, so it's a
boon if you can find some -  much bigger, and better-informed -
bourgeois forces who want, in their own way, to defend
modern civilization too. But their information, with or
without quotes, needs to be checked on very carefully.

Concerning the "ozone hole" campaign in itself, the writer
of the foreword to the book "The Holes in the Ozone Scare",
French volcanologist, and former secretary of state for
cathastrophies etc, Haroun Tazieff, points out a couple of
things that to him show the *bad faith* behind the "ozone
depletion" propaganda, the fact that there must be some
ulterior motives behind it all. On this, I'm still certain
that he and the authors of that book are right.

But it's necessary to get the facts straight on all points,
and thus it's very good that you on your part intend to
take a closer look at them, Sid.

On the other points of your 16.12 posting, no comments
>from me just now; I'll save that for later too.

Rolf M.



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