California man is first in the US to be charged with smuggling greenhouse gases, prosecutors say

Some guy was smuggling prohibited refrigerants. DOJ will probably recommend SuperMax for life.

Hart was arraigned Monday afternoon and pleaded not guilty to 13 charges including conspiracy, sale of prohibited materials and illegal importation, the statement said.

It’s the first prosecution in the U.S. to include charges related to a 2020 law that prohibits the importation of hydrofluorocarbons, commonly used as refrigerants, without permission from the Environmental Protection Agency, according to prosecutors.

https://apnews.com/article/hydrofluorocarbons-greenhouse-gases-smuggling-arrest-california-32f695c1a7f27d1a81a5f3d0602bf05d

Oy.

U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath said in a statement. “We are using every means possible to protect our planet from the harm caused by toxic pollutants, including bringing criminal charges.”

https://apnews.com/article/hydrofluorocarbons-greenhouse-gases-smuggling-arrest-california-32f695c1a7f27d1a81a5f3d0602bf05d
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Bryan A
March 6, 2024 10:14 am

So what was he doing? Moving to CA and bringing his out of state A/C unit with him?

MarkW
Reply to  Bryan A
March 6, 2024 11:52 am

From the article, he was arrested for smuggling from Mexico into the US.
Still ridiculous though.

hiskorr
Reply to  MarkW
March 6, 2024 7:15 pm

You mean smuggling from Mexico is a crime? I thought it was a feature of the FJB administration!

mariojlento
Reply to  hiskorr
March 6, 2024 8:31 pm

OMG that was brilliant. Plus 1

Reply to  hiskorr
March 6, 2024 8:48 pm

Guess who is the criminal defendant in multiple cases …LOL, the bankrupt known as Donald Trumpf

Reply to  Duker
March 7, 2024 11:43 am

What does any of this have to do with Trump? Or are you just that obsessed?

Scarecrow Repair
March 6, 2024 10:15 am

SuperMax for life? What, is his middle name Houdini?

March 6, 2024 10:23 am

What’s about breath protection ?
Wear a bottle to collect the exhalated CO2 ?

Russell Cook
March 6, 2024 10:29 am

Hoping they don’t figure out a way to stop legally produced unopened cans of R12 from being sold on eBay or elsewhere. My approaching 40 year-old daily driver vehicle still occasionally needs recharges of that ‘GHG’ for its A/C.

Scissor
Reply to  Russell Cook
March 6, 2024 1:20 pm

It’s too bad you can’t convert it to fentanyl. USPS will deliver it straight to your doorstep.

Mr.
March 6, 2024 10:36 am

Next thing they’ll be imprisoning folks who need to get their diesel pickups started on freezing mornings.

Nulon-Start-Ya-Bastard-Instant-Engine-Starter-150g-SYB150-1
Caleb Shaw
March 6, 2024 11:18 am

Meanwhile fentanyl pours in and over a hundred thousand die.

Nothing surpasses
The braying of asses
Like government lasses
Who want to harass us.

Caleb Shaw
Reply to  Caleb Shaw
March 6, 2024 11:24 am

Addiction to the swamp is far worse than addiction to fentanyl, for the fentanyl addict knows he or she is damned, while those in the swamp think they are elite.

A short rant about this craziness:

https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2024/03/06/super-tuesdays-snakes-and-ladders/

Reply to  Caleb Shaw
March 6, 2024 1:07 pm

Before the laws were passed there were opium dens(bars) in the major cities of the US and very few people died from opioid overdoses. Opium will put a person to sleep when smoked instead of killing them if too much is smoked. Even in ancient Greece when they executed Socrates they killed him with hemlock but gave him opium to ease the pain.

The laws making opium-type chemicals illegal raised the price so much that people who needed it to feel normal had to inject it, which is what is causing the fentanyl deaths. Their ancestors probably came from opium-producing regions and their bodies don’t make enough endorphins, one of the opioids people’s bodies make. Only about 10% of people enjoy opioids and the doses at methadone clinics, which the client chooses, can vary from 1 mg per day to 200 mg per day, suggesting a genetic reason.

March 6, 2024 11:37 am

Supermax for life? Actually the death penalty is still technically on the books.
Newsome might have the guy executed.

MarkW
Reply to  Thomas Finegan
March 6, 2024 11:53 am

It’s a federal case, Newsome doesn’t have any say in the matter.

JamesB_684
Reply to  MarkW
March 6, 2024 1:08 pm

… yet

Bob
March 6, 2024 11:50 am

So does this mean you can’t buy dry ice?

Mr.
Reply to  Bob
March 6, 2024 12:18 pm

not if it’s white dry ice.

Reply to  Bob
March 6, 2024 8:50 pm

Chloroflourocarbon gases are banned. Its more of an ozone killer than a greenhouse gas

prjndigo
Reply to  Duker
March 7, 2024 1:14 am

Mercury destroys more ozone than anything else on the planet and it evaporates right out of the antarctic ocean. 90% of the hole down there is caused by it.

Reply to  prjndigo
March 7, 2024 7:58 am

Please provide scientific evidence—any scientific evidence at all—that mercury is a recognized cause of ozone destruction at its very minute concentrations in the atmosphere at altitudes above 15 km, the typical lower altitude of the “ozone hole”.

“The major form of mercury in air is elemental mercury vapor (Hg°). Typical concentrations of mercury and its compounds in ambient air {i.e., at sea-level} may range between 1 and 4 ng m−3 for elemental mercury, from 1 to 50 pg m−3 for reactive gaseous mercury (water-soluble gaseous mercury species) and total particulate mercury, whereas MeHg has been found in the range between 1 and 20 pg m−3.”
— M. Horvat, in Encyclopedia of Analytical Science (Second Edition), 2005

Furthermore, in the EPA’s listing of ozone depleting substances (https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/ozone-depleting-substances ),
there is no mention of elemental mercury or any mercury compounds.

J Boles
March 6, 2024 12:02 pm

Yet all those who would prosecute him use CFCs every day, the hypocrites.

Reply to  J Boles
March 6, 2024 8:51 pm

How so.
You are confused over HFC which replaced them . Hypocrite is on you

dk_
March 6, 2024 12:02 pm

hydrofluorocarbons, commonly used as refrigerants

HFCs are not greenhouse gases, but alleged ozone depletion agents.

AP got the headline wrong, again, as none of the prosecutors quoted called the materials greenhouse gases.

Heavier than air, HFCs were found in the upper atmosphere only by high altitude sensors that were themselves most likely the contamination source for the detections.

Since 1989, the Montreal ban has had little noticeable effect on the fearsome ozone hole that set the pattern for CO2 warm mongering. The Earth’s ozone layer seems to wax and wane for some other, unkown reasons.

Reply to  dk_
March 6, 2024 12:49 pm

As I understand it, ozone is formed in the upper atmosphere by Sunlight striking it.
Each pole doesn’t receive direct Sunlight during winter or summer depending on the pole.
That’s why the hype about “The Ozone Hole” would shift from pole to pole depending on the season.

prjndigo
Reply to  Gunga Din
March 7, 2024 1:17 am

there’s also the magnetic polarity, the protons coming in mostly at the north and the mercury evaporating out of the ocean in the south being carried up into it by electrostatics

HOWEVER, the Earth’s atmosphere has been shrinking in diameter since the ban actually started having an effect… and as we know, temperature only represents density in the atmosphere – not energy.

Reply to  prjndigo
March 8, 2024 10:39 am

Not to disagree but something to remember, we’ve only been able to measure such things for a very short time in relation to how long the Earth has been been here.

Reply to  dk_
March 6, 2024 1:35 pm

HFCs are not greenhouse gases, but alleged ozone depletion agents.
________________________________________________________

Oh yes they are greenhouse gases:

IPCC AR4 Chapter 2 Page 212 pdf 84

Table 2.14. Lifetimes, radiative efficiencies 
and direct relative to CO2. 

Global Warming Potential [GWP] for Given Time Horizon [20 years]
 

CFC-11	6,730
CFC-12	11,000
CFC-13	10,800
CFC-113	6,540
CFC-114	8,040
CFC-115 8,310

The six above is just a sampling from the table you will find at the link.
The IPCC claims ridiculous global warming potentials for HFCs up to
11,000 times more potent at trapping heat than CO2.

You will recall that methane and nitrous oxide are quoted by the IPCC as having GWP numbers of only 86 and 300 times more powerful than CO2 respectively.

Please note that none of these GWP numbers say anything about how much these green house gases (CH4 N2O, and the CFCs) will actually affect global temperatures. Smart money says that’s because so it’s small as to be undetectable by ordinary means.

dk_
Reply to  Steve Case
March 6, 2024 9:57 pm

Points taken. Perhaps the point of agreement is that there is almost none of it in the atmosphere, that CFCs are more dense, and interact with ozone and hydrocarbons low in the atmosphere, and that they cannot affect thermal radiation in any significant way.

prjndigo
Reply to  Steve Case
March 7, 2024 1:20 am

11°F above ambient solar orbital average solid mass temperature. That’s the entire effect of all of it, water vapor – gasses – gravitic density, at ground level right now.

Reply to  prjndigo
March 7, 2024 8:18 am

“11°F above ambient solar orbital average solid mass temperature.”

I’m thinking that that asserted 11 °F “above ambient” (what the heck?) must be for a certain assumed average solar radiation absorptivity and a certain assumed average LWIR radiation emissivity for that hypothetical “average solid mass”.

For sure, it doesn’t apply to Earth with its current average global LAT of 58.0 °F (14.4 °C)

If talking about a body without an atmosphere at approximately Earth’s orbital distance from the Sun (that is, the Moon):
“The moon’s temperature varies from about -153C to +106C near the equator, but can be much colder in polar craters: -248C or just 45K. With such wide variation it gets a bit arbitrary to talk about an “average” temperature. You can find calculated numbers ranging anywhere from about -73C (-100F) to -23C (-10F) depending on the data source and method of averaging.”
— James McDonald at https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-temperature-on-the-Moon-in-a-year

technically right
March 6, 2024 12:10 pm

Mr. Hart’s mistake was not getting in the scrum of Venezuelans and Chinese Nationals flooding the boarder. He would have gotten a free airplane ticket to anywhere he wanted instead of the slammer.

March 6, 2024 12:20 pm

It was probably R-134a, which is an HFC.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1,1,1,2-Tetrafluoroethane

Just like what is being driven around California right now in almost every auto AC system. R-134a already has an “insignificant” ozone depletion potential.

For curiosity, I looked up what is supposed to be replacing it. R-1234YF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,3,3,3-Tetrafluoropropene

Chemically similar. Completely insignificant to climate outcomes in any case.
.

March 6, 2024 12:37 pm

Hold my beer.

March 6, 2024 12:49 pm

So if you want California to arrest illegal immigrants, just give each of them a free can of HFC’s before they cross the border?

observa
Reply to  Richard Page
March 6, 2024 3:29 pm

Pssst I think the worm is turning-
San Francisco overwhelmingly votes in favor of law and order ballot measures and new rule that’ll force welfare recipients to pass drug tests (msn.com)
Q: How do you cure folks from leftism?
A: Shrug as they vote in lefties and wait.

Reply to  observa
March 6, 2024 4:38 pm

Dupont was instrumental in the banishment of CFCs and they were the manufacturers of most of the the replacement products. Is Dupont a leftist agent of the Communist Internationale? The company is listed on the NYSE as currently trading at $70.28/share on an average daily volume of 3.24 million shares. Sure looks like a leftist operation to me.

observa
March 6, 2024 1:42 pm

Story tip

We always knew it was all about control and never about saving the planet and buying EVs won’t save you from mad lefties and their fan club-
The German Tesla plant fire is claimed by far-left ‘Volcano Group’ (msn.com)
Prepare for throwing heretics into volcanos as there’s a shortage of virgins.

Editor
March 6, 2024 5:43 pm

The issue is that this man bought what I am guessing to be A/C recharge canisters, maybe the lind you can use yourself in your garage, to top off old auto a/c units. Maybe 20 lb sized tanks, but don;t think s….they wer e small enough to hide uner a tarp and his tools in the back of a pickup.

Calling them Greenhouse Gases is just propaganda — they are legacy refrigerants currently banned from production, sale, and importation.

He broke the law, but I suppose they will figuratively crucify him on the cross of Climate Crisis.

prjndigo
March 7, 2024 1:12 am

We all smuggle greenhouse gasses. Surprised they haven’t charged him with operating an illegal pig farm and having a disfunctional ECS.

March 7, 2024 7:38 am

U.S. Attorney Tara McGrath needs to argue that that the smuggled greenhouse gases be given a lifetime jail sentence . . . that way, they will be sequestered forever.