The Californian was busted for smuggling air-conditioning gases into a hot-weather state.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
The Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report this week about the prosecution of a California man for “smuggling greenhouse gases” across the border from Mexico and selling them online.
The agency posted that it was its first “climate change arrest.”
Michael Hart, 58, was arrested in March and pleaded guilty in September to charges related to transporting refrigerants into the US to peddle on Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and other online vendors between June and December 2022.
Biden’s EPA touted the crackdown on Hart, the first-ever person charged for climate change-related bootlegging of refrigerants — namely, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HFCs) — without the agency’s approval, in its report.
When charging the San Diego resident earlier this year, US Attorney Tara McGrath vowed “it will not be the last” case of its kind.
“We are using every means possible to protect our planet from the harm caused by toxic pollutants, including bringing criminal charges,” the prosecutor from the Southern District of California said.
As a reminder: Hydrochlorfluorocarbons are important for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. They were initially produced to replace the “ozone-depleting” chlorofluorocarbons.
The compounds have been added to the long-list of evil “greenhouse gases” as part of the pseudoscience climate cultists follow.
As already mentioned, HCFC is an abbreviation of hydrochlorofluorocarbon. These gases are composed of chlorine, carbon, fluorine and hydrogen. They are a type of gas that can be categorised as a transitional gas, as they are being used to replace CFCs as part of the plan to reduce the emission of ozone-depleting gases. HCFCs are gases used in the manufacture of other chemicals.
Despite their lower ozone-depleting potential than CFCs, they have a high global warming potential. These are gases therefore that are to be gradually phased out. Their use is decreasing in developed countries, in particular, in line with the Montreal Protocol. This protocol aims to reduce the baseline to 90%.
The report also highlighted a long list of penalties and fines it lavished on Americans and their business enterprises.
Additionally, the EPA reported issuing $1.7 billion in administrative and judicial penalties, the highest level since 2017.
The agency’s environmental enforcement efforts also saw 1,851 civil cases concluded, 121 criminal defendants charged, and it issued more than 225 million pounds of “pollution reductions” in “overburdened communities,” according to the report. As of the end of 2024, there are about 480 open criminal investigations on environmental programs.
The results reflect a 3.4% increase in civil cases and a 17.6% increase in criminal charges compared to 2023, The Associated Press reported.
In the FY 2024 report, the EPA also noted that collaborative efforts on the “implementation of EPA’s national priorities” led to a “12% increase in criminal leads opened because of referrals from EPA Headquarters and regional offices.”
If any member of the Biden administration could read the mood of Americans correctly, this entire report would have been buried during the Christmas news snooze.
But, then again, it appears nobody in that administration understands the citizens of the nation. Hence, we will be enjoying a second scoop of President Donald Trump.
It appears that what the Biden EPA most wants to produce is the political environment. According to David Strom of Hot Air, Biden is going to divert more monies to climate cultists on his way out the door.
Biden says we should expect more climate funding from him before he leaves office. I guess there are more beds to be feathered and too little time to do it all, so he has to rush.
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With the incapacitation of Capo Joe, the Biden Crime Family is being led by some rather obscure figures hiding back in the shadows! We don’t know if they are aligned with the Obama Mafia or the Clinton Global Intifada, but they are setting records when it comes to selling pardons to their cronies and pushing pallets of dollars out of the plane as they soar off to a remote island somewhere!
Come January, let the investigations begin! First clean up the DC Swamp; next, maybe Davos!
News Flash: “Ex-FBI informant admits he lied about wrongdoing by Biden”. So no evidence for your accusations
You’re right – one informant has reneged on his testimony. None of the others have thus far.
I’m feeling very sorry for you and your idols.
The Hunter Biden pardon covers the two present convictions and affords immunity back to Jan. 1, 2014, before he joined Burisma energy.
Curious minds want to know. It nothing untoward happened, why?
We do not know what kind of pressure was exerted, or if any was, that caused the whistle blower to change his story. Regardless, there is documented evidence that Biden and family did some things that just do not see legitimate. So, there is no lack of evidence as you pronounced.
No evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever. And you can’t cite any. Doesn’t exist.
Wow! Living proof that you can lead a horse’s @ss to water, but you can’t make him think! Do you credit your mind viruses more to FBI or CIA sources!?
Ha! So no evidence from you either, I see
Warren’s a woke media fan-
TV host reacts to CNN’s recent blunder | Watch
That was a goodun, I’m going to borrow it, you can have it back later
I found it strange how the Kids for Cash judge was pardoned. One wonders if the judge used some of the Cash for a pardon ?
I refuse to cut and paste the entire Congressional Report.
So you can’t cite one piece of evidence. No surprise! Even the lead investigator, Republican James Comer, said he couldnt’t find any but we’ll keep looking!!”
Biden’s pardon is an admission that Hunter has done many , many illegal and disgusting and probably treasonous things, all the way back to when he was installed with the totally corrupt Ukraine hierarchy.
I hope they investigate regardless of the pardon, so we can see all the total debased depravity he has really been up to, (as hinted to on his laptop)
Biden’s pardon might be an admission of guilt, it also might be simply a CYA, to prevent being dragged through countless years of investigations and trials.
One has to consider it also might be a good thing. This country has been sorely divided and dragging the H.B. scandal for more years will not allow any healing to start. Just an alternate point of view worth mulling over.
One has to consider it also might be a good thing.
I disagree. Not because of anything you said following that, but because of the nature of the pardon being a blanket pardon of any crimes that may have been committed during the last 10 years. It sets a bad precedent.
You can’t prove a negative.
Lack of evidence is not proof of anything.
Given the Congressional investigation was political, not judicial, they would have needed to convince a fair number of Democrat Senators to vote for impeachment. Given the solid party block it was reasonable to conclude an impeachment, let alone a conviction, stood no chance.
There is a preponderance of evidence that wrongdoing occurred. That is the lowest evidentiary standard in a court of law. It usually applies to civil cases, but is too often applied in Title IX complaints at colleges and universities.
There is clear and convincing evidence. This evidentiary standard is a higher threshold. Based on the reports and evidence, this standard applies to Hunter Biden’s nefarious activities.
The highest standard is proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It is clear the Congressional Investigation did not find anything that achieved that level.
Impeachment is a political function. Do not confuse that with politicization. The point being this was not conducted by a Court of Law, but by Congress.
It is clear that your purpose here is to argue and try to score debating points. I feel sorry for you if that is true.
so you can’t cite any evidence either! And since evidence is required to show guilt, I win the point!
Not exactly correct. He did not admit he lied. He changed his plea from not guilty to guilty which is not exactly the admission of guilt the media spouts forth.
There are reasons to change a plea. The location of the trial, in the view of the defense, would not provide an unbiased trial and they could not get the trial moved to a different venue. The defense might have determined the probability of winning to be too low, so the plea change results in a lesser sentence.
While he may have lied or man not have lied, I can’t say.
Oh, Hunter was guilty. But not Joe, which was the topic.
meh. i own a small generator, and may even take it to california.
Where it is probably illegal.
Having read Huxley, Kafka and Orwell etc I get a good laugh out of ‘the great and the good’.
“smuggling air-conditioning gases into a hot-weather state”
“transporting refrigerants into the US”
“climate change-related bootlegging”
Not so very far from
“smuggling meat and/or dairy produce into a hot-weather state”
“transporting animal products into the US”
“climate change-related bootlegging” – universally applicable
Biden will probably do what Obama did when he left office; throw a lot of money at the so-called climate crisis.
What did surprise me about Biden is how all the media swept all those presidential pardons etc under the rug. I wonder what they would have said had that been Trump’s list of ne’er do wells?
“Biden will probably do what Obama did when he left office; throw a lot of money at the so-called climate crisis.”
Yuh, like 15 billion to CA. I quoted the WSJ on that- in the previous story.
Biden can always claim he doesn’t recall doing any such thing
We can be certain he is not doing anything now except signing what his handlers and minders of the deep state tell him to sign.
He already has EPA shoveling the money out the door. It’s ongoing.
Thank goodness he didn’t wrangle cattle across the border. Imagine the methane crises!
That would have been a crime worthy of the death by methane asphyxiation penalty.
There is a lot of checkered history regarding HCFC’s, their effectiveness as greenhouse gasses and the destruction of some of the worst. It became so lucrative to destroy HFC-23, a byproduct of making HCFC-22, that nearly half of the carbon credits from the EU went to China in 2010, whose companies were making large quantities of the HFC-23 because it was so lucrative to destroy it.
China, as the world’s largest producer of HCFC-22, generated about 182 MMT CO2e HFC-23 as a by-product in 2010. The destruction of HFC-23 has been subsidized by the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)1. However, the vast amounts paid for HFC-23 offsets have led factories in China and elsewhere to manufacture more HCFC-22 and its HFC-23 byproduct than necessary to maximize the amounts paid for destruction through the UN-backed carbon trading scheme2.
There are a large number of HCFC’s that have quite different greenhouse gas warming potential. The “natural” substitutes are things like ammonia, butane and propane which can be much more hazardous to users due to toxicity and flammability. The Grenfell Tower fire was caused by a leaking butane refrigerant which exploded when a refrigerator door was opened and then spread to cladding on the building with flammable insulation.
Is the EPA pushing refrigerants with serious hazards for users of refrigeration equipment to make miniscule changes to greenhouse gas warming?
The AC industry hasn’t used HFCs since 2020, and they aren’t even needed for service of old equipment because recycled HFCs are widely available. But producing or importing HFCs has been illegal since then. This guy is nothing more than a conventional smuggler and deserves whatever sentence the courts decide.
So, nothing to do with climate, just smuggling to make a profit.
Just wait till the penetration of R600a becomes prevalent. It is an Isobutane rated for refrigeration. Many service companies will not service equipment with this gas as a refrigerant. I have seen during testing R600a in a kitchen refrigerator the evaporator compromised and active flames melting the inside of the unit. I wonder who will win the tort Lawyers or the EPA requiring it….. I know who losses, the customers and the taxpayers.
EPA approval is not sufficient for manufacturers to use isobutane in a refrigerator. All appliances must go through rigorous safety testing by UL. Furthermore, it’s likely only small refrigerators will qualify. Large side by side refrigerators may have too large a refrigerant chargeto pass UL testing. Keep in mind that isobutane refrigerator charges are quite a bit less than for R-134a, so that helps to alleviate safety issues due to flammability.
Isn’t this the point? I mean, once is a fluke, twice is a trend, trice… And somehow those shuffles by the Watermelons turn out to err on the same side.
Compare: https://web.archive.org/web/20190514171716/www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/administration-plans-100000-new-highway-deaths/
Sean, the history is checkered. The claim is Biden admin brought unprecedented climate change prosecution against man for ‘smuggling greenhouse gases’ by transporting refrigerants.
Background
The Montreal Protocol, ratified in 1987, forced the industrialized world to switch from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) on the theory that CFCs break down the ozone layer.
Both the formation and depletion of the ozone layer depend on ultraviolet light from the Sun. The theory was that UV splits chlorine atoms from the CFCs. The CFCs sat around all winter, moving into position, waiting … and then just as the Sun returned, the chlorine radicals chewed up the ozone as it was being formed, producing a brief downward spike in ozone at the start of the Antarctic summer. This is the famous ozone hole.
The actual measurements look very peculiar, which means there’s more going on than just a simple chain of free-radical reactions. But NASA and the climatologists were confident that the mystery was solved. As with the AGW debate, most agree that it could theoretically happen; the debate is over how big the effect is and how important it is.
Four popular HFCs in use today as refrigerants are R-410a, R-407c, R-143a, and R-134a. The average GWP of the HFCs currently in use, weighted by usage, is about 1600. Enviros are claiming that eliminating these so-called high-GWP HFCs will prevent up to 0.5°C of warming by 2100. Due to the huge variability in the predictions of the various models, this could be anywhere from 8 to 100% of what the models predict. What is remarkable is that absolutely nobody seems to have noticed any of this until the patents ran out.
The HFC emissions in the left panel are on a scale of 1 to 5 GtCO2eq.yr-1. So HFCs are estimated to have a GHG effect in single digits compared to CO2 emissions which in 2022 were ~37 Gt. On the right panel, the warming effect is estimated to range between 0.05 and 0.25 W per m^2. Putting this into context, The energy budget of our climate system involves the absorption and reemission of about 200 watts per square meter. Doubling CO2 involves a 2% perturbation to this budget. HFCs are an order of magnitude less, taking IPCC estimates at face value. But there’s more.
Why would HFCs and CFCs cause global warming?
Most articles merely say that HFCs cause global warming because they possess a high GWP. This is a circular argument, because GWP simply means global warming potential.
The real explanation is that they absorb thermal (mid-)infrared radiation at wavelengths that don’t overlap with carbon dioxide. The infrared spectra of HFC-125 and HFC-143a have three bands in the mid-infrared which have little overlap with carbon dioxide (CO2):
But look at the spectrum of absorption by H2O and other IR-active gases:
The absorption spikes by HFCs at 7 to 8 μm are already covered by the higher concentrations of H2O. There’s little radiation for HFCs to absorb, so the Global Warming Potential is hypothetical.
Yet the 2021 regulation requiring EPA approval to import HFCs was based on HFCs as greenhouse gases:
“On 5 October 2021, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published a final rule to set out the methodology for phasing down HFCs over the next two years. HFCs are potent greenhouse gases that are used as refrigerants, solvents, fire suppressants, foam blowing agents, aerosols, and propellants. The final rule is the first ruling under the American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act of 2020 to implement the HFC phasedown.”
Thus the EPA overreach regulating GHGs despite Supreme Court ruling that being congressional authority.
Your contains a number of mistakes:
1) R-410A, the refrigerant used in residential central air conditioners and commercial rooftop ac, since 2010, is not an HFC. It’s an HCFC.
2) the range of total projected temperature rise is not an error bar; instead, they represent different emission scenarios. So youre dividing apples by oranges to get your 8-100% range for the share of warming represented by HFCs.
3) Your analysis of the global warming effect of HFCs is another version of the saturation fallacy made by Angstrom. Prof Raymond Pierrehumbert of Oxford explains:
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gas
If they phase out HCFCs, what will people put in their heat pumps?
Ammonia. It works great. But only the green stuff. Brown ammonia is bad because it uses fossil fuels to produce hydrogen and generates twice as much CO2 as it does ammonia. But tanks of green ammonia produced by using solar power and traveling across borders is OK.
The fridge in my RV has ammonia refrigerant in it. It works, but saying it works “great” is a stretch 🙂
That’s the absorption cycle refrigerator, they are not terribly efficient. You can use ammonia in a conventional compressor driven refrigerator too – ammonia is very effective….and toxic as hell if it leaks, which is WHY CFCs were invented in the first place.
Yes, ammonia is very good as a low temperature refrigerant– in part because liquid lines are small and the cycle efficiency can be helped substantially sub cooling in the condenser.
And after ammonia came CFCs, then HCFCs, and HFCs, and now HFOs.
Industrial size refrigeration systems, such as huge food freezers, continued to use ammonia long after CFCs were invented.
An even more green method is to use camel piss as source.
The name Ammonia is derived from Amun or Ammon, the Egyptian god. Worshippers visiting the temple of Amun parked their camels in the forecourt where reportedly the atmosphere was laden with the stink of rotting camel pee.
The high and climbing death rate from ammonia, and one or two other toxic refrigerants, led to a concerted research effort for a better alternative. Freon, harmless to humans and other animals and to the environment in general, was the eventual end product.
There is another part of the story that likely made the CFC ban much easier for the suppliers to swallow.
The patents for CFC’s had long since expired so they were sold as a commodity. When Rowland in Molena introduced their ozone depletion theory which led to the Montreal Protocol, the companies that made refrigerant got to work immediately to make replacements and patented those compounds. As a result, the price commanded was much higher. 30 years later, those patents are expired and the regulatory bodies create new opportunities to make patented products that can be sold at a premium.
your facts are about right, but I disagree with your implication that regulatory bodies introduced another phaseout for the purpose of creating new business opportunities for chemical producers. To the contrary, both equipment mfrs and chem producers saw any mandated phase out of HFCs as a massive business COST, amounting to billions of dollars of investment in engineering resources to develop HFC replacements, and much more to tool up new production facilities. Regulators proceeded with phaseouts in order to get rid of climate changing HFCs.
Recycled HCFCs. Widely available
Heat pumps use hfcs, not hcfcs. And the rules under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal protocol allow for mixtures of HFCs and HFOs to be used in air conditioners and heat pumps as replacements for the HFCs currently used, Those mixtures are currently the only fluids that can work in air conditioners and heat pumps while reducing the global warming impact of the refrigerant.
Someone on the Trump team needs to start researching to find out if there is any way for the US to exit the Montreal Protocols.
Indeed. I’ve seen conflicting studies as to whether or not R-22 actually had anything to do with the so-called ozone hole. Is there any definitive info on this?
Also of relevance is that R-410A, which is the refrigerant used in most currently installed ACs, is going to be phased out due to its presumed GW impact. Reversing this nonsense would be a quick way for DJT to ingratiate himself with a lot of home owners anxious about the prospect of having to change out their equipment before the end of its normal service life.
No need for anxiety. Recycled HCFS and HFCs are widely available for servicing existing equipment.
How comforting!
https://www.angi.com/articles/what-fair-price-r-22-refrigerant.htm
thought you’d like to know that fears of not having service refrigerants have no factual basis.
Same comment 3 times. Heard it the first.
Story tip. Rahman 1 : 0 Khan
“…campaigners in east London have lost a high court challenge against the mayor of Tower Hamlets over his decision to remove three low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in Bethnal Green.
The campaign group Save Our Safer Streets (SOSS) raised nearly £80,000 through a crowdfunder to bring judicial review proceedings. After a two-day hearing last month a judge ruled on Tuesday that the mayor, Lutfur Rahman, did not break the law when he announced in September 2023 that he would be removing the LTNs.”
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/dec/17/road-safety-campaigners-lose-high-court-challenge-against-tower-hamlets-mayor
Anyone remember Tim Hardin’s spoof song “Smugglin’ Man“? Michael Hart’s smuggling operation was so small that he could hide his contraband in the back of his pickup truck mixed in with his tarps and tools. Purchased legally just across the border in Mexico, where any citizen of southern California could go and have their old auto air conditioner recharged with the refrigerant they needed, HCFC-22.
Hart’s business model was that he could help folks too far from the border to make the trip themselves.
This “Old Time Smugglin’ Man” was offering for sale, GASP, “Partial 10 lb canister of R22 refrigerant,”
Yep, the EPA is saving the planet again.
Given the astronomical price of approved refrigerant it is only a matter of time before a bootleg industry develops.
This is so true as not only is the approved refrigerant expensive it also doesn’t work worth a crap. Freon 12 could turn your car into a meat locker on a 120° day. 🥶
The new refrigerants work just fine in new equipment specially designed for them
Just fine is not the same as just as well.
They work just as well as the old refrigerants in new equipment designed for them. In fact, R-410A yields many advantages vs the old R-22 — it has better heat transfer characteristics, and improved efficiency vs R-22.
Nope.
You are dead wrong. R-410 evaporative heat transfer coefficients can be up to 40% higher than for R-22 , and the sensitivity of the cycle efficiency to evaporator pressure drop is much less than for R-22. R-410A is an all round better refrigerant than R-22. These properties were established in testing by industry manufacturers, including by me.
Nope. Had the older equipment gone through the same modernization, the difference would be clear.
yes, at higher pressures so the compressors break more often
Totally false. I ran the engineering department that developed scroll compressors which are now used universally in R-410A US residential and commercial air conditioners — their failure rates were actually lower (better) than the R22 compressors they replaced.
Way more expensive though
well damn if my dehumidifiers only last 2 years, my portable a/c units also 2 years and my “new” freezers 5 or 6. At least i got 3 years before the first service call on my viking fridge. meanwhile, my inlaws 50 year old fridge still works.
yes, i can buy aprilaire and santa fe dehumidifiers, made here in WI (yay) for 7 times the price.
thanks for that
and the santa fe is warrantied for 6 years
I had a portable dehumidifier that lasted nigh on 20 years. It gave up the ghost. Now I replace my dehumidifier every 2 years.
Newer designs usually include reliability improvements, incorporate lessons learned and the like. So it is not surprising a newer design has a lower failure rate.
ah – but Freon 12 lost its patent protection, so a gullible (or well re-imbursed) Congress could be talked into banning it for a new (not as effective, but patent protected) refrigerant.
Win-win for everyone not in government or at DuPont.
I remember that sequence of events. Just as evil then as it is now.
Why is a less harmful refrigerant evil?
Government / industrial complex making a law so that a refrigerant losing patent protection was outlawed so a company (Dow Corning) could keep manufacturing under a new patent and so keep a monopoly in place.
Not the reason. When two Nobel prize winning scientists –Rowland and Molina– discovered that CFCs were destroying Earth’s protective ozone layer, US industry and the US EPA worked with other nations of the world to create the Montreal Protocol Treaty, signed and approved by nations producing CFCs, to phase them out of production and replace R-12 with R-134a, an HFC. Yes, DuPont benefitted, but the important point is that the Earths protective ozone layer was shielded from further destruction, and is now repairing itself.
Yes, so that penguins in Antarctica don’t get skin cancer.
Where is this “ozone hole” How long have we known about it. What sort of historical database do have of its extent and thickness? Does it even matter?
Or was the Montreal Protocol just a dry run for Kyoto and Paris?
Except what they discovered is being proven wrong.
No it has been proven right. The stratospheric ozone layer thickness and integrity is starting to improve, as predicted.
There is no evidence of that.
Non-significant trend in are. zero trend in minimum ozone.
I agree there is no trend since 92, now I need to compare that to the Beeton article, which I hope contains some prediction.
“If current policies remain in place, the ozone layer is expected to recover to 1980 values (before the appearance of the ozone hole) by around 2066 over the Antarctic, by 2045 over the Arctic and by 2040 for the rest of the world.”
A conditional prediction made in 2023 that I can’t check until 2065? Ugh.
Like all “climate” predictions ..
… way out beyond when most will not be here.
Funny the ozone hole was only discovered in 1980 when satellites became available.
We don’t know if there have been “ozone holes” in the past.
We have nothing to show this isn’t just a long term cycle like many other things on the planet..
The “holes” are in the Arctic and Antarctic, where for half of each year they get 24/7 solar irradiation and the other half zero. The Earth’s magnetic field also directs a lot of energy at the poles. Those areas are a very harsh environment for ozone to maintain a stable level.
Also, how are R-12 and R-22, much heavier than air, supposed to get up to the stratosphere? Like other fluorine containing compounds, CFCs are extremely tough stuff. Yet somehow these super durable, extra heavy molecules flitter their way miles high then fall apart.
Take a look at Figure 2(a) in The ozone hole and a phase change in lower stratospheric temperature – https://wjarr.com/sites/default/files/WJARR-2024-0531.pdf – there were ozone holes when CFCs were near zero. The Montreal Protocol is nuts.
Yes, but the polar hole was a seasonal event — the polar hole closed and opened every year. What CFCs did was THIN the ozone layer, and also cause the seasonal polar hole to remain year long. The real problem for most of the words population was the thinning of the layer — and its potential disappearance.
Peer reviewed…. get over it. !!
“Ozone, temperature, CFC and N2O data from 1963 onwards suggest that ozone at the South Pole has a relationship to the early 1980s phase change in temperature, and they do show that the annual ozone minimum does not correlate with N2O, or with CFCs before 1979.
The data suggests that the annual ozone minimum at the South Pole is related to lower stratospheric temperature independently of chlorofluorocarbons and nitrous oxide.”
Thank you. Saved me the trouble of digging that up.
Harmful?
Yes, no chlorine in the R-134a molecule, so it could not contribute to depletion of stratospheric ozone.
Because its use is enforced to protect patent income from cheaper patent-expired products.
Untrue. DuPont actually opposed the phase out of their unpatented Freon-12, but under a/c industry and EPA pressure, they eventually supported the phase out. The entire reason for the phaseout were the ozone depleting properties of CFCs, and the health and safety dangers it presented to the public, worldwide.
Bending to government overreach is not voluntary support.
Freon 12 was banned because two Nobel scientists –Sherwood Rowland and Molina-discovered that cfCs were destroying earths protective layer. A win win for humanity since the problem was solved by replacing Freon 12 with R-134a.
That conclusion was bullcrap as not much has changed in the 35 or so years since the Montreal protocols creation. The switch to 134a reduced efficiency by 30% Explain to me how one of the heaviest molecules out here finds its way up into the stratosphere?
It was always known that once CFCs were banned, the rate of ozone depletion would gradually slow ( takes years because chlorine ions in the stratosphere have to be naturally consumed ) , and then stop altogether, allowing ozone to have net growth once again. That process is playing out as predicted.
Answer my question. No science has explained a path for that really heavy molecule to levitate so high, but they have come up with an different explanation of the ozone hole caused by the isolation of the antarctic continent by circular high level winds in the latitude of the 40’s and 50’s cutting off the atmospheric air exchange with the atmospheric area over the antarctic. This also explains why there is no corresponding ozone hole in the arctic since those winds don’t exist in the north.
The behavior of heavier molecules diffusing and mixing through the earths atmosphere is grade school science. If your nonsense were true, the lower reaches of earths atmosphere would be composed of lighter molecules like hydrogen and we’d all be dead.
Why would the lightest atoms be at the bottom and the heaviest at the top? There is good mixing in the Troposphere due to convection but that doesn’t carry to the stratosphere.
Not just convection, but primarily diffusion.
Why would the lightest be lowest?
Still opening and closing like a yo yo.
Why does bnice29000’s graph show no such thing?
Also, R134a equipment is just as efficient, or better, than the Freon 12 equipment it replaced.
Not quite they had to increase the size of the evaporators and condensers to make up for the 30% efficiency loss
R-134a equipment was slightly more expensive for the reason you mention, but in air-conditioning, the effects were small — not even close to 30%.. These differences were readily accommodated by different heat exchanger and compressor optimizations. For low temperature refrigeration, however, R-134a was at a larger disadvantage vs R-12; So companies looked to other refrigerants for refrigeration applications.
So I was right😎
Not for air conditioning, which is the major use of R-134a.
Yes because it was too inefficient to use for the cooling they used Freon 12 for.
R-134a is used extensively, and successfully, in automotive ac, with only minor changes to the system components. Compression efficiency actually increased slightly with R-134a.
Agreed. As the thread stands, Beeton’s “more expensive” comment validates Bergin’s “increase the size” comment, making Bergin sound right.
Only Slightly more expensive in air conditioning, eg in automotive ac. But In low temperature refrigeration, R-134a compressor displacement has to be increased a fair amount, and heat exchangers also as Bergin and I said. That’s why R-134a is not used for commercial low temperature work, if better substitutes are applicable.
“Explain to me how one of the heaviest molecules out here finds its way up into the stratosphere?”. Easy. When it was drifting around the lower atmosphere with the other heavies, it looked up and saw some clouds. Then it worked out that the clouds were made of water that had floated up there because water vapour was light. Then it realised that there was now a simple scientific method for it to get up there too: it could just identify as light.
Oh dear I forgot about the power of the rainbow. Of course it can do many things right up there with Unicorn farts. 😉🤣🤣
So, a trans molecule?
/humor
One of the first to be pardoned by DT.
From Wikipedia it sounds like the EPA overstepped:
The EPA subsequently issued guidance to the effect that the EPA would no longer regulate R-22. A 2018 ruling[10] by the same court held that the EPA failed to conform with required procedure when it issued its guidance pursuant to the 2017 ruling, voiding the guidance, but not the prior ruling that required it. The refrigeration and air conditioning industry had already discontinued production of new R-22 equipment. The practical effect of these rulings is to reduce the cost of imported R-22 to maintain aging equipment, extending its service life, while preventing the use of R-22 in new equipment.
Imported R-22 is illegal I believe, but it’s irrelevant, since recycled R22 is widely available — and legal.
You have just confirmed that the import was nothing to do with “climate”.
Well done, beetroot.
Word of the day: climactic.
So, the media sensationalizing the alarmism is solely intended to make the news climactic.
That implies that an extreme climate event is ‘a climax’. This will be news to my wife. But perhaps ‘climatic’ is what is meant?
“This will be news to my wife” 🤣 🤣 🤣 😎
You understand.
🙂
The Ozone hole scare that nixed freon has been studied for years now and it is becoming more and more inconclusive that freon was the culprit.
Just the opposite. The ozone hole is repairing itself just as predicted.
I think you might want to check again before you make any bets.
This comment needs links to
1) prediction
2) current status
https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/ozone-layer-recovery-track-helping-avoid-global-warming-05degc
You believe anything released by the UN 🤔🙄 Explains a lot.
I believe in the universal conclusions of this scientific research. If you find any science that disagrees, please let us know. I’ll be waiting..and waiting…
see my comment above.
So Im still waiting for anything you can cite that contradicts my post.
see my comment a couple of questions above
see my ‘Montreal Protocol is nuts’ comment above
Why is it nuts?
see my comment above.
Been no statistically significant change in Ozone hole since 1992
And basically zero trend in minimum ozone.
The 2023 UN article makes an unverifiable “in 20 years” prediction.
The ozone hole problem was news 30 years ago.
If lawmakers made no ozone recovery predictions at the time they made laws, then what were lawmakers expecting?
The EPA brought charges against the man for breaking a federal law, passed by congress. Charges he plead guilty to, So the EPA is overstepping for enforcing federal laws?
Clearly not. The EPA is doing its job
If we ignore bad laws instead of fixing them, then every man is doing what’s right in his own eyes.
It’s a good law
I disagree, the science is suspect and it is already apparent that the WEF, WHO and UN have their own agenda so anything they say is also suspect.
The science is not suspect (except by deniers), it’s well established science, found in every advanced atmospheric science textbook around the world
All science is suspect all the time.
Like how is CO2 at 410 ppm going to destroy the earth when it has been as high as 7000 ppm and more recently 2000 ppm for the dinosaurs and the world didn’t end then? Do you know that the US just had an all time record corn crop yield in 2023. NASA says the increase in the CO2 level so far has caused the earth to become 15% greener from improved plant growth. The Montreal protocol was just a test run for the global warming scare so the UN could install a world government. Check the minutes of the 1992 rio conference of the club of rome where they set up the UN agenda 23 now Agenda 20-30 and give it a read. You will own nothing, be happy and eat the bugs By the way it is not a conspiracy theory as you can buy the book at the UN bookstore.
Your post is loaded with bogus conspiracy theories — all nonsense.
You must be a fast reader that conference went over a few days there are a lot of pages I can’t even read that fast and I’m quick. You just don’t want to know the truth so you have stopped looking.
Not one thing I wrote is incorrect they actually talk about the protocol during the conference.
Warren,
You fail to understand the Scientific Method. It is based on questioning hypotheses. There is no consensus in science.
There is widespread agreement among scientists on many basics — eg, smoking can cause cancer, evolution by natural selection and the earth orbits the sun. And the agreement among researching scientists that Man’s activities are responsible for modern day climate change is 99%, per a recent Cornell University study of published scientific papers.
Sorry but smoking only slightly increases your chance of getting cancer. A large number of smokers live a long life and never get any cancer. Though I must say that if I hadn’t quit smoking 25 years ago I would be dead now.
Why wouldn’t scientists think the climate has changed it has been changing for 4.5 billion years and will be changing long after humans are gone. We may be somewhat responsible for recent climate change but there is absolutely no evidence that that change will be catastrophic. At the moment not one single climate prediction has come true. I have been watching since I became a climate warrior with all my Cub Scout buddies in 1970 when we were all going to freeze to death in an ice age.
‘Only slightly increases your odds of getting cancer?’ For someone so woefully uniformed, you are very certain of yourself. Dunning-Kruger personified.”More than 16 million Americans live with a disease caused by smoking.
Cigarette smoking harms nearly every organ of the body.Cigarette smoking causes many diseases and reduces the health of people who smoke. Smoking also increases health care utilization, health care costs, and absenteeism from work.
Cigarette smoking causes:
Petty attempt at avoiding posting any evidence of CO2 warming.
What a sad little beetroot you really are.
Are these specs from NIH or the CDC if so they’re not worth the paper they are printed on. There is a good reason Trump is going to replace them.
The whole study for secondhand smoke was bogus. Canada did a study for the effect on lung health of industrial city living compared to country living. The people that did the exposure to secondhand smoke study used the info obtained from the city/county living study for their own study. When they published the results it was obvious the study was bogus because the only way they could get the results they did is by taking all the smokers from the cities and non smokers from the country. The results had the same percentages down to 3 significant figures for city/country and smoking house /non-smoking house. There were a lot of 90 year old people sitting outside the old age home smoking like crazy when I used to visit my mother. My grandfather died of emphysema and never smoked a day in his life. According to his doctor he got it from the lime he used in his job as a plasterer. So there are many things that can cause these diseases not just smoking.
Of course there are many other causes for COPD. Nevertheless, smoking is responsible for 1 in 5 deaths in the US (Re read my prior post). I find it amazing that anyone in this day and age can be as uninformed about medical science as you– and yet so certain of when he’s so wrong.
From my side you are the one that appears uninformed but I’m getting tired trying to show sense to the senseless. How you can trust the medical institution after the Covid19 bullshit. Open your eyes man quit stumbling around in the dark.
How many pages of this ping-pong do you expect to co-author before any result other than excavation of decades-old talking points is visible?
I used to exercise bile glands like that too, sure, but this remains too bland even to insert jokes… Couldn’t you just install a cute little chatbot locally? It would be an indistinguishable experience. :]
If you don’t like it quit reading. I ain’t forcing you. 🤷♂️
Smoking is BLAMED. The proof is circumstantial.
My maternal grandfather died at the young age of 99. He smoked 2 packs of Camels his whole life, including the day he died.
I doubt he was included in any of those studies.
Cancer from smoking requires a genetic predispostion.
And beetroot shows just how ANTI-SCIENCE he is by calling to “consensus”.
Stop digging, the hole is now deep enough to plant a turnip, red or otherwise.
Deniers 😉
Goering.
I hope you aren’t seriously suggesting we allow government agencies to go rogue and self-determine which laws, passed by congress, to enforce and which to ignore based on the personal feelings of the agents.
“government agencies to go rogue and self-determine which laws”
That is what the EPA does.
I thought you were all for laws made by petty brain-washed bureaucrat activists..
Ah, so it was you being a low-end socialist lackey with an absolute NEED to be controlled by petty bureaucratic activists.
Not surprised.
No, I’m saying we should elect people who make the right things legal rather than ignoring laws because they seem dumb. What I say is idealistic, but I don’t like promoting lawbreakers even if they have a point. I don’t know enough to know whether the lawbreaker in the article had a point or he was just making money.
You mean like K.Harris did when D.A. in CA?
So it is nothing to do with “the climate”… thanks for the note. !
Love that this was tagged “climate refugees”
Need to read carefully before forming an opinion on content – don’t want to advocate smuggling. If the law is dumb lets make a better one.
Even though eliminating departments like EPA would be satisfying. Withdrawing all rule making authority, enforcement authority, grant making authority and other funding activities would solve almost all the problems with this agency and all agencies like them.