More Threat To The Ozone Shield

John Berge

1992

Published in:

The Northwest Technocrat, 1st quarter 1992, No. 326

As Discover magazine of November 1991 reports, laughing gas is no joke. Used mostly by dentists as an anesthetic, nitrous oxide, or N₂O, got the name laughing gas, possibly because of involuntary laughter sometimes elicited from patients. But now in this instance, nitrous oxide is unfunny with a vengeance.

The concentration in the atmosphere of nitrous oxide now is only about one-thousandth that of carbon dioxide or CO₂, but it seems to be increasing. CO₂, is a greenhouse gas and much has been said lately about the greenhouse effect and its causes which affects mostly the lower atmosphere.

But the ozone layer is at high altitude and functions like a blanket of atoms consisting of ozone that protects life on earth from the terrific barrage of ultra-violet radiation coming from the sun. Scientists have described the condition and warn of its danger. The ozone hole is a thinning out of the ozone layer that becomes apparent when the upper air currents change with the seasons. The ozone layer because of its thinning out then allows a hole to form. One cause is CFCs, or chloroflourocarbons, a gas or gases used in air conditioners, refrigerators and industry. One atom of chlorine, from CFCs, attacks 200,000 atoms of ozone, and, since CFCs take about a quarter century to reach the level where they destroy the ozone layer, it follows that the destruction occurring now is the result of CFCs released years ago, and CFCs have been released in increasing amounts in the intervening years.

Nitrous oxide has more effect on ozone than CFCs do, but where it was coming from was a mystery until a chemist, Mark Thiemens of the University of San California at San Diego, identified a previously unknown source -- nylon manufacturing. Thiemens estimates that nylon manufacturers worldwide emit 727,000 tons of N₂O annually. This gas lives on for 150 years.

The threat of the ozone hole was presented to politicians, but this was really an exercise in futility, because politicians are agents of business; they stayed in character and resolved to postpone any action. The people that were voted for and expected to be responsible for the country haven't moved yet -- maybe they can't! Citizens of North America should be able to see that politicians really are mediocrity. We must face it; politics can kill us.

Technocracy has a social design that was put together to handle problems that an increasingly technological society will be confronted with.