Wow, are you ever sunburned!

Oh Gross!! What’s That On Your Skin?
By Joseph Walther

I overheard a very intense argument concerning our destruction of the ozone layer. Actually, the participants spoke of global warming, too. I got the impression that these verbal combatants considered both issues as one in the same. While they are somewhat related, they are separate issues relative to cause.

Even more striking to me was the fact that these people lined up along ideological lines, with one side blaming the other for the “mess”. The conservative side kept blaming the liberals for exaggerating everything out of proportion, while the liberal side relentlessly accused the conservatives for “not giving a damn” and “destroying our planet” in the interest of profits.

This is why we can’t get anything done relative to either of these issues. We use both of them as political attack mechanisms to defeat the “other” side. This is unproductive, stupid, and very dangerous. Here’s why.

We are hearing much more about these topics nowadays, and not just from the tree huggers, either. It’s no longer a debate as to occurrence, but rather as to whether it is part of a naturally occurring cycle and whether humans are contributing. I think it’s a combination of the two. Hear me out on this.

Oxygen is an atom symbolized by the big “O” and it amounts to about 20% of what we humans breathe. When two “O” atoms chemically combine, they turn into two molecules of “O2”. We need “O2” in order to remain among the living. There are no exceptions, not even Tom Cruise or Brooke Shields!

Oxygen atoms also combine, though much less frequently, into other molecules. When three oxygen atoms chemically combine, they turn into “O3”, which we know as ozone. Singular oxygen atoms are chemically reactive. They love to combine with whatever molecules happen to be nearby. All that’s required is a catalyst like molecular nitrogen.

So, when an “O” combines with an “O2,”along with a catalyst like molecular nitrogen, they turn into “O3,” only with an unwanted consequence: the catalyst does not disappear. It just keeps hanging around, available for many future combinations. In other words, we create ozone (O3) with plenty of molecular nitrogen still around to create a lot more of it.

This happens with automobile emissions. It occurs every time industrial blast furnaces spew waste into the surrounding air. It happens every time an electrical circuit begins to short out via sparks. It happens every time a fire burns. The ways in which we produce lots of ozone down here on earth are too numerous to mention. But, we do it. We may do it consciously or unconsciously. We may do it necessarily or unnecessarily. How and why are immaterial; we do it, and we’re doing it at an ever-increasing rate.

Too much ozone on Earth stinks. It’s bad for our lungs, along with a whole host of other health problems that it causes. As bad as it is, however, too much ozone on Earth’s surface does not pose anywhere near as serious a problem as too little ozone up there, about 15,000 miles above Earth.

In the early 1900s, refrigerators became big players. Air conditioners followed. People, out of a learned fear of underarm sweat, invented antiperspirants, along with aerosol propellants to deliver them. These, along with countless other consumer products came into high demand, leading well-intentioned chemists around the world to invent a previously non-existent class of molecules called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). CFCs, unlike ozone-producing pollutants, don’t create ozone; they destroy it.

The chemistry involved is long, tedious, and boring. Concisely, however, it breaks down to a simple reality. Chemically, “2O3” turn into “3O2”. In simple English, this means that the chemical reaction destroys two ozone molecules and creates three oxygen molecules. Worse is the fact that the catalyst, chlorine atoms, stay around to perpetuate the chemical reaction, destroying more and more ozone.

Ozone, which is plentiful on Earth’s surface, remains alive, increasingly smelly, and ever more dangerous to our collective health. The microscopically thin ozone layer, about 15,000 miles above Earth’s surface, the one keeping out the ultraviolet rays from our Sun, continues to weaken and break up. We need to get a handle on the REAL extent of this as caused by humans.

I’m not playing a blame game here. Humans live in a macro world. Chemical reactions take place in a micro world, hidden from our eyes. This is mostly good. Can you imagine what life would be like if we could see billions of bacteria, not to mention millions of damned ugly viruses crawling all over our bodies and coming at us from every conceivable angle? There wouldn’t be much human sexual activity going on; I can tell you that.

Our macro world experiences are the result of micro-world interactions. As such, we have to accept or reject what scientists tell us. This is pretty tough to do, especially when one group of renown scientists tell us one thing and another group, just as renown, tell us the opposite. Precisely who is telling the truth? More importantly, what is the truth? Perhaps even more critical, can we recognize the truth when we hear it? Finally, do we even want to recognize the truth IF we hear it?

While I believe that global warming/cooling and ozone layer depletion/rejuvenation are part of a nature’s cyclical process, I also believe that modern humans are contributing to it and continue doing so at an increasing rate. I’m not talking about ancient humans, like the cave dwellers of old, and even people like Moses. I’m referring to modern humans like all of us. And even though he’s older than dirt, we must include the likes of Jack LaLanne, no matter how many fantastic juicers he’s invented or how much juice he has made and drunk during his ninety plus years of living!

Relatively speaking, the human species has been around a paltry million or so years. In relation to the age of our universe (some 14 billion years and our solar system, some 4.6 billion years), humans have been here the equivalent of a cosmic second. Us modern day troublemakers have been around even less time, perhaps about the time span of a cosmic microsecond!

No matter how we view it, we youngsters are larger contributors to this than our ancient brethren are. After all, serious human-made pollution from planet Earth didn’t begin in earnest until around the industrial revolution, along with a whole host of additional technological advances. Earth’s ozone depletion didn’t begin in earnest until our well-intentioned scientists invented those chlorofluorocarbons in response to our human demands, sometime during the 1930s.

We didn’t invent these things with the intentions of killing off our species. We wanted a better way, other than lugging ice all over the place, to keep our foods from poisoning us. We also wanted a way to control underarm sweating and body odor. Bathing with soap and water seemed so… well, slow. We wanted to end the horrible nightmare of high heat and humidity, especially in the office. So we ingeniously invented some stuff without considering the possibility of a few unintended consequences.

What’s done is done. We cannot, nor will we, stop technological advances aimed at making life better for all of us. However, we need to stop arguing about it and accusing everyone we disagree with of attempting to destroy the planet. We also need to hold our political leaders’ feet to the fire and stop letting them use these issues as justification for being morons at our expense.

Let’s begin to understand that humans want and need many things, some of which may be somewhat harmful to our natural environment. This is not going to stop. Humans, like it or not, are contributing on a larger scale than we’d like to admit. Get over it and let’s start looking for solutions before we destroy our species. We can’t send the space shuttle up to fix this one, folks.

Here’s the bottom line from the human perspective. There is an acceptable medium somewhere between being totally informed about all things and being blissfully ignorant of all things. The former is impossible and the latter will kill all of us. So, we need to find that medium and we need to find it soon. Oh, and our news network intrepid windbags, including those of FOX News, are useless regarding these issues.

Here’s the bottom line from a cost perspective. Expectation theory makes a great deal of sense if we examine it closely. Potential low probability occurrences with known catastrophic consequences need to be examined more closely than high probability occurrences with known low to modest catastrophic consequences.

With this in mind, we need to stop mentally masturbating about global warming and ozone depletion. Not only will it pay dividends in the long run, it may well provide us humans with a long run to worry about.

Have a great week. Tune in again next week. And turn that air conditioner up.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Send your comments. Just click here.