One of the most important things to note about the so-called Antarctic ozone hole is that some of the most complex and least-understood atmospheric chemical reactions occur during the four-to-six-week duration of the ozone hole. The Polar Vorex seals the Antarctic atmosphere during this period, creating what is essentially an extraordinary chemical reaction vessel. As we can see in the next figure, very dramatic changes occur in the chemical composition of the stratosphere as one flies from outside the vortex to the vessel inside. The concentrations of many chemicals drop dramatically, including water vapor, nitrogen oxides, and ozone. At the same time, the concentrations of other chemicals, like chlorine monoxide, increase dramatically.

The boundaries for these extraordinary changes in chemical concentrations is the wall of the Polar Vortex. Think of it as a sealed chemical reactor vessel inside which there is a water vapor hole, a nitrogen oxide hole, and an ozone hole - all occurring simultaneously. This chemical conditions exists nowhere else on Earth, except perhaps the short-lived Arctic polar vortex. The graph above was common at scientific meetings, but seldom at public forums or in the news media. Why don't those who fret about the ozone hole also worry about the nitrogen oxide hole, and so on?

Explaining this complex chemistry has been a major problem for the proponents of the ozone depletion theory. From their standpoint, the "discovery" of the hole in 1985 was both a blessing and a curse: a blessing because it revived their sagging fortunes; a curse because F. Sherwood Rowland's theory could not possibly account for the depletion.The latest version of Rowland and Molina theory predicted a 5 percent depletion of ozone over 100 years. In Antarctica, scientists were observing depletions of 50 percent in a few weeks!. Then, a few weeks later, the ozone level was back to "normal" again.

It took two years for the ozone depletion propagandists to come up with an explanation for this anomalous situation. The "depletion gang" were not disturbed by their own contradictory pronouncements. An article by Martyn Chipperfield in Nature, Jan. 24, 1991, for example, triumphally proclaimed: "It is now beyond doubt that stratospheric ozone is being destroyed by chlorine derived from man-made CFCs". In the next paragraph, however, Chipperfield warns that "... many quantitative details of the Antarctic ozone depletion remain unexplained..."

Mario Molina devised and unbelievably complex chemical theory called "heterogeneous" or "dimer" chemistry (Molina and Molina, 1987). the theory requires very cold temperatures, below -78ºC, which occur in the Antarctic atmosphere only a few weeks of the year. It also requires the formation of polar stratospheric clouds, which are made up of nitric acid, instead of the water that makes up normal clouds. Finally, Molina's new theory requires sunlight at just the right time.

These conditions can occur in Antarctica only after three to four months of complete darkness enable the stratosphere to cool own to -78ºC. Then, at the very moment that spring returns and sunlight strikes Antarctica, at that moment, all conditions being right, the stratosphere being primed, the sunlgiht supposedely sets off a series of very complex reactions that break apart the molecules in which chlorine is bound, freeing individual chlorine atoms to wander about and destroy the ozone layer.

Molina's chemical formulas are as follows:

(1)     ClONO₂ + HCl ice> Cl₂ + HNO₃
(2)     Cl₂ + hv –> 2 Cl
(3)     Cl + O₃ –> ClO + O₂
(4)     ClO + ClO + M –> Cl₂O₂ + M
(5)     Cl₂O₂ + hv –> Cl + ClOO
(6)     ClOO + M –> Cl + O₂ + M

(M) is a "collisional chaperone" (a hard surface) for N₂ and O₂, as put by Molina.

The net result of this series of complex chemical reactions is two ozone molecules (O₃) will be turned into three oxygen molecules (O₂). This is the heart of the explanation that CFCs are depleting ozone in Antarctica. The so-called "chloro-catalytic process" that has scared the hell out the common people.

Please note that CFCs are not involved at all in Molina's chemical reactions. The chlorine comes instead from two "reservoirs" ClONO₂ and HCl, natural atmospheric compounds.

Second, ice (a hard surface) is needed to begin the reaction, which is why the polar stratospheric clouds are required. The ice is found only when temperatures are colder than –78ºC and an altitude of between 12 and 20 km.

Third, without sunlight (hv stands for a photon of UV radiation) this reaction could not occur. Let us concentrate on reaction (5). This crucial equation says that when a molecule Cl₂O₂ (chlorine peroxide) is struck by UV radiation, it will break up into a Cl atom, which goes on to destroy ozone molecules, and ClOO.

The ClOO (sometimes known as OClO) is then presumed to undergo a molecular collision against an ice crystal to give up molecular oxygen and a free chlorine atom. The crucial thing is: Given that the theoretical mechanism has never been definitely established in the laboratory, does the chemistry work like this in the stratosphere?

"NO", says Igor J. Eberstein of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. In a paper published in Geophysical Research Letters in May 1990, Eberstein demonstrates that the most likely path of chlorine peroxide photodissociation is into two ClO radicals; that is, back to the monomer. A secondary path of dissociation is Cl₂ and atomic oxgen. If this is getting too technical, please forgive me, but there is no layman explanation for these complex reactions. On the other hand, if someone does not undestand this chemical reactions, he/she shouldn't be into ozone layer discussions defending something he/she does not fully understand.

The ozone depletion theorists conveniently ignore these least-energy pathways, a fundamental law of thermodynamics, with no exceptions whatsoever. They claim that the chemical reactions goes this way:

Cl2O2 + hv –> Cl + ClOO
Eberstein shows that the reaction actually follows one of these two most probable least energy pathways: Path 1:     Cl2O2 + H becomes 2 ClO or,
Path 2:     Cl2O2 + hv –> Cl2O + O

According to Eberstein, "There is no proven chemical mechanism to account for the creation of the ozone hole. This is a very serious failure. If you have a theory, you should be able to provide a definitive mechanism. Otherwise is pure speculation. This Antarctic ozone depletion issue has to be put on a more solid scientific basis."

But Eberstein is not alone in criticizing the chemical hocus pocus. Writing in the Journal of Geophysical Research, on Oct. 20, 1990, G.W. Lawrence and his associates demolish a popular version of Molina's Equation (6) and the presumed gas-phase photodissociation of chlorine oxide to free up chorine. After a series of very complex experiments in the laboratory, Lawrence, Clemitshaw, and Apkarian (1990) conclude:

In the spectral range in which it has been recently reported that OClO undergoes unimolecular dissociation to produce Cl + O₂ ... we have conducted studies to establish that if indeed such a photodissociation channel exists, then its quantum yield is less than 5 x 10 ^–4, Such a small quantum yield process would render the photochemistry of OClO irrelevant to the destruction of stratospheric ozone." (p. 595).

Sunlight is another requisite element in Molina's "dimer" chemistry. Sunlight is the "trigger" for the chemical reaction that destroy ozone molecules; this is why the ozoe hole appears only at the beginning of the Antarctic spring, although the chlorine molecules have been there all throughout the winter darkness.

Again, reality intrudes. The National and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) anounced on September 1990 that its polar satellites were detecting the development of the ozone hole a full month before the appearance of sunlight. In other words, the hole is well developed before sunlight strikes Antarctica, exactly the opposite of what Molina heterogeneous chemistry theory claims. If chemical reactions are creating the hole, these reactions are occirring in the darkness, which invalidates the theory.

Not surpisingly, the news media ignored the importance of the NOAA discovery in refutig Molina's dimer chemistry. Instead, the press played the news to another scare story, reporting that the NOAA satellites data showed Antarctica ozone depletion to be more serious than originally thought, because the hole was - unexpectedly - appearing early.

Molina got the Noble Prize in chemistry in 1995, along with his teacher, F. Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen, not for their scientic work by itself, but for the "political implications that saved mankind from an impeding catastrophe", breaking away from Nobel's basic conditions for awarding the Prize: "For outstanding achievements on sciences, that lead to industrial progress and the benefit of mankind".

A blatant example of how science has been politically abused, clearing the ground for more junk and fraudulent science, and for absurd international treaties of tremendous effects on global economies - and none on the rise of CO₂ and amelioration of poverty and hunger in the world.

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