Free Radicals - Michael Brooks [101]
His initial reaction, he says, was disbelief – he thought he must have done something wrong in his calculations. But he also says that a chill ran down his spine. He knew that if he was right, then this was dangerous.
Rowland and Molina checked their calculations, discussed them with colleagues and searched for flaws in their analysis. They failed to find any, and in June 1974 they published their findings in Nature. A few months later they discussed the results publicly for the first time, at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Atlantic City. By October, a US Government committee commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a study into the question of whether the ozone layer really was under threat from human activity.
Not that Rowland was waiting around for the National Academy of Sciences report to come out. The US Environmental Protection Agency calculated that non-malignant skin cancers would rise by 5 per cent for every 1 per cent reduction in stratospheric ozone. Deaths from cancer would increase as fast as ozone concentration decreased. 800,000 tons of CFCs was being released each year, and each chlorine atom they eventually unleashed on the stratosphere was destroying thousands of ozone molecules. It looked as if the ozone layer would eventually be depleted by 20 to 40 per cent. Rowland called for an immediate ban on non-essential CFCs. The industry railed at the possibility – and war was declared.
Unfortunately, most scientists were not willing to fight on Rowland and Molina’s side. Some of them even fought for the opposition. In 1975 the Chemical Specialties Manufacturer’s Association, a US industry umbrella organisation, brought Richard Scorer, a physics professor at London’s Imperial College, to America. His job was to sow seeds of doubt. During his six-week tour, Scorer told anyone who would listen – the viewers of the prime-time TV show Firing Line, for example – that tales of ozone destruction were just ‘scare stories’, and that the supposed impact of CFCs was ‘utter nonsense’. The Earth’s atmosphere was the ‘most robust and dynamic element in the environment. Man’s activities have very little impact on it.’
Scorer’s tour had no impact on the views of the scientific community, but surveys indicated that it increased by 50 per cent the public’s awareness that there was scientific opposition to the claims being made by Rowland and Molina. That was more than enough to keep the controversy alive – and a ban at bay.
By 1976, Rowland was describing himself as ‘impatient’ for a ban on CFCs. He wasn’t alone: at the ironically named 12th International Symposium on Free Radicals, held in Laguna Beach, California, in January of that year, other scientists echoed his concerns that nothing seemed to be happening. But that was not about to change.
When the US National Academy of Sciences issued its report in September 1976, its conclusions were so weak that the next day’s New York Times reported the Academy as recommending a curb on aerosols, while the headline of the Washington Post screamed out ‘Aerosol Ban Opposed by Science Unit’. As Lydia Dotto and Harold Schiff, authors of The Ozone War, point out, the equivocal nature of the Academy’s report meant that both newspapers were ‘fundamentally right’.
Things took a long time to improve. Alan Miller, a lawyer working at the Natural Resources Defense Council, has called 1977 to 1985 the ‘Dark Years’. Although aerosol sprays using CFCs had been banned in the United States, sales of non-aerosol CFCs – such as motor vehicle refrigerants – were soaring to new heights. And this was more than a decade after Rowland and Molina had shown CFCs to be profoundly dangerous.
‘What’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?’ That was Rowland’s outburst to a reporter from