Re: Statistics 101

[RuthWeiner@AOL.COM]

>I learned in Statistics 101 that while correlation can provide a 

>basis for suspicion, it does not prove a cause and effect relationship.

>Again I ask, how do you know that if we had not stopped using freon, 

>the depletion rate wouldn't have slowed anyway?<


Added to the correlation is a chemical mechanism that is not only "plausible" 

but pretty elegant, and completely in accord with basic photochemistry that 

has been demonstrated experimentally.  The chemical mechanism for ozone 

depletion is also well understood and has been demonstrated.   The 

photochemistry of CF3Cl can (and has) been demsntrated in the laboratory.  To 

give you a relevant analogy: photochemical smog (now referred to collectively 

as "ozone") was produced in the laboratory by irradiating a mixture of 

exhaust gases from cars with the UV from sunlight, thereby corroborating the 

proposed theory that Los Angeles smog resulted from photchemical reactions 

with car exhaust: mix sunlight and exhaust and you get typical LA smog with a 

large concentration of photochemical oxidants.


Moreover, while a plausible tested mechanism is proposed for ozone depletion, 

I know of none that has been proposed for spontaneous ozone layer recovery.  

The reason for the depletion is that the removal of free oxygen by reaction 

with the photochemically formed CF3 free radical is faster than the natural 

production of ozone by cosmic ray bombardment.  This is why, in my opinion, 

leaks from air conditioning systems don't matter, because the ozone formation 

rate by cosmic rays can take care of some depletion, but use of Freon 

aerosols does matter.  It's the quantity of CFCs that matters ("the dose 

makes the poison"). Rowland, by the way, described the chemistry very well in 

an old Scientific American article.


This is the way environmental chemistry is confirmed, and by the way it's 

more causation than correlation.


The "greens" aren't ALWAYS all wrong.  In the case of ozone, they 

over-reacted   Let's not get carried away and denigrate the good science with 

the junk science.  I question global warming in part because neither a 

consistent explanation nor a consistent mechanism has been proposed, nor can 

I figure out how they tell.  The ozone depletion mechanism is a model of an 

observed phenomenoin, not like global warming, which is a prediction based on 

a not-yet-validated model.


Ruth Weiner, Ph. D.

ruthweiner@aol.com