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Coincidences exist that are crass abuses of privilege to amass money and power, and for the sheer joy of squeezing a skinny neck. Nicolae Ceausescu exercised a vicious Rumania of Official Truth and terror 1965 to 25 December 1989. His citizenry voted a very sincere ballot for him and his wife Elena (are you listening, Hitlery Ramrod Clinton?) by firing squad on Christmas Day. Abusive US government factions are earning their own Christmas surprise, and peremptorily dishing it out in kind.
Freons sported unblemished records of safety and efficacy as refrigeration working fluids from their synthesis by Thomas Midgley, Jr. in 1930 through their discovery by Enviro-whiners in the 1970s. Luddites sworn to destroy progress in its every form mandated freons' replacement (except in 135 underprivileged nations) by hydrochlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons via the Montreal Convention. These chemicals are awful working fluids, require exotic lubricants, are intensely corrosive and tumorigenic, and are powerful Greenhouse gases. Montreal mandated HCFC and HFC exclusive use in eco-terrorist First World countries, and also banned them starting in 2003. The patents expire around 2003 (coincidence).
We turn to radical right wing (like your Bolshevik grandma) publication Chemical & Engineering News 76(31) 33 (1998). The Man legislated that your refrigerator use HFC-134a (1,1,1,2-tetrafluoroethane) in its compressor and HCFC blowing agents for its polyurethane foam insulation. Consumer complaints have escalated to politically viable shitstorms.
HFC-134a is expensive. Its only compatible lubricant is a costly and hygroscopic ester that within minutes, if "mishandled," absorbs enough humidity to reduce refrigerator life from 20 years to a few months through corrosion. Flammable, volatile, cheap hydrocarbons like cyclopentane and isobutane are easy to lubricate and 10% more efficient, if not safe, and are banned by the EPA until 2003 (when they are mandated). HFC-134a "has 3400 times as much global warming potential as a molecule of carbon dioxide." The UN Intragovernmental Panel on Climate Change states in 2000 HFC-134a annual impact on Official global warming will exceed that from all fossil fuel burned in the UK. Pity.
HCFC-141b (1,1-dichloro-1-fluoroethane), by law, blows insulating foam in refrigerator walls. (Superior freon-blown foams are banned). Do not venture into the kitchen. HCFC-141b is a potent tumorigen. (Programmes for Alternative Fluorocarbon Toxicity Testing (PAFT). Every chronic test of HFC-134a and HCFC-141b elicited abundant tumors and "other effects" in rodents, ASHRAE Journal 36(7) 17 (1994)).
Buy a ruinously over-priced inefficient new refrigerator boasting an expected lifetime of its warranty plus a day, and your family will die horribly after visiting the oncologist to inquire about "other effects." Expensive, shoddy, and deadly are Enviro-whiner hallmarks. Toss in massive exacerbation of the Official Greenhouse Effect. Reduce CO2 emissions, suckers.
August 1998 was EPA press release heaven. The National Ozone Crisis was narrowly averted! Violation of ozone air quality standards in 27 eastern states during 74 days between 05 April and 20 July 1998 occurred 139 times, fewer than 0.07 times per state per day (Clean Air Network and US Public Interest Research Group). Given an emergency air pollution truancy, the EPA lowered ozone standards to 80 parts-per-billion, with a "b," and renormalized 139 violations (good air quality) into the IMPENDING DOOM of 1904 violations. 1765 extra violations were created by jiggling a decimal point. EPA bureaucrats are party animals!
Clean up your act, suckers, and the EPA will reduce ozone standards to below natural levels. Oh EPA, could we vent some freons to Officially scrub the air clean of ozone? NASA can monitor our progress with $billion satellite telemetries and data can be renormalized into politically salutary sound bites.
From 1963 to 1995 typical underprivileged nation Iran brought on line 13.25 billion tonnes/year of petrochemical production with no pollution controls, no waste disposal rules, and no carbon dioxide emissions limits (C&EN 76(31) 25 (1998). Annual megatonnages of natural gas flare in the desert as oil well waste. Iranian cool ones stay frosty in freon-powered refrigerators, building cooling plants are freon-powered, their land yacht cars boast freon air conditioners. Iran laughs at what we have become, suckers.
As swamps were dialectically elevated to wetlands and jungles to tropical rain forests, so the lowly California mud puddle has achieved hallowed Enviro-whiner "vernal pool" status (Science 281(5377) 626 (1998)) replete with fragile and endangered species enjoying a devastating effect on biodiversity. Statistical soil sampling of historic mud puddles, er, vernal pools, definitively establishes (like fairy dust) 1.64 million acres of ooze in the 1800s and only 0.4 million hectares of ooze in 1998. How will we cope with the National Mud Puddle Crisis? In San Diego, CA alone a 5-year $million project will restore 116 vernal pools on 9300 hectares of Marine Corps base. Property owners and farmers are hysterically bulldozing every depression, bog, and mire lest their property be declared "protected" (stolen by the government).
Protected? Protected to death.
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