Day 011 - 12 Jul 94 - Page 77
1 whether they call themselves an environmentalist or a
scientist, may have thought that something was adverse.
2 Do you know when the Nature article was published? You
said mid-80s, can you be more precise than that?
3 A. Basically, my Lord, I do not have the information with
me, but I can ensure that is.
4
Q. You could give us the reference for the issue and its
5 date?
A. I can give you the reference to the issue and the
6 date. I can do that as rapidly as I can.
7 Q. Going on a bit from that, when did you as a specialist,
when were you first aware of any suspicion that CFCs might
8 have a damaging effect on ozone?
A. In fact it was about the time when the British
9 Antarctic survey reported.
10 Q. About the same time?
A. Yes.
11
Q. Does it follow you had not heard before that of a
12 suspicion that this was the case?
A. As far as I remember I had not heard very much about
13 it, though I had heard vaguely about the Maliner and
Roland paper.
14
Q. Back in 1974?
15 A. Yes, but in fact I did not start to take an interest
in until the mid-1980's, so I cannot comment in detail
16 before that time.
17 Q. I am not asking an interest which might lead to you doing
work on it yourself, but just an awareness that there was
18 a real suspicion in someone's mind.
A. I would say that until the Maliner and Roland paper
19 which was again in 1974, there had not been any scientist
who had thought that the chlorine containing compounds
20 were a great threat to the atmosphere. So we are talking
about knowledge over the last 20 years.
21
Q. Between 1974 and the Nature publication, did anything
22 happen to remind you of this? Was there any scientific or
public attention drawn to it that you recall?
23 A. No. I think the main point was that the shock that
was caused by people who had been doing routine work in
24 Antarctica was quite considerable. It is worth noting
that in fact the satellite instrument called total ozone
25 mapping spectrometer was in operation at the time, in the
latter part of the time that Farman's group were working
26 in Antarctica and had detected low levels ozone, but
because they believed that the ozone level could not be so
27 low on the basis of current knowledge, these were
discounted until the ground base measurements were made,
28 were release at which stage they looked at the satellite
instrument date and realised it had been recording
29 correctly. So I would submit that if people had thought
this was a possibility they would have been less keen to
30 discount the satellite data initially.
