Day 011 - 12 Jul 94 - Page 51
1 Q. Right.
2 MR. JUSTICE BELL: But when you said HCFCs are more harmful ---
3 MISS STEEL: Yes.
4 MR. JUSTICE BELL: -- what were you comparing that with? Were
you saying more harmful than CFC-12 or more harmful than
5 they had been thought to be which is what Professor
Duxbury thought you were meaning.
6
MISS STEEL: I am not 100 per cent sure, but I thought that he
7 was saying the more highly reactive compound putting a
large transient burden on the atmosphere was meaning in
8 the short term it was putting a greater burden than, for
example, CFC-11 or 12?
9 A. No, that was not what I meant. What I meant was that
when the people who drew up the revisions to the Montreal
10 Protocol put the HCFCs in a separate class, that meant
they had put a certain risk factor on the use of those
11 HCFCs.
12 What the SORG report is saying is that, in fact, the
decisions which people made in drawing up that were
13 possibly flawed, and that it should have possibly been
included along with methyle chloroform as substances which
14 should have been phased out faster, but methyle
chloroform, if you look at the Montreol Protocol, is a
15 somewhat minor species compared, for example, to CFC-12.
That is why I asked the question more harmful than what,
16 because to say something is more harmful without giving a
comparitor does not tell you anything.
17
Q. So when you were giving a comparison, what were you
18 comparing it to?
A. I was comparing it with the previous estimate of, if
19 you like, what is called the anthro-progenic effect which
is the harmful effect of a manmade substance on the
20 atmosphere.
21
MR. JUSTICE BELL: Can I just ask this -- I am trying to
22 simplify it for my own purposes; I may become inaccurate
and, if I do, tell me -- you have, for instance, CFC gas
23 which produces reactive chemicals which act or can act as
a catalyst for ozone destruction?
24 A. Yes.
25 Q. Once that has happened, can they continue to act as
catalysts, chemically speaking, or is that that, as it
26 were, in ordinary English?
A. No, basically, the chlorine in the stratosphere is
27 found in three types of species; the first are the CFCs
which have actually found their way into the stratosphere
28 and by looking at the light in the infra red reaching from
the sun going through the upper atmosphere, one can
29 actually see the chemical fingerprints or the spectral
fingerprints of these things and work out what the loading
30 of the unprocessed chlorofluorocarbons is.
