As I mentioned in a previous article in this magazine ("Understanding Global Warming," Supply House Times, July 2002, page 36), I had the opportunity to talk at length to several environmental scientists about this subject in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And as the result of these discussions I was able to accurately predict the coming phaseout of CFCs and the effect this would have on our industry. At the time, my story was pretty unbelievable. However, these discussions have convinced me that global ozone depletion may be real and is the result of refrigerant and solvent releases. Though even here I think the potential has been blown out of proportion in some instances.
It's just a fact that environmentalism is an inexact science, because proving a theory may actually take centuries of observation to prove it true. One theory that I wrote about in 1990, and which was foretold to me by top scientists, was that increased ultraviolet radiation on the earth's surface due to ozone-layer thinning would result in killing huge amounts of oxygen-creating plankton in the seas of the world. Is that really happening? Well, scientists now say the plankton is thriving on the extra radiation. So the scientists and I proved wrong.