In the process of getting my refrigerate license, I had it pounded it into my head that the method by which CFC’s (such as Freon) destroyed the ozone hole was well understood. So I got a chuckle of this….

But chlorine peroxide is a difficult molecule to work with. Extremely unstable by sea-level laboratory standards, it’s been hard to isolate in pure form for study. And despite the generally accepted cascade of ozone depletion reactions, it hadn’t even been detected in the Antarctic until 2004, which difficulty had been largely chalked up to its short lifetime. Now, though, a team at JPL has produced the best synthetic samples of chlorine peroxide to date, and they’ve checked how quickly it decomposes in the presence of ultraviolet light. And, well. . .the problem is, the stuff falls apart much more slowly than anyone had predicted – many, many times more slowly. If they’re right, it’s hard to see how the accepted chemistry of chlorine peroxide-driven ozone depletion can be correct.

Cross Posted to the Watching the Trades