The Democratic Primary is Upon Us! - Biden is the Presumptive Nominee

[Agema]

...gaseous emissions from industrial activity that take years merely to reach that altitude in the first place.

No. You're misunderstanding what that means.

Gases move by diffusion and convection currents. Diffusion is relatively slow, but the wind causes powerful convection currents. These will readily move any gases and small particulates around, including upwards to kilometres above the surface of the Earth because there is vertical movement of air currents as well as horizontal, for instance due to differences in pressure and temperature.

Although gravity is a thing, the power of the winds over small particles tends to exceed gravity: to all intents and purposes, any inert, largely insoluble gas released at sea level will end up thoroughly mixed; at the top of the troposphere the concentration relative to other gases is going to be pretty much uniform with the sea level concentration. The concentration of argon in the atmosphere, for instance, is roughly consistent around 0.9% all the way beyond the troposphere up to about 100 km.

The stratosphere is approximately 10km up. However, when they say it takes "a year or two" for a CFC molecule to reach the stratosphere, this is a gross simplification to reflect a much more complex process. It's not about some Brownian motion where there's a rate of diffusion we can calculate and it takes one year, because diffusion is a tiny force compared to convection. What's actually going on is that every day a small percentage of CFCs in the troposphere are transferred to the stratosphere by vertical air currents, some of which will stay there. There's no distinction between molecules going on here, as if a CFC molecule has to wait a year before it gets an access all areas bracelet. It's just that those in the right place on the right currents get shunted up. And, on average, it might take about a year for any one particle. But some get there much faster, and some much slower.

Yeah you can keep telling yourself all you want. Me, I'll rest confident in my ability to tell the difference between particulates yeeted straight to high altitude by an impromptu nuclear rocket engine definitively proven to have been such 34 years ago, smoke from a giant fire after the nuclear rocket engine tuckered out, and gases released at no particular velocity from industrial equipment.

Yes, particulates that are blasted out to and then transferred by winds to places like Sweden. Some got to a higher altitude and got caught by higher currents that took them NE instead of NW, arriving at Cherepovets in four days. Later radioactive release caught currents that spread them more generally west across most of Europe (reaching the UK in about 6 days). All of these times and distances are consistent with normal wind speeds.

snip

[sigh] More argument failing to address the central point.

And I'm pointing out why and how your examples are outstandingly poor. Because your "obvious common sense", is neither obvious nor common.

You're the one who seems to think that the wind blows, and certain gases somehow resist moving with the rest of the air.

My argument was...

... completely theoretical and proves nothing at all. Not unless you want to pony up a sufficiently convincing cost analysis of savings from oil prices compared to the cost of developing new non-CFC technology and manufacturing processes.

As for "paper tiger"... lots of these new emissions seem to come from China, but China is a country with rampant rogue capitalism underneath the nominally Communist politics where companies routinely infringe pollution and toxicity controls if they can punt out stuff cheaper and make money. China, of course, has strongly disputed being the source of these emissions, and yet for some reason has also shut down factories and started air monitoring for CFCs in relevant industrial areas...

The absolute best-case scenario for the Montreal Protocol is it expedited that market transition; the worst-case, and frankly more likely given the massive "oh shit, we fucked up" that was the Kigali Amendment, was that it forced premature mass global production of AGW-accelerating hydrocarbons that depleted ozone levels anyways.

It wasn't a fuck up. The point of the Montreal Protocol was to reduce ozone depletion by replacing CFCs with less damaging alternatives, and it worked.

 

[Silvanus]

You might ask yourself, "what happened between 1973-1985?". But more to the point, year-over-year CFC and HCFC production was already slowing, even accounting for the energy crisis and its subsequent resolution, indicating an approach towards peak production long before the Montreal Protocol.

This is why basing an exponential growth model off peak year-over-year increase without consideration for any other intervening variable, like for example a global energy crisis retarding CFC and HCFC production for over a decade followed by a shallower production curve than prior, is really dumb.

What I'm seeing is not an assumption of exponential growth; what I'm seeing is an unsustainable increase in production, relatively suddenly levelled off at the time of an international protocol coming into effect.

That unsustainable growth may well have levelled off anyway, due to economic factors or otherwise (though economic factors are notoriously unreliable in causing unsustainable trends to level off: just look at the housing market, or the loan market, or damn near anywhere there's money to be made).

...but to assume it would level off that steeply, at precisely the same time as the protocol but for entirely unrelated economic reasons, is beyond coincidence. I'd say it's quite obvious you have your own pet theory. But this is the product of amateur internet sleuthing, and you can't expect that to trump actual scientific consensus.

This is why studies, charts, facts, and figures are generally split into two categories: 1964-1980, and 1980-1989. Only show Scary Line go up, except when Good Thing must be shown causing Scary Line go down.

Yes, I'm sure the global scientific community is all in on it for the funding, too. There's surely more money in atmospheric science than there is petroleum.

You tell me. You're the one arguing the chemical industry would manage to transition its entire production regime, specific to the US in a post-Chevron regulatory climate, just because the UN asked nicely, in a shorter and more costly time frame.

If industry is at leisure to disregard regulation and legality with no incurred cost or risk, as you seem to be suggesting, why aren't we living in Rapture already?

Being that approximately one of us seems to know the difference between a halocarbon and a hydrocarbon, in a conversation about the Montreal Protocol of all things, I'll take my own word, thanks.

I'm aware of the difference, given that it's pretty damn simple. It's gone unaddressed because so very much of what's been posted is an irrelevance or a distraction to the specific question at hand, which is about attributing cause and motive, not chemistry. It's a full-time job dragging the thread back onto the topic from the tangents and uninvited high-school chemistry lessons.

Still waiting for an argument stamping your feet and holding your breath, in the face of a fossil fuels industry banking on your doing just that, will accomplish the same goal. Which is funny, because while you want to hold fast to really bad examples because that's what you've been told to parrot, I've given you three better examples -- the prohibition of TEL, the prohibition of DDT, and the acid rain program -- you might otherwise have used, which you're completely ignoring.

I particularly enjoy the irony of telling me I'm "parroting" lines from other people-- just a step away from calling us "sheeple" in the Youtube comments section, by the way-- and then a sentence or two later tell me I should be using your examples for some reason.

Which is why I consider "the left" at large to have zero credibility or authority to speak on any of these topics. The obsession with performance over substance could not possibly be clearer in this entire conversation.

But... were you not claiming that your approach was more effective in bringing about the change I want to see? You've been banging on about how I need to change tack if I want to see change. You've gone on and on about performance far more than I did, and you did so before I did too.

My claim, quite specifically, was:

The right has been the faction to point to bushmeat consumption and unregulated wet markets, in the pursuit of what you (rightly) pointed out: scapegoating. The left has busied itself calling the right racist, and making appeals to cultural relativism, for it. "Both sides" are right, but for all the wrong reasons: global inequity, uneven distribution of wealth and resources, and cultural imperialism are a primary driver for bushmeat consumption and wet markets, and to a certain extent one state or culture ought not interfere in good faith, humane, and safe practices of others, but playing white savior to protect unsafe and inhumane practices does no good and neither does scapegoating.

This is as big a vindication of Marxist theory as one can get: social and economic elites are playing the right and left against one another to protect global economic inequality. Keep the useful idiots fighting over wet markets, rather than paying heed to why they exist in the form they do.

My goalpost is pointing out how the left is wokescolding the right over perceived racism, for criticizing wet markets. There is no "at all", there is one side hypocritically accusing the other of racism.

Cute. I was referring to this, in a different post:

Ironic, you don't seem terribly interested in recognizing in those articles, criticism of wet markets was specifically cited as one among many "instances of racism in the wake of the outbreak".

Where is that specific citation? None of the articles you've posted make that claim. It's bollocks, isn't it?

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

But some get there much faster, and some much slower.

The determinant apparently being "is it conducive to my argument", not "is it consistent with the laws of physics". Again,

> It takes decades for the effects of reduced ODS emissions to be seen, because the process is all so very, very complicated.

> A period of lower production, emission, and tropospheric concentration of ODS's would have had an impact on stratospheric ODS concentrations inside 5-7 years. Because, you see, diffusion and convection actually work faster when (temperature and chemical concentration) gradients are lower.

Pick one.

Yes, particulates that are blasted out to and then transferred by winds to places like Sweden.

Radioisotopic particulates with half-lives measuring in hours that could only have originated from ongoing fission, you mean. And, once again, the "blasted out" part is the difference between your comparison and a practical one. ODS's don't get blasted by a plasma jet straight into the upper atmosphere, bypassing the entire process of diffusion and convection upon which you're hinging your entire argument.

In fact, not even the smoke plume is comparable to your point, because of the whole "giant radioactive fire" part. Spoiler warning, giant fires create thermal columns. Especially fires hot enough to burn graphite.

More argument failing to address the central point.

Love how debunking your red herrings and bad comparisons is "failing to address the central point".

...but China is a country with rampant rogue capitalism underneath the nominally Communist politics...

...I'm sure we can discuss the global economic leverage China has in the 21st Century thanks to its "rampant rogue capitalism" which might emasculate UN sanctions thanks to threat of retaliatory tariffs, elsewhere. Like in the COVID-19 thread.

It wasn't a fuck up. The point of the Montreal Protocol was to reduce ozone depletion by replacing CFCs with less damaging alternatives, and it worked.

If by "less damaging alternatives" you mean "petroleum products with GWP between three to five orders of magnitude higher", yes. If by "reduce ozone depletion" you mean "shift ozone depletion from the poles to the equator", or alternatively "shift the burden of climate change from the economic North to the economic South", yes. If by "it worked", you mean "maybe had a short-term effect, but was worse in the long-term for reasons that were neither studied nor properly understood until thirty years later", yes.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

...but to assume it would level off that steeply, at precisely the same time as the protocol but for entirely unrelated economic reasons, is beyond coincidence. I'd say it's quite obvious you have your own pet theory. But this is the product of amateur internet sleuthing, and you can't expect that to trump actual scientific consensus.

Now, you're putting words in my mouth. I said, CFC reduction was going to happen anyway because the market for those substances was doomed to failure, I never said when. If I had to bet based on demand and production of HCFC's and HFC's through the '90s, it probably would have taken 5-7 years. What I did say, is the most-positive assertion one could make of the Montreal Protocol was it expedited that process. At greater long-term cost, considering the products that replaced CFC's were between three to five orders of magnitude higher in GWP.

If industry is at leisure to disregard regulation and legality with no incurred cost or risk, as you seem to be suggesting, why aren't we living in Rapture already?

You tell me [https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/ozone-layer-epa-united-states-pollution/]. It's not like the EPA isn't a wholly-owned subsidy of the fossil fuels industry [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/31/trump-epa-obama-clean-car-rules-climate-change], or has been for decades [https://www.epa.gov/history/bubble-policy] with SCOTUS endorsement [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference], or anything. Speaking more broadly, it's not as if we're living in the middle of a global pandemic that's revealed the dark side of American capitalism or anything [https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490263-shortage-of-medical-gear-sparks-bidding-war-among-states].

I particularly enjoy the irony of telling me I'm "parroting" lines from other people-- just a step away from calling us "sheeple" in the Youtube comments section, by the way-- and then a sentence or two later tell me I should be using your examples for some reason.

The examples you list are the same ones I always hear from Greenpeace and Sierra Club (Greenpeace for the affluent) types -- performative, insubstantial, not terribly indicative of a deeper understanding of the environmental movement nor the political and legal battles waged. Because the point is visibility for visibility's sake, not securing policy victories, nor reflecting on past victories (and losses) in pursuit of lessons for the future. There are more, better, lessons to be found in the fight to prohibit TEL, for example, than there are in the history of Earth Day.

 

[Agema]

> It takes decades for the effects of reduced ODS emissions to be seen, because the process is all so very, very complicated.

> A period of lower production, emission, and tropospheric concentration of ODS's would have had an impact on stratospheric ODS concentrations inside 5-7 years. Because, you see, diffusion and convection actually work faster when (temperature and chemical concentration) gradients are lower.

Pick one.

Why? False dichotomies are not a useful way to progress discussion.

Radioisotopic particulates with half-lives measuring in hours that could only have originated from ongoing fission, you mean.

I'm not sure what your point is here. Radioactivity was first observed in Sweden around 2 days after the explosion. This means that it took 2 days to get there. Because that material was blasted up into the atmosphere, caught a breeze, and travelled along with the current.

It's a lot more sensible than arguing that it was shot out a nuclear explosion at thousands of miles an hour, reached Sweden in a few minutes, and then temporarily stopped being radioactive for 2 days.

And, once again, the "blasted out" part is the difference between your comparison and a practical one. ODS's don't get blasted by a plasma jet straight into the upper atmosphere, bypassing the entire process of diffusion and convection upon which you're hinging your entire argument.

In fact, not even the smoke plume is comparable to your point, because of the whole "giant radioactive fire" part. Spoiler warning, giant fires create thermal columns. Especially fires hot enough to burn graphite.

The air around the surface of the Earth tends to be warmer because the sunlight heats up the surface and that's passed onto the air around the surface, so it rises. The air, and particles within, can rise over a kilometre in hours. This effect wears out after a couple of km or so and it's much harder for particles to rise after this effect goes, but still.

Temperature and pressure differences also cause forms of vertical currents, which in circumstances like storms might be in the order of metres per second vertical movement. In extremes like a tornado, of course, these have enough power to pick substantial pieces of matter off the ground and toss them hundreds of metres into the air and convey them substantial distances before they drop (hence "rain of frogs")

An inert, insoluble gas released at the surface can be pretty much vertically homogenous in the troposphere, 10km up, in a few weeks. And of course some of molecules of that gas will have reached the top of the troposphere long before the whole is homogenous.

your red herrings and bad comparisons

Irony.

If by "less damaging alternatives" you mean "petroleum products with GWP between three to five orders of magnitude higher", yes. If by "reduce ozone depletion" you mean "shift ozone depletion from the poles to the equator", or alternatively "shift the burden of climate change from the economic North to the economic South", yes. If by "it worked", you mean "maybe had a short-term effect, but was worse in the long-term for reasons that were neither studied nor properly understood until thirty years later", yes.

My issue is here is that you're presenting the normal stuff of progress as a tale of cock-up. It is in fact totally normal to have a problem, find a solution, and then find that the original solution needs tweaking due to additional factors and considerations, or unforeseen problems emerging.

A fuck up is to devise a "solution" which doesn't work, orwhere the consequent problems are either known or should be known. I don't see either significantly apply to the Montreal protocol.

As for the decay at the equator more recently observed, to the best of my knowledge no-one is sure why: there's certainly no adequate reason to blame the Montreal protocol as yet.

 

[Seanchaidh]

What I did say, is the most-positive assertion one could make of the Montreal Protocol was it expedited that process. At greater long-term cost, considering the products that replaced CFC's were between three to five orders of magnitude higher in GWP.

So what's the upshot? Because it manifestly isn't that regulations are ineffective nor that the market handles this sort of thing better. Obviously governments can exert a large degree of control over the economy in terms of its impact on the environment. So they should do so carefully with the best information available.

 

[McElroy]

Only one Joe remains. Pack it up.

 

[Marik2]

It's official. This will be a repeat of 2016. We are going to get 2 old corporatists with dementia debating each other and constantly forgetting what they said. Murica is the laughing stock of the world.

 

[Eacaraxe_v1legacy]

I'm not sure what your point is here...

Oh geez, Let's go back to basics: contaminants released as a direct consequence of the Chernobyl accident can be identified in three "waves": as a result of the explosion, as a result of the graphite fire, and as a result of residual heat and steam after the graphite fire was put out. They're identified such, due to the composition and half-lives of the radioisotopes detected.

What you're talking about is the first wave. That's what was detected on the second day in Sweden. Which is in no sensible way comparable to gaseous emissions from industrial activity. Because of, you know, the whole explosion thing. It took two weeks for the second wave to reach Sweden.

It's a lot more sensible than arguing that it was shot out a nuclear explosion at thousands of miles an hour, reached Sweden in a few minutes, and then temporarily stopped being radioactive for 2 days.

Those are all words you put into my mouth to build straw men. Which would have been an accurate summation if, you know, Earth had no atmosphere. Earth, fortunately, does have an atmosphere and even particulate matter still has a terminal velocity. That's not the effect of "wind", that's the effect of solid matter falling through a fluid medium. Particulates blasted upwards at hundreds or thousands of miles an hour, are not guaranteed to fall at the same speed.

You were literally just talking about this a page ago. Funny how air resistance and terminal velocities seem to mysteriously vanish when it supports your argument.

The air around the surface of the Earth tends to be warmer because the sunlight heats up the surface and that's passed onto the air around the surface, so it rises.

Under typical circumstances, "the air around the surface of the Earth" does not approach that necessary to ignite graphite. You'd have to go to the surface of Venus for that kind of action -- and there, not really, because that's a more or less uniform distribution in temperature and pressure. Again, you want to pay attention to the importance of convection and gradients in temperature and pressure, but only so long as it furthers your argument, and once it ceases to, those like so many other laws of physics cease to exist. Which is how you came to laughable comparisons like what we're arguing about to begin with.

An inert, insoluble gas released at the surface can be pretty much vertically homogenous in the troposphere, 10km up, in a few weeks.

See aforementioned conversations about wind belts, atmospheric cells, convergence zones, and latitudinal transfer versus longitudinal transfer. And this even has an additional layer of humor, for reasons I'll broach here in a second.

My issue is here is that you're presenting the normal stuff of progress as a tale of cock-up. It is in fact totally normal to have a problem, find a solution, and then find that the original solution needs tweaking due to additional factors and considerations, or unforeseen problems emerging.

No, it was a cock-up. The scientific community already knew hydrocarbon gases were greenhouse gases, and the UN "forced" the premature adoption of hydrocarbon-based solvents, coolants, and propellants on the world before their full range of effects were known. We later discovered the ozone-protecting products that replaced CFC's, depleted the ozone layer anyways because higher temperatures accelerate natural ozone depletion and disrupt the upward convective transfer of naturally-produced ozone [https://news.agu.org/press-release/new-study-shows-that-common-coolants-contribute-to-ozone-depletion/].

This is how it works. If the Montreal Protocol can be attributed the near-elimination of CFC's, it's responsible for the consequences of CFC elimination. If you're going to attribute the MP with that, you need to own its consequences rather than trying to have your cake and eat it, too. Me? I don't personally attribute the Montreal Protocol with the consequences of HFC production vis-a-vis global warming and ozone depletion, because I don't solely attribute the MP with CFC reduction in the first place. That was a market cock-up.

At this point, an astute observer may note how much attention is paid to polar ozone concentrations in relevant media, compared to how little attention is paid to equatorial ozone concentrations.

I don't see either significantly apply to the Montreal protocol.

Because you're uncritically defending it and not actually looking for what problems it failed to solve, or created in the long term.

As for the decay at the equator more recently observed, to the best of my knowledge no-one is sure why: there's certainly no adequate reason to blame the Montreal protocol as yet.

No, we know exactly why and exactly who and what are to blame. This is why the Kigali amendment was passed. As I've been saying for multiple pages now.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

It's official. This will be a repeat of 2016. We are going to get 2 old corporatists with dementia debating each other and constantly forgetting what they said. Murica is the laughing stock of the world.

Yeah... right now I'm seeing this as between Tony Blair (Biden) and Victor Orban (Trump). It doesn't fucking matter how much you hate Blair, it's still a step in a better direction than the other. If you willingly say its the same thing, you become the laughing stock for not being able to tell the difference between the two.

Either way, I'm no longer updating this thread as Sanders, in my opinion rightfully, has ended his campaign. He clearly doesn't want a repeat of 2016, where his supporters engaged in increasingly desperate long shots and were primed for manipulation by bots trying to manipulate them [https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/bernie-sanders-booed-convention-226136]. He knows the difference between a half-loaf and nothing and a few weeks where he essentially been forced to reckon with serious flaws in his campaign and campaign strategy [https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5e837ecfc5b603fbdf4a8782/amp?guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvL05SQkE0TG1LWXQ_YW1wPTE&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAL7ud-GObFa3QHff9jyCEqcfASkLs7irxdkbyO7SqbnWyikTA6Ooyl279uQ_2bMDn5xcsnYz8yjzbyHs-5nuAp_5wgusVSMOfW-EVLDPOg0ztipnF3StlpomqCgMV_N-U_R2HZWtTZrpnHzRPhfC5pZLfRSKAmK1tkh_o4U_GuZr&ncid=engmodushpmg00000004&__twitter_impression=true&guccounter=2] (some of which were fairly obvious such as banking on a turnout strategy without hedging by being less combative against the majority of the party and registering as a Democrat) probably brought today's news about. One of the weaknesses of his convention drop-out in 2016 was the constant profligation of increasingly crazy theories about how he could rest the nomination from the person with not only the most delegates, but a sizable vote lead as well, meaning any negotiation had little time to engage the Clinton campaign about how to strategize to maximize a positive affect on the general election. Instead, he got booed by his own supporters [https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/bernie-sanders-booed-convention-226136] because they didn't have time to prepare them to pivot their support.

Dropping out now gives time to strengthen ties with Biden, who, despite political differences, don't have the personal animus between them that his supporters emanate [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/us/politics/joseph-biden-bernie-sanders.html]. Sanders clearly wants Biden to win in November, even if he thinks he would have been a better nominee (and I think there's evidence in both directions on that). And by disengaging now and taking a more collaborative approach, he may be able to shift Biden on key issues that Sanders supporters value, such as healthcare, student loan forgiveness, and tackling climate change as priorities. 2016 scarred a lot of the Democratic party, and I doubt Sanders wants a repeat of, well, being booed for trying to get a candidate who is better on almost all policy matters than Trump. He saw McConnell ram through enough judges to know that any progress means dealing with a judiciary stacked against it. He witnessed constant backsliding on almost every policy position he holds, from banking, to regulatory reform, to taxation and LGBTQ+ rights. He knows the stakes and isn't arrogant enough to burn down the party at the expense of the country.

So here's the real question: are his supporters actually progressive enough to take his cue and save the internal fight for the next primary and get ready for the real fight in November, or were they just wanna-be rebels who don't actually care about making progress? They don't have to be enthusiastic, they just have to vote.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Well looks like Trump will win in a landslide now. D'oh well, we tried

 

[Terminal Blue]

At this point, it's Alien vs (sexual) Predator

Whoever wins, we lose.

 

[Marik2]

The virus will still linger in November and cause even more of low voter turnout than usual. The gubmint isn't going to do vote by mail or phone, and even if they did, they're going to mess it up.

I feel disgusted by the DMC for being adamant on having a pawn even at the expense of Joe and the country. They are going to do their best to limit Joe from interviews as much as possible and will speak for him.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

MAGA apparently always wins. Even if it's blue MAGA.

Only MAGA can defeat MAGA?

 

[Avnger]

Snippy

Oh look, a well thought out take.

 

[Pseudonym]

Well that's sad. Biden is less bad than Trump but Bernie would have been actually good. I mean how bad is it when a hawkish, police brutality facilitating sexual harassing creep with dementia is apparently the better candidate? By virtue, I suppose, of not outright denying climate change and of only wanting to maintain current levels of inequality rather than wanting to exacerbate them. Ugh. Well it is what it is. Nothing to do now but wait for the election near the end of 2020 and hope for bad over worse.

I'm not as convinced as others that Trump will win this with ease. People have been predicting Joe Biden to flop for the entire primary until he won the primary. He does good in the polls and Trump has visibly mishandled what was probably the most important event in my lifetime so far. The economy is being gutted by the quarantine which will harm Trump (regardless of whether that's fair). Biden seems to be at least acceptable to fairly large groups of people and all of his problems have so far not prevented people from electing him. On the other hand, Trump is still the incumbent and is popular with the standard republican voter blocks: religious zealots, plutocrats, gun-people, etc, and he is a good campaigner so he'll put up a good fight. Could go either way, I think, though I think Trump has slightly better odds.

 

[Marik2]

This is supposed to be the "safe" candidate. Hopefully enough people will start to sound the alarms even louder now.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

This is supposed to be the "safe" candidate.

Tinfoil hat: Democrats at the convention swap out Joe for someone else.
Dumbfoil hat: Hillary/Harris

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Snippy

Oh look, a well thought out take.

I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcastic.

 

[Silvanus]

Now, you're putting words in my mouth. I said, CFC reduction was going to happen anyway because the market for those substances was doomed to failure, I never said when. If I had to bet based on demand and production of HCFC's and HFC's through the '90s, it probably would have taken 5-7 years. What I did say, is the most-positive assertion one could make of the Montreal Protocol was it expedited that process. At greater long-term cost, considering the products that replaced CFC's were between three to five orders of magnitude higher in GWP.

Not really putting words in your mouth. Seeing as you attribute the drop that did occur to the energy crisis, the "when" you claimed it would happen anyway is... when it happened in reality.

The whole "expedited" claim came later in the thread (as it became clear how unfeasibly coincidental the timing would be if you didn't make some kind of concession towards the impact of Montreal).

You tell me [https://theintercept.com/2020/01/18/ozone-layer-epa-united-states-pollution/]. It's not like the EPA isn't a wholly-owned subsidy of the fossil fuels industry [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/31/trump-epa-obama-clean-car-rules-climate-change], or has been for decades [https://www.epa.gov/history/bubble-policy] with SCOTUS endorsement [https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference], or anything. Speaking more broadly, it's not as if we're living in the middle of a global pandemic that's revealed the dark side of American capitalism or anything [https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/490263-shortage-of-medical-gear-sparks-bidding-war-among-states].

Yep, that accounts for the EPA. And the UNEP?

Keep in mind, the industry heavily lobbied the US government against ratifying the Protocol... a peculiar move for an industry that was supposedly going to make the same shift at the same time for unrelated reasons. An even more peculiar move if the Protocol lacked any power.

The examples you list are the same ones I always hear from Greenpeace and Sierra Club (Greenpeace for the affluent) types -- performative, insubstantial, not terribly indicative of a deeper understanding of the environmental movement nor the political and legal battles waged. Because the point is visibility for visibility's sake, not securing policy victories, nor reflecting on past victories (and losses) in pursuit of lessons for the future. There are more, better, lessons to be found in the fight to prohibit TEL, for example, than there are in the history of Earth Day.

Funny, that I'm not terribly focused on securing policy victories in this debate on an obscure video-game forum. I don't give a toss what you consider "indicative of deeper understanding", because you're not a lecturer marking my essay.

I'm still waiting for the examples of what policy shifts have been brought about by purely financial arguments, by the way.