Alleged National Academy of Sciences Violation of the Spirit and Intent of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer

Abstract

Protecting Earth’s stratospheric ozone layer is of such great importance that all 198 nations signed the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol, both of which deliberately leave room to investigate ozone-depletion mechanisms beyond chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Despite restrictions on chlorofluorocarbon production since the Montreal Protocol was entered into force in 1989, the destruction of stratospheric ozone has not declined, but increased. Because virtually all life on Earth depends upon stopping the progressive deterioration of stratospheric ozone, fundamentally new advances related to solving that problem are encouraged by the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer. But not by all institutions. Here we present just such a fundamentally new advance within the context of the allegedly non-scientific resistance it encountered from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) while attempting publication. We previously have proposed aerosolized coal fly ash as an ice-nucleating and ozone-reactive particulate, and as an alternative source and activation platform for chlorine, bromine and iodine. Here we show that elemental analyses of coal fly ash are consistent with arrayed and published stratospheric particle data thus providing compelling support for previously published evidence that aerosolized coal fly ash is a major cause of stratospheric ozone depletion. The global technological assault on our planet’s natural environment and all its biota by aerosolized coal fly ash must cease and desist.