Ozone and CFCs Debate

Honestly I have no clue where I stand on the issue of CFCs and their effects on the ozone layer. It seems every other article I read is telling me the exact opposite of what I saw in the one before that. While I agree that anything we can do to stop the further destruction of the ozone layer is going to help us in the long run, I do feel that the governments around the world were a little hasty in jumping on the "ban CFCs" bandwagon. If engineers and manufacturing companies can come up with alternatives to CFCs in the production of refridgerators and alternatives for aerosol cans, I say go for it. Why put more CFCs into our atmosphere than necessary?

However I do think that the government went a little overboard, scaring the public by claiming that these CFCs were causing the rapid depletion of the ozone layer, and that this would put people at a serious risk for cancer, when in reality they had very little research supporting their claims. As the first article stated, the oceans release almost ten times more chlorine into the atmosphere in a year than we could, and a single volcano eruption produced more than we could in a lifetime. The fact that the oceans and volcanoes have been around longer than most of us can even comprehend and the world hasn't melted away yet, should be more than enough proof that the small amounts of CFCs that we do produce will not bring about the end of the world. If the government feels that it's necessary to make a claim such as the one they made, they should have at least had a little evidence to back it up before trying to scare people into believing something that wasn't necessarily true.

Assignment #1

1.Class expectations

Honestly, coming into this class I wasn't expecting to learn alot. Most of my other GE science courses have pretty much been a recap of what I already learned in high school, but after the first day I'm happy to see that we'll be covering some topics that my high school chemistry never touched on.

2.First impression

My first impression of this class was actually really positive compared to most of my other classes. I'm kind of glad that this course is new to our teacher too, so I don't feel so stressed and I'm looking forward to the demo's that he mentioned to hopefully keep things lively.

3.Hope to Learn?

I'm excited to expand on the little bit I know about environmental chemistry, because what I know is pretty limited. I also look forward to what will hopefully be some pretty interesting labs.