I haven’t had a good shoot the shit in quite a while so it’s time. I don’t know about you but I’ve reached my limit on the “CLIMAT CRISIS” alarms. We have people committing suicide, seeking psychological help, and taking drugs because they bought the climate crisis story. So, this shoot the shit will address OZONE depletion and climate change. For those unfamiliar with a shoot the shit, it’s a social interaction during which any topic can be discussed, participants don’t need to know anything about the topic, they are free to use uncensored profanity, make any unsupported comment and insult anyone they wish. Unlike sitting with a psychologist, who broadly speaking is a jackass who majored in psychology so they could understand themselves, paying them $150+ per hour, a shoot the shit saves you the $150+.

So, let’s get started.

To talk about the ozone layer, we need to understand Earth’s atmospheric layers. The image above should clear that up for you.

When we talk about the Ozone layer, we are talking about ozone that exists in Earth’s stratosphere. Ozone, which is nothing more than O3, is a product of Q2 (oxygen) acted upon by solar ultraviolet light. When O2 is radiated by UV you get O3 or ozone. Ozone in the stratosphere acts like your sun blocker, it limits the amount of ultraviolet light that reaches the earth. Higher concentrations of UV reaching earth are problematic for humans who are susceptible to skin cancers; however, increased ultraviolet light accelerates photosynthesis, which is the process plant life uses to sustain itself. So, the takeaway here is that Ozone is generated by sunlight acting on oxygen, this is the good ozone. There’s also “bad ozone” which is the ozone you’ll find in the troposphere. Bad ozone comes from tropospheric POLLUTANTS chemically reacting in the presence of sunlight. I’ll pause here to talk about sources of oxygen.

Oxygen, which is needed to replenish the ozone layer comes from 2 sources: The majority of O2 comes from oceanic plankton, drifting plants, algae, and some bacteria that can photosynthesize and, in the process, generating O2, they consume carbon dioxide. The other source comes from landmass vegetation. So, ocean pollution and deforestation are areas of great concern. This is a BIG Deal because the O2 they generate is needed to produce stratospheric, or good ozone.

Fossil fuels require combustion which consume oxygen and generate carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide and other contaminants produced by fossil fuels react in sunlight to produce tropospheric ozone otherwise known as bad ozone. This type of ozone acts as low level insulation to prevent thermal transfer trapping heat causing warming. So, should we limit fossil fuel use, the answer is yes, but you don’t want to make decision via anal extraction, we want to make informed decision. We can reduce global CO2 by cracking down on oceanic pollution and deforestation. We should aggressively fund carbon dioxide scrubbing technology, which is available as of this writing. We should replace fossil fuels with nuclear power.  A 1.1Giga Watt nuclear power plant costs about $9 billion to build, and that includes financing costs. It’s not just clean, it takes up less land than littering solar panels and wind turbines all over the planet, and they are refueled at 2-year intervals.

Note that any action taken by the United States to reduce carbon emissions is as effective as a pay toilet in a diarrhea ward when you have China (the #1 carbon emitter in the world) and India (#3 global carbon emitter) not participating.  Pollution is what needs to be addressed.

You need to think about climate crisis as a way of herding the uninformed into following. When 9-11 happened, the country rose and united to defeat terrorism. The climate crisis extravaganza is being advanced to achieve the same effect. We have the wherewithal to successfully tackle the source of the problem, which is pollution. But, to succeed, we need to get politics out of the equation.

Stratospheric ozone depletion is not responsible for climate change.

I hope this has shed some light on the climate discussion for you and remember that your EV is only as good as your power grid. Have a great weekend, give your iPhone and social media a rest and schedule your own shoot the shit.