Over the years I've seen many articles and editorials printed on the more prominent pages of your paper purporting to prove how CFCs destroy the ozone layer and how global warming will kill us all. The news items regarding the other point of view are rarely given the same treatment.

Recently your paper reported that 1995 was the warmest year on record and allowed a local college professor to repeat the factoids regarding CFCs. If the follow-up article about 1995's "record" was in your paper, it was buried in the classifieds because I didn't see it. (It was later reported that the group making the announcement had used incomplete data - January through November data only - and had withdrawn their claim.) I'd at least like the privilege of responding to the ozone-depletion piece.Some of the facts missing from the discourse on danger to the ozone layer are the "ozone hole" over Antarctica was first discovered in the late 1950s by a British researcher, ozone destruction by chlorine (from both CFCs and natural sources) occurs only over Antarctica where it is dark enough and cold enough long enough, and even though ozone in that region drops to about 40 percent of its normal levels now (and dropped to about 65 percent of normal levels in the 1950s before CFCs were commonly used), it takes only a few weeks of sunshine to restore the ozone to its normal level.

The measurement of ozone is tricky at best, because the amount of ozone at any given location or time depends on sunspot activity and the weather in the atmosphere below it. The highest level of ozone recorded occurred in 1971, a peak year for sunspots; the lowest ozone levels recorded over our country have been over thunderstorms.

Ronald D. Hathcock

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