Ding ding ding, we have a winner. I work in the trade (service sales) and the old timer techs tell me about the new freon is not as efficient, 10 to 13 percent less efficient. That means the coal burning power generators work that much harder. This is important as 40-50 percent of a commercial building power usage is for the HVAC.
The industry itself has been responsive in being responsible. A long time ago, the techs would use an open barrel of the R22 to clean their tools. Refrigerant leaks are also taken care of faster.
I believe the idea of chlorine based refrigerants eating away at the ozone hole is the original environmental myth. Once govt paid scientist figured they could dupe the public on this lie, then came global warming.
We had an old ac unit that set at 78 would keep me perfectly cool. It finally quit working and we had it replaced. We have to keep the thermostat set at 76 now to keep the same cool. 78 is just too darn hot.
Have you heard that from anyone else?
Hey, if it worked once.........
You are correct. The original environmental myth was that refrigerants containing chlorine and fluorine were destroying the Earths ozone layer. Looking at this with a little common sense, you can see that it all was based on fraud. These refrigerants are heavier than air and break down at around 1200 degrees F. How do they get into the upper atmosphere? How will they break down in the environment?
The dirty little secret behind this is that DuPont “admitted” that refrigerants “may” be an environmental hazard. This just happened to occur about the time that their royalties on these refrigerants was expiring. DuPont made billions of dollars worldwide on Freon royalties. BTW, Freon is a DuPont trademark.
DuPont came in and saved the Earth from environmental disaster by developing a whole new family of refrigerants to replace R-11, R-12 and R-22. Rest assured that they will continue to collect billions in revenue for many years to come.
Actually, that problem may be the only one for which actual "smoking gun" chemical measurements exist to verify. But what was unexpectedly found once the original ban was in place was that the kinetics by which the active agent was removed from the atmosphere was much faster than their models predicted, and the last time I read about this in depth, the problem was largely gone.