Have you heard of Thomas Midgley, semi-accidental planet-maimer?

I just ran across a short article about him, and was surprised to have not heard of one of the scariest and most destructive people who ever lived:

https://blogs.agu.org/wildwildscience/2014/04/21/more-about-the-guy-who-almost-poisoned-the-planet-as-seen-on-cosmos-sunday-night/

Without initially setting out to do any harm, he invented two apparently very useful chemicals that turned out to be two of the worst pollutants of the 20th century: Tetraethyl lead (as in leaded gas) and Freon. When confronted with the destructive nature of each of these, in both cases he dug in his heels and did his best to make sure they'd continue to be used for as long as possible.

It was also accidental that he didn't do much worse: He could've just as easily invented a slight variant of Freon that would've worked just as well as a refrigerant, but would've obliterated the ozone layer before anyone had a clue that it was happening. It's pure luck that nobody created that chemical at that time - especially this guy.

That's crazy.  Karma is a bitch.

It may be fun to vilify the man for his role, but we should not absolve the corporations that manufactured and marketed his inventions, nor the governments who failed to act when it became obvious that significant harm was being done.  He was just good at his job. 

We could as easily blame Einstein for the development of the atomic bomb, but really, what's the good of it?

Remember Thag? That guy millions of years ago who tied a rock to a stick.

Yeah, that Thag is a real bastard, look at all the destruction he caused.

1988RedT2 said:

It may be fun to vilify the man for his role, but we should not absolve the corporations that manufactured and marketed his inventions, nor the governments who failed to act when it became obvious that significant harm was being done.  He was just good at his job. 

We could as easily blame Einstein for the development of the atomic bomb, but really, what's the good of it?

Well the main comporation that manufactured and marketed his inventions was the Ethyl Corporation, where he worked, including lobbying for governments and voters to fail to act on the harm these chemicals were causing. He wasn't just good at his job, he was terrible at morals and ethics. Short of dumping these chemicals into the environment as a hobby in his off hours, he could hardly be any more guilty in this situation.

The comparison to Albert Einstein is about as wrong as possible - Einstein was much further removed from the invention of the nuclear bomb and was outspoken against their use, and warfare in general. If Midgley were like Einstein, he would've been shouting from the rooftops for people to stop using TEL and Freon as soon as he learned how dangerous they were. Which is about the opposite of what he actually did.

My grandfather was injured by a non collapsible steering column in a Model A Ford...

Interesting read. 

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

As nice as that rhetoric sounds, Midgley was VP of the Ethyl Corporation and was 100% complicit in the deaths of his own employees, marketing and manufacturing the product, etc. He also personally conspired to destroy the life and career of the scientist who discovered the health risks!

Comparing him to Einstein is way off base, what Midgley did was basically the equivalent of Einstein dropping the bomb himself.

It's much easier to complain about something that happened in the past and cannot be changed than to spend your time trying to make actual change happen.

In reply to ShawnG :

Nothing wrong with discussing the past. That’s like saying you should never discuss a 1979 firebird and should only talk about buying a 2019 camaro. 

^Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.

And those who do learn from the past are doomed to watch everyone else repeat it

Ethyl Corp had a manufacturing plant in my hometown.  Same plant later made nutrasweet or something.  

Edit:  they made ibuprofen.  Hopefully not in the same line they made TEL.  

Earned a good bit of money for college working at a division of Ethyl Corp. in NJ.  So you'll excuse me if I defend them. 

Lots of corporations have skeletons in their closet.  FWIW, GM and Standard Oil formed Ethyl Corp. to develop and market TEL.  Mr. Midgley invented TEL while in the employ of GM.  You want a whipping boy?  Whip GM!

GM only wanted a patentable octane booster, and AFAIK didn't participate in efforts to spread misinformation about TEL's dangers once they were discovered. There was nothing inherently wrong with inventing TEL, the problem was advocating for its use after its dangers were found.

Thomas Midgley was not a TEL-pushing automaton and was the VP of the biggest company producing and selling it, he might've been the person most capable in the world of putting a stop to its use when it was found to be dangerous but instead he chose to do the opposite.

TEL was a big factor in WW 2.  Without it our aircraft would not have performed as well. 

Freon is harmless.  The lead stuff, not so much.

This could never happen today.  Look at Monsanto/Bayer and their voluntary withdrawal of Round-Up from the market.  Oh, wait....

Dr. Hess said:

Freon is harmless.

Directly to people, sure, but to the ozone layer, not so much.

1988RedT2 said:

This could never happen today.  Look at Monsanto/Bayer and their voluntary withdrawal of Round-Up from the market.  Oh, wait....

Yep, Glyphosate is the DDT of the 21st century.

Sorry, GB, that's not correct.  Freon is harmless to the ozone layer.  It is very heavy and very non-reactive.  The guy that got the Nobel prize for studying it and that all the "research" is based on later said he was wrong.  Politics and money pushed otherwise. Also, DDT wasn't bad stuff either.  Didn't hurt Bald Eagles a bit.  There even was a zoo that force fed a nesting pair DDT.  No effect on their eggs/baby eagles at all.  Another politics and money thing.

No worse than the rest of us us; we keep making humans even though it has been proven time and again that humans are an ecological disaster. We ALL know this, but we keep doing it, so how are we any better than the corporations? 

Just saying.

Pete

NOHOME said:

No worse than the rest of us us; we keep making humans even though it has been proven time and again that humans are an ecological disaster. We ALL know this, but we keep doing it, so how are we any better than the corporations? 

 

Just saying.

 

Pete

You know whats even worse-Corporations are made up of people. So not only do we make the evil people-We make the evil corporations too! 

Oh, boy. This thread is about to tank. I can feel it. 

In reply to Appleseed :

You must have felt me delete the post I was about to make. 

I think it's interesting how the leaded/unleaded gasoline thing long ago found its way into the vernacular (and persists today).  If you get "unleaded" coffee, you get it without the caffeine, which let's face it, is the only reason anyone would drink coffee.  "Leaded" gives you more.  And so it was for gasoline.  The only reason they took lead out of gasoline is that it killed those power-robbing cadillac converters that nobody wanted anyway.  The deleterious effects of lead are clearly overstated.  Heck, look at me.  My formative years were during the muscle car era when everyone drove big V8's that drank copious amounts of leaded gasoline, and it obviously didn't hurt my intellectual capacity.  Why, shoot!  Those were the good old days.  What we need is to hacksaw those converters off our cars and petition our Congressmen (yes, I said Congressmen!) to put the lead back in the gasoline! 

Who's with me?

Dr. Hess said:

Sorry, GB, that's not correct.  Freon is harmless to the ozone layer.  It is very heavy and very non-reactive.  The guy that got the Nobel prize for studying it and that all the "research" is based on later said he was wrong.  Politics and money pushed otherwise. Also, DDT wasn't bad stuff either.  Didn't hurt Bald Eagles a bit.  There even was a zoo that force fed a nesting pair DDT.  No effect on their eggs/baby eagles at all.  Another politics and money thing.

I can't find any information about any of this supposed counter-evidence. And if CFCs such as Freon were really harmless to the ozone layer, then the entire history of ozone layer observation would need to have been fabricated to match human CFC release, and CFC emissions enforcement would all be an expensive act of theatre to back it up (including this incident).

So I think it's more likely that mainstream physics and chemistry is largely correct than that there are decades-long globe-spanning conspiracies involving millions of people to cover up the truth about a few chemicals that were replaced without too much trouble.