Dannemeyer Tackles Ozone Layer : Environment: Congressman challenges theory that release of chlorofluorocarbons is damaging Earth’s protective zone.

Conservative stalwart William E. Dannemeyer, leaving the House in January after 14 years of often quixotic battles against big government, homosexuals and environmentalists, served notice Thursday that he does not intend to exit Congress quietly.

At a Capitol Hill news conference, Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), who lost a bid for the U.S. Senate in California’s June primary, launched a new attack on environmental orthodoxy.

Flanked by two like-minded scientists, Dannemeyer challenged the widely accepted proposition that the release of chlorofluorocarbons--man-made chemicals such as Freon, which is widely used as a refrigerant--is seriously damaging Earth’s protective layer of stratospheric ozone. Ozone, an atomic relative of oxygen, filters out the sun’s most harmful ultraviolet rays.

“Extremists have been so exercised over ‘ozone depletion’ (that) they were able to get the Senate . . . to sustain a treaty to ban (production of) chlorofluorocarbons by the year 2000,” Dannemeyer said, noting that President Bush earlier this year moved up the compliance date to 1995.

On Thursday, Dannemeyer also introduced a House resolution that, if passed, would call on Bush to create a presidential commission to study the issue further. Chances for approval appear dim.

“We as consumers who are driving our automobiles, or owning air conditioners, we’d better wake up because . . . if CFCs are banned . . . the cost . . . will be absolutely profound,” the congressman said.

Dannemeyer said climate changes and chlorine gas produced by the ocean and volcanoes--not man-made chlorine compounds--are far more likely to cause the most serious ozone depletion. The assertion was supported by S. Fred Singer, director of the Virginia-based Science and Environmental Policy Project, which often has been at odds with environmental groups. Also backing Dannemeyer was Hugh Ellsaesser, a retired scientist who maintains an office at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory.

But their views were dismissed by a spokesman for the Sierra Club, one of the oldest environmental organizations in the nation and a frequent target of Dannemeyer’s barbs.

“The only people who believe that are the people who are much more concerned about industry profits than they are about public health and the environment,” said Daniel J. Weiss, director of the Sierra Club’s environmental quality program.

“Everybody else, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, President Bush . . . our European allies, all of them believe that the emission of chlorofluorocarbons and other related compounds (is) responsible for depleting and destroying the ozone layer,” Weiss said.

“If this were 1492, Mr. Dannemeyer would be saying that the world is flat,” he said.

In arguing that the nation should reconsider the CFC ban, Dannemeyer contended that public officials have rushed to judgment and taken action that will cost taxpayers billions of dollars, with no proven benefit.

The congressman suggested that the expense of replacing Freon-cooled refrigerators and home and auto air conditioners could reach $2 trillion.

Dannemeyer is the senior Republican on the health and environment subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the panel most likely to get jurisdiction over the CFC resolution. However, prospects for a hearing on the issue appear remote, because the chairman of the subcommittee is Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Los Angeles), one of the strongest environmentalists in the House.