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Yes, it is! The fact is, the very wording is misleading, and probably intentionally so. The ozone layer is not something the earth has been born with, or something that has been built up over millions of years, like oil deposits in the ground that took 200 million years to form, which are definitely a finite resource that can, and will be depleted. Ozone isn't like that. Ozone is a large molecule of oxygen that is naturally quite unstable. It is the most unstable form of oxygen there is. Its average life span is about 120 days. Yes, all the ozone in the world is on the average no more than four months old. The ozone layer constantly decays and is constantly replenished.
Ozone is created in the upper layers of the stratosphere where normal oxygen molecules are split apart by high intensity short wave radiation from the sun. The free oxygen atoms, then, combine with normal oxygen to form the larger molecule of oxygen, called ozone. Most of the new ozone becomes also split apart by the same sunlight. However, the free atoms quickly form ozone again. The ozone layer, which exists at a much lower altitude, is the benefactor from this dynamic process in which ozone is created and destroyed and recreated in an endless cycle. The ozone layer collects the residue that settles down as a kind of fallout from the dynamic process in which ozone is created and destroyed.
The reality is, that the world's ozone can never be depleted for as long as the sun shines on the earth and oxygen is in the air. All the world's ozone at this present moment has been newly created during the last four months, and the supply is constantly renewed. However, the renewal process can be interfered with by injecting chlorine into the cycle, so the story goes.
The ozone depletion theory suggest that the CFCs from refrigerators and other sources waft up to the outer edge of the stratosphere where they, too, are broken up by the same process that produces ozone, which in this case produces chlorine. The chlorine atom that gets freed up by the breakdown process, then, steals another oxygen atom away from an ozone molecule which reacts with other molecules of its own kind in a long chain of reactions, only to end up as a pure chlorine atom in the end, which of course, starts the process all over. Thus, it is believed that a single chlorine atom can eat up many ozone molecules.
The only problem with this theory is, that nobody has ever seen or measured any CFCs at the outer edge of the stratosphere, some 150,000 feet above the surface of the earth where the atmosphere is extremely thin. There simply exists no proof for the theory. The whole theory is based on a series of assumptions that are not measurable, or provable. However, a whole array of real facts is stacked up against the probability of the theory.
Against the theory stands the fact that the CFCs are rather heavy elements - several times heavier than air - and therefore tend to settle onto the ground and into the soil, or are likely absorbed into the oceans, rather than being wafted up into the stratosphere to heights of 150,000 feet above the surface. While the existence of CFCs has been measured in the soil, and has been measured in the oceans, CFCs have never been physically detected in the stratosphere. They are conveniently assumed to be there, for the sake of the theory.
The ozone depletion theory is justified by reports of so-called holes in the ozone layer. These are not actual holes, but are areas of lesser concentration. Still, the so-called ozone holes taken as proof that CFCs are destroying ozone. What can be more solid than this proof, right? Everyone has seen the ozone holes on TV forming in the depth of winter over the Arctics.
Is it not strange, though, that these ozone holes have been forming always in winter over the arctics? And why is it that these holes form over the arctics at all, which are about as far away from population and industrial centers where the CFCs are are used, than they can be on the planet? Those who like to see the ozone holes as proof that CFCs destroy ozone, conveniently ignore the fact that the arctics receive virtually no sunlight in the winter so that the ozone production is at its lowest point. Also, the arctic atmosphere is bottled up in the winter by wind-sheers.
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