Norwegian chlorine elimination proposal

Europeans were doing something else more recently. One time, twenty years ago, my old thesis advisor walks into my office. He had a copy of the periodic table and he had X-ed out chlorine, because the Norwegians had decided that chlorine was a bad actor in the environment, and they were going to eliminate chlorine from the environment. How are you going to do that when the oceans are full of three-and-a-half percent chlorine? We just get rid of the oceans, right? Once Congress was about to pass a law — someone stopped them — but they were going to ban any material that would destroy DNA. One of the most potent materials for destroying DNA is called oxygen. Under this law, Congress would have banned oxygen. You know what, we wouldn't have had to worry about any environmental problems from then on — we'd all be dead. This is what happens when non-scientists try to dabble in science.

Bob Rose's periodic-table-with-chlorine-X'd-out gift to Tom — Norwegians proposed banning an element. Used as setup for the Congress-DNA-oxygen punchline.

A number of years ago the Norwegians decided they wanted to outlaw chlorine. Bob Rose, my thesis advisor, came in with a periodic table where he had Xed out chlorine, gave it to me, and taped it on the back of my office door, because he thought it was so funny that they thought they could outlaw an element of the periodic table.