You hit the proverbial nail on the head when you mentioned that there is too much money at stake.I'm in the air conditioning business and we in this industry have been taken for a ride by our goverment with no round trip available.
The year of the Montreal Protocol,where it was suddenly discovered that the old hole in the ozone was caused by HCFC'S, a subclass of greenhouse gases, there was an immediate outcry to make everyone associated with the ac business liable in some manner.We had to not only send our employees to classes where they learned how to capture the little boogers before they could escape and make that hole larger but we had to go also because everyone who gives more than a cursory glance at a ac unit must have the "green card".
R-11 refrigerant at that time was somewhere around 1.30 cents per pound.Over the next three years that cost increased to more than 20.00 dollars per pound,all of the excess being in the form of taxes placed on that refrigerant.Once R-11 was legislated out of existence our representatives looked around for the next cash cow.Well, they found it in R-22,the refrigerant that is in almost every residential ac unit manufactured in the last thirty years.We are now at about the midpoint in the tax cycle for R-22.There is a replacement freon(r-410a)that now is going in to all residential units.School is still out on this refrigerant as we are seeing much higher operating pressures that might lead to premature leaks and shorter life spans on the equipment.
This farce has caused us to spend untold thousands of dollars in training,recovery machines and extra labor to keep logs on all of this mess.
Sorry for the rant but I just had to when I saw this thread.

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