I did a little research and this seems to be true, at least if we restrict it to “If we had invented chloroflourocarbons in 1800, and used them as vigorously as we did in real life, we would have severely depleted animal and plant life outside the tropical zone.” Our hypothetical air-conditioned Victorians would observe a steady increase in harmful ultraviolet light, spreading from the poles. But the cause would remain a mystery. In our timeline, the ozone layer depletion was discovered by satellite, but could have been detected from the ground if people had been measuring. So we wouldn’t have to wait until spaceflight for it to be discovered. But the mechanism by which chloroflurocabons deplete ozone is quite beyond nineteenth century chemistry, and furthermore the ozone layer would not even be discovered until 1913. So they would have kept on using them for many decades. Our fifty years of use depleted the ozone layer over the poles (where it is thickest) by about twofold, but over the equator by only ten percent. In the other time line, it seems reasonable to extend this for 150 years, to a tenfold increase in CFC concentration. This would lead to roughly a ninety percent depletion over the poles and in the temperate zones, and a factor of two over the tropics. This would have catastrophic effects on all life on land or in the shallow ocean. Eventually the economy would collapse and CFC production would decrease, but since it lasts for many decades in the atmosphere, this would not get better for a long time.
I did a little research and this seems to be true, at least if we restrict it to “If we had invented chloroflourocarbons in 1800, and used them as vigorously as we did in real life, we would have severely depleted animal and plant life outside the tropical zone.” Our hypothetical air-conditioned Victorians would observe a steady increase in harmful ultraviolet light, spreading from the poles. But the cause would remain a mystery. In our timeline, the ozone layer depletion was discovered by satellite, but could have been detected from the ground if people had been measuring. So we wouldn’t have to wait until spaceflight for it to be discovered. But the mechanism by which chloroflurocabons deplete ozone is quite beyond nineteenth century chemistry, and furthermore the ozone layer would not even be discovered until 1913. So they would have kept on using them for many decades. Our fifty years of use depleted the ozone layer over the poles (where it is thickest) by about twofold, but over the equator by only ten percent. In the other time line, it seems reasonable to extend this for 150 years, to a tenfold increase in CFC concentration. This would lead to roughly a ninety percent depletion over the poles and in the temperate zones, and a factor of two over the tropics. This would have catastrophic effects on all life on land or in the shallow ocean. Eventually the economy would collapse and CFC production would decrease, but since it lasts for many decades in the atmosphere, this would not get better for a long time.