This Year's Ozone Hole Largest Ever

Katydid writes "Got sunscreen? It's UV exposure season in Antarctica again, and for the first time a city in South America - Punta Arenas, in Chile - was directly under the area of missing atmosphere we know and love. At 11.4 million square miles, the hole is 'more than three times the size of the United States.'"

Comments

Re:The voice of dissent

[centauri]

Skin cancer is the most popular association with depleted ozone, but there are other theoretical effects that could be much worse. The one that comes to mind is the destruction of microscopic ocean life close to the surface. The idea goes that these plankton and whatnot form the basis of a major food chain. Take out that link and the whole system could break down, starting with the oceans. Okay, I don't know the particulars and I'm not even sure I believe any of it, but the article sanemind offered didn't go very far towards convincing me that ozone depletion is not worth a great deal of economic upheaval. Besides, anytime anyone puts forth the economy as a good reason NOT to do something, I'm suspicious. --- You can find today's sig on page 28 of your User's Manual.

Re:It isn't more logical, with insufficient data

[Valdrax]

I think that one of the key things we have to come to realize at this dawn of a new century is the extreme danger of a growing and increasingly politicized use of science.

Personally, I find it more dangerous that our society looks at the empirical evidence of science and calls it political when it threatens the cushy life that we've built for ourselves. In this case, the scientific evidence clashes with the orthodox forces of the industrial establishment. This is not dissimilar from the attitude of Big Tobacco with dueling studies over the cancer-causing effects of tobacco smoke.

Facts:

1. The ozone hole is getting larger. Satellite photos show this.
   
2. The ozone layer protects us from the larger amounts of UV radiation outside the atomsphere.
   
3. UV radiation contributes to cancer. FYI, UV radiation is sufficiently energetic to break carbon bonds -- the chemical backbone of all biological structures.
   
4. Certain chemicals we emit into the environment react with ozone, disrupting the ozone-oxygen/free radical cycle that blocks UV rays.
   
5. While there may be a natural component to this happening, deep cores taken from Antarctic ice indicate that this is the worst the planet has probably seen.
   

Only dedicated and intelligent scientists, devoted to their field of inquiry [while in competition with each other] are qualified to make any determinations of provable risk, and if there is any at all.

They are making predictions of risk, and they are starting to come true, but people are ignoring them, calling their research "political."

The voice of dissent

[sanemind]

One thing that gets me is the near universal assumption that the 'ozone hole' is a necessarily new phenomonon that represents a fundlemental danger to humans and other life on earth.

There is an interesting essay [with an excellent bibliography] here Which endeavors to critically debunk the rationale behind the scaremongering widely perpetuated by the mainstream media. Many respected scientists have had critical disagreements over the validity of the 'ozone problem', yet this has suprisingly been absent throughout the long history of mainstream media coverage of the topic.

Think what you will, I won't say I am wholly convinced one way or another, but this is well worth reading. Even if you are an adamently radical environmentalist, if nothing else it is good to know thine enemy. ;)

The preliminary introduction is a bit slow, if you're in a hurry, skip down to the subsection titled SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTIES AND CONTROVERSIES and as well to CONCERNS ABOUT SKIN CANCER , which I found particularly interesting.

It wouldn't be the first time that national hysteria (in this case, international) got out of hand, fed by a singular drum-beat of media hype, leading to bad policy. [Remeber columbine, the drug way, countless others?]

It's valuable to challege orthodoxy, and I found this article a fascinating read. You should check it out.


--
man sig

Re:The voice of dissent

[Mad Hughagi]

Thus, the issue of whether the global ozone layer shows a steadily depleting trend is still controversial.

Taken right from the essay. Although I would agree with you in that I'm not totally convinced on the issue of 'ozone layer depletion' either, it is interesting to see that this article begins with a scientific basis of 'the uncertainty' of research on ozone layer cause and effect and quickly progresses to the fact that it costs lots of money to phase out 'potential' ozone depleting chemicals and whether or not it is in the US's interest to stay in potentially expensive environmental pacts.

I think one of the key things that we have come to realize at the end of this century is that many of the large scale phenomena we witness here on Earth are the products of an extremely complex and often non-linear series of events. Our technology has reached the point where it can and often does cause serious changes to our environment. One of the problems with the point of view that this essay takes is that it neglects 'precaution' in favour of the idea that we should be more concerned with short term economical gain.

If something has the potential to possibly cause damage, isn't it more logical to stop using it? Even if we are only right 1 in 10 times on whether something can cause damage to the environment, I would rather waste the money controlling the nine than sweeping the one under the rug.