Slashdot Mirror
Antarctic Ozone Hole Leveling Off
twistedfuck writes: "An Irish Time article reports that the size of the hole in the antartican ozone layer is levelling off and should begin reducing in size. It seems like it should be welcome news but it is tempered by the fact that more UV radiation will reach the southern hemisphere this year because the hole will persist longer. Unfortunately I can not find any details regarding the NOAA report on their website." Update: 11/06 17:31 GMT by H :Thanks to Isaac Lewis, NOAA Sysadmin and Slashdot reader, for pointing out more information, as well as pointing out the ozonelayer site.
IMHO Mother Nature takes care of herself. Fires to clean the earth, wind to sweep away the garbage, seasons to refresh the vibrance of life and so forth...
This article suggests that though the total mass of the hole is reducing in size, it is also maintaining itself for longer periods. Without research, an immediate assumption would suggest that this would be letting the same doses of UV rays reach the earth annually.
I'd say Mother Nature is attemtping to counteract our efforts and regulate the earth the way she has done for millions of years!
And given our (human) track record.. I'd give 1000:1 odds in favor of Mother Nature doing the right thing.
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
I was just looking into this not too long ago. Strangely enough, we met someone from Israel while we were travelling in New Zealand who said it had closed, which I was sure was wrong. Turns out it's still there.
And remember it's not really a hole, i.e. there is ozone present, it's just at significantly lower levels.
Here are a couple of sites I found useful :
www.epa.gov/ozone/science/hole/holehome.html
www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/
When we were in New Zealand the sun feels different ! It feels very intense and somewhat uncomfortable, and it was only the first month of spring. You HAVE to use sunscreen.
Absolute statements are never true
The problem with environmental theories is that they are just that...theories.
Much like chemistry of 50 or 100 years ago in many ways would seem laughable to what we know now (and will again in 50 years probably), the science of the environment is a young and new science. Unlike chemistry or physics, it's much harder to do experiments, and the timescales involved are immense.
The truth is we simply know too little about the Earth to make longterm models and whatnot that are dead on. We can make GUESSES, and maybe even good guesses, but there is still so much that we don't know at this point.
As a side note-it is my understanding that CO2 levels during the time of the dinosaurs were much higher than they are today. The Earth can handle huge changes with relatively little environmental impact. It's been around (what? 5 billion years?) a long time, I don't think humanity can destroy it in a little over two century.
Scott
No, but it is what the preponderance of the evidence suggests.
... Oh wait, that happens all the time?
a) Upon seeing problems, we've heavily cut back on all sorts of emissions under the belief that it will fix the problem.
b) Results of a) (above) will take sixty more years to manifest.
c) Problem is disappearing long before results of a) are known.
Therefore, perhaps a) was a faulty assumption that costs businesses billions annually, and the ozone hole is really just a cyclical thing?
That said, lower emissions are good, if only for two reasons - one, so that whilst canoeing the Indian Arm of the Fraser River, I don't know that Vancouver is (that way) due to the brown sky. Two, because they *do* seem to be responsible for all sorts of human respiratory problems. You know, if environmentalists weren't all a bunch of crackpots who use pseudoscience to justify whatever their jihad of the day is, I'd probably identify myself as one.
PS - The ICE at the NORTH POLE is MELTING!!! Oh NO!!!
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
I believe there's a meteorological phenomenon called the polar vortex that causes the ozone hole to occur at the South Pole and during Antarctic summer. See this link for more details. Short version is, during polar night there's a huge whirlpool of cold air that circulates there all night causing the CFC's we've emitted to more rapidly destroy the ozone in the region. By summer, the vortex stops, so the ozone hole disperses. There's also a vortex in the North Pole, but because there are a lot of irregular land masses there, the vortex up north is a lot weaker, hence the ozone hole up north is far smaller. But global warming is causing the northern vortex to strengthen, and hence increase the size of the hole up north.
This is what I get for watching too much Discovery Channel!
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.