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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.
Are we to believe that this reduction in size is a result of global regulation of CFCs, or could it possibly just be part of a natural cycle? Too bad we didn't get satellites before styrofoam.
Pleeease can you spell it right? :) I swear it isn't hard!
I don't know much about ozone and such, but why would the size of the hole start to decline? Are we producing additional ozone that could somehow refill the hole? Is the remainder of the ozone layer spreading out to fill the gap?
Are there any meteorologists/ecologists out there who know how this works?
Ceci n'est pas une sig
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!
Who Cares? This only affects those of us that
actually go outside, and in all honestly, how many of us have actually been outside in the
past two weeks. (Outdoor-type quake mods do not count)
mccann@telalink.net
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
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.
Oh well. Luckily the world will end AFTER I'm dead.
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
To summarise the findings, it seems the density of Chlorine from CFCs has peaked, and it is expected the Ozone hole will gradually (i.e. over the next 50 years!) disappear.
It now seems to be an interesting case of us screwing up our environment, working out what we'd done, and fixing it. However, you could consider that we just 'got lucky':
Compare this with the current situation re global warming, and this looks less like a successful victory and more like a warning shot across the bows
Back in '92 (I believe - not sure), most new air conditioners started being manufactured with CFC-free refrigerants. The "new" coolant requires different tolerances in the compressor and evaporator systems. What this means (as anyone who has tried to retrofit an older car air conditioner with CFC-free coolant can tell you) is that the new coolant doesn't work as well in older systems. This has actually created a black market for the older coolant (freon, as I recall) from countries where it is still manufactured.
If this research is correct, the coolant switchover and strict rules regarding the recovery of waste freon have probably played a part in the improvement. Even if this is an inconvience for auto A/C mechanics, it's a small price to pay to preserve our valuable ecosystem.
So if you're driving an older car and your recharged air conditioner doesn't seem as cold as you remember it, you're right. But you're helping save the enviorment.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
More info on the same subject.
Every time I hear someone talk about the ozone hole that we (humans) are creating, I have a little laugh to myself. I mean, seriously... Human beings populate such an insanely small percentage of the Earth's surface (I mean, far less than half is even land anyway), how can you believe that we could really have such an immediate (read: 80 years) impact on something like the global climate? Come on, I think that's getting just a little bit of a big head... We wish we could control the weather...
Do not read this sig.
In the great words of Lewis Black:
"We've got rockets, we've got plastic wrap... Fix it!"
A good description of the process which results in the ozone hole can be found here.
Basically, the intense cold of an antarctic winter creates a vortex which isolates the air over the south pole, and allows build up of the CFCs. When the summer comes, the Chlorine from the CFCs acts as a catalyst to destroy the ozone.
It now seems to be well understood - but it's one of those things that nobody could have predicted before it happened.
I thought that weather patterns tend to not cross the equator...
If that's true (and even if it's not), why is the ozone hole over the ANTARCTIC? Aren't most of the CFC/ozone-eating gases being emitted in the NORTHERN HEMISPHERE? Why isn't there one over the arctic?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
I live in Melbourne. If you look at the piccies of the hole, you'll see it nowhere near approaches Melbourne.
I have to use sunscreen when I go outside. I've got fair complexion and I burn up in the sun. Yet when I visit Sydney, I can spend 2 hours in the sun without as much getting a lick from sunburn.
You have to wonder what the situation is like in Hobart or Antartica.
Just as a flame-worthy side note, there is a lot of antagonism in New Zealand towards the US because of Bush's decision to boycott the Kyoto(sp?) Protocol. The United States is demonstrably by far the worse offender with carbon dioxide emissions, and the general consenus in the scientific community is that these emissions are causing, or at least accelerating the hole in the ozone layer. To be honest, Usians aren't the most popular people (as a society, not individuals--I personally have met several and they were wonderful people), and this is just one more straw on the proverbial and cliched camel's back, with the United States saying what is effectively "Stuff you, we'll do what we want and who cares about your ozone hole causing rising skin cancer and medical costs".
I didn't mean that as a flame, just a point of view. I'd rather you respond than just mod me down...I'm aware that I am oversimplifying it; this is merely the general trend of thinking in Kiwiland.
A word can paint a thousand pictures
Where is the evidence of the increase of human skin cancers due to "ozone hole" ?
Check cancer rates between Pennsylvania, USA and Sydney, Australia. I know this is far from a bulletproof arguement, for maybe Aussies are naturally more prone to skin cancer, or spend more time outdoors (which they do), or they use a sunblock which mutates them into sun cancer prone mutant freaks. But the (abeit weak) arguement some people say is that in the land down under there is mommothian awareness of skin cancer, everyone uses sun block, hats and that disgusting blue crap you put on your nose, there are advertisements all the time for sun awareness (remember that egg me no fry ad? Yes!), and here in the good old US of A we suffice with those annoying no-life weather channel dorks to tell us to put on a hat. I have lived in both countries for a decent (over 4 years) amount of time and the amount of people here in the US who care about skin cancer is miniscule compared to Aust. Yet (and the reason for that) rates are still higher down there. We are both about on the +/-40 degree latitude mark. This evidence is circumstantial at best but I'm sure someone else can post up a more scientific explanation for it (please?)
Just what I think, thats all
CO2 is responsible for global warming, not ozone depletion.
CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and some other gases like halon(tm?) are responsible for the thinning ozone. Most of these gases have been banned under the Montreal protocol for some years now, but because they are largely inert they can rise far into the stratosphere (which takes them quite a few years) where they do their damage. What happens up there is that the suns intense UV rays break the CFC molecules up and the chlorine ends up binding with an oxygen atom from the ozone. The actual reaction is here
CO2, on the other hand, absorbs infrared radiation from the earth reradiated from sunlight and keeps the heat in the atmosphere. It basically acts like a big blanket. CO2 is what the Kyoto Protocol is trying to limit.
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I didn't want to leave this space blank.
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.
I'll just point out a slight inaccuracy in your highly informative answer. CO2 increase in the atmosphere does directly relate to the ozone hole problem. CO2 increase causes global warming. Global warming causes the (presently) weak polar vortex in the North Pole to strengthen. Strengthening of that polar vortex causes the ozone hole in the northern hemisphere to increase in size. Well, many more people live in the land around in the higher latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere...
That's the thing with the environment; everything is interconnected.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
I've heard there have been some, um, anomalies in the flocks. Are they growing wool again? How about the lamb-meat? Is it still tender and juicy from the prolonged basting? :-)
You know those fine men in Washington are going to use this as evidence that there is no need for tougher environmental laws. Not that they'll understand the difference between global warming or the ozone hole or what have you.
Can someone find this study and maybe post a link? Have there been any reports of corrolation between the reduction in the use of CFCs in many countries and the leveling off of the hole or was it a natural phenomenom after all.
To the guy in NZ who talked about the anamosity toward the US for backing out of the Kyoto treaty. We're all feeling very patriotic, but you please remember a majority of the folks in this country did NOT vote for Bush and co. We voted for a guy who thought (according to his book) Florida would be under water in a few years if we didn't do something about the environment! Didn't like either of them, but I vote a bit on the enviromental side with a strong streak of anti-relgious fundementalism. I think pulling out of the Kyoto treaty even if you DIDN'T agree with its premise was a mistake because it dishonored our country. We played a big part in setting the thing up then canceled at the last minute. For that I am truely sorry.
Unfortunately, due to recent events it will be a number of years before we'll pay a great deal of attention to the environmental problem. It may be a number of year before we link the gas prices with all of us buying SUV's that get 8 miles a gallon (not me!), but we will..hopefully before we melt the place.
-Andy
Actually, I think that was more due to the fact that you were thinking autumn with shorter days than spring. When I lived in NZ in 97/98 (south end of the Mainland) I found no difference.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Ok, here's the deal:
Stratospheric ozone is created by bombarding normal, happily breathable O2 mollecules with ultraviolet light, splitting the O2 into a pair of O1's. These O1's eventually bump into another O2 mollecule and create O3. Big woop.
Where there is solar UV light, you'll probably see some ozone popping up. Since the Antarctic Desert is in the dark for a good chunk of the year, you'll discover a not-too-surprising lack in stratospheric ozone over winter and well into the Spring. Also not surprisingly, we have an ozone hole over the north pole.
Over the north pole, of course, there isn't quite as extreme a desert as over the south, and there are more large land masses nearby to carry air better.
Back in the 30s when the first weather measurements were taken in Antarctica they found almost identical levels of UV light hitting them as during a modern winter. Greenies prefer to depend on climactic models rather than empirical evidence these days, however, so their multi-million dollar research is stating the problem is getting bigger, even if someone else's multi-thousand dollar research is saying the opposite.
The ozone hole is the result of too many people putting faith in government, who can't predict the future more than a few weeks down the road, and weather men, who can't predict the future more than a few days down the road, and expecting their government-funded computer models to be able to predict the future years down the road.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I agree with your statements, and I've read similar articles in scientific periodicles. Those articles, however, are usually well hidden and no longer than half a page, because they aren't very popular. So why is rational thought about the O-zone not popular? Well it's not sensationalist, it doesn't give people something to "fight" for, and people who are "environmentally concious" just hate to admit that they are wrong.
Another thing that I don't think you touched on, our climate goes in cycles. I don't recall the exact dates, but I know that some time ago in recent history (1960's maybe?) all of the popular scientists were warning of global cooling. That's right, the earth was getting too cold and there was going to be another ice age if people didn't do something about it. Our climate is not as stable as some would imagine, and contrary to popular beleive we humans have nothing to do with it. Yes, in large cities there is smog, but that is a microclimate just around the city, and it dissipates in the atmosphere and goes away eventually, doesn't affect the global environment. The global climate is something that is very dynamic and not easily understandable. One thing is for certain though: there is no proof that we have a problem with the O-zone layer.
~ now you know
Ummm... It's a lot sunnier in Australia. Even on a clear day in Pennsylvania, you still have A LOT of moisture in the atmosphere, which blocks a lot of the radiation.
Perhaps you should be comparing Arizona with Australia.
Global warming is a fact,
True. But you can't forget the fact that global tempatures are currently lower then average. Leaving "the little ice age" (1200-1800) would account for global warming.
Of course the question is then is there are problem. I can't answer that. Everything feeds everything else. When we burn a drop of oil is affects how the trees grow and things like that. Forest fires are a significant cause of polution, and the well ment, but disasterious smokey the bear (Only you can prevent forest fires) program has ment that in the previous centry there were less of them. Volcanios when they errupt make up the large majority of the polution released that year.
So is there a problem or not? I can cite lots of facts. There is no way to know without controlled expiriments lasting for several million years. Even if we had the patience to see such a study through, we don't have the ability to construct several idenitical solar systems, complete with suns and planets, so we can't control the variables. Even if we could construct such systems we can't alter orbits of the planets at will, we can't prevent/cause solar flares, and we can't cause volcanos. (Even if we could, could we do it without introducing anouther variable?) Facts are easy, figgureing out what they mean is hard.
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s792.htm
lots of links and pretty pictures available.
(And just a note: Radio Free Nation had this back in the middle of October, but what do I know? [smile])
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I believe that the US regulations are the most lax in the developed world
Hmm.. perhaps you should research that, because I belive US regulations are the most strict. I know that there are cars in Europe that can't be sold in the US due to polution regulations (VW TDI gets about 100 hp in the US, same engine tuned different gets 150 hp in Europe, but cannot be sold in the US)
A recient trip to Spain revealed a lot of polution. It was impossibal to breath. Inside smokers were the problem, outside cars. In particular there were a lot of 2-cycle scooters running around pouring out polution.
Unfortunatly Europe is conposed of many different countries, so you can point out one country with tougher regulations and compare that to the US. California has the toughest regulations in the US, but that isn't a country so it doesn't count. (the word state in english means country)
I work for the Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Laboratory which is part of NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration). If anyone is interested, our lab launches balloons that help measure the level of ozone in the atmosphere at the South Pole.
More information can be found at the South Pole Ozone Page.
Eric
The ozone hole was discovered back in 1958 by the British Antarctic Survey. At the time, they saw it as a natural phenomenon caused by the South Atlantic Vortex -- a well established air movement pattern.
Now, there may be some real science behind CFCs and ozone depletion. The original lab work that demonstrated the chemistry was real. However, most of the material that comes my way about CFCs in the atmosphere seems more like spin than science. Maybe someone here can point us to some more measured and competent publications than I have been able to find.
Before we jump to too many conclusions about all the anti-CFC material, we should bear in mind it is standard practice for corporations to seek methods for making obsolete materials for which the patents have expired. Some creative lobbying and legislation is a great way to stop third-world companies turning out your products on the cheap.
For ozone to be destroyed you need:
Although I am sure that other chemicals can break down ozone, CFCS are the most common and best at doing it because they are lighter than air and they normally DO NOT react with anything around us (at or near sea level). These two properties make them fly up high into the ozone layer. The non-reactant portion is what made these chemicals so great and so unthought of as causing problems. To destroy ozone molecules you have to have some very specific conditions:
Okay so now how do you get these conditions, and why is there no northern ozone hole? Well we have uv-light and aplenty so that's not a problem. The first issue is gathering a lot of CFCs (and ozone) into one place, this is taken care of by the Antarctic vortex. The vortex is there during certain months of the year and it builds up a lot CFCs and Ozone into a small space. In the northern polar regions it isn't so prominent because there are landmarks to break up these winds, however there are some weaker ones that are present in the north. Okay, we got ozone and CFC and light, now we need to get rid of the nitrogen. This is handled by formation of nitrogen clouds, which are clouds that are really cold and really high up that contain droplets of condensed nitrogen, and now the nitrogen is gone in the atmosphere and CFC havoc may occur. This doesn't happen in the north because the north pole is much warmer (or at least enough to prevent this). Now the scary thing is if we get a cold winter in the north then a big hole can form in the north, and if you look at a globe there are millions upons millions more people in the upper northen latitudes than there are in the southernmost latitudes. And if you use the following statistic, -1% ozone layer = +2% UV-light on the surface of the Earth = +4% skin cancer, which is sorta bad when applied to cities like London and Quebec and what not (yes these ozone holes can affect huge areas).
Now before someone tries to beat me down for using pseudo science, my mother is on the DIAL team which is a NASA group that measures the ozone hole using a LIDAR(Laser detection) system. These were the people who went to confirm the ozone hole when NASA originally thought the TOMS satellite was malfunctioning because it had almost no readings in the south pole for ozone. I may have bungled some of the facts so if I did please correct me. I think most of these chemical processes have been tested in a lab so they are empirical evidence.
As for the the stabilizing of the ozone I can only make a few conjectures: 1) the most likely IMHO, the temperature in the southern pole haven't been as cold lately, I know I have been going through some wacky yearly climate cahnges here, 2)the Earth is mucuh more resilient than we like to think, or 3) We're missing something that is there and it may not be only the CFCs or it could be a natural cyclical event, but I have trouble believing it is natural with all the scientific evidence I have seen. There are still too many CFCs in the ozone layer for it start repairing, and due to the resilience and the near-non-reactance of CFCs they will be around for another 60-100 years, before the ozone makes a come back and another 100 after that to repair itself.
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Just your ordinary BOFH
http://killertux.org
Check cancer rates between Pennsylvania, USA and Sydney, Australia. I know this is far from a bulletproof arguement, for maybe Aussies are naturally more prone to skin cancer, or spend more time outdoors (which they do)
Or maybe the Aussies and the NZers killed/displaced the reasonably dark skinned people who were properly adapted for living there, replacing them with light-skinned northern europeans...
Observations have just finished one 22-year solar activity cycle. Solar activity has been at a peak this year (producing magnificant aurora visible across much of the USA last weekend). This ascpect of natural causes should be understood too.
I've seen too many examples of people overinterpreting there data decrying "disaster is at hand" or "no way the environemnt could be hurt". So little is known about natural activity, that the scientists shouldn't over do it.
Here's some statistics and information on the ozone hole from the Climate Prediction Center:
e /sbuv2to/ozone_hole.html
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratospher
Bush Lies Watch
http://www.ozonelayer.noaa.gov
BTW - for anyone that cares, the ozonelayer site runs on a Linux box
I myself, tend to believe more of the crackpot pseudoscience than the greedy bastard pseudoscience, thank you very much!
If you believe pseudoscience, you're part of the problem. You see, it is likely that the changeover from CFC based systems to other systems did cost on the order of a billion dollars (that isn't that much, just 1 B2 bomber). Now if, in fact, we did not need to do so, that billion dollar hit to the economy could have been taken in an environmental area that was needed. So getting environmental science wrong is not helpful. The emotional environmentalists have done more to harm the environment than any single chemical manufacturer. My own case in point is the nuclear debate. Emotional environmentalists have pushed FUD tactics regarding nuclear power for some time. This has caused industrial nations to increase use of oil, coal, and hydro-electric systems, each of which have terrible environmental disadvantages of their own. Geologically, coal tends to be a trap for naturally occuring radiogenic compounds, and your average coal plant spews out more radioactive gasses than all the nuclear spills of all western reactors combined (clearly Chernobyl is a case apart), not to mention the tons and tons of CO2 that get tossed into the atmosphere. Hydro dams destroy habitat by the hundreds of square miles.
here are evidences[sic] that we are destroying nature, look at the rivers!
The US is hardly the worst polluter of riparian environments in the world. The clean water act has actually been very effective at cleaning the rivers. I heard a story by an entymologist I know at Clemson university who specializes in cadis flies and other aquatic insects as indicators of stream health. He'd developed standards of measurements for defining stream pollution throughout the southeastern US. He traveled to China to do some work there, and had to travel several hundred miles inland before he found environments that were healthy enough to even show up on his scale.
US citizens are not even one 20th of the world population but they manage to produce half the pollution.
This depend highly on how polution is defined. We are the largest producer of CO2, which was not considered a pollutant until fairly recently. In other respects, we've greatly reduced our environmental destruction. At the turn of the century, South Carolina was largely devoid of trees. Through conservation and forestry, that state has now recovered large tracts of forest land. Clearly this land is not as healthy as old-growth forest yet, but such things take time, and its doing better than one might think.
Also, it is the third world, the developing countries, that continue to use CFC depleting chemicals. For more details check out this article at ENN.
Now, I do believe that CFC reductions are largely responsible for the halting of growth in the ozone layer. It is true that ozone depletors remain active for quite some time. However, ozone is continuously being produced by incident radiation, and even if depletors are present in the atmosphere, ozone levels will quickly reach equilibrium once the amount of depleting agents stabilizes. We can expect a slow recovery, but we should expect to see stabilization quickly. This is precisely what is being reported.
if ($it != $onething) {$it = $another;}
Individuals are often conscious of environmental issues, but company executives who have oil fields destroying the earth whilst living comfortably in Aspen typically just don't care.
Executives are individuals too, and corporations are owned, operated, and staffed by individuals. Companies do the things that they do because their customers (individuals!) tell them what to do: people (individuals!) buy gas guzzling SUVs because they like them - no one is forcing them to do so, and suggesting that the reason is "greedy corporations" is ludicrous. People (individuals!) buy the bigger SUV, not the more efficient one, because the bigger one is cheaper - no one is forcing them to spend less money, they just want to.
Suggesting that individuals care and corporations don't is inane and a refuge of the weak willed; corporations do what it takes to make a profit by providing individuals with the goods and services they want at the lowest price possible. Individuals do now and always have had the power to influence what corporatios do, by voting with their dollars (or euros or pounds or rupees etc) If you want a "greener" world, then you need to convince other "individuals" that they should be willing to pay for it, and you need to put your wallet where your mouth is. Don't try to absolve yourself by passing the buck to the "greedy corporation"; it is the collective decisions of millions of individuals that dictate what those corporations do.
Where is the evidence of the increase of human skin cancers due to "ozone hole" ?
:-)
Speaking from personal experience, and speaking of the experiences of other people I know, you sunburn sooo fast in New Zealand, compared to hotter, sunnier, more northery countries, it's scary. If you accept that there is a link between sunburn and skin-cancer, the dreadfull ease of getting burned when under the ozone hole should constitute evidence.
If you don't accept any link between sunburn and cancer, you're probably the sort of person that the PR department of BiocideCorp Chemicals Inc would love to hire...
(I currently live at about the same latitude north as I did latitude south when in New Zealand. The sun is just different. It doesn't have the same sting in it - you can feel the difference).
They can't prove it. Oh, sure, they can come up with tons of circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but the one thing that they cannot do is establish causality beyond a doubt.
WHO CARES? As long as they can establish a REASONABLE chance that there IS a causal relationship, then let's act on it. And they've done that; let's see, on one hand we have pro-business pseudoscience, and on the other we have the work of tens of thousands of scientists. Who would you believe? The idea that we can't establish a causal relationship to 100% certainty is a point that only a philosopher of science should reasonably care about. Hell, if they establish a 30% chance we should act on it, simply because the possible costs are so high.
So, what's the next best thing they can do? Go on the PC offensive, or course! It's simple and it's proven to be effective time and time again. They can just demonize any thought or information that doesn't conform to their preconceived determination, and use the willing accompices in the media and academia to ensure that their views will be the "accepted" ones. Anything that doesn't march in lockstep will be declared "evil" and ostracized.
And what the hell do you think you're doing?
Or maybe the Aussies and the NZers killed/displaced the reasonably dark skinned people who were properly adapted for living there, replacing them with light-skinned northern europeans...
British colonial forces in New Zealand were far from saintly. There were needless lives lost. There were people cheated. There were those who never bothered to find out about the culture they were living alongside, causing friction, suffering and loss on both sides. There was a law against Maori people speaking their own language in schools at one point, as part of an attempt at cultural assimilation. That's not something the country is proud of. Still, at least they didn't put bounties on the native population and attempt to wipe them out in the scale of places like Tasmania.
Maori weren't all bright happy peaceful people before the nasty British came along. There were a lot of warring tribes, though many coexisted relatively peacefully. There was occasional cannibalism, and widespread slavery. So it's not like any one ethnicity has clean hands. The same could be said of anywhere in the world.
The Maori are still here. The Europeans are now here too. A lot of Maori are a lighter-skinned now, due to intermarriage with Pakeha (Europeans). Maori get skin cancer too, y'know. And in higher rates than they used to. The hole in the ozone layer has a very real effect.
New Zealand is in a temperate area, with only the northernmost regions in the subtropical zone. My city is on a complementary latitude to places like Chicago and Seattle. Do the weather reports in Chicago warn that there's a "burn time of 10 minutes" or whatever, throughout most of summer?
"Cut word lines. Cut music lines. Smash the control images. Smash the control machine." - William S. Burroughs
Many of the "thousands of scientists" you mention have vested interests as well.
And what about those that don't? The reason you're discounting their research is not because it's flawed but because you don't agree with it.
lot of the pro-environment propaganda that goes on is the direct result of big corporations wanting to manipulate you
How on earth can you be so amazingly, 100% wrong? It's remarkable.
Point to one single PAC formed by corporations that endorses stricter environmental regulations. Go ahead, I dare you.
so they keep quiet when polititians and various other talking heads distort their findings to sound more frighning than they really are.
Do you even read the paper? Most politicians ignore this, as they've ignored it for decades.
Face it, you are being played.
And you are so lost in the self-delusion of your own little fringe ideology that it's not even worthwhile to continue this.
That's what happens when you leave science to lay-folk. Any real scientist would tell you that your proposal is way too ambitious; the scope of your proposed experiment can be drastically reduced without adversly affecting the outcome. You don't need to build multiple solar systems for your control group, you just need to build multiple Earths, orbiting the one Sun. You have to admit that building multiple Earths is far easier than building multiple solar systems. I suggest you start with Venus, as the 2nd rock's pretty worthless except as a navigation device for sailors, it's about the right size, and it's already close to the desired orbit.
Of course, this guy might not like it...
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Uhh, excuse me, but isn't this science that we are talking about in the first place? Oh, wait, sorry, you are absolutely right, of course! This is nothing more than politics in the guise of "science"! Excuse me for that little oversight.
So you actually believe that science never enters the picture? That the climatologists, ecologists, environmental chemists, geophysicists who research this stuff are just wasting their lives on a useless pursuit. The facts are these:
1. Releasing industrial waste (as CO2, CFCs, chlorine, heavy metals, whatever) into the environment changes that environment.
2. These changes are probably harmful to humans.
If this is the case, shouldn't we try to limit how much of these wastes we release? Just because we haven't proven all of the facts 100%? Do you not pay car insurance because there's not a 100% chance you'll get into an accident?
What happens to pollutants then, if you release them into the air? You think they magically disappear? Let me guess, the hole in the ozone doesn't exist either?
The really sad thing about this whole debate is that, by using such "sky-is-falling" scare tactics and demagoguery, the left wing has successfully hijacked the whole environmental issue and used it as nothing more than a means to ram their marxist dogma down everyone else's throats.
Oh yes, you found us out. The entire environmental movement is simply a front for a vast Marxist conspiracy. After we sneak in all those environmental regulations we're going to erect a statue of Marx in Washington, DC, then march around waving red flags chanting Soviet slogans. Give me a break.
Think it's bullshit? Try taking a long hard look at your ridiculous
My motives? What motives can you extrapolate from my sig?