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Ozone Hole Getting Smaller
snark42 writes "According to Reuters and some other sources the hole in the ozone layer shrank 20% this year to a mere 9 million square miles. Of course scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about."
20 years from now, we'll have discovered there's a natural grow/shrink cycle we never knew about...
While this is good news, I hope it isn't seen by governments as an excuse to ease their environmental burdens in favour of bowing to economic/corporate pressures, and, I really hope it isn't seen as yet another excuse by the US government to duck out for even longer on signing the Kyoto Accords.
I realize the above accords don't directly affect the ozone layer, but, ask anyone on the street - the hole in the Ozone layer and the "Greenhouse Effect" are the same thing right? Maybe the hole lets more heat in or something...
It is a sad state of affairs when one feels so cynical, that the first thing that occurs when a hint of good news comes along, is, how will those in power exploit this?
Of course scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about.
Move along, nothing to see here.
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Slashdot: Racism against Indians OK. China bad, USA good. Blue pill in water supply.
I am sure there is a joke in there somwhere but can't quite put my finger on it.
Or maybe the ozone layer is getting much thinner in other areas to help cover up the massive gaping hole?
has there been a drop in the amount of pollution that is beleived to cause the hole? or are we polluting more than ever?
Also, do the people in Antarctica get sunburnt easily?
The ozone *layer* shrank by 20%...
This may be a stupid question *but*...
Why can't we 'reseed' the ozone layer? We can make ozone in a lab, so why don't we get some high flying aircraft and strap some ozone filled bottles to the fuselage and start spraying? It'd be like dusting crops only a lot different.
Although, it is good news that the hole is smaller.
I am reminded of a scene from Batman Returns when The Penguin says:
"Stop global warming. Start global cooling. Make the world a colder place!"
Maybe that's what's happening. The Penguin is taking over the world. Yay. We'll have Linux world domination yet!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
Reporting this suggests everything will be OK in 5 years - 20% in a year - just 80% to go hey!!
... certainly 20 years, actually I never claimed.' 'THANK you very much its 8:59 time for traffic'
Of course this could be nothing to do with anything - and simply be an anomoly, a measuring error, a rogue reading, or true. Until everyone has a basic degree of scientific understanding this kind of news will hit the headlines and be presented as a Good Thing. Which is isn't - its neither good not bad.
A bit like the medical researcher on the radio every few weeks being introduced as talking about a 'newfound cure for cancer' and saying 'this is certainly an exciting development' being asked 'so when will it actually be used to cure cancer' and having to say 'well... possibly never,
Shrinking Oxone hole...Being environmentally friendly is expencive, which brings me to my question...How long will this last?
They invent more environmentally friendly for us but when will the companies get the picture?
Perhaps they will start selling real freon again, instead of that expensive useless crap R134..
Oh, who am I kidding, the government release restrictions on an industry? They can keep prices artificially high due to regulation, and collect more taxes off the product ( and required "licensing" )
This 'discovery' wont do much for us other then give the scientists something else to debate..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It exempts most, if not all, of mainland china from it's rules. Please tell me how exempting the fastest growing, most poluting economy on the face of the planet will make one bit of difference.
How can this be possible. In recent years, if anything our environment has gotten worse. How could the ozone possible be healing itself?
Last time I checked it took roughly a 100 years for any exhaust gasses released on Earth to have an impact on the ozone layer ..
global warming is a natural process, it happened many thousands of years ago and now it happens again. Then ice age and back to normal.
It's probably shrinking-away from his foreign policy and blood thirsty war mongering.
Now if only pollution will stop the weird weather patterns we've been getting.
Yes, and we're part of the cycle. We stopped making CFCs 10-20 years ago when we proved they destroy ozone, and now the hole is getting smaller. How much more correlation do you need, after laboratory and in the wild, to stop denying the science that is saving your life right now?
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make install -not war
The Earth is fairly resillient, much more so than we humans are. The Earth will survive just about anything we do to it, but we are at risk. The argument that there are no (or minimal) dangers ignores the fact that skin cancer exists. It ignores the fact that there is a hole in the ozone. The Montreal Protocol has been a major step forward to eliminating/minimizing those chemicals that we know deplete the Ozone layer.
The other thing that may contribute to the Ozone layer growing back would be global warming, as the ozone depletion effect requires very cold temperatures to do the spectacular damage it has done to the pole. (see Univeristy of Cambridge.)
Some interesting facts:
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
...the Goatse Hole...
vicious, untreated political sewage...niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive...worshipless pap
Generally, it takes Aqua-net approximately 15 years to escape the earth's atmosphere. The residual Aqua-net from 1980's groups like the Cure and Poisen , as well as teenage girls, who are now fat 30-somethings, has escaped the stratosphere. So long as fashion trends to not revert to high bangs and glam-band hair... we will survive.
We plan to allow the UV/ozone/oxygen balance to reach equilibrium by not destroying it any more with pollution. That means letting volcanic CFCs consume the excess ozone that might otherwise poison us or something else in our energy/food chain. We evolved to live in a balanced environment that flucuates within a window kept stable by overlapping natural cycles. When we change that balance, that environment, too quickly, by boosting one of the cycles to the detriment of another, we are no longer as fit to survive in the new environment. In related news, we also plan to allow various species to reproduce before hunting them to extinction, so we can continue to eat them.
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make install -not war
"Of course scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about."
I don't recall they're waiting a 'couple more years' before squealing that humans were responsible and linking it to the end-of-the-world scenarios.
Exempting China from Kyoto lets American corporations manufacture there, keeping their costs low. That has some terrible effects on some parts of the American economy, but boy is it great for those corporations' particular economies. Too bad about that darned environment, but it isn't intentional, so it's OK, right?
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make install -not war
There was a plan to send up baloons carrying metal catalysts to increase ozone production. I think it was even here on /. But I think it was more about some guy patenting a procedure that could have been useful based on the chemisty, rather than a well thought out enginering plan.
And where did you get the idea that China is the worlds largest polluter - "common knowledge" is that it is the US by a long golden chalk.
I stand corrected, I was just wandering around trying to find a reference to to worlds worst polluter and had great difficulty finding it. This material just isn't that commonly available - people not interested in it?
After great effort, I found this which contains the phrase "China is the second-biggest producer of greenhouse gases, after the United States".
This is also worth a read - containing the line:
Furthermore, the U.S. for over 20 to 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions, for just 4 to 5 percent of the world's population.
I strongly agree with jeffehobbs above though, progress is progress with or without the US, China (which I didn't realize to my own discredit) and India (apparently).
The environment isn't in on your conspiracy: DuPont kept needed ozone protection laws from passing until their patent expired. That speaks not of the safety of freon, but the inhuman power of DuPont - which was riding high from its sales of napalm to liberate Vietnam, after that unfortunate setback in selling DDT to douse children.
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make install -not war
Maybe we won't all die in a flood...
Really? Great minds think alike. *natch*
Ok, on to the next conspiracy...
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
http://www.gg.caltech.edu/~jeff/lwimages/ozonehole .gif
This was in the news at least 2 or 3 years ago (here on Slashdot, I believe). Sounds like a trend to me.
If he had signed the Kyoto Treaty, how much bigger would the ozone be now? I shudder to think about it...
Four more years!
It's OK! I'm a limo driver!
... russia only approved the Kyoto Protocol just yesterday!
This is my sig. There are thousands more, but this one is mine.
I can start using deodorant again!
Who was the knee-jerk enviromentalist wacko who moderated the parent post as "Flaimbait"?!?
".... mankind has been very lucky and that things could have been truly catastrophic, with an "ozone hole" occurring everywhere, if industry, instead of chlorine, would have produced similarly large quantities of bromine-containing compounds...."
s /koopmans_crutzen_2003.html/
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Admin/INF/lectures/Koopman
Simple chemistry, unknown at the time industry chose to use chlorine, marginally cheaper, over bromine, in freons etc.
Bromine in those applications would've wiped the upper ozone layer worldwide.
Oh, and the 'skeptics' (Hogan)? -- note the dates on those pages being proffered and the elevation of the effects described. That parrot's dead.
Highlander II already said this in 1991.
So, lemmie get this straight:
The hole gets 2% bigger, scientists freak out, instantly blaming pollution and saying we need to change. Then, when the hole shrinks by 20%, "scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about."
Is it just me, or does it seem these scientists are protraying the facts in such a way to continue their funding?
Aside from the expense of making the attempt (can you imagine the size of the water sprays you'd need to cool volcanic steam emissions and keep them from getting into the stratosphere?), it just isn't that important. Volcanic emissions of sulfur aerosols fall out of the atmosphere within months, and their impact is quite limited; free halogens liberated from halocarbons have residence times measured in years, if not decades.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
- As the IR opacity of the atmosphere goes up, the depth of the troposphere (the part where heat is transferred by convection instead of radiation) increases. This cuts into the size of the stratosphere and decreases the amount of air in it, and thus the ozone it can hold.
- As the IR opacity of the troposphere increases, the stratosphere cools and conditions become more favorable for the formation of the ice crystals which are the most damaging catalysts for the destruction of ozone.
HTH. HAND.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
And presuming (never proved, just presumed) that the connection is valid to begin with. An ill-conceived cure can be worse than the disease.
Companies like DuPont made billions from "ozone-layer friendly" coolants, so let's just all be happy for them and all the enviro-hippies who were their unwitting marketing tools. Never mind that the Sun drives the earth's climate, let's make everyone think man does, and that we need to upgrade our toys to save mother earth!
>> least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about."
Then why do they get excited IMMEDIATELY when there is even the slightest increase?
Wow, that's only one and a half times as big as the entire USA (including Alaska). Almost nothing!
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Could this have something to do with the increasing collapse of ice shelves in the Antarctic? Perhaps there is some relationship between the Ozone hole beginning to shrink and the collapse of the Larsen B Ice Shelf, which both coincidentally happened in 2002. Maybe the collapse and accellerated glacier movements triggered some environmental chain reaction that affected the Ozone hole, but in a superficial way that temporarily masks a continued climate change.
Eat a cow, save the ozone!!!
China has not had this improvement. Beijing still relies on coal burned in individual coal stoves for domestic space heat, and some cities emit so much soot that the lack of light reduces agricultural production downwind.
Basically, China is a pretty sucky place to live. There were times when it was much better than the West (like the Dark Ages), but this isn't one of them.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Here is a better assessment: 20 years from now, we'll thank the Russian government. Please read the latest news about Putin signing the Kyoto treaty. His signature means that the Kyoto treaty is activated.
The most significant holdout is the USA.
26 years after that, we are still having problems from our carelessness. Do you begin to see the virtue of caution?
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
Of course, you could always go back to using sulfur dioxide or ammonia as the working fluid in your refrigerator (yeah, right); CFC's were used because they didn't kill people when they leaked. Some European hardware, not being constrained by ill-considered safety regulations as we are in the USA, uses isobutane to this very day.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
it will be found to be tied to the neo-cons in office that release a lot of polluted air and the rest of the admins that clean it up.
Sadly, it was the republicans that first started conservation. Now, the neo-cons treat it like it is a joke.
I'm not going to wait two years. I need to be excited now.
The Sun was being a jackass and launching solar flares (think laser pen). It needs to cut it out before it blinds Earth.
Or maybe we should get Earth some sunglasses.. Highlander II anyone? anyone? (chirp chirp) hellooo...
My previous comment emphasised the 'finger pointing' too strongly.
I realise that your post was informative, and the only 'bias' was that you left it open for other people to put these actions in perspective.
[after all, we are only talking about CFC's here!]
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
C'mon, he's right. The reaction to a 20% increase would have been a resounding condemnation of all human industrial processes plus a descrying of all nations that haven't signed on to Kyoto, etc.
Maybe what it all means is that we still have very little understanding of our environment and that any statements to the contrary are really politically motivated.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I don't see why the deal is particularly intended to cause "pain to the US economy". There are no special anti-US provisions in there, as far as I can see. Indeed, you could argue that reading a level deeper some of it is pretty beneficial for the US economy compared to others.
As usual, the simplest explanation is probably the right one: if the US has to suffer more to comply with the rules under Kyoto, perhaps that's because the US position was worse than others in the first place. Just take a look at what the average US family drives compared to those in Europe, Japan and elsewhere, as an obvious starting point.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Then I saw "Doc Ruby" and it all made sense -- as usual, the good doctor mixes useful information with his patent dry wit.
Soul tonic, Doc. I think you're chanelling Mencken.
-kgj
-kgj
Fluctuations in size of the ozone hole could be a natural cycle that grows and shrinks over decades. The hole has only been observed for about two decades, so we cant be sure. Its also crazy to rule out man made causes because of the danger when the ozone it lost. Its unscientific to blame it solely on humans, because there could be other causes.
My misteak [sic]
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I lived in China for a while. The Hong Kong/Guanzhou area makes LA seem like the swiss alps. They have just as many cars, and worse environmental standards. And massive, unregulated factories.
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
"volcanic CFCs" ??
Actually, reducing 20% a year isn't going to get you there.
20% reduction == 80% remaining...
0.8 ^ 5 = 0.33
100% - 33% = 67%.
So, 5 years of 20% reductions would get you a total reduction of 67%.
THIS IS SHOUTING.
Now only if my bald spot would follow suit.. :-P
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
Sometimes I hear people saying that pollution control is unnecessary, or proposed out of malice toward the industrialist or particular nations. I wish we had two planets so we could try out the thesis that pollution is an igorable problem, we might learn a lot watching a worldwide pan-biological extinction. But since we only have one planet, and it would suck to watch that from the inside, I have to take issue with those foil-hat wearing confederate neo-con redneck alcoholics over mercury, deforestation, CO2, overfishing, raw chemical dumping, open sea trash dumping, ocean bottom trawling, commercial whaling, and generally shitting in our collective beds. I support fission and fusion as a short term, partial solution while we deal with our population problem (preferably not via WWIII).
Except that, of course, cancer survivability rates and treatments are improving, quite dramatically for some types of cancer, thanks to the continued research of these people. While today's research may not bring practical benefits for 5 or 10 years in most cases, some of the research announced 5 or 10 years ago is coming good in practical applications today. So it is with many environmental issues as well, including this one.
Sorry if I'm going a bit serious, but as someone who actively supports cancer research and has lost loved ones to the illness, I'd hate to see new research trivialised in the way you suggest. The improvements in results today are great motivation for those researching the next generation of treatments, and for those of us who support them. Again, so it is with many environmental issues.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
just like CmdrTaco's penis.
~~~~ "For a gay universe!"
"such as nitric oxides from the corona discharge [wikipedia.org] method (where particles are charged with electricity similar to creation of ozone during a lightning storm)." Maybe that would help to explain (or be explained by) the increase in pacific storms this year? after all... nature finds a way or Stability of a chaotic system relies on the establishment of balance, when it is disturbed it will cause turmoil. I say - Airbourne Tesla Coils for All! (little American flags for some)
This perpetual motion machine Lisa made is a joke, it just keeps getting faster and faster. - Homer
Why is it that a "positive" trend has to be around for a few years to be something to write home about, while the slightest sign of a "negative" trend is immediately reported as the surest clue of the beginning of the final catastrophe that will turn the world into hell?? Can we sometime have news (even in
This finding proves that we can do whatever we want to the environment and suffer absolutely no negative consequences whatsoever! Yay!!!
International cooperation is for pussies!! All hail Bush, savior of the environment!!
That say "we need more information to verify a trend"........ .0001% increase, start complaining about global warming. The earth is CHANGING all the time, a "20 year" study, in earths time, is but a second....
The same ones that if there is
Well, think of it this way: are political campaigs won by legitimate efforts to inform the public, or by schoolyard scare tactics? I have always voted in favor of legitimate efforts to reveal the truth, but I'm no sucker; I know scare tactics are much more persuasive than the boring, honest truth.
If Democrats can win with arguments about Republicans trying to steal your social security and/or welfare money... If Republicans can win with arguments about Democrats trying to tax you to death and take God out of your life... If environmentalists can win with arguments that we're killing the planet no matter what we do... we all lose.
Like you said: "That cycle was discovered a long time ago during the IGY. The "Ozone Hole" over the Antarctic was larger in the mid-50's than it is today."
The earliest year with data is 1956.
1956 321 DU
1957 330 DU
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/antarctic /
As was pointed out in the topic, this year is looking rather better than recent history, starting the month at 150 DU:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/images/z oz0405.JPG
(Historic data is the average of 1957-72)
"you pick your data carefully and you can justify any theory you want."
Some theories are clearly unjustified when we look at all of the data. Like, for example: "The "Ozone Hole" over the Antarctic was larger in the mid-50's than it is today."
It would be interesting to discuss why October, as then we could discuss the way that CFCs cause the ozone hole. Discussing the centuries before 1956, the first year with ozone data from Halley Bay, Antarctica, without data, is pointless. As for data between 1982 and 2004, feel free to educate yourself and us.
Oh, and one more thing. There are no ice core records of ozone as there are no glaciers in the stratosphere. If that changes, let us know.
"The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance."
Does this mean that the cow population has dramatically decreased?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
"Of course scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about."
Of course if the ozone hole got BIGGER by even 5%, we'd hear about it and feel guilty, wouldnt we? Where is the front page story about the fact that something GOOD is happening? We need more news like this to be exposed. Frankly I think that the global warming naysayers are correct, and anyone who thinks it's anything more than a global climate change (In fact its getting COLDER Where I live) is just out to get big industries, imho.
Pick a database and location. Look at measured ozone level over Antarctica and you can see the "hole" (200 units was normal, before 1980s when the 'hole' clearly shows up and has since persisted). This isn't rocket science, this is geophysics. Destructive testing is ill-advised.
.... 100+ instruments worldwide.
http://www.cmdl.noaa.gov/ozwv/dobson/
"... archived data, papers, and information pertaining to the total ozone project. The Dobson Ozone Spectrophotometer has been used to study total ozone since its development in the 1920's. The observations of total ozone, the total amount of ozone in a column from the surface to the edge of the atmosphere, by this instrument is one of the longest geophysical measurements series in existence.
Graphs of current O3 values from our stations. (Includes preliminary data.)
Archives currently containing selected daily O3 observations for 1962 through December 2003. You may need the key to the data format in this archive...
You're confusing ozone in the "ozone layer" at the edge of the atmosphere with ozone near the ground.
The 'ozone hole' occurs at the elevation where UV light breaks O2 and O3 is produced -- the stratosphere, where the chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons ends up and hangs around as a catalyst, particularly in years when there are high water ice clouds ('noctilucent') on which catalysis takes place at a higher rate.
Only the very stable CFCs persist long enough for diffusion to carry them up; at that level the chlorine can catalyze reactions for a very long while. (Bromine does far worse.)
Ozone produced near the ground is a reactive species in dense air. It reacts and is a dangerous air pollutant, causes lung damage etc.
The issue here, as my old geology professor used to point out, is that when you have a density gradient, the same chemistry produces very different effects depending on the density.
He would add, sometimes, that information also produces very different effects, depending on which end of the density gradient it's applied to.
Surely you can see that 2% compounded growth over 15 years is about 40% (35%).
As to the size of the hole in local areas, there's basically only one hole. It doesn't have localized measurements. Maybe you are speaking of the thickness of the layer in localized areas?
I have to agree with the original poster. It took 15 years to expand 40% and people freak out. Then it gets 20% larger in a single year and people claim it means nothing.
It reminds me of the drought in NorCal we had for 8 years. The reservoirs were lower and lower each year. Then we got a rainy winter. We were told early on in the year that a single rainy year won't undo what happend for 8 years. Except it did. All the reservoirs were full to overflowing at the end of that winter.
I'll agree the best way to measure long term effects is to look back, not forward. But I also agree that when measuring recent changes, there is a vast double standard in many cases. Especially with the environment. Look at oxygenated gas, which was mandated after a single winter of low pollution over Seattle. The next years in Seattle not only weren't any better despite the oxygenated gas, they were actually worse than before oxygenated gas.
CFCs and HCFCs can still be produced in countries that haven't signed onto the Montreal Protocol. The major destroyer of ozone was probably CFC-12 (AKA R12, Freon, etc.). Luckily, the major user (USA) has greatly reduced its need for CFC-12.
a tcl/
Other ozone-depleting chemicals are still being pumped into our air, though. One of the worst is methyl bromide. It's used as a soil fumigant in agriculture, among other things. Ever wonder why weeds don't seem to grow in commercial agricultural fields?
Related info can be found at:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/str
Reduced volcanic activity there. Nature produces
MUCH more CO2 than man. That is what caused the
damn thing in the first place, NOT us!
Thank you.
The irony is of course that the US kept modifying the Kyoto Protocol, and once it was nicely messed up decided that it was not agreable. The reality is that it will effect the powers that be's investment portfolios.
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
"While this is good news, I hope it isn't seen by governments as an excuse to ease their environmental burdens in favour of bowing to economic/corporate pressures,..."
Good point. It's also very possible that some government (USA?) faked the reports and the ozone hole is actually getting bigger. It would fit the pattern of Bush family behavior.
C'mon -- you don't think that Ig Nobel prize was just a coincidence, do you?
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." -- Philip K. Dick
Of course scientists caution this would have to continue for at least a couple more years to be a trend or anything to get excited about.
Isn't it funny that when there is good news about the climate, "scientists" tells us that we shouldn't "get excited about it," yet when there is apparently bad news, these same scientists demands that we must act "before it's too late."
We also have excellent models for the mechanisms of ozone destruction, including laboratory verification of catalysis on the surfaces of droplets and ice crystals. If you don't think that this meets the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, let alone a preponderance of the evidence, is there anything that could possibly convince you? Anything?
I accept something as a fact when the evidence in its favor is such that it is unreasonable not to. Ozone depletion is one of those things.
He's written similar screeds before. But consider his qualifications to make such claims. Look at his bio; he's an engineer, not a researcher. He writes to persuade and entertain, not for peer-reviewed publication.He may even write to mislead. Looking at that page, I notice a hugely incorrect graph about halfway down. It's titled "Atmospheric sources of chlorine", which is misleading for two reasons:
- What gets into the atmosphere is irrelevant; what matters is what gets to the stratosphere.
- Most of those sources emit chloride, not CFCs or even elemental chlorine.
Those two points are crucial, because chloride is very soluble in water (another substance that is ubiquitous in the troposphere, as well as constituting the majority of volcanic gas emissions) and washes out very quickly. Anything which doesn't get to the stratosphere or falls out again quickly isn't going to damage ozone very much. The reason that CFC's are hazardous is that they are not water-soluble and are so stable that almost nothing in the lower atmosphere can break them down; they can diffuse past the cold-trap which keeps the stratosphere so dry and then release their halogens in elemental rather than ionic form into the ozone layer itself. The reason we have moved to HCFC's is that molecules with hydrogen can be broken down in the troposphere and won't accumulate indefinitely.Don't believe me? Here's the graph of CFC-11 concentration, (see the bottom of the page) and this page (tables 4, 5 and 6) details the reasons why the statements made by Hogan are wrong.
But hey, if you want to follow an ozone-depletion denialist or a platygean I can't stop you. But I will point at you and laugh at every opportunity.
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I've had a quite a bit of trouble finding some stats like this in the past. It can be quite hard to find detailed statistical info. I suspect that it's a direct result of the general dumbing-down you tend to find in the media these days; stats are too hard for Joe Average so they don't get mentioned.
Then my girlfriend (who's very skilled in information-broking) showed me Nationmaster.com
Nationmaster has access to every stat you can imagine, easily allows you select what you're after, compare it to pretty much anything, make graphs, charts, correlations, you name it.
Without further ado, here's the graph for CO2 emissions. The USA is indeed way out there in the lead; China is second but is still 40% behind the US. When you compare on a per capita basis, the results are also quite interesting. Four oil producing nations take the first few places, the USA drops to number five, and China goes down to 79th position.
Looks like China might not be that bad after all...
Thanks for nailing the false claim about the ozone hole existing before CFC use; as you note, the actual Dobson numbers dropped only in the 1980s, what was called the ozone 'hole' began then, but the baseline goes way, way back (ozone unit of measurement since the 1920s, the oldest geophysical time series measurement there is).
Gotta watch the source and check this stuff!
Suggestion to the person who quoted the false (1950s) claim -- consider your source and ask yourself why someone could have fooled you into publishing verifiably wrong information.
No matter what their politics, anyone can refer you to the science that's been published, to check before posting what you've been told uncritically. Those who don't teach you how to check the source info, aren't likely trustworthy.
As to why -- October for measurement -- that's when the effect happens each year, because it's the end of the Antarctic winter (six months of darkness); the cold air vortex around the South Pole becomes illuminated at that point each year; if it's been a cold enough winter in the stratosphere, and high ice clouds are present as a substrate, the chlorine that's been carried that high by the very stable CFCs can then catalyze breakdown of O3 faster than the sunlight can break O2, and the total ozone amount drops. Then as the circumpolar vortex breaks down parcels of air that are low in ozone move out over inhabited areas (inhabited by plankton, people, whatever).
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/208.html/
This work began long before the IGY; there was no 'ozone hole' (pronounced change) until the 1970s.
You can look it up, and should. Here's the longest time series of measurements.
"... The key research into this subject was done by Gordon Dobson in the 1920's. He developed the Dobson spectrometer which has been used since 1929 to measure the total ozone column. It is still in use even now.
"One of the first six Dobson spectrometers was used at Arosa in Switzerland by Paul Götz and from there we have the longest time series of total ozone column measurements in the world. The trend shows that the ozone layer has become thinner over time. Values below 300 DU have been measured recently at Hohenpeissenberg in Germany, a critical limit which makes better Sun protection necessary. In the 1930's, Götz showed that the ozone concentration maximum was likely to be below an altitude of 25 km and, as a result of his work, the ozone layer was located and its thickness measured."
Figure along with the text shows the complete record from that site. The change from equilibrium to ozone layer breakdown is easy to identify. The chemistry is explained as well.
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/
3 7e addbee0a5ee8331a,55a304092d09/209.html
Then look at the Chlorine Chemistry page (can't link directly to it); it's here:
http://www.atmosphere.mpg.de/enid/5c4aa91f52863
It's got the time series, the chemistry, the polar vortex explained more clearly than I've seen done elsewhere.
OK, "volcanic aerosols", which aren't the complex organics in CFCs, but simpler SO2 and other consumers of aerosol. I took the bait of the poster to whom I replied, answering in kind following their mistake, without my usual nitpicks. I answered their surely facaetious question in good faith, with a reasonable answer - no good deed goes unpunished.
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make install -not war
>whew!
Your response had just scared me there, Doc, I almost thought they'd gotten to you for a moment.
Always, I value nitpicking -- it's the most basic act of primate social kindness to help get the bugs out right at the beginning of each interaction, lest they propagate.
(E.g., the transient effect of volcanos is huge -- but volcanic gas gets used up in chemical reactions in the stratosphere. Very stable CFC molecules persist for decades during which they continue to contribute chlorine to the stratosphere that hangs around and continues to catalyze ozone loss.) You knew that. I worried about your readership maybe not knowing it.
I'm more interested in getting irrelevant nits picked out, so they don't slow me down. Learning is almost as much fun as surviving, even if we have to do it all together with people who are wrong about "stuff that matters". If other readers get caught up, too, well, the more the merrier.
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make install -not war
Uh, why don't you catch up with the rest of the conversation? CFCs have a negligible impact on the ozone layer. O3 is created through a natural atmospheric reaction drawing from UV rays. The ozone layer decreased by 5% in the 50-60s, and increased by 5% in the 60s-70s--correlating with the solar cycle of the sun. You've been raised to believe junk science.
I'm not clear here, so you mean they did find a correlation? I know the feeling here is that it is real, and from informal observation it looks like it is, but it would be nice to have some scientific evidence to back it up.
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No entendí bien, lo que decis es que sí encontraron correlación entre el agujero y los efectos en la piel de la gente de Usuahia?? Porque se siente así, y "experimentalmente" yo lo veo así, acá en Uruguay, pero estaría bueno tener alguna evidencia científica.
HE witnessed the natives taking extra precautions and sunburns, that was aproximatelly on october (as I remember), so the total effect was mostly due to the ozone hole.
I dont't remember if they have anythng of the data on the web but just in case here it goes.
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Lo que mi profe vio fue que la gente de Usuahia tomaba precauciones extra, e igual se quemaba bastante, si no me acuerdo mal fue como por octubre, así que cabe pensar que el efecto total es debido al agujero de ozono.
No me acuerdo si tienen datos en la web, pero te paso el link en la parte en inglés (hoy estoy muy vago), por las dudas, de paso pispeas
Sorry about my bad english, isn't my natural language
America starts in Tierra del Fuego and ends in Alaska