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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."
International accords have acted to reduce the amount of CFCs being released into the atmosphere. These are the pollutants that affect the chemical ozone cycle. So a decreases in them would permit ozone to stick around. People in Antarctica do get sunburnt very easily, as do people in new zealand and chile when the hole is over their region. Chile has many school programs preventing children from going outside during hole episodes.
Perhaps, but what we do now is that a single molecule of CFC can destroy thousands of ozone molecules before it is taken out of the chemical cycle. This overt destruction of ozone would not occur if we did not introduce CFCs to the atmosphere.
You realize it's the UV rays that cause the tanning in the first place, right?
I hate to be pedantic, but on Slashdot it's a requirement. When in Rome...
Ozone is destroyed in a on going chemical process that is balanced by the creation of new ozone through natural mechanisms. The equilibrium level ozone is what we get. With CFCs introduced the equilibrium levels get shifted to lower concentrations. The introduction of man made ozone would be of little consequence as it couldnt be done a scale necessary to offset the CFC destruction. It would also need to be a continuous input which would make it very expensive and time consuming. A better plan, as we have done, is to attempt to reduce the CFCs and shift the equilibrium levels back to more favourable conditions.
Volcanoes don't produce CFCs. They produce sulfur, which depletes ozone, but the long-term ODP of the sulfur compounds from volcanoes aren't anything like CFCs, which stick around for a very long time. What we are seeing now is probably primarily the result of the 1976 ban on CFCs in aerosol cans.
Because ozone is created by the interaction of O2 and UV radiation. It's not some finite mass of rare elements. It's O3. The reason it's "coming back" is that human activity has a negligible effect upon it. The "hole" is a cyclical phenomenon more closely related to solar activity than anything else.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
The entire planet didn't. China still uses very large amounts of CFCs.
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An example, google for more.
THE PROCESS TO phase out the use of CFCs in polyurethanes from the 1,000 or more foam factories in China has started to accelerate.
The phase-out is being undertaken in accordance with the Montreal Protocol, which established a timetable for developing countries to phase out the use of CFCs by the year 2010. With financial support from the Multilateral Fund supplied by the United Nations, it is estimated that about 10% of Chinese foam processors have now substituted CFCs with other foaming agents, such as pentane, C[O.sub.2] and water. Companies that have completed
uhzzz.....do a little research please ozone is created when UV light from the sun strikes O2 (oxygen you breathe) and forms 2 O3 (ozone) from 3 O2. Magical isn't it?
-- Checking emails and kicking cheats `till the day I die.
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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actually the answer has little to do with the natural balance of creation and destruction. the answer is that while we can make O3 in the lab, it has properties that distinguish it from natural ozone, which cause it to fall back into the lower atmosphere where it's of little to no use. what is produced in labs is called industrial ozone. also methods of producing ozone have nasty byproducts, such as nitric oxides from the corona discharge method (where particles are charged with electricity similar to creation of ozone during a lightning storm). basically our methods for producing it are semi-viable at best and even then yield inferior products.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Actually, the US has signed the Kyoto protocol, however it was a purely symbolic gesture by the Clinton administration. The Senate had voted 95-0 (and yes, Kerry was one of the 95) for a resolution stating that the US should not sign the protocol. Since the senate is the body with the US government that ratifies treaties, neither the Clinton or Bush administration pushed the issue further.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
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).
Ozone (O3) is basically created when UV light hits O2 molecules. When there's less ozone to block the UV rays, it stands to reason that more ozone would be created because more UV radiation is getting down to the level where the atmospher contains more O2. Even those that believe the hole is caused by human activity don't describe it as a problem caused by lack of ozone production; rather, it's theorized that atmospheric chlorine is breaking the ozone down faster than the UV + O2 interaction can replace it. Suggesting we "spray ozone" completely fails to appreciate the scale at which this is happening. We're talking BILLIONS OF TONS of ozone. It's like suggesting that we fight a 100,000 acre wind-driven wildfire with bucket brigades and garden hoses.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
We did? Who's "we"? The US stopped in 1996, but China is still cranking out tons of the stuff, and doesn't plan to have it phased out for TEN MORE YEARS. Furthermore, it's not the production of CFC's that release them into the atmosphere-- it's the venting of it from leaks in CFC-using equipment . It'll take at LEAST 10 years before we see a significant reduction in CFC venting due to equipment replacement.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
No, but the most industrialised ones did....
And since they were producing them a lot it has a big impact.
Jeroen
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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.
the answer is that while we can make O3 in the lab, it has properties that distinguish it from natural ozone, which cause it to fall back into the lower atmosphere where it's of little to no use.
No it doesn't. Ozone is ozone. It's a simple molecule. O3.. three oxygen atoms. If it's got three oxygen atoms, it's ozone. There no difference. Identical molecules are not distinguishable. They have no difference in properties.
You are drawing ridiculous conclusions from the facts here. The facts are that there is ground-near ozone, which is produced by car exhausts and the like, don't make it up to the top of the stratosphere, because ozone is a very reactive molecule (it forms radicals easily).
Since it's very reactive, this also means it's toxic, which means ground-near ozone is an environmental problem in itself.
The ozone at the top of the atmosphere is a different story, it's being produced there by UV radiation causing the oxygen atoms to break apart and reform as ozone molecules.
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.
The fact that Bush is scared just shows how much of a plan he has for economic growth.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
That does sound very convincing when you first read it, because the author is an excellent politician. But you should beware of people who use strawman arguments (the young man at the panel discussion) and unfounded ad hominem accusations (accusing the government of being infected by irrational environmentalists who want to destroy industry) in support of their case.
Anyway, here's a generic rebuttal to the ozone naysayers.
Any scientific issue, no matter how rooted in facts it is, always has naysayers. Even the round earth theory had considerable opposition. For someone to dispute accepted scientific theory requires extraordinary evidence, and frankly this james p. hogan doesn't provide much in the way of actual evidence.
Oh, and in general, paying attention to whether a text contains logical fallacies is very helpful too in weeding out truth from falsehood.
a. Gore did sign the protocol (which was symbolic only).
b. And that both Clinton and Bush decided to not pass the treaty on to the senate, citing the Byrd-Hagel resolution as strongly suggestive that the Senate would not ratify it.
As for this:
What was in the resolution that was so "broad" that "strong supporters" of the protocol had had to vote for this resolution?Here is the text of the resolution. Find the statement that was so compelling that John and Joe couldn't resist voting for it...
I've read it... it is one of the most straight-forward resolutions I have seen from the Senate.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
The skin cancer rate here has tripled since the 50's.
yes true enough but the acuracy of detecting skin cancer has tripled since the 50' (actuelly probably alot more) this is like the breast cancer debate yes the rate for breast cancer has increased but if you adjust for an aging population with better detection methodology you find that it has actually decreased and those that get cancer are more likely to survive it these days....no direct skin cancer increases have been atributed to the oznone layer depletion, but they have been atributed to increses in human longevity (living longer increses chances of cancer) and improvements in diognosis....like lets say the dr says that thing on your back has a 30% chance of being malignant....are you going to call it cancer and have it removed or are you going to wait in the hopes it won't metastisize....
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And let's not forget the biggest reason for that improvement is the massive reduction in infant mortality rates, more than adults actually living longer on average.