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Sun Storms Deplete Ozone, Too
An anonymous reader writes "Turns out the sun itself zaps the ozone that protects us from the sun. LiveScience is reporting that the record-setting string of solar storms around Halloween in 2003 (including an X28 flare) set off a cascade of events that depleted the ozone layer over the Arctic in early 2004. In a nutshell, more nitrogen was created, and an unusually strong vortex of high-speed winds aloft brought the nitrogen down, where it contributed to cutting ozone by 60 percent over the polar region. In January, the a European scientist warned residents of the far north to basically stay out of the sun. While chlorofluorocarbons are still blamed for ozone depletion, scientists said this study shows they don't properly account for the sun's impact."
You would find an article in the latest Scientific American interesting:
How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?. It's a controversial theory how humans have been altering the global climate for thousands of years, since the invention of clear-cutting forests for agricultural purposes. I found it a very interesting read, especially the theory presented by the author (here comes a troll modding for even parroting this theory) that early humans have actually caused us to avoid an ice age because of their global warming activities.
I'm a big tall mofo.
Yes humans are probably affecting the Earth, but every problem is presented as humans doing all the damage, and there is no possible way that Nature could be doing any of this damage.
Gee, the Sun affects the Earth, what will they consider next?
This "theory" has got a few problems. First of all we know without a doubt that for the last number of decades the major source of solar radiation - the Solar Energetic Particle events (SEPs) - are quite modest. This is known from ice core samples. I've seen the reports of the data myself and it's quite conclusive. In a nutshell our current space age has occurred during a very quiet, very benign time. To attribute solar sources to any current trends is ozone depletion is simply disregarding the data. While solar events certainly do effect the ozone to attribute any such current depletion is FUD.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
No doubt that our environment changes over time. But the "theory" that solar activity is responsible for current trends in the ozone is FUD. Solar activity duing the last few decades has been quite low based on ice core samples that date back for thousands of years. It's clear that something has effected our ozone over the last few decades but any attempt to place solar radiation as the cause of this trend is simply ignoring the data.
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
The sun/cosmic rays create ozone at contant rate X. The sun/atmospheric reactions destroy ozone at rate Y. The rates will also have a factor proportional to the amount of ozone.
If you don't understand what the above implies, read it again.
HINT: You get a steady state solution. A type of a balance where the ozone layer will tend to average out to a certain value over a period of time.
What CFC do is increase the rate of destruction of ozone. That will decrease the amount of ozone over a period of time. The ozone will never dissapear, but you might just need a SPF 75 sun screen to be in the sun for more than 10 minutes.
Also, if you don't understand, the result gives more detail into what rate X and Y might actually be. That's all!
The "theory" about CFCs destroying ozone is a fact. It's been shown and reproduced over and over again the lab experiments. Saying otherwise is like saying that atoms don't exist.
It is not a fact they are in the earth's ozone layer in an amount that has anything to do with the possible variation in the ozone layer. It's entirely possible that's due to varying sun activity or some other process we don't know about.
And I don't know about volcanos putting CO2 into the atmosphere. I do know that volcanos put amazing amount of HCl into the air, but normally have 99% of it is flushed down with water ejected at the same time. (Which, of course, causes rather a lot of problems to those the acid rain hits.)
However, we have no assurances that will always happen, or has always happened. We know very little about how that works.
All we know is that, after volcanoes, even those that reach the stratosphere, erupt, spewing HCl into the air, the stratosphere does not have more HCl in it, because the HCl, the two times we've managed to watch a volcano that large, was brought back by water. Nothing at all says a volcano can't turn all the water into HCl before going off.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
Actually, it's the anti-environmental lobby that latches onto the natural cycles argument, using it as an excuse to do nothing.
They're not using it an excuse to do nothing, intead they are using it as an excuse not to crawl back into the cro magnon cave the crawled out of! Environmentalists are against technological progress. When Al Gore advocated banning the internal combustion engine he was proposing just that. Gasoline engines may not be perfect, but until we have viable replacements for them, banning them is not an intelligent solution.
There is not "anti-environmental" lobby, but there certainly is an "anti-environmentalist" lobby. Like it or not, environmentalism is a specific political ideology. Not everyone who wants to protect the environment is an environmentalist. Not everyone who wants to eliminate pollution is an environmentalist. Pretending that wanting to clean up the Earth is environmentalism is as silly as pretending that wanting to eliminate poverty is socialism.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
I consider myself a tree-hugger. That said, the whole ozone thing is a scam by scientists who see bad news as a way to obtain research grants and funding and - dare I say - notoriety masquerading as prestige.
Consider:
1) 90% of industrialization and associated emissions is in the northern hemisphere
2) The coriolis effect keeps the earth's northern and southern airstreams seperate (very little mixing)
So why is the ozone hole over Antarctica? Why not the North Pole seeing as this is the hemisphere supposedly cursed by industry? Use Occams' Razor - it ain't our fault...
Regards...