Your Thoughts on the Great Ozone Debate?

Hrodvitnir asks: "Yesterday the BBC reported that the hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic is the largest on record. Today CNN says that it is recovering, or at least stabilized. Do we really know what's going on? Is this more bad science/false studies, or are they both partially right?"

Comments

Re:Well...

[Solr_Flare]

I've yet to find a single media source that isn't biased. And yes, the BBC is very biased, so is CNN, Fox News, and yup even slashdot. That's why intelligent viewers look deeper into the stories presented to them, or use multiple sources of information(something they teach you in grade school..or at least did when I was growing up).

Re:I'd like to take a moment

[bladernr]

I'd like to take a moment and thank the United States, along with other countries all over the world, for STILL depending on the archaic power production form known as "Coal power plants".

Why the US? You should be focusing on China and India. While the US did not sign Kyoto, it is still taking some steps on the environment (amazing considering the prevailing attitude of the party in power). China and India signed the Kyoto treaty - in which they made no committments (not sure why signing was a big deal, honestly, since they don't have to do anything).

Kyoto was intended to keep polution at 1990 levels (I would argue to reduce it from there - but just keeping it there was a start). China and India are countries of 1.3 and 1.0 billion people where pollution is skyrocketing, and no one is talking about it. The pollution in some cities in China and its health effects are astouding - nothing in the modern US or Western Europe compares. Why can't we agree that ALL countries need to go back to 1990 levels - and then work to reduce from there.

The big unspoken reason the US rejected Kyoto was it put US manufactures at a disadvantage versus ones in China (and India, but less of a consideration), because of different environmental requirements. You must have a level playing field to compete, and the US rejected Kyoto's attempt to create a system that favoured China.

If you look at the trends out to 2050 and 2100, the US is NOT the problem - it's China and India.

Re:Easy......

[Morinaga]

You're not suggesting that ozone samples are trapped in snowfall and that 'hole size' could be extrapulated from such samples with core ice drilling and what not. Are you?

Re:We can't even agree on global warming

[stlhawkeye]

I love how anti-climate change folk, just like creationists, love to pretend that there's not a near scientific consensus [sciencemag.org] on the subject (in this case, anthropogenic climate change). They usually make clear their lack of knowlege on the subject by saying things like:

I did not and do not pretend that there is no scientific consensus on the matter. I also did not say I am anti-climate change. In fact, I made it rather clear that there clearly IS climate change going on. The science that documents this is all but irrefutable. My concerns lie in the research that "proves" that the change is anthropogenic.

CO2 does not destroy ozone.

I didn't say that it does. I asked how we know how much ozone there was in Antarctica's atmosphere before the industrial revolution, since the parent poster to MY post had talked about returning ozone levels to "pre-industrial" normals. How do we know what those levels were? If we do, great, but how?

CFCs destroy ozone. They were not developed until 1928, and didn't become widespread until the 1960s. You're confusing ozone studies with temperature and CO2-level studies.

No, I'm not, I'm quite clear on the difference. Perhaps I mixed the two topics inappropriately in my post. If I was unclear, I apologize. I have two separate questions.

1) What are the "normal" levels of ozone that should exist over Antarctica, and how do we know that those hypothetical levels are "normal"?

2) Although I do not doubt that global climate change is going on, I am skeptical of the research done thus far to prove that it is anthropogenic. The famous "hockey stick" graph shows temperature rising in direct correlation to the advent of the automobile (hence, CO2 emissions). However, the same graph can be found in any number of samples of utterly random information with enough red noise. Further, the pioneering and supporing research on the topic has been found to cherry-pick data series to produce the intended results. In fact, the SAME GUYS who came up with the "hockey stick" graph originally found NO correlation, and kept including and excluding series until they got a correlation, and then published THAT. Among the included series were a study of a half dozen tree rings in the Southwestern United States, which were the sole representative series for a long time period. Now, if you want to tell me it's good science to extrapolate the ring widths of a half dozen trees to be representative of a world containing billions of trees of tens of thousands different species, that's your business, but I will disagree that this is good enough science on which to base global climate policy. What's more, the original samples are now mostly unavailable, much of the original data (including WHERE the trees were found and measured, and exactly WHEN and under what circumstances) is missing, lost, or out of the recollection of the scientists involved.

For my money, if we're going to subject ourselves to lifestyle changes amounting to $100 trillion dollars to limit global temperature increase over the next 300 years to 6 degrees instead of 8, I'd like more research to back up that we are unquestionably the cause. It all SOUNDS GOOD and LOOKS good, but I'm skeptical of the original research and much of the supporting research, and I question the motives of the major players involved in the project.

You don't get more government grants by coming back and saying, "There's nothing to worry about here."

I DID NOT SAY and DO NOT THINK that global warming is not happening.

I am undecided on whether or not I think it's anthropogenic in nature. The research I have read does not prove it to me; not conclusively, not convincingly, not even suggestively. The research alone doesn't prove jack shit to me, it's when it holds up and passes a serious, critical peer review that I start to trust it, and I don't get the sense that global climate change has been given its due review. Finding flaws in it is a one-wa

Re:We can't even agree on global warming

[fyngyrz]

NOTE: Entirely US-centric reply follows

I suspect that the majority of scientists that say they believe in a God or Gods are just feeding back what they expect the left half of the IQ bell curve wants to hear so they'll go away and let them do real work.

I have yet to encounter a good argument for the existence of a god. Nary a one. If you think you have one, go ahead and try; I expect I'll eat you for lunch, and generally speaking, it'll take about one average size paragraph. Nor have I ever encountered any person, regardless of how educated and/or intelligent, who can do anything but fall back to an utterly lame and unconvincing "well, I have faith it is so" in the face of moderately informed counter questioning and observation-sharing from me. And I'm not even all that smart. I know I'm not; I have very smart people who work for me, it's quite humbling. :-)

I agree entirely with the upstream comment that any scientist who seriously claims he "believes" in God, Santa, or the Easter Bunny is going to go to the bottom of my credibility index, and right quickly. If you can't think clearly about abstracts, if you accept propositions without evidence, if you are willing to accept one unanswerable and untestable proposition as the solution and/or explanation for another unanswerable and untestable proposition, then you have demonstrated that you don't understand scientific method and that should be (is, for me) a death blow to credibility in science.

What these survey readers (and givers) need to realize is that it is not "OK" to be an atheist in this country; it is a conservative, dangerous environment within which to choose to come out for atheism and it is also time-consuming -- should a person designated as a scientist make such a claim they'll likely end up spending a lot of time defending said claim to people they really don't need to be spending time with. Now, some of us -- like me -- have the time and there is no particular loss to society if I spend my time that way. Perhaps there is even a benefit; some people are just confused and will immediately understand when presented (finally) with reason over religion. But I'd hate for a scientist to spend a lot of time doing so. I'm much more interested in our learning how the world actually works than I am in hearing a scientist try to debunk the myth-makers. For these reasons, surveys that claim real, productive scientists are "religious" feel dubious to me. I'd actually be fascinated to meet one who could back up their belief system with other than the usual easily defeated lines of rubbish; but it's not happened as yet, and I'm not exactly holding my breath. I think it'd be a good use of their time, though, as it'd keep them away from the beakers, chalkboard and animal cages for a while. :-)