Slashdot Mirror
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?"
They're both partially.
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Does the hole over the antarctic have anything to do with the fact that there is no or very little plan vegetation down there? I guess if so the same hole might be over the arctic. But still, why does the hole end up over a magnetic pole?
Let's see who we have:
Who are you going to believe?
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
The hole is a seasonal ozone hole over the South Pole. It comes and goes, sometimes it's bigger than usual. This has been used by environmentalists since the 80's to scare people.
i dont think we know all there is to know yet, but i have to think that much of what man has done has had some effect
The ones that think we are harming the earth and the ones that think we aren't
neither side have any idea what is going on with the earth.
the earth will be fine, now and long after humans are wiped from the planet. are we speeding up that process? maybe, maybe not.
Fox! After all, they're fair and balanced!
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Bad science? More likely bad reporting. The public likes their news in small, easilly digested sound bites, but something as complex as environmental policy issues don't fit that template. So one scientific paper says the ozone hole isn't as big as before (even if the previous case was a record breaker) and the press says that things are recovering. That's just misleading.
What we need are better educated reporters. And a better educated public. But I'm not holding my breath for that, no matter how polluted the air is.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
As long as you don't have a consensus on the facts, you assume and act according to the worst case scenario.
The owls are not what they seem
The fourth paragraph of the BBC article says:
"There have been signs over the last two years that damage to the ozone layer has reduced, but a full recovery is not expected until around 2050."
Sounds like the same thing CNN is saying to me.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
The earth has been here for millions of years....
Scientists measuring the ozone layer have only been here for about 30 years.
Real measurement for 30 years verses millions of years of unknown history.
Extrapolation is easy if you really don't care.
Well, in this case, it's pretty easy. Both stories say exactly the same thing - the rate of damage has slowed but the damage hasn't halted, and it's projected to be around 50 years before the damage is completely halted and the ozone recovers to pre-industrial status.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
Here's a good link to the story...quite a bit of detail not present in either article cited in the submission.
Interesting that the sources that hold that the hole is gtting worse are European, while the sources that state everything's OK are American.....hmm....
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
I guess you are like the person who wrote the caption on the following photo... because these people are white, they "found" this food in a store:
0 50830071810_shxwaoma_photo1
8 0/ladm10708301649
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/
Yet this black guy didn't find stuff, he looted it:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/4
Uh huh.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
It really depends on what the political agenda of the person writing the story/the station is. On one hand the intention might be to make Bush look bad in which case, it is the biggest ever. On the other side, reduce panic and therefore say its recovering. If cnn said it was the biggst ever, they migth be accused of scaremongering.
Go look at some stories on democratic underground and you will see stories saying that Bush was responsible for hurricanes because of global warrming and a ton of "scientists" backing that. Look on michael moore.com and cindy sheehan has a post about jews who took soldiers away for war in iraq and not being here to stop the looting ( hello posse comitatus) in New Orleans.
My point, "News" is basically the blog of some reporter with about as much factual basis behind it. (See jason blair)
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
This is another case of science being used to push an agenda. Is the "hole" there, sure, I'll take their word for it. If I really cared I could establish if that fact was true or not. Everything after that fact is opinion and probably biased. Some people may believe it's a problem and will change the earth for the worse forever. Other people may believe it's part of the natural evolution of the earth which may lead to a new great era. Others may believe it's part of Intelligent Design so it must be implicitly good. Who is right? Probably none of the above. My opinion is that the effects will be both bad and good. It's part of life, learn to deal with change.
I, for one, could use the extra sun. Being a nerd, I'm pretty white.
"Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies." -Thomas Jefferson
This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with bias in media. The real question is who is lying and who is telling the truth? My money is on the folks who say global warming is happening because they have quantifiable data to back their claims up. The people who are opposed to those findings have yet to produce reliable proof. But getting back to the question at hand, where does the bias come from? The news media corporations have many companies behind them. And those companies have investors backing them financially expecting a return on their investment. And not just a reasonable return, but unrealistic expectations. This drives those parent companies to cover their asses every which way as long as whatever they are doing makes a profit. They could be putting newborn babies in crash test simulators and if there was a tidy profit to be made from it, they'd do it and then try to hide the fact that they're doing it. Meanwhile, the media companies that they control aren't going to leak a word of the story because the parent company could shoot them down permanently. It's gotten out of hand and I suggest that some people at the tops of many corporations need to be handled in the way that Pat Robertson suggested that Hugo Chavez be handled. ;P Seriously. All the investors need to put down the crack pipes and realize that they are indirectly responsible for a lot of really rotten things. Don't just bury your head in the sand. Accept the fucking responsibility.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
BTW, did you know that because of the huge ozone hole, Chileans from the extreme south have to wear sunscreen all the time ?
The Raven
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.
Sarcasm and hyperbole are the final refuges for weak minds
Who wants ozone anyways? That stuff is poisonous!
A big problem with listen to any debate is the understand that while people who are talking are equal, their knowledge is not necessarily equal. For any subject you can find, you can easily find ten people arguing on one side and ten on another. In the end, it comes down to two possibilities: Global warming is happening, global warming is not happening.
Unfortunately, America has lost responsibility in the press. It used to be about finding and reporting facts. Now it is about finding both sides to argue so as to make more money printing the same things over and over. In the end, whether or not global warming is happening or not, it makes sense that if there are things we suspect that are screwing the Earth up, we should take care of it. Americans are used to suing when you do something stupid and want to get out of it. There is no one to sue or a way to get a new Earth.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
So, the ozone layer is stabilizing... meaning that it is shrinking by less each year. It's still shrinking, however, so the hole will continue to grow for a bit.
Also, there is a 26-month cycle for equatorial winds that affects the size of the Antarctic hole, so there's a quasi-biennial cycle to the ozone layer hole.
So, the only question is, how do you want to spin it?
The hole is still getting bigger. We need to step up pollution controls. Or
Nothing to see here, the hole is stabilizing at it's current size and we expect it to go back to normal within 50 years, so our current ozone-depleting-compound-pollution policies are fine.
Are we doing the best we can in re: O3 layer? No.
Do we need to do better? I dunno, and apparently, neither does anyone else.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I'm not exactly sure what the article submitter is trying to imply or ask?
The submitter seems to be trying to say that the BBC and CNN articles contradict one another. However, this isn't the case at all. The BBC article is talking about the size of this year's hole; CNN seems to be talking about the size of the hole in a more general over-years sense. CNN is saying that the ozone hole is levelling off in a long-term sense; the BBC is talking about year-to-year fluctuations. The BBC itself even says: There have been signs over the last two years that damage to the ozone layer has reduced, but a full recovery is not expected until around 2050, seeming to support the CNN article.
Moreover, the article submission is misleading. The submission says the 2005 is the largest on record. The BBC says the 2005 hole is one of the largest on record. The BBC itself says: They show that the Antarctic ozone hole was larger in mid-August this year than at the same period in any year since 2000. The 2000 ozone hole was still larger than this year's hole!
CFCs take a certain amount of time to fall out of the atmosphere, and the damage they cause lasts a certain amount of time beyond that. There is no sign in the news here that the Montreal protocol is anything but working; we're jolting back and forth within a certain area but at least the ozone hole is no longer getting worse constantly.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I keep a can of it in my car, helps kill the "herb" aroma when the coppers pull me over...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You need to learn some science. Ozone depletion and global warming are NOT the same thing. Carbon dioxide does NOT deplete ozone. Chlorine, in the form of CFCs, DOES deplete ozone. Thanks to an international treaty, most CFC production has ceased and CFC concentration in the atmosphere is dropping. And while there are hints that global warming may exacerbate ozone depletion, this is by no means certain. Most models suggest that ozone depletion is stabilizing and will recover in a few decades. At least in this sense, we're reducing our damage. Now is the time to concentrate on other, more pressing issues like global warming.
I predict that the ozone layer will vanish one day, not because of first world countries, but because third world countries dont have the cash for the more expensive ozone-friendly chemicals.
When that happens, a whole bunch of people are going to die from skin cancer and/or will go blind from cataracts, while the survivors who are more resistant to UVs will procreate.
I'd give anything to be around at that time, only to see how the creationism/evolution debate turns out.
The articles linked are both right in some sense, the article submission is wrong... the slashdot summary here says the 2005 hole is the "the largest on record", the BBC article it links says it is the largest on record since 2000, which was the actual all-time record...
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
.. since It's All Bush's Fault(tm)
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
My girlfriend is a redhead and extremely sensitive to U.V. She travelled a lot and told me she never experienced stronger UV than in Antartic - even in places with similar conditions (all white)
\u262D = \u5350
source
The bbc article, unfortunately, is a bit harder to track down...
Yeah, the earth will probably go on its merry way oblivious to the "damage" humans inflict upon it. I think the point of understanding this phenomenon is to prevent the "humans are wiped from the planet" bit from happening sooner than later, particularly due to our own actions.
But if the earth somehow can and does care, I think it'd rather be rid of us sooner....
People arent ready to realize that the planet is slowly dieing, But people also dont care about cutting pollution of inconvincing there lives, its the normal human attitude. There are plenty of people who care but can not do anything because the mass have better things to worry about like paying off there bills which is more important to them. The Pratical solution to the problem is that they wont have to handle it
I'm not familiar with this issue in particular, but BBC > CNN for essentially all values of news.
The worst case scenario: Any possible source of carbon dioxide or methane is a significant danger to the environment.
Solution: Exterminate all non-plant life on this planet, for the good of the ozone.
Never confuse volume with power.
Carbon Dioxide has no impact on the ozone hole.
The ozone hole, which this article is about, is not connected to the separate problem of global climate change as a result of human-produced greenhouse gases. The ozone hole is also a problem which is easier to deal with; the CFCs and particles which cause ozone layer damage fall out of the atmosphere much faster than carbon dioxide.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Who wants ozone? Believe it or not, Los Angeles!
The city water department makes ozone to disinfect drinking water. It produces essentially zero carcinogens compared to chlorine. Because ozone can't be relied on to prevent contamination downstream of the treatment plant, chloramine is added as a final step. Any excess ozone is destroyed by catalytic degradation.
I saw this plant roughly 18 years ago when it was dedicated. It's near Sylmar, and was installed to treat water from the formerly prisine, but now less so, Owens Valley.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Do we really know what's going on?
No.
There, that was easy. Now, as I read somewhere around here the other day, science is not truth nor is it fact. It's a method that attempts to discern both of those things. It's a good method and as time goes on the results of our discoveries show in the things we build and the advancement of our society. So before I continue, I'm not anti-science and have no desire to be branded as some sort of Bible thumper. (Which seems to be the title given to anyone who dares question the perfection of our holy scientists.)
The problem is that humans (whether religious zealots or scientific zealots) rarely want to admit they're on the path to truth. They want to say they've found it, they know what it is and that's all she wrote. No one wants to say that they're trying when they can say that they're successful and make a really big deal out of it. For instance:
People who defend sensational scientific beliefs are just as contradictory as religious nuts. When they're talking about evolution they point to the fact that the changes and cycles take thousands and thousands of years. Geological changes? Even longer. Nature, as a whole moves in very slow patterns and makes very slow changes. It's not in a hurry. However, suddenly we analyse weather for what... 100 years? 200 years? We pluck out a pinhole sized chunk of a 4,000,000,000 year old pie and think that it really tells us anything that's truly long term?
I really love George Carlin's routine on the environment. He make a single statement that really brings it all into focus. Are humans so arrogant that we think we can destory the earth let alone save it?
I have a pretty simple policy on whether or not I believe a particular scientific theory/"discovery" and it works like this: If a "discovery" is made that yields cool new gadgets that improve my quality of life (TV, computers, polyester, bath puffs) then I believe it. If a "discovery" is heavily debated and spends a lot of time coming out of the mouths of the far left and/or the far right, I can usually ignore it and move on with my life. Politically pushed and motivated science is the worst kind. In an ironic twist, science should be scientifically motivated.
Stop telling me we know how everything works or that our methods are perfect and all that's left is time and discovery. In 250 years they're going to poke as much fun at what we know now as we do the science of 1750. Our medicine will be viewed as barbaric and primitive and our ideas on things like quantum physics will be viewed as remedial at best. In fact, with the speed discoveries are made now, the gap may be even bigger in 250 years. Again, this doesn't mean everything we know is bogus, it just means you shouldn't treat it like the be all end all.
Use science as a guide and use it to the best of your abilities. However, putting the level of faith in sensational theories that fundamentalists put in a literal 7 day (24 hours a day) creation of the world really isn't any better.
Scientifically, we're moving in the right direction. We're doing our best. However, deal with the fact that a lot of so-called "science" is politically motivated bullshit. Also deal with the fact that some things that we hold dear now are going to be discarded as we learn more about the universe and its laws and mechanics. With the exception of spotting a huge space object heading for the planet, doomsday science can be summarily ignored.
3) Ted Turner hasn't been intimately involved in what goes on with CNN for a decade (he sold CNN in 1995) and conservative Walter Isaacson moved the network very much to the right when he took over in 2001.
You see, the BBC article quotes data taken from European satellites, where as the CNN article quotes data taken from American satellites.
It is clearly a problem with the European satellites.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Cute explanation, but wrong. CFCs have a stratospheric halflife of 70-120 years, and catalyze ozone destruction, thus reducing the steady-state ozone level when balancing solar ozone creation and ozone destruction.
Basically, CFCs long life allows them to reach the stratosphere. There, they slowly break down, releasing a constant supply of chlorine ions. This participates in many reactions, most notably Cl + O3 -> ClO + O2; ClO + O -> Cl + O2. Note that the chlorine ion is still left over. This ion goes on to complete thousands of more reactions before it is ultimately lost (to a variety of mechanisms).
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
Herbert Hoover wasn't personally responsible for the Great Depression, but he is forever associated with the Crash of '29. In a similar way, Lois XIV is associated with the excess of the French Aristocracy. I hope that Bush isn't associated with the end of the American Century, but I have a sinking feeling that the US is courting disaster. It will not be GW's fault, but he isn't going to be part of the solution either.
Think global, act loco
Especially when critical studies that form the basis of global warming theory so poorly documented and have undergone no genuinely critical peer review. Our founding documents and main research on global climate change contain cherry-picked data series to produce the desired results to "prove" that global warming is a result of automobile emissions. Secondary research to confirm the original research was done with similarly cherry-picked series and is even less well-documented data series. When we can't even go back and review the physical evidence used by our researchers because they have misplaced or just "don't remember" where they gathered their data, any intelligent and appropriately skeptical scientific-thinking person ought to call for more and better research before advocating sweeping policies that will cost the world economies an amount of money so large as to be nearly uncountable.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Living with it is better than going to your neighbor's house and beating him over the head with a shovel because you believe he might have had something to do with it.
Since they weren't even looking for the "ozone hole" until just recently, they don't have much historical record of it. I believe it's much less than 10 years. They really don't know if it is normal to have a hole at the poles or not, because they don't have any historical evidence.
It's like measuring the water level in a bay over a two minute period, and assuming that the water level change when the tide comes in is a disaster caused by SUV drivers. Same thing for "global warming".
It's bad science. They are taking their cause, and trying to assign whatever "disasters" thay can find. If the ozone thing doesn't pan out, they will just move on to something else.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I love how anti-climate change folk, just like creationists, love to pretend that there's not a near scientific consensus on the subject (in this case, anthropogenic climate change). They usually make clear their lack of knowlege on the subject by saying things like:
"determination of how much ozone was in Antarctica's atmosphere prior to the industrial revolution"
CO2 does not destroy ozone. 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.
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
And tech can get us out. Now that we've taken care of the root cause, it's time to use the profits from the root cause to solve the symptom. A few million weather balloons with spark gap generators ought to do the trick to cut that 50 years down to something more reasonable.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
At the time they made that prediction, they were basing of the usage of CFC at that time. Since CFC use now a day has dropped dramatically, the ozone depletion also slowed down a lot.
In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
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
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
> 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.
Hm.
The Chinese emit 2.3 Tons of CO2 per capita per year
Americans emit 20.1 Tons of CO2 per capita per year.
Clearly any idiot can see that the Chinese are the problem.
http://savingiceland.org
Stratospheric ozone (O3) and O2 exist in an equilibrium, constantly being converted to and from one another by reaction with UV light. Free chlorine in the stratosphere in the presence of a substrate like SO2 or PSCs (polar stratospheric clouds) can "tilt" the equilibrium toward O2 (O3 + Cl- => O2 + ClO). The Antarctic has a far more extensive PSC layer because of its larger cold air mass relative to the Artic, thus the ozone hole there is larger even though most sources of stratospheric Cl are in the northern hemisphere. In the Antarctic night, when no new O2 is being created by the UV raction, the Cl-influenced equilibrium swings dramatically toward O2, causing the famed "ozone hole". Stratosperic chlorine is almost entirely man-made. Volcanoes and sea water produce water soluble forms of Cl that wash out in precipitation before reaching the stratosphere. CFC's and similar Cl- and Fl-containing molecules are mostly insoluble in water, and when released mix in the atmosphere at as "trasporter" molecules. They mix in the stratosphere where the Cl molecule is released by the strong UV light at that altitude. Supervolcanoes like the one under Yellowstone would definitely alter the Cl budget in the upper atmosphere. But even Pinatubo, the largest volcano of the 20th century, changed stratospheric Cl by only 6-7%. Volcanoes do inject SO2 into the stratosphere in singificant amounts. That SO2 can act like a global PSC layer, depleting ozone world-wide. Hope this helps....
Apart from your fact that your study shows anything but a consensus (38% atheists in natural science), what would that have to do with the scientific consensus on the subject of evolution vs. creationism?
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
Before jumping to too many conclusions about the ozone hole over Antarctica, we should remember it was first observed in 1958 -- a time when CFC use was just beginning. In those days, there was interest in the upper atmosphere and considerable research efforts because of its importance to HF radio communications.
The British Antarctic Survey group that made the observations was expecting to find an ozone hole because of the predictions of their atmospheric model. In 1958, UV spectrometers used vacuum tubes, were big and heavy and carting them to the Antarctic was quite an undertaking. They had good reasons to expect a positive result.
I am not an atmospheric physicist so the following might be a little naive. However, here is my understanding of their theory:
1) Ozone is made primarily at low latitudes
where vacuum UV has direct access to
the upper atmosphere. Little vacuum UV
reaches the atmosphere at high latitudes
because it has already been absorbed by
low-latitude air.
2) Ozone reaches high latitude locations
by the natural convection processes in
the atmosphere. If the earth did not
spin, air would rise at the equator
and fall at the poles, transferring
the ozone there from the equator.
3) The rotation introduces Coriolis
force and deflects the movement to
the "trade wind" pattern we know. It
also produces a phenomenon called the
South Atlantic Vortex -- an air-flow
pattern that greatly reduces
interchange of air from the equator
to Antarctica.
4) With little air interchange, there
should be little ozone over Antarctica.
There is now so much spin surrounding CFCs and Ozone Holes we will probably never learn whether or not their theories were correct. It is not something any atmospheric scientist can afford to challenge and still get his next research grant.
As a final thought consider the business aspects of CFC use. When you go business school, one of the first things you are taught is, "never let your product become generic." When your patents are about to expire, you must find a way of making your old product obsolete and replace it with a new one. Otherwise, generic manufactures will duplicate it for a lower price.
Drug companies frequently keep a few safety studies up their sleeves for this purpose. Of cause, they have a new version of the drug, with some minor changes to an inactive part of the molecule, which fixes the problem.
When NASA rediscovered the Antarctic ozone hole, in the 80s, it was really good news to CFC manufacturers who were facing their own "generic problem." We will never know if their public relations departments helped along the CFC scare but...
What are the "normal" levels of ozone that should exist over Antarctica, and how do we know that those hypothetical levels are "normal"
There are four main radicals that break down ozone: Cl-, Br-, NO-, and OH-. Cl- is easily the most damaging - the chemical reactions involved are well understood. In the early 1970s, natural sources of Cl- were dominant (there are different source molecules - CFCs aren't made in nature). We've easily displaced them in terms of quantity, however - now, 84% of Cl ions are from CFCs.
At the same time, we've watched average antarctic ozone levels cut by a third, and minimum ozone levels cut by two thirds. Worldwide, levels were been cut by five percent in two decades, with the rate accelerating as stratospheric CFC concentrations increased.
What more do you need?
hockey stick graph
What is your obsession with some "hockey stick" graph? There have been thousands of studies, and you obsess over a single graph? The physics of global warming are apparent (CO2 *is* a greenhouse gas), its concentration has increased by 20% in the past century, we can model accurately how that much CO2 got there (the rate of influx vs. outflux), and we have ice cores that show an incredible correlation between CO2 concentration (as well as methane, another greenhouse gas) and temperature over the past several hundred thousand years. This is just the start of a summary of the literature, by the way - there is a *lot* more. Again, what more do you need? There's a reason that there's a near universal scientific consensus, and it's not a "hockey stick graph".
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
Just out of curiosity, has anyone bothered to compare the atomic weight of CFC's to say, general atmoshpere of comparitive volume (espcially of the higher O3 areas?). Seems to me it would be mighty diffucult for the CFC's to traverse up that high due to their weight.
The atmosphere is turbulently mixed up to 80 km. This is fortunate, because otherwise the nitrogen would sink below the oxygen and we couldn't breathe.
see this lecture for example. The relevant part is at the end.
Oh, wait a sec! They also only collect AT THE SOUTH POLE. Must like it cold or something.
No, the atmosphere is well-mixed, remember? They only catalyze ozone breakdowns at extremely cold temperatures.
One ought to do some research on the effects of CFC with Ozone (O3).
yes, perhaps one could win a Nobel Prize or something.
[usual paranoid rants about DuPont elided. Let's stipulate that DuPont wanted to make money.]
I agree with an above post. Dissenting voices cause society to label one as a "nutcase" or "extremist" Isn't science all about finding logical explanations to the world around us? I say, follow the money trail, and you'll find who concocted the stories of global warming, global cooling, ozone holes.
Err, yes, I agree. Follow the money is right. I think it might be the case that the tiny little energy corporations are trembling under the onslaught of misinformation from the hugely financed scientific professional organizations and NGOs. But it might be the other way around.
mt
That would be important if only solar flares or their intensity were something new (they're not, and it's not as far as we can tell), if most ozone in the long run wasn't destroyed by ionizing radicals created from regular radiation bombardment (it is - the third strongest flare in 30 years destroying perhaps 0.4% of the ozone present at a given time doesn't even compare to the long-term rates of ozone cycling), Cl- wasn't the most responsible of these (it is), and 84% of the Cl- wasn't from manmade sources (it is).
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in sub-atomic physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be effected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun and I believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker. If more radiation hits the Earth and the Sun is spewing out more heat, shouldn't that also increase the overall temperature of the Earth and can global warming be attributed to this? I've been bouncing this idea in my head for a while now and I can't see why this MAY not be true.
In science, you can make two broad sorts of errors.
- you can fail to find something that's really there, and suffer from its effect,
- or you can find something that's not there, and suffer from spending time/effort/money/angst/blather on it needlessly.
In this instance, we'll could miss figuring out the ozone and suffer the consequences. If that happens, we'll need to make more ozone.
Or we could be wrong about the perceived ozone problem. If that happens. we'll need to make more time/effort/money/angst/blather.
I'm guessing it's going to be easier to come up with replacements for time/effort/money/angst/blather than it will be to order up some replacement ozone.
That's based on our existing experience with replacing resources. This year, between the tsunami and Katrina, we'll be seeing what happens when entire cities, including a modern first-world one, have to be brought back to functioning literally stick by stick, brick by brick.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I'm so glad we had the technology in pre-industrial times to know what the pre-industrial status was.
If somebody says something that runs counter to when I think is true, and quotes a source, I go look it up. I review what they quoted and if it shows no evidence of being worthy of consideration and integration into my worldview, I discard it. If it DOES seem worthy of thinking about, I then consider the source and their motivation, and then go do research on whatever it is I just read. 9 times out of 10, somebody has responded to it and refuted it. And I research THAT response, etc, until I find something that nobody has countered yet, or until the arguments are simply circular. I then absorb this whole body of knowledge and argument, and determine which one seems to me to have the least merit, and discard that one.
So, I don't care if somebody quotes "QueersLoveBush.com" or "wtfpwnedpr0n.com", if I'm discussing a controversial issue with somebody and they provide evidence to support their opinion, I'm going to go at least give it a shot. If it's truly as baseless and worthless as its "source" (despite the fact that JunkScience isn't the source for this) would suggest, it should be clear fairly quickly.
At this stage, quoting from JunkScience
JunkScience did do this research. The files containing the research are sitting on machines owned by JunkScience.com. They might have written up the summary and opinion part, but the research they are quoting was carried out by two guys, independently. And frankly, if you'd gone to read it, there's plenty of holes to poke in THEIR work, too. What amazes me is how quickly and easily Slashdotters won't even think about reviewing the material before dismissing it. Yet you're on here day in and day out blasting George Bush (rightfully) for ignoring a bodies of critical scientific effort in forming his policy.
Sorry if that sounds close minded
It does.
but after a while, anyone but the least human of us considers certain sources strong clues as to whether something should be taken seriously.
I disagree but fair enough. Are you going to at least review the work in question (ignoring JunkScience's opinion of it) and refute what it says? I'm quoting it to "PROVE" anything, I'm throwing information out there to be digested. If it's easily debunked, so be it! I'm interested in forming an accurate and informed worldview, not "proving" that "my side" of an issue is right. I'm interested in figuring out which side of an issue is most compelling. I haven't been compelled by the "man is causing global warming" research I've read. People constantly quote "hundreds" and "thousands" of anonymous "scientific studies" that "prove it" but can't ever give me a link to one along with a body of critical peer review. I only see dire predictions quoted by various scientifists that are accepted unquestionably.
Well, I'm sorry, but I'm skeptic.
I'd have laughed at someone for linking to a Greenpeace report too. Link directly to the papers, or neutral group's readings of it (Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, you name it) if you like, but don't expect to be taken any more seriously if you link to JunkScience than if you'd linked to the Church of Scientology.
All well and good, but it strikes me as a cheap and easy way to not have to consider and rebut an argument. "Well that can't possibly be valid, look who said it!" I guess I'm less cavalier in dismissing information. Luckily, somebody else has since mailed me a number of references of fairly recent work to investigate, which is encouraging. It had seemed to me that the scientific rigour of global warming study had waned.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
Basically, CFCs long life allows them to reach the stratosphere. There, they slowly break down, releasing a constant supply of chlorine ions.
And how does this differ from the chlorine ions that reach the stratosphere from volcanic eruptions and a host of other mechanisms?
We're on a planet 3/4 covered with a salt-water ocean. The bulk of the salt is chlorides. The air is FILLED with small crystals of salt, loose ions from it, traces of diatomic chlorine, and a host of other chlorine compounds, due to the evaporation of salt-water spray from wind and wave action. Two things save the ozone layer from total destruction.
One is that the upper atmosphere is stratified. But that stratification is not absolute. A number of processes project chlorine ions, radicals, and compounds into the upper atmosphere, where they participate in ozone destruction as above, regardless of their source. Freon happens to be one of the ways it gets there. But though it's a new thing it's hardly the only thing.
The other is that the ozone layer is also full of oxygen and ultraviolet light. While the chlorine is busy breaking the ozone down, the ultraviolet light is busy making more.
Except at the south pole just now: It's the dead of winter there. That means the sun has SET and will be DOWN FOR MONTHS. Oops: No ultraviolet! Once the ozone breaks down, no more is made - near the pole. The only way for it to get there is by upper-air circulation and diffusion, and part of the point of the stratosphere is that there isn't much wind there.
So there's no ozone to block ultraviolet light from getting farther down. But there's also no ultraviolet light to block. Go a bit farther north, to where there's some light, and you fine ozone again. Golly! Guess it's not the end of the world after all.
We wouldn't even know the hole was THERE if it hadn't been for satelite sensors noticing it. Any bets on whether it was there when the dinosaurs were abroad?
Sure the size of the hole varies somewhat from year to year. (It's a weather phenomenon - which has only been observed for a few years so it's too soon to extrapolate annual differences into trends.) More chlorine (from freon, volcanos, forest fires, etc.) moves the edge out a bit further into the dim light where the sun is on the horizon. Different upper-atmosphere winds move the cholrine and ozone about differently from year to year. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for the ozone layer to disappear worldwide.
For starters, removing the layer lets UV down further, to where it finds more oxygen. So you get ozone a little lower. It's a long way down to the tropopause and the salt spray below it in the weather-busy troposphere.
Meanwhile, isn't it just an amazing coincidence that the study that claimed to find a connection between Freon and Ozone was funded by Dow Chemical, just as their patent on Freon was about to expire (making it possible for everybody in the world to make this cash-cow cheap)?
So suddenly Freon is banned worldwide just before it would get cheap and everybody has to build new refrigerators (or recharge old ones) with a NEW, patented, compound.
And it costs more. So lots of people in poorer regions can't afford refrigeration. And a bunch of them die from food poisoning.
Not as bad as the malaria death rate increase from the DDT ban (which appears to have been based on totally bogus pseudo-science claims rather than bogus conclusions hyped from an apparently real phenomenon). But still no fun.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
There's no evidence that the Earths diminishing magnetic field is related to global warming, but there is a strong correspondence between solar activity and global warming for as long as we have records on both. It's not immediately obvious why solar activity would affect temperatures on Earth (not solar temperature or radiation output, which are nearly constant, but activity such as sunspots).
I do, however, find the disappearance of the Earth's magnetic field quite troubling. Given that it's pretty important to surviving solar radiation to begin with, and is merely a symptom of something even more mysterious happening in the core, it could be quite dangerous. I guess it's not interesting to people who want to use global warming as a weapon for their pet political cause (since it's clearly unrelated to human activity) so it doesn't get any attention.
The Earth's crust more or less floats over the solid inner core, and there's no reason to assume they rotate the same speed or direction. However, if the core changes the speed or direction of it's rotation significantly (some interpretations of the magnetic field changing direction requires this), the planet as a whole will still have to conserve angular momentum, so the crust could be expected to change the speed or direction of its rotation. While the change would only be fast in geological terms, the poles don't have to move much for life to get interesting.
But, of course, we have very little data about the core, so we are left with making computer models which account for the magnetic field changes and guessing which one might have the accurate underlying assumptions.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Because you want the ozone in the upper atmosphere (where it blocks UV radiation), not in the lower atmosphere (where it is pretty toxic).
Diffusion & convection (air currents). Why then do CFC's ignore all the yummy Ozone on the surface and then defy gravity by flying up into the stratosphere and then travel like Arctic Terns to the poles to have their Ozone Buffet?
Very simple. CFCs themselves don't do much to ozone. However, when they are broken up into radicals (for example by, um, UV radiation, of which there's plenty up there in the ozone layer but not so much down here (yet)), the radicals start eating up the ozone.
I love how anti-climate change folk, just like creationists, love to pretend that there's not a near scientific consensus on the subject (in this case, anthropogenic climate change).
For the more rational crowd who accepts that global warming is ongoing, but is looking for proof that it's unnatural, the scientific consensus seems more like political correctness than actual science. Who wants more pollution? Who wants to be seen as overly critical of the global warming theory when such views have been proven detrimental to one's career. Unless one works in the oil industry, of course, in which case one's papers can simply be ignored on the basis of their source, regardless of the data, right?
Writing like this from insiders expressing how politicized the science has become shake my faith in the peer-review process in this area (that link is quite good, though it's just one anecdote). A friend of mine studying geology at Cal-Tech remarked that "if you admit your research might cast doubt on the accepted cause of global warming, you simply can't get a grant for that research". Not to overvalue anecdotal evidence, but it's disturbing. There are an increasing number of non-nutjobs making claims like this.
Average temperatures in many regions are certainly changing, and we're certainly overdue for the onset of the next ice age (which makes me happy), but is this genuinely unusual, or simply a normal cycle that out species is just too young to have discovered yet? We know the biggest driver for free CO2 is a billion-year cycle of the formation of carbonate rocks in ocean beds, the subduction of that rock, and the eventual volcanic venting of CO2, because there's solid evidence of that, but mechanisms for cycles longer than Ice Ages but shorter than geological are a mystery.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Its the basic thing there is american news organisation giving objective information, while rest of the worlds news agencies gives simply blatant false information on their self interest that is contradiction to American political interest. Its something that everything that is published about pollution and atmosphere its the same thing. The rest of the world has VERY bad bias in there.
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
First off, previewing is a good idea, but I'm sure you realized that after the fact. :)
from what?
The early 1970s. Yes, we don't have long-term historical data on its size, but the physics of it are very apparent: we've 5x'ed the amount of Cl- ions in the stratosphere from what they naturally are, so unless nature decided to vary Cl- ions *5fold* before the 1970s, we're doing tremendous damage.
It's the climate change theory that hinges on it
It distinctly *Does Not*. It is a single graph from a single study, no matter how you try and portray it. There are many thousands of studies on global warming in existence. Here's cites for just a few of them.
There are dozens of ice cores alone that have been analyzed for temperature, CO2, and methane. I'm aware of two oceanic sediment cores (a 10,000 year and a 20,000 year) which have been studied, and two lake sediment cores (8,000 years and 13,000 years) - there's probably a heck of a lot more. There are thousands of direct worldwide temperature readings from the mid-1800s to millions in modern times that have been factored in. That covers the entire historical record back to about 180,000 years ago with extensive overlap, with wide precision on the old records and narrow precision on the modern records. What the heck more do you need?
Do these ice cores give us a strong indication of how much CO2 was in the air?
How many times do I have to tell you that they do? CO2 is easy to study in the cores because bubbles of the atmosphere are actually trapped within. Same with methane. Temperature is determined from oxygen isotopic ratios, as oxygen-heavy water evaporation rates as opposed to regular water evaporation are very temperature dependant (there are also other correlating factors on temperature, but lets keep it simple for now).
Anywhere where we have:
A) Trapped gas, and
B) A date on the volume that is trapping it,
We can determine the full atmospheric record from the time, barring leakage (which would throw off ratios, determinable by a concordia/discordia plot). We have trapped gas for very long periods of history.
sed "s/SJW.*$/... never mind. I was about to say something stupid, and also, I'm a troglodyte./Ig"
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. :-)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Do you know when we discovered the hole in the ozone layer?
-When we developed the equipment to detect the ozone layer.
Do you know what makes most of our ozone?
-Trees, or other photosynthetic life.
Now, what is the flora of Antarctica?
-Nonexistent, at least in enough quantity to sustain a constant creation of ozone.
So, considering these facts, the hole in the ozone layer may have been there for centuries, millennia even, never causing any problems b/c the fauna there have all adapted to handle the UV rays, which are indirect to begin with. It has constantly fluctuated, sometimes getting bigger, sometimes getting smaller.