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NASA Announces Record Ozone Hole
Drewsk writes "NASA has announced that the ozone hole over the Antarctic has broken all records. From the story: 'From September 21 to 30, the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles,' said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. If the stratospheric weather conditions had been normal, the ozone hole would be expected to reach a size of about 8.9 to 9.3 million square miles, about the surface area of North America.""
Meh, MP3 players and consoles come and go with a rapid speed that requires many news posts to keep track of. I haven't seen a Planet 2.0 with new and improved mineral deposits slated for release yet, my guess is that the project went overbudget and got cancled. :)
It's because these global warming news are super depressing, anti-american, pro-terrorism and bad for the economy. We should collectively hush-hush these fairy-tales of evident destruction of human kind and just live in four year periods. Now, go back reading console news and smile. Remember - ignorance is strength!
I heard when all this started that CFC made its way to upper atmosphere in a matter of 2-3 decades. So if dropping CFC helps, it may only become visible in the next decade... But I can't help thinking you may be right here :-)
One of those Europeans...
Sure! Your intuition is far more powerful than 100 years of scien-ma-tific observation. Well, admittedly science wasn't exactly at the same level in 1906 as it is today, especially for things like upper atmosphere composition.
Some of us have, anyway.
Sure, the earth has seen some big cataclysms in the past, which haven't wiped out all life on the planet. The big ass meteor that made the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago only wiped out about 90% of all species.
But even within, as you say, the lifespan of humanity, there've been some major catastrophes, that haven't wiped us out. A couple of ice ages, we weathered through (so to speak). And even more recently, plagues, war, famine, huge volcanic eruptions. Sure the human species have survived. Villages, towns, cities, nations, even entire civilizations have been wiped out, but humans survive.
Mostly, I just don't want to be part of one of the civilizations that gets wiped out.
The same can be said about population pressure. The more people there are, the greater the chance some big disease will come along to take care of the problem, or some asshole pushes the button and nukes us back to the stoneage. Either way, nature will adjust. She's just not as picky as I'd like about her methods.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
"She's just not as picky as I'd like about her methods."
The problem is, when most people say this, by "discerning" or "picky", they automatically assume that THEY would be part of the population favored by such choice...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Something repeatedly bothers me. We act like global warming caused by humans means the end of days, but surely the earth has undergone far more cataclysmic changes (such as after supervolcanoes), even during the lifespan of humanity, and we've lived to tell the tale?
Oh yes, we have survived. But barely. According to the Toba Catastrophe Theory the Lake Toba eruption reduced the total number of human beings to 1000-10000. We also survived the plague, which killed of a third of Europe's population in the middle ages.
But surviving doesn't mean a walk in the park. Yes. We would survive sea levels rising a couple of feet. I live in Holland and we've been fighting the water for centuries. Now, we're more prosperous than ever so we'll be able to build the dykes. But countries like Bangladesh (which floods like every two years already) would be in serious trouble and would not be able to do a thing about it.
Perhaps it's just now that we're so widely knowledgeable (if not intelligent) about our world at large, we realise just how many people will be outright fucked over by the coming changes. I'm sure humanity will survive, regardless of what happens. Anyone recall Daisyworld and biodiversity versus adverse conditions from biology class?
You are right if bare survival is your criterium of success. But I'd prefer to aim a little higher than that.
Oh and of course I am aware that I'm talking about global warming, which has very little to do with the hole in the ozone layer. But the point remains valid.
and how much shit those cows make and how much they fart methane!!!
You know, people fart too. I hope you're wearing your butt-plug, my fellow eco-warrior...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Maybe not, but they're there. All the same tools that tell us whats in other planets' atmospheres works equally well on our own. Further more, as surprising as it may be, if you lay down on the ground, you're not likely to asphyxiate unless someone dumps a sufficient amount of a heavy gas right next to you, since the atmosphere mixes up rather easily. As for how they move, I'm going to suggest things like the Jet Stream for moving them around the planet, and equatorial heating to carry CFCs into the upper atmosphere and down towards the pole.
An active imagination is a wonderful thing.
1. CFCs are not found in the stratosphere any where on the planet, they're simply too heavy. Chlorine is. The most obvious source would be from volcanoes. By the by, Antarctica has its own source of chlorine called Mount Erebus.
2. Laying on the ground won't kill you, thats true, there is some mixing. But how a heavy molecule gets up into the stratosphere and travels all the way from (usually) the Northern Hemisphere to the South Pole is not simply a difficult problem, but completely impossible.
3. The Jet Stream doesn't go anywhere near the Equator, and even if it did, there's no mechanism to keep CFCs aloft all the way to Antarctica.
Could it possibly be that the Cl in your ice is the same Cl in CFCs?
Very, very , very unlikely. What about from salt carries high into the atmosphere and then broken down by a decent sized cosmic particle? Erm. Didn't want to consider alternatives did you?
In any case, there are more plausible ways to get chlorine into the stratosphere than by CFCs.
Oh, and you missed the final bit: if CFCs have been legislated away by the Montreal Protocol then why, ten years after we thought the problem licked, does a massive ozone hole appear over Antarctica?
Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
Why didn't you contribute this article 4 days ago, then?
Remember how this was supposed to be a global-warming induced horrible hurricane season?
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell