Laughing Gas Is Major Threat To Ozone Layer

Hugh Pickens writes "The Christian Science Monitor reports that according to new research, nitrous oxide, the colorless, sweet-smelling gas with a long history as a medical and dental anesthetic is the next big threat to Earth's protective ozone layer. Its role in destroying ozone has long been recognized, as well as its role as a heat-trapping greenhouse gas but the new study puts nitrous oxide's ability to deplete ozone into numbers comparable to those used for other ozone-depleting gases covered by the 1987 Montreal Protocol. The researchers note that the health of the ozone layer has been improving since the adoption of the protocol and that nitrous oxide looms large today as an artificial destroyer of the ozone layer, in part because the emissions of other harmful chemicals have been so sharply reduced." (Continues.) "Globally, Earth's ozone layer has thinned by 5 to 6 percent since 1980, before CFCs and their ilk came into wide use, according to Akkihebbal Ravishankara, who led the study. He and his colleagues note that 6 percent may appear to be a small number, but it still can lead to significant effects on organisms at Earth's surface. The researchers did not make any policy recommendations in light of their finding. 'It is not for us to gauge how much risk there is,' says Ravishankara. In any event, Ravishankara says, at the moment researchers could not say with confidence 'how much nitrous oxide comes from where.'"

Comments

Oh wow...

[jmerlin]

aaahahahhahhahahahhhahahahaha... HA!

Re:To the Global Warming naysayers

[khayman80]

... that version of the Vostok ice core graph you included is horrendously misleading. If you don't overlay the two graphs on top of each other you can easily be fooled into thinking the data suggests that increased atmospheric CO2 lead to higher temperatures. When you do overlay the charts, it becomes clear that the increase in temperature slightly preceded the increase in CO2 in each cycle, including this one.

I've specifically addressed that point in 7 (f) of the index: "CO2 increases after temperature, so it doesn't warm the planet."

But since the tone of your response implies that you probably won't bother, I'll repeat myself once again: this phase lag isn't known with great precision, the worst case scenario has it lagging ~800 years out of ~5000 year deglaciations, and more fundamentally, the difference between the small Milankovitch forcings and the actual observed temperature swings shows that CO2 amplifies the natural forcing. CO2 is a strong greenhouse gas, make no mistake about that.

And I'm sorry if you're offended by ads. I tried really hard to force them to be non-animated, and only put them off to the side (I HATE interstitial ads with a burning passion.) And to be honest I make ~8 cents a day from them-- my dream is to have them make 30 cents a day so that the website pays its own hosting costs. And, yes, even though I've archived most of my responses for people to read, I still find it necessary to repeat myself because people keep bringing up the same strange talking points regardless of the scientific evidence. Again, sorry if this is horribly offensive to you.

Re:and natural CO2 production is 20x mans

[techno-vampire]

I took a look at your article, and found it interesting, and not obviously biased. Very good!

I also noticed that you were very careful to specify that your temperature graph only went back 300 years. This is significant in a way you didn't mention: it means that the first half of it records temperatures at the end of The Little Ice Age, and the portion between about 1830 and 1900 (roughly) shows the climate "recovering" from that. As the graph doesn't go far enough back to show The Early Medieval Warm (Yeah, I know: you have to work with what you've got.) it gives the impression that the climate hadn't changed for thousands of years, then suddenly began to warm at or near the beginning of The Industrial Revolution.