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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.'"
Did April 1st come early this year?
Turns out it *is* a laughing matter.
This is no laughing matter.
I'm super serial, guys.
we must attach bottles of nitrous oxide to our automobiles and burn it up ASAP!
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This is almost funny. You know, the gas and all. Whatever. Anyway, what other gasses do we have to do the same job(s)? I would think this might not go to well with the people who use it, given how common and likely (comparatively) inexpensive it is.
Does this mean racing games will have to use some kind of different pickups for speed boosts?
This comment is fully compliant with RFC 527.
...at the moment researchers could not say with confidence 'how much nitrous oxide comes from where.'
That would probably be because it isn't regulated. It's actually legal to own despite its recreational properties. As an oxidizer it has many industrial uses. And like all oxidizers, yes, when it gets into the upper atmosphere Bad Things Happen(tm). We may need better methods of containing it (it is a gas at room temperature, of course) when used in an industrial setting, but that's about the extent of what we can do to contain the problem -- it's a very basic chemical with a wide range of applications, many of which aren't amiable to being changed to using another agent.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
After all, where else does a sudden uptick in nitrous oxide emissions come from?
The ricers and rocketry enthusiasts burn it up in their engines. The hippies and dental patients metabolize it. So where else would more nitrous in the environment be coming from except from the relatively recent proliferation of gourmet coffee shops?
Imagine all the people...
This article doesn't really matter. Any amount of numbers can be thrown around, quoted, refuted, or postulated. There will always be something that's the "next big threat" to our planet. It will always be our fault no matter what.
It's never smelled sweet to me. Weird. Never inhaled it through my nose I guess, but still..
Even laughing gas is no fun.
To all those who decry Cap and Trade (or a Carbon Tax) and shout out either that
a) Climate Scientists don't know what they are talking about, neither does the UN, NASA, EU... FoxNews knows what it is talking about
b) Even if true we can't do anything anyway.
Here is a case where a threat to the health of people on the planet as a result of pollutants was identified by Scientists who also identified the causes and then the political will was there to fix this global problem.
So seriously, these guys are batting 1.000 on both their predictions and their causes and have demonstrably been right in both.
But with Global Warming they are just shouting "Fire" in a theatre for their own nefarious ends to destroy the American Way of Life(tm)*?
* - "American Way of Life" is a registered trade mark of the Petroleum industry and cannot be used to describe any other action than the driving very large cars.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Dear Planet Earth:
I'm really sorry for all those whip-its I did in college.
aaahahahhahhahahahhhahahahaha... HA!
I read "Christian Science Monitor" and was thinking that's about as sensible as the "MIT Fairy Tailes Quarterly"?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Nobody's talking about laughing gas, the anesthetic and geek enhancer. They're talking about artificial and natural shit -- let the new round of hilarity begin.
Dear Planet Earth:
I'm really sorry for all those whippets I did in college.
Fixed that for you.
Ha-Ha!
A meme becomes the defacto threat to humanity?
but it damn well won't stop the "consensus" train.
The only good thing about N2O is that its not something you can tax the population over, at least directly. Can't wait to see who the N2O bogeymen are going to be.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Um, yeah. Those too. Damn! I mean.... Damn!
Better stock up now!
Hahahahahahahahahaahahaha we are destroying our ozone layer, hahahahahahahaaha
http://freelinuxguides.wikidot.com
"Christian Science"...an oxymoron if there ever was one.
It's interesting that something so dear to so many hippies is destroying something so dear to so many hippies.
Now where did i put that whip-it balloon and Grateful Dead CD ...
Let's take your numbers at face value.
Natural CO2 production has to be balanced because otherwise we'd already have a nearly pure CO2 atmosphere. It's balanced because it's mostly based on a cycle of decay and photosynthesis in plants and animals.
Now, you say that humans add an extra 5% of that total production each year. That comes from burning oil and gas. Unlike the natural production, which is balanced by photosynthesis, human production is all excess CO2, since there is no photosynthesis or absorption to balance it.
Adding 5% of the total natural CO2 production each year as excess to the atmosphere is a huge deal. It's roughly like turning off all photosynthesis on earth several weeks each year.
So, thanks, your "20x" argument shows actually how severe human CO2 production actually is.
TFA says that the ozone layer is improving anyway. So it appears that NO, while bad for the ozone layer, is not present in sufficient quantities to actually be causing a problem. No action should be required.
Or in different terms, it may be the most significant cause of damage to the ozone layer, but it is not a cause of significant damage to the ozone layer.
At this point, we need to start tagging stories with such doom and gloom scenarios as "ONOZWEREALLGONNADIE," (Ticker symbol: ONOZ) or perhaps in this case, "OZONEWEREALLGONNADIE."
I'm beginning to wonder if armageddon science isn't becoming more appealing because it gets the big grants, and we are looking more frequently at doomsday scenarios as a function of marketing.
This is not to belittle the work. This may well be the big one. CFCs were certainly a problem, but I'm just about worn out by all the dire warnings lately. I'm wondering if there's a good paying job in figuring out how to survive all the plagues we keep discovering.
--
Toro
(Who would like his tags to start working again so he can just tag stories instead of typing up a manifesto! ;^) )
oh shit, hear those helicopters...? oh shit...hahahahahahaha!!!1
NOx == nitric oxide - this stuff, when hit with sunlight, causes smog - or low level ozone.
N2O == Nitrous oxide - the stuff we are talking about
I just want to give a heartfelt congratulations to humanity for being the cosmic equivalent of a giant canister of whipped cream. Excellent job! *claps*
Why so serious?
Don't disrupt The Narrative with Facts
It is regulated by the EPA. Just see . Excess NOx is a byproduct of incomplete combustion of a hydrocarbon.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
It's worse than I had ever thought possible!
Time to call Batman AND Captain Planet!
Sounds terrible... Everyone needs to send me all there nitrous for proper disposal... food grade only please.
Your mom is a major threat to the ozone layer! /high on laughing gas
lolz
wut?
This page shows the Antarctic ozone history. You can see that there is only a hint of recovery in the past few years, so to say it has been improving since the 1987 Montreal Protocol isn't quite correct. Chemical depletion of the ozone layer is mostly a polar issue, and looking at global ozone trends can be misleading. For example, global ozone is also governed by mid-latitude dynamics. The dynamics of the tropopause (the boundary between the ozone-rich stratosphere and lower atmosphere) is important, and there are some indications of change in stratosphere-troposphere exchange in recent years that is perhaps related to climate.
Despite the Montreal Act, CFC114, which is also a greenhouse gas 20,000 times more potent than C02, is leaking from Paducah Uranium Enrichment facilities into the atmosphere through hundreds of kilometres of cooling pipes. The average is 1 million pounds (thats 453,592.27 kilograms) PER YEAR since the bans began. That is 8 618 255.03 kilograms (8 Megatons) of CFC114 *since* they were banned. That's the equivalent of 172,365,100,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide from the enrichment process alone and does not include the 1 Gigawatt of coal fired power used to run Paducah.
One thing that is not immediately obvious from the destruction this compound causes to the ozone layer is the eventual effect on Phytoplankton which creates more breathable oxygen than the Amazon. The assertion is examined in these links production of oxygen in the oceans is at least equal to the production on land if not a bit more
and Field studies indicate a dramatic decrease in photosynthetic oxygen production can be measured after exposure to solar radiation
and Environmental effects of ozone depletion: 1998 Assessment. Sure it's 10 years old, but that's an extra 10 million pounds of CFC114 resultant from enrichment operating, I don't imaging it's got any better.
Going after nitrous oxide emissions is the proverbial trying to plug a hole in a dam with your fingers while it is bursting elsewhere. CFC 114 is still used for enrichment today, and the Nuclear industry is the number one industrial emitter of CFC's in the United States. We can expect up to 1 million pounds of CFC114 to leak into the atmosphere per year whilst enrichment continues.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
I remember reading about nitrous oxide, from sources such as nylon production, being one of the big ozone depleting problem chemicals nearly twenty years ago. Everything old is new again.
...unless we change our way of life, and send every spare cent to our governments.
No thanks- we've been doing that since the ComingIceAge of 1978 or so, the KillerBees, TheOzoneHole, ManMadeGlobalWarming, and a host of other hoaxes meant to separate us from our money AND OUR CALM.
Go away, Henny Penny: sky's not falling, here. Ocean's not racing 100ft, here. Don't need to start using poisonous light bulbs, here.
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
..besides, those were only ordinary whippets. What we're talking about here is in a whole new class, Whippets of Doom!
-- thinkyhead software and media
The next Dead or Phish show will be soooooo filled with guilt....
Every time I read a story like this, I want to shoot someone in the f'ing face. This is a waste of f'ing money, what these science-morons should be doing is figuring out what's in the air naturally, and then making sure that nothing other than that gets into the atmosphere. It's really quite plain and simple people, pretty much ANYTHING will react with another chemical in some way, not everything though mind you. So knowing this, can we stop wasting fucking money, and put it toward solutions for keeping anything except nitrogen and oxygen from escaping into the atmosphere? And I know, for that one person, everybody everywhere breaths CO2, but plants need food too dumbass, I like flowers.
The only thing wrong about that report is the focus on nitrous oxide instead of hydrogen. Remember all the impetus toward a Hydrogen Economy? Well, hydrogen handling technologies are not perfect and do leak slightly (not dangerous at ground level). But all that leaking hydrogen will head straight up, and the ozone in the ozone layer happens to be "hypergolic" with hydrogen (reacts on contact).
So something only counts as causing a problem if it's making bigger holes, but being the most significant thing slowing down the recovery is fine? Great logic. If the US budget deficit was falling at $1/year would you say "it's falling, problem solved. No further action should be required"? Thought not.
TFA doesn't say this that the recovery is too slow. Nor does it say how much of a problem NO is, just that it is the biggest remaining threat. It does say that we are still in the process of phasing out HCFCs, i.e. we haven't done all that is already planned to deal with the today's threat. So at least based on the TFA, then no, no further action is required.
And BTW: your analogy is bad. The ozone hole isn't analogous to the deficit, it's analogous to the national debt. The recovery is analogous to a budget surplus.
lol
I have not felt this good since the last Full Moon.
All cows eat grass!
Why so cirrus? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_cloud
NO is nitric oxide, a vasodilator. N2O is nitrous oxide (laughing gas). There's also nitrogen dioxide, NO2. It gets pretty confusing.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
If the US budget deficit was RISING at 1 MILLION dollars a year, that would be such a vast improvment over the current situation that I would be dancing in the street and getting stinking drunk!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"Christian Science" is a specific religious group in the United States. The name, reminds me, however, of old Mike Myers's SNL skits where he portrays a middle-aged New York lady hosting a talk show, and at some point, she starts losing emotional control ("I'm getting verklempt," (don't know if that last word is quite correct, but (s)he always said something like that), "let me give you a topic to discuss amongst yourselves. . . the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire - discuss.")
Well, near as I've ever been able to figure, "Christian Science" is neither Christian, nor Scientific. Discuss.
(P.S. The 'newspaper' run by the Christian Scientists (that is, the Christian Science Monitor newspaper) seems to have earned something of a reputation as being a decent source of journalism, regardless of its backers; I believe the Christian Science church does not exert much/any editorial influence over the newspaper staff, but I could be wrong).
Note that "NOx" also includes NO2, or nitrogen dioxide. Good point, though.
Aviation and the global atmosphere: a special report of IPCC Working Groups ...
By Joyce E. Penner
Comments that NOx released in the troposphere (where the bulk of weather occurs) is a few weeks. Releases in the lower stratosphere has residence times on the order of months to years. If NOx is significant as an ozone depleter, the source would be primarily jets and natural sources that inject gas into the stratosphere (some wildfires, volcanoes)
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Anyone who blindly repeats this old Limbaugh canard about using scare tactics to get funding instantly reveals themselves as knowing nothing about the research community or science. Most geophysical research is funded on a steady, ongoing bases because it is basic research, not results driven. Lying about results will not get you more funding, it will get you less.
The problem is with communicating to the public about complex, slowly developing issues. If you can't match the latest blockbuster movie for excitement, then the important issues don't get airtime.
It's like you have settings that can be adjusted, but never adjust them to see what they do. What a waste of consciousness, if you don't occasionally hack it.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com