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Severe Arctic Ozone Loss
iONiUM writes
"The BBC reports that 'Ozone loss over the Arctic this year was so severe that for the first time it could be called an "ozone hole" like the Antarctic one, scientists report. About 20km (13 miles) above the ground, 80% of the ozone was lost, they say. The cause was an unusually long spell of cold weather at altitude. In cold conditions, the chlorine chemicals that destroy ozone are at their most active.' This is the first time in observational history that the Arctic ozone has been depleted to such extensive levels (abstract). This will mean high UV problems for Russia, Greenland and Norway."
Note to self... Don't sun-bathe in the arctic... and wear layers.
Honestly though, it's been a while since I've seen much news about the Ozone layer. I hope people haven't forgotten that the damage done (or being done) is a problem.
My American mind doesn't trust the scientific integrity of this article.
Global warming due to CO2 == heat is trapped in the troposphere => less heat lost => colder stratosphere.
If the global warming was due to the Sun, the whole atmosphere would be warming.
On the other hand, Venus has runaway greenhouse effect and its stratosphere is abnormally cold.
since the environuts have lost the polar bear debate
In whose mind? Compare global warming awareness today to 10 years ago - there are significant policies in place and continued effort at carbon emission reductions....
> But hey make up your mind, is this Arctic cold snap caused by Global Warming too, or what?
Yes. The colder air than usual in the stratosphere is caused by the fact that greenhouse gases insulate so much that less heat escape to space. Common sense actually. So yes, this phenomenon is a very good indication that the greenhouse effect is both real and increasing.
Really, only the anti-science loony fringe denies global climate changes now a days, the scientific evidence for man made influence on the present climate change keep on coming, and is getting confirmed from many different sources. AFAIK, not a single scientific study trying to find other causes than human influence, have succeded in explaining what is going on.
--
Regards
So the ends justify the means.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
In this case you are wrong. Global warming has EVERYTHING to do with the hole in the ozone layer. Greenhouse gases that cause global warming also cause a cooling in the upper atmosphere and THAT is the cause of the ozone hole, because the CFC chemicals that destroy ozone are activated by low temperatures.
The air has been exceptionally cold up there? Where is all that global warming everyone is speaking about?
Mr. Republican/Tea party member, the correct term is "Climate Change".
Enjoy the rest of your science bashing day.
Can you point to a time... any time in history when earth was NOT experiencing "Climate Change"?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Wait, so you link to articles about an accelerated loss of the ozone layer in the Arctic due to cold weather then say nothing came of it in the comments to an article discussing the first hole in the Arctic ozone layer? Using your timeline this seems like a rather reasonable progression of events but the tone of your post makes it sound like this is par for the course.
Holes in the ozone layer can have very significant effects on humans in regions were those holes exists. The ozone layer protects the surface of the Earth from some of the UV flux emitted by the sun. UV light is known to cause skin cancer in humans. Having a hole above a populated area of the world (unlike where the Antarctic hole usually forms) can have lasting effects on those populations. These effects may not be obvious for years due to the varying timelines for cancer development.
Please just try to address information objectively before imposing your beliefs on it. Be critical of any argument put forward and prepared to change your view point to fit new facts. Skimming an article and asserting it is the same old thing when it is blatantly not serves you and those who listen to you poorly.
Venus stratosphere ranges between 385C and 75C.
This is abnormally cold to you?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I think we need to thank GWB for these efforts for carbon emission. He allowed our Gas prices to go over $4.00 a gallon. Causing people to look towards more fuel efficient cars. Compare that to Clinton who kept gas prices really low causing almost every American to get huge SUVs.
The reason why the emission reductions are working now is the fact for most businesses it means saving money because fuel is too expensive. And saying you support a green movement is just good PR which sound better then we cannot afford to pay the energy bill.
If energy is cheap we will use it more. Most of us would love to drive large 4 wheel drive trucks vs. the small hybrid car but economics has forced us to make a trade off. Unfortunately a bad economy is good for the environment.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
This is all well and good, but is this climate a recent turn of events or is it like that since as long as you can remember?
Write boring code, not shiny code!
The concentrations of O3 in question are quite small. Would manufacturing (or capturing surface ozone, which is a pollutant when here with us surface dwellers) O3, lofting tanks on high altitude balloons over the poles and releasing it help?
I realize how insane this sounds.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
So the ends justify the means.
Ozone hole deniers and global warming through CO2 deniers are both the same, people who refuse to believe that physics works.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
it would be nice to be able to reach through the screen and tear him a new asshole, or rip off his head and shit down his neck
This is the hallmark of pretty much all fanatics everywhere. Well done. Why don't you throw in a couple Allahu-ackbars too, before you decapitate me?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I am not a climate scientist. I am a former telecommunications engineer (I contributed to 802.11n standardisation process) who now works in market making (gotta follow the dollar when you have young mouths to feed). Explain to me in a way that I can understand why insulation that reduces heat escaping into space causes air in the stratosphere to be colder than usual. By my uninformed logic, I would expect air to be warmer if less heat is escaping.
Not trying to troll - just looking for an explanation that makes sense. I'm not uneducated, stupid, poor or unwilling to learn. I don't work in an industry that stands to lose if we have to cut back on carbon pollution. I'm just a curious guy who wants to know why the logic that appears to be contradicted is wrong.
I don't think you get what the parent was talking about:
http://pastebin.com/BBquTAt3
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Can you point to a time... any time in history when earth was NOT experiencing "Climate Change"?
Can you point to a time... any time in history when the earth experience warming on the scale that it is now when it should have actually been cooling.
The people who spend their lives studying the climate are quite familiar with the way it changes over time. You didn't really surprise them with this stunning revelation. The problem is not that it is changing, but the rate of change.
But then you knew that, because it has been pointed out to you time and time again and yet you still spew out the same uninformed one-liners that are supposed to counter the volumes of research that has been done on this subject. But you might as well keep it up, because the surveys show that it is actually working. It appears that stupidity is catching after all.
I think we need to thank GWB for these efforts for carbon emission. He allowed our Gas prices to go over $4.00 a gallon
Agreed - I was astonished that people voted for his re-election as prices were spiraling upwards. Though, I don't think there was a single green thought at the highest levels that year, as I recall, the oil companies posted all time record high profits that year.
Err.. Your common sense isn't working.
What you say would be true if the greenshouse gases suddenly appears and blocks heat from escaping. As it is it only delays heat from escaping quicker. If all the heat coming from the sun did not also escape as heat, it would not take long before earth was hotter than the sun..
I think what he is saying is that the heat trapping layer is below the stratosphere. So IR comes in heats the ground. If there is a layer of insulation it prevents the heat from traveling up into the stratosphere.
Kind of like if you heat your house in the winter the more insulation the colder the attic is.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Yea you guys always find excuses.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Not to mention that Bush decided not to have the US sign the Kyoto agreement.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Careful. Many of the more hardcore wackjob denialists think that anyone who wants to reduce carbon emissions is a crypto-communist-revolutionary (they call them "watermelons" - "green on the outside, red on the inside") who wants to commit genocide against the denialists as part of their plan to create a socialist one-world-government. Don't give them any ammo.
You see, that's where they win all the time. They can say anything they want. But aside from the one world government, that all sounds good.
Besides, with free trade we already have what amounts to a one world government, it's hardly socialist.
I don't know much about climate myself, but I do know that the atmosphere is several layers of chemically goodness.
If the heat is trapped below the area where most of the ozone resides than the heat wouldn't get to pass through the ozone layer on its way out into space, thus not being able to warm it. When I tried to look up the phenomena in an article I read recently all they said was that it was generally accepted that increased surface temperature results in chillier atmosphere (which is not a helpful explanation) http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-10/so-now-there%E2%80%99s-ozone-hole-over-arctic-what-does-mean.
The Ozone hole has never got close to NZ or Australia. In fact it has never been within a 1000 miles.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Too bad the anti-science loony fringe also includes some left wingers that appose nuclear power at every turn. We could have been totally off coal decades ago.
It was a Nature article. The Weather Underground has a thoughtful discussion.
Sure, that's easy. For the vast majority of Earth's history people weren't dying. Say 4 billion BC to 2 million BC.
Reductio ad absurdum. Try a better argument.
Get rid of all swimming pools.
The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere where temperature goes hotter the higher you go since the ozone gas releases heat when broken into monoatomic oxygen and diatomic oxygen by the ultraviolet rays of the Sun.
I suppose the parent estimated that some heat was also absorbed from the troposphere (the layer directly below the stratosphere, and the lowest of the layers, where all meteorological events take place). Since the greenhouse gases are in the troposphere, they shield the stratosphere from the heat radiating from the Earth back to space.
phyzz
No, of course he can't. Climate changes due to natural events and cycles. I don't think anyone denies that.
However, he can point out that according to the best figures we have, the climate is currently changing at a far greater rate than has occurred previously (outside of major extinction events), and that that pace of change cannot be explained by natural causes alone. We are seeing changes over decades-to-centuries time frames that would normally take millennia (or longer).
Actually, Venus is a good example because people best undersand extremes. If you want to demonstrate the effects of greenhouse gases, what better way than to point to a planet where they compose the vast majority of the atmosphere? Venus is what would happen if all of the Earth's atmosphere were to be replaced with greenhouse gases.
If you look at, say, Mars and Venus, you have the two opposites. Earth stands somewhere along the two; global warming is inching us closer to Venus. We'll never actually reach Venus levels, obviously, but the comparison is still apt.
So true. After all, that agreement really put the brakes on China stinking up the planet.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Why is this being reported now? The ozone depletion is a springtime phenomenon. The high exposure to UV at high latitudes would be experienced during the late spring and summer.
For lack of a better sig, this one has to do.
Just because it makes me angry that assholes like you don't care that we are destroying the earth. Which I will admit, is exactly what you want. You win that one.
I fail to see how that makes me a martyr? Or how me being pissed off proves or disproves anything?
What it proves is that you will jump on anything and call it proof.
I think the Chinese take the attitude "we will when you will". But hey if Chinese manufacturing bothers you so much, go ahead and boycott Chinese products and I dunno, go live in the forest or something.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Yes. The colder air than usual in the stratosphere is caused by the fact that greenhouse gases insulate so much that less heat escape to space. Common sense actually.
You have a very optimistic understanding of what common sense is. Most people don't seem to understand that local and regional climate variations can be a lot bigger than global variations. Take for example my country of Norway, if I compare us to say Siberia or Alaska we probably have 3-4C warmer climate because of the Gulf Stream, while the estimates on global warming are something like 0.8C in the last 100 years. If global warming fucks up that, our country and most of Northern Europe could end up being a colder place even if the world in total warms up. Also precipitation will change around the world, which leads to huge changes. For example one I thing I heard was that warmer poles means more humid air and more snowfall, weighing up for increased melting. But the world has still gotten warmer as a whole. There's lots of things like that where people point to a local phenomenon and say see, global warming is false. That's roughly as far as common sense goes, I'm afraid.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Conversely, by my similarly-uninformed logic I expected air to be cooler if less heat is escaping into it. Probably because I automatically assumed the insulation to be below the stratosphere while you assumed it to be above. I'm sure someone will tell us where greenhouse gasses actually accumulate and then we won't be as uninformed.
I am sure that recent volcanic activity alone has affected the global climate far more than human activity.
Well, you're DEAD WRONG. Volcanoes emit about 1% as much CO2 as human activities. Look it up. The main effect of volcanoes is *cooling* caused by ash, which only lasts a couple of years max.
Every time you see someone mention volcanoes as the culprit in a discussion about GW, you can be sure that they don't have a frigging clue what they're talking about, and everything they post can be safely ignored.
You are correct. The environuts won the polar bear debate when they got them listed as a "threatened species", even though there are more polar bears today (by a factor of several magnitudes) than at any time since scientists started counting them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
From TFA: "In cold conditions, the chlorine chemicals that destroy ozone are at their most active." This is wrong, because chemical reactions slow as temperatures decrease. It is an axiom in chemistry that the rate of the reaction halves (or doubles) for each 10 degree C drop (or increase) in temperature. A far as I can tell, there has been no high altitude sampling that has detected any CFCs in the Artic. This is just more environmental fear mongering and finger pointing without scientific proof.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
WTF? So we banned CFCs in the 80s to save the ozone layer but in a cruel twist of fate the increase in CO2 causes the air down here to get warmer and the air way up there to get colder and that makes the CFCs more efficient and therefore better at destroying the ozone? Yeah? So we are supposed to... do... what? How do we know that banning all carbon would not have some other unforeseen issue? These people have no idea what they are talking about or they do but are not saying anything productive. It will be news if one of these guys knew how to fix any of this mess or had something productive to say. The truth is that we are fracked no matter what and we should really focus upon what we will leave in the fossil record and enjoy the time we have left!
Actually the United States signed the Kyoto "agreement" in in 1997. It has not been ratified by the Senate.
You only just noticed that you have higher gas prices in europe than america? Well you are a special kind of retarded aren't you.
Well I for one think that "finding excuses" as you put it is a lot better than putting your fingers in your ear and going lalala until people stop trying to talk to you.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Volcanoes emit about 1% as much CO2
You know that CO2 is nowhere near being the "worst" greenhouse gas, right? Why are you even discussing CO2 when you should be discussing methane and water vapor?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Considering the surface temperature is 460C, sure.
http://www.noaa.gov/features/02_monitoring/arctic_thinning.html
The "coldness" of the pole is related to the strength of the winds (polar vortex) around the pole in the atmosphere. The south pole generally has strong winds circling it, which works to cut off the south pole's atmosphere from the rest of the world, especially during the southern hemisphere winter. Part of the reason for a stronger vortex is due to ocean surrounding the south pole on all sides, with land masses far away. In addition, the southern hemisphere in general has more ocean compared to land than the northern hemisphere.
In the northern hemisphere, the polar vortex generally has more waves or pertubations in the polar vortex, which help to mix in air from lower latitudes. Some of this is caused by planetary waves that propagate vertically in the atmosphere. These planetary waves are formed generally due to land masses and mountains affecting the atmospheric flow (not this simple but this is the general idea). Generally, the factor that causes the difference in the north and south polar vortices is land mass.
Now relating this all to climate is a bit tricky. It has been seen that as the troposphere warms (lowest layer of the atmosphere), the stratosphere cools. This has been seen in observations in the last 30-50 years (you may argue that 50 years might not be enough to define a long-term trend). The reason for this cooling is basically radiative balance (though I'm oversimplifying it here). If the troposphere warms due to increased greenhouse gasses, then the atmosphere above must cool above it. There cannot be more heat coming in than is leaving the Earth. A good analog to this is Venus. Venus has huge concentrations of greenhouse gasses. We know its surface is very hot (over 400 degrees C), while its upper atmosphere is much cooler than Earth's (gets down below -110 degrees C, compared to about -80 C on Earth).
The tough part is separating the stratospheric cooling due to greenhouse gasses and ozone destruction from CFCs (although we may know this answer once all the CFCs are out of the atmosphere in the future). Increased greenhouse gasses will warm the troposphere and cool the stratosphere. This will lead to more polar stratospheric clouds, leading to more reactions sites for ozone destruction. More ozone destruction means less UV light is absorbed by ozone in the stratosphere. Less UV absorption means a cooler stratosphere which further intensifies the problem.
Nice attempt to distract attention from your lack of knowledge on the subject by switching topics. Back to the point: Volcanoes are not significant sources of methane or water vapor either.
Methane released by human activities is a significant problem.
Water vapor has a half life in the atmosphere of a couple of days. It's levels are an *effect*, not a cause.
(Of course I should have taken my own advice, saved futile effort, and ignored your post.)
So, how exactly did a level of CFCs that are now a fraction of a percentage point of any modern-era level -- to the point where they're now banning fucking *asthma inhalers* -- somehow cause the largest "ozone hole" in recorded history? This seems to suggest that we've either gone completely overboard trying to banish every last trace of something useful in an act of complete futility and political masturbation, last year was an epic flaming catastrophe with millions of halon-extinguished fires (since that's pretty much the only significant source of CFCs left), or CFCs don't have nearly as much to do with it as originally speculated, and the "holes" are going to keep occurring regardless of whether or not CFCs continue to exist.
This is not to deny that the phenomenon exists, or that CFCs have no impact, but rather to point out that the worldwide banning of CFCs might have ultimately caused a phenomenon that's going to occur anyway to now be 99% as large as it might otherwise have been instead of 100%, and call into question whether that small improvement was actually worth the expense and misery of its opportunity cost. As someone who got hit with a $1,800 AC repair bill ~9 years ago for something that should have been a $65 refill (because they had to basically tear out and replace the car's entire air conditioner), I have a bit of an axe to grind over this matter. Frankly, I'm not convinced that I've gotten $1,735 worth of added ozone value in return for my investment.
There's a difference between arguing that CFCs shouldn't have been phased out at all, vs arguing that the extreme and expensive measures taken to banish them almost overnight regardless of cost or benefit instead of simply requiring that new equipment be CFC-free going forward were worth it.
Don't just explain a new observation with a few quips. I can do that too: Cold air more dense than hot - should cause thermals which will cause more mixing, leading to a more uniform distribution of heat in the atmosphere - not increased stratification. There. Now remember, it's not fair to say my hypothesis is less valid than yours because they are both pulled out of someones ass. They shouldn't make such claims without a reasonably validated mathematical model.
You're lying in bed at night in a cool room with one blanket on. The blanket is warmer on the bottom next to you and cooler on the top. The top of the blanket is still warmer than the air in the room and it loses heat. Put on a second blanket. You get warmer underneath the two blankets, the top of the blanket layer is cooler than before, and less heat escapes into the room. The troposphere without additional CO2 already has about a dozen blankets on, because we're 33K or so warmer at the surface than our effective radiative temperature into space, and the recent excess CO2 is just adding another blanket to add a few more K to the surface warming. But the main point for this is that the stratosphere is mostly outside the blankets and is getting less heat.
You are incorrect. http://www.skepticalscience.com/polar-bears-global-warming.htm
The polar bear population was estimated in the 50s and 60s to be 5k-10k. This was based on anecdotal evidence of hunters and explorers, so it likely underestimates the population back then. Today, it's estimated to 20k-25k. That is not even one order of magnitude, let alone several.
Additionally, a scientific analysis of polar bear sub-populations shows that the number of increasing sub-populations is declining (only 1 of the 12 sub-populations with sufficient data is increasing), the number of stable sub-populations is declining (3 now), and the number of decreasing sub-populations is growing (8 now); 7 sub-populations lack sufficient data.
That suggests population loss is accelerating - even after they are listed as a threatened species.
:(){
Well, except for the fact that CO2 is actually fairly effective at absorbing IR in certain windows, so it's not a minimal effect. Moreover, the change in energy budget from increase CO2 has knock-off effects on the other, more potent greenhouse gasses, specifically H2O. It's these positive feedbacks that drive a lot of the climate change, not just the direct effects of CO2, although those aren't minimal either.
I think we have a winner, and thankfully it wasn't a car analogy!
The outside of a mug with hot coffee inside is hot. The outside of a thermos with hot coffee inside is room temperature. It's pretty simple, isn't it?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Actually, all the things you listed except for global cooling have been problems and have either been addressed, or we've learned to live with them. Overpopulation is a problem, even if it's not in your neck of the woods. A lot of the world is poor and has too many people living in cramped quarters to effectively provide for them. Acid rain is still a problem, though mitigated by programs to reduce SO2 output, but nobody talks about it because it's not exciting enough to be newsworthy. The ozone problem was fixed to a degree because we actually took action and reduced or eliminated the usage of chemicals that lead to ozone depletion.
The common thread in all these things, though, is not that we had fake problems, but that the media presented them as worse or further reaching than they were, and then stopped reporting on them once they weren't fun anymore. The folks who actually deal with these problems continued to do so and either made progress, or haven't really, but you don't hear about it because we've just come to accept the negative results. We're okay with India and China because that's just how it is and those aren't our countries, so we don't really have a stake in changing them. That doesn't make it not a problem.
Actually, it's the hallmark of frustrated people everywhere. Some of those people are frustrated fanatics, some are not.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
So because the media can't portray complex scientific problems correctly means that global warming or the ozone hole aren't actually issues?
This is a spurious argument. There's no "should" here. Life has been affecting the climate since nearly the beginning, and vice versa. That we're doing it is no worse than any other life form changing the climate, local or global. The difference between now and history is that we are able to determine that our activities are going to change the climate in a way that's likely to be detrimental to our life and to other life forms that we care about, and we've also determined that we can avoid that outcome. Other than that, there's nothing *wrong* with climate change.
The heat is being trapped in the troposphere, and hence not reaching the stratosphere. The more heat that gets trapped in the troposphere and cannot escape into the stratosphere, the less thermal energy there is in the stratosphere. Therefore the troposphere's temperature increases (the troposphere is where the climate we care most about basically happens) and as a direct result the stratosphere's temperature decreass.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Perhaps if there were "WTF" moderation since physics has less to do with the ozone hole than environment and chemistry. But yes, flaimbait would have been more appropriate.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
The CFCs are still a problem that had lessened, but because of abnormal temperatures in the Arctic, their remaining effects were magnified a great deal.
Someone just needs to get a really big tube and suck the air out of the mega cities like New York, LA, Chicago and Goose Creek, South Carolina and pump all that ozone saturated air into the polar regions.
Yeah, I know... can't be done- it's just sad how our world is seeing ozone missing where it is needed- and causing harm where it isn't.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
No, of course he can't. Climate changes due to natural events and cycles. I don't think anyone denies that.
However, he can point out that according to the best figures we have, the climate is currently changing at a far greater rate than has occurred previously (outside of major extinction events), and that that pace of change cannot be explained by natural causes alone. We are seeing changes over decades-to-centuries time frames that would normally take millennia (or longer).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs
The river Thames rarely freezes today. I believe the last time was in 1963 and even then it was extremely rare. Of course, during the "little ice age" that started ending a couple of hundred years ago, it was a yearly occurrence as shown by the annual fairs that were held on the frozen river. So, in less than 200 years, the river has gone from freezing annually to almost never freezing. Note that this "little ice age" ended before the industrial revolution took off, and well before the SUV.
The point is that this level of warming has gone on for centuries and well before man could be blamed for it. Although, that won't stop man from believing that he has an effect. People are arrogant in that way. Men do a dance and it rains. Men believe that the dance CAUSED the rain and begins to repeat the dance whenever rain is needed. The climate warms, but instead of looking for natural causes, man looks at what HE is doing that could be causing it. It's the rain dance thing all over again.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Perhaps if there were "WTF" moderation since physics has less to do with the ozone hole than environment and chemistry. But yes, flaimbait would have been more appropriate.
Chemistry is a subset of physics. Environment is made up of matter, which falls under physics. Please try again. Or on second though, don't.
P.S. When I spell a word correctly and you spell it incorrectly in your ignorant reply, you look even more ignorant than you would have anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, how exactly did a level of CFCs that are now a fraction of a percentage point of any modern-era level -- to the point where they're now banning fucking *asthma inhalers* -- somehow cause the largest "ozone hole" in recorded history?
Because it can take up to 2 years for a CFC molecule to make its way up to the ozone layer. And after that, it's not the CFC that directly breaks down the ozone, it's when the molecule itself is broken down by radiation that it then reacts, which can take decades. So banning CFCs won't instantly fix the problem; it takes time to see the results - perhaps till around 2030-40.
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
Great rationalisation. So many uses! Nuclear testing:
Can you point to a time... any time in history when earth was NOT experiencing "radioactive heating"?
Mass poisoning:
Can you point to a time... any time in history when this town was NOT experiencing "heavy metal exposure"?
Taking a dump on your lunch:
Can you point to a time... any time in history when your body was NOT experiencing "coliform bacteria in the digestive tract"?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
So, how exactly did a level of CFCs that are now a fraction of a percentage point of any modern-era level -- to the point where they're now banning fucking *asthma inhalers* -- somehow cause the largest "ozone hole" in recorded history?
So, how did you jump to the conclusion that CFC levels are the only factor affecting ozone levels?
As someone who got hit with a $1,800 AC repair bill ~9 years ago for something that should have been a $65 refill (because they had to basically tear out and replace the car's entire air conditioner),
Uh no. Because Freon is $50/lb, or more and your car would take probably 1.5 lb or more, the freon alone would cost you $75. Of course, it's only that expensive because we outlawed its production in this country, but seriously, you will only come off as a luddite if you rail against that. Harmful compounds are harmful.
It's too bad you had to pay $1800 for a conversion, which basically consists of dismounting the compressor and dryer, draining the compressor, removing the orifice tube, blowing solvent through the lines, putting some oil in the compressor and a new dryer, installing the orifice tube and the compressor, and recharging the system with any A/C-specific tools except the connection that comes with the fill kit. You might need a separator for snap lines, but you can get a plastic cheapie set for under ten bucks.
You were robbed, but that's not R-134a's fault.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
We're warming ON TOP of the post-Little Ice Age warming. You are attacking a strawman.
Never mind...Troll was indeed appropriate.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
If you think the world is "back to normal" you've been living in a very weird world for the last 30 years.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I perosnally think we all orginally lived on Venus, and then because of all our gas guzzling cars screwed the atmosphere, the socialist governernment, Illuminiati, Masons and United Nations got together, put us all to sleep, then transferred us over to earth, which they had terraformed to be the same as Venus. Thats the real reason that there have been few probes sent to Venus, we'd see all of the cities and everything.
They're currently looking at Mars to do the same thing.
try to make ends meet, you're a slave to money, then you die
Economics has *ZERO* to do with buying hybrid cars. You have no return on investment before the car falls out of warranty. Buying $10,000 in replacement batteries after 3 years.. yeah, that's going to sting a bit. You spend $40,000 for the hybrid, I spend $10,000 to subsidize, the manufacturer loses money and there is zero return. This could possibly explain why it is impossible for hybrid cars to survive in a free market economy (at this point). I'm all about hybrid/effiecient cars, I hope someday they actually become affordable.
Venus stratosphere ranges between 385C and 75C.
You got a cite for those figures?
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
The hole itself hardly needs to be "over" NZ or Australia to have an effect. Whenever the ozone depleted air wanders a bit (when the hole "breaks up"), it reduces the levels of ozone for quite a distance around. More info...
Growing up in Southern NZ, I was always confused by how kids on TV got to play outside all day on a really hot and sunny day whereas for us, that'd mean a horridly painful sunburn in an hour or less. The news weather reports would tell us the temperature and "burn time" for the day - often a matter of tens of minutes even when the temperature was barely high enough to not be wearing a coat.
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Think the Chinese take the attitude that "if you do, we'll think of another reason not to". The Chinese government doesn't give a flying rats ass about the environment. They are only interested in development and how that translates into power.
IIRC, The North and South poles create a magnetosphere (shield) around the globe which protects us from cosmic rays (and to a large extent, gamma rays created through solar flare activity).
The magnetosphere attracts electrons from the cosmic rays which enter the earth's atmosphere at the poles. It is at the poles where the electrons react with molecules in the atmosphere to produce the Northern Lights.
Question is: Is it possible for Pole Shift activity to affect the location of the Ozone hole? If so, that would seem to suggest that the Ozone hole is going to get dragged around relative to Pole Shift.
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The Science News story has some words of caution of equating this 'hole' to the Antarctic hole:
(sorry, Slashdot still protects us against dangerous quotation marks)
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The record says otherwise, unless you limit your timeframe to, say, 800 years or so...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Didn't we fix this problem by getting rid of CFC's or something?
What we are "supposed to do" is just wait.
the ban only took effect in 1996 (phasing out was started in 1991), with some CFCs (CFC-13, 111, 112, various halon variants, etc.) only getting fully eliminated last year.
The issue is that CFCs are very long lived. It takes decades for them to break down. We won't really start seeing the effect of the bans on the ozone layer for another 20-30 years. Until then, we just have to deal with it.
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Global warming of about 0.8 deg C over the last 100 years. Mt. Pinatubo's 1991 eruption cooled the earth by 0.6 deg C. Looks to me that one good volcanic eruption can cancel an entire century of global warming. Now add up all the volcanic eruptions we've had in the last century... I think you'll find they affect the climate a lot more than than man-made CO2.
It can cancel it ... for a couple of years. Then of course when the ash and sulfur falls out of the atmosphere, temperatures go right back up. We don't get the biggest volcanic eruption in a century as an annual event.
FFS - does anybody here have reasoning skills beyond a 3rd grade level?
I don't remember the exact year offhand, I guess it might have been closer to 15 years ago. I just remember that the car was manufactured and bought the final year CFC-using air conditioners were legal, and the repair happened about 5 years later. In retrospect, I probably should have taken the car to get fixed by some random mechanic in his driveway in Hialeah (who could have refilled it with used refrigerant recovered from a junkyard car), but I made the mistake of taking the car to the dealer and got completely raped, just like a few million other Floridians who had no idea at the time how expensive something that was historically a minor band-aid repair job you did to older cars in their final year or so of life before trading them in had just become (the AC in question wasn't completely broken... it had just lost enough refrigerant over the years to eventually start icing up regularly, and really needed only a fairly small amount to top it off).
A meaningless slogan (the ends justify the means). Some ends justify some means. I know this may shock you. Please note, this is not in reference to any particular means being justified by any particular ends. I'm just tired of the meaningless slogan.
In the end it all boils down to physics.
How about you deal with the science and cut the smug egotism, asshole. Some scientists believe the climate is warming due to human activity released CO2. Some do not. Either say why you believe the first group of scientists, and why you are not bothered by the politics and the lying which have been exposed - or SHUT THE FUCK UP. Your choice. Demonizing those who do not willingly accept force-fed imperatives is not productive. Yeah, I can't force you to do this, any more than you can reach across the internet and tear me apart.
I can think of valid arguments supporting anthropogenic climate change, but I cannot think of a proof. I can also think of both positives and negatives if the change does occur, for WHATEVER reason. What I haven't seen is any indication of is a complete cost benefit analysis of tearing apart the world economy and grossly lowering the standard of living of those most vulnerable. Hey, there may be an analysis which could convince rational people of the advisability of radical action but, like, IT NEEDS TO BE DEVELOPED AND DEBATED RATIONALLY.
Passion can be a useful and laudatory thing, but it has to be harnessed. And it ain't easy, believe me. Just look how we both got all worked up now.
If anything it's been more stable(warmish) in the last 4k years than it has in the last 400k years. The data is there, people just like to scream that *DOOM* the end has come. The norm is very warm like now followed by a fast drop off and long interglacial periods in a 10-30k range, which are cyclical.
Om, nomnomnom...
If you want to demonstrate the effects of greenhouse gases, what better way than to point to a planet where they compose the vast majority of the atmosphere?
That's disingenuous fear-mongering, not demonstration. If you try to educate people by screaming, "OMG the earth is becoming Venus! 0.0388% is higher than 0.0387%, and that much closer to 96%!! We're all gonna fry!!!", don't complain when they don't take you seriously - you've invalidated your own point.
If it were legal to use a 90% new stuff / 10% old stuff mix of refrigerant, the trace R12 would properly carry the oil through the system and it would have been a $65 repair with a 90% reduction in CFC.
Won't be a problem for much longer since E10 fuel is destroying older cars.
Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
... this proves that the ozone problem is bipolar.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
So, now we've got people denying that CFCs damage the ozone layer? The anthropogenic climate change deniers can at least appeal to a tiny minority of authorities who agree with them. Is there anyone intelligent who doesn't believe that CFCs damage the ozone layer?
There are answers on stratospheric cooling here.
wherein swirling holes of stratospheric cold freeze the Earth -- The Day After Tomorrow?
Vision with execution is hallucination.
No problem. The Canadian Government has already thought of the solution. They are firing all the scientists researching the ozone hole.
No scientists. No knowledge of the ozone hole. No problem.
Go Conservatives Go!
You're speculating on the return of the decision to ban CFCs. Sure, it's your right to do so, and it sucks that you got ripped off by your mechanic (he could have instead directed you to someone who would refill the CFC refrigerant, since only *production* was banned -- it would have cost a bit more than $65, but you could have done it).
But I think before you continue speculating that there is very limited return on the ban of CFCs, you should probably do some research on the subject. I think you'll find it illuminating.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
You do realize you're arguing on slashdot with Dunbal, right?
What else would you expect?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Attach electric arc ozone generators to all commercial airliners at 30k feet, that should provide a much needed O3 boost, and help ensure the major polluters are doing something constructive to off set their evil ways.
Reductio ad absurdum. Try a better argument.
That was my point - the argument was already absurdly reduced.
Fandroids hate facts.
Problem with that is no model has ever worked without including the effects of CO2.
Too bad nuclear power is one of the most expensive ways to produce power and requires such high government subsidies to be viable at all.
Even the global cooling thing was addressed. A couple of the papers on global cooling in the 1970's were concerned with the increase in industrial aerosols causing cooling. Pollution controls reduced those aerosols although they're coming back a bit with China. But China will clean up sooner or later as well.
Stop breathing, man. You have to stop breathing!
Think of all the animals and stuff, man!
Of course I only mean the cute animals. All the scaly animals can just go die.
Now, if you will excuse me, I have to go put another Grateful Dead sticker on the new BMW that my parents bought me.
Its funny how the subject is joke science and here you show up to quote some joke science. Nuclear power has a High capital cost (price to install the reactor) but very low operating cost. Wind has an even higher captital cost per Kwh and only actually provides power for about 1/4 of the year.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/uploadedImages/org/info/projected_electricity_costs_finland_2003.png
By your silly logic, we can't make any pronouncements about gravity and physics because we've only studied them for a tiny fraction of the time that they've existed and operated in the universe.
The tactic of saying "we haven't been around long enough" is, for the deniers, just a way of moving the goal posts.
There is very little water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere above the tropopause. I believe CO2 is usually more abundant there.
Ozone is formed by UV light hitting regular oxygen.
It is reasonable to assume an area would have a lower level of ozone after several months of total darkness.
The term 'Ozone hole' has always triggered my hysterical headline detectors. I'm sure the level isn't 0.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Ozone is, as you say, formed by UV light hitting regular O2. Ozone is also destroyed by UV light. So there's a state of dynamic equilibrium. In areas like the poles, the dark and cold do tend towards there being less ozone naturally, but CFCs make it much worse. It's fairly well understood. To give you and others like you the benefit of the doubt, I should have asked "is there anyone intelligent [and educated in the relevant areas] who doesn't believe that CFCs damage the ozone layer?"
Also, of course it's not an absolute lack of ozone. That would be ridiculous, but it's enough of a difference to have a noticeable effect on the ground. I grew up in New Zealand, so I have some experience with this. I didn't burn all that much, though. I had a full body covering of overlapping freckles to protect me.
You have to include the cost of decommissioning the plant at the end of its life and the cost of dealing with the waste products. And one way or another the potential liability costs if things go south. The biggest reason that no new reactors have been built since the 1970's is the cost not regulation or TMI syndrome. Huge up front costs with a long time to pay it off. Coal plants are cheaper and faster to get on line.
Well, I live and learn. Today I've learned that, although overshadowed by climate change denialists in the larger environmental debate, there are anthropogenic ozone depletion denialists as well. And they have research from "think tanks" to back them up.
Predicting the size and shape of the ozone hole basically amounts to weather prediction plus additional complicating factors. Weather prediction is hard enough already, so if no-one has an exact model that predicts the size of the ozone hole, I can understand that. It hardly proves in any way that man-made CFCs aren't a major factor in the destruction of stratospheric ozone. The simple fact is that pretty much all natural substances that can also cause the same problem are water soluble and have a very short stay in the atmosphere to begin with and a very hard time even getting to the stratosphere.
In any case, in four decades or so, when the long tail of the CFC ban has actually taken effect. We can compare notes again and see how the ozone is doing. Either that, or we can start using CFCs again, and look at the ozone layer in five or six decades. If we take the first route, and it turns out that the ozone layer hasn't really changed, then we say whoops, our bad and start using CFCs again. If we take the second route, and it turns out that the ozone layer is gone, we'll then have to ban CFCs again and wait another half century for it to come back again.
There's this whole thing about erring on the side of caution if you must err that the denialist types never seem to get. Like the people who deny that we'll ever run out of energy-positive fossil fuels (some of them insist that the fossil fuels aren't actually biogenic, and it's possible that they're at least partly right, but I'm still going to refer to them as fossil fuels). Even if they're right, which seems less and less likely with every passing year, it makes sense to conserve as much as possible, just to be on the safe side.
The denialists tend to be in such awe of the sheer size of the earth that they can't imagine how human action could ever damage it in any way and seem to remain blind to all the obvious evidence right in front of their eyes. The fact is, there's only about 5 and a quarter acres of land for each human on earth. There's about 715,000 tons of atmosphere per person and 193,000,000 tons of water per person. All that seems like a lot, except for the 5 and a quarter acres. Considering the ~11 kilowatts (counting all sources, not just the ~300 watts of home electrical use) of per person power usage in the US. The 5 and a quarter acres seems like a fairly small amount for a single person to be able to mess up. As for the atmosphere, those numbers mean that a single person accounts for about .1 ppm of their share of the atmosphere by body mass. Doesn't seem like that much until you consider how very small changes in some atmospheric variables can cause some pretty big changes. Consider that 11 kilowatts of power use again and consider each person's share in all their household goods, their housing, all the infrastructure they have a share in, etc. Just think about how many times their weight in garbage a single human produces in a year. As for the water, well there, a single human being by weight is .35 ppb, so it should seem like we're on safer ground, but consider that maximum contamination levels for mercury are about 2 ppb. Then consider all of that garbage over a lifetime along with the energy use, then consider the fact that mercury bioaccumulates, we eat seafood, and that mercury is only one of the contaminants that we have to worry about. Considering all of this, I have to conclude that the world is big, certainly, but the parts we inhabit just aren't that big compared to the sheer size of the human race and our civilisation. We certainly exist on a scale big enough to alter the world, and do so faster than it can bounce back. Anyone who thinks otherwise is deluding themselves.
And if you in fact checked why, it has nothing to do with the ozone layer hole. It has to do with the fact that we have about the same latitude as Spain, and are 1000 miles away from anywhere so there is a *lot* less particulate matter (dust) and other aerosols to scatter things. I assure you there is plenty of other places where an hour outside gets you a really bad sunburn. I have personally seen it in southern and Central France, Spain, Croatia, Italy, Japan hell even Austria.
:/
Also Sunburn is not a measure of UV. If you look at actual UV data, NZ and Aussie do not look any different to other places with similar Meteorology/Climatology.
By the way the Universities in NZ have quite (or at lest had when i was) big group working on this with yearly trips to Antarctica to study it. I have seen the data but missed out on a trip
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Why is there a UV problem at NIGHT? Does the Arctic ozone hole reach to latitiudes where the sun rises at that time of year?
This is not an intentional troll. I just don't understand why this is considered to be a problem.
--
Sometimes I stare into space and it doesn't recognize me. - P S Mueller
Think the Chinese take the attitude that "if you do, we'll think of another reason not to".
And yet China actually does more than the US. Stop blaming China for your inaction.
Fandroids hate facts.
Explain to me in a way that I can understand why insulation that reduces heat escaping into space causes air in the stratosphere to be colder than usual. By my uninformed logic, I would expect air to be warmer if less heat is escaping.
This isn't about "heat" escaping, it's about infrared radiation escaping. Earth absorbs radiation from the sun and radiates IR as blackbody radiation. Greenhouse gases absorb IR, then re-radiate it in all directions, effectively trapping some of it. More greenhouse gases means more IR gets blocked below, so less IR reaches the stratosphere, at least in the short term (couple of decades).
Fandroids hate facts.
So you agree that 'hole' is just a simplification and that UV is involved in creating and destroying ozone.
It follows that for the correct definition of hole there was almost certainly a hole there every winter prior to CFCs. That is the point. We don't know how much Ozone was at the poles in spring prior to CFCs.
If the 'hole' is a natural phenomenon we will be waiting forever for it to close. We don't know what normal was.
The earth certainly has a carrying capacity for CFCs in the atmosphere while still maintaining enough ozone. Nobody is suggesting going back to using it for spray cans. Still I prefer working fluids in my cooling systems that are non-toxic. The new refrigerants are not perfect.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Of course 'hole' is just a simplification, I don't think anyone has ever disputed this fact. And UV light both creates and destroys ozone.
It does not, in fact follow from those facts that there was almost certainly a hole there every winter prior to CFCs (not that there wasn't, it just doesn't follow from those facts). The fact that UV light destroys ozone as well as creating means that, when the light is absent for the winter ozone is no longer created as readily, as you said in the grandparent post, but it's not destroyed as readily either. So, how the balance is maintained is a complex issue, not a simple one. It is known that ice clouds form in the polar cold and the ice crystals make up a reaction surface where a lot of chemistry takes place that destroys ozone. There probably are other natural chemical reactions taking place that destroy ozone on the surface of those crystals, so there probably has always been a 'hole' in the ozone around the poles. We also know that CFCs, and quite possibly other man-made chemicals, promote the destruction of ozone in those conditions. So, even if the ozone hole is natural in part, CFCs pretty definitely make it worse.
I currently live at almost the exact same latitude that I lived at when I lived in New Zealand, it's just Northern latitude now rather than Southern Latitude, but the UV is nowhere near as much of a problem here as it was there. Enough of my relatives and their friends and acquaintances have died from skin cancer in New Zealand that I'm quite happy if the ozone layer is as thick as possible. The CFC ban seems to be the wise thing to do in that circumstance.
I would probably be ok with CFCs being used as refrigerants in sealed systems if there were actually some sort of sane end to end system for appliances. For unsealed systems prone to leaking like car air conditioning, then it's right out. As for working fluids for cooling systems that are non-toxic... You are aware that R12 refrigerant, a CFC, while not particularly toxic by itself, turned horribly poisonous on the slightest exposure to heat or flame.