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Over the Antarctic, the Smallest Ozone Hole In a Decade
hypnosec writes "The ozone layer seems to be on a road to recovery over Antarctica; according to Europe's MetOp weather satellite, which is monitoring atmospheric ozone, the hole over the South Pole in 2012 was the smallest it's been in the last 10 years. The decrease in size of the hole is probably the result of reduction in the concentration of CFCs, especially since the mid-1990s, because of international agreements like the Montreal Protocol."
Correlation is not causation.
Perhaps this means that conservation efforts over the last decade have had effect? I don't know, I'm honestly speaking from a point of view that is ignorant of climate science. In any case, this is great news.
Surely if it's been shrinking all this time then you could have the same story every day: "ozone hole smallest size since $date". Has it grown occasionally for some reason?
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Sean Hannity called, he wanted to remind you it was the smallest ozone hole over the entire century. And that the the definition of "hole" varies between measurement organizations.
No, this will re-kindle the fire that both sides of the coin have been at for the last 30 years or so. Watch as more "research" is done to prove/disprove that conservation is having an impact on the earth in general. The oil companies will take credit that their efforts are showing effect so we shouldn't stop using gas while actual climatologists fight tooth and nail to get the years' research grant money.
I have a stash of 80s era aqua-net I've been saving for this occasion!!!!!
you are confusing ozone with global warming, the two are separate issues
you are also under the guise of being able to tell weather-difference based on your memories
... scientists recognized an environmental problem and demonstrated a clear link to human activity, the scientists told the politicians about it, the politicians acted, and now the problem's going away.
My God, this is terrible! We must ensure that no such thing ever happens again!
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Rather than going by your intuition, maybe you should go to eklima, where you can access all climate data from Norwegian weather stations since 1901. It's not impossible that it should have gone the other way here compared to the globe as a whole, but I doubt it.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
So when can I start using the cheaper freon again?
This demonstrates a problem seen on both sides of the climate change debate - people look at their short term local environment and extrapolate those experiences to the world as a whole without looking at actual relevant data.
Had a really hot summer? Boy, this global warming has gotten bad, it's going to wipe out humanity in a decade.
Terrible winter? Man, I'm tired of all those global warming alarmists - I wish it WAS warming!
But as far as the ozone hole goes... Given the very slow rate of exchange between the upper and lower atmosphere, it's hard to see how policy changes mainly implemented by western countries in the very recent past could fully explain this.
#DeleteChrome
Clearly, the increased CO2 in the atmosphere is helping close the ozone hole! Suck it, Al Gore!
(That's how it works, right?)
In other news, Microsoft Windows users are now covered under the Americans with Disabilties Act...
I'm not sure how that compare to this news
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/02/unprecedented-ozone-hole-opens-over-canadian-arctic/
...in 3.... 2.... 1...
It's called "global warming", not "local warming". It's quite possible, and indeed expected, that some places will get colder as the world as whole gets warmer. In particular, collapse of certain warm-water currents in the Atlantic are likely to make Britain quite inhospitably cold if the ocean gets a little warmer. So stop being an ignorant, self-centered fool and learn about the issues before making stupid statements in public. Attitudes like yours endanger everyone.
Do you know about the gulf-stream conveyor belt ? It is the principal cause of Europe pasts warmer winters, it used to take heat from America, move to Europe, give back the heat and flow back to America. If its model is correct, its acceleration is inversely proportional to the sea temperature variation. As the sea got warmer, that heat conveying belt slowed down giving Scandinavian colder winters and Canadian east of Manitoba warmer one.
Smallest in 10 years, you say?
Here's a story blaming the ozone hole for TOO MUCH ice
http://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/8267243/Too-much-ice-for-Antarctic-penguins
After all, what does the data say? Higher temperatures, less Antarctic ozone? Looks like a correlation, and therefore....
why don't we just nuke it like the good ole days
The reduction of ozone over the poles has little to do with global warming. It has to do with artificial CFCs emitted into the atmosphere. Different issue.
And the predictions of global warming are not that every place in the world will get incrementally warmer. A lot of areas are predicted to get warmer, but the amount of precipitation (i.e. snow) will increase. It's called "average" global temperature for a reason. Inevitably there will be places that experience colder temperatures.
First of all, there never was a "hole" - a better term would be an "ozone reduction". Its cause remains unknown. There are many theories, and the one exclusively blaming CFC's is made increasingly implausible by recent research, as well as the recent ozone increase. What is known is that the government intervention in banning CFC's had some small negative impact on the quality of life of almost everyone alive today. The effect of the ban on the ozone layer, if any, won't kick in until the CFC particles already released begin to exit the atmosphere many decades from now...
There are many natural cycles that affect this planet and this solar system, and modern science has not been around long enough to measure and fully understand all of them. However "we don't know" is not an acceptable answer to many people - they want a story that sounds good and fits their preconceived political beliefs...
--libman
I hate to even point this out, because idiots will claim I am a global warming denier, climate change denier or kicker of cute puppies...
But I really wish that the climate change folks would take a note from the whole ozone thing. CFCs and other contributory substances (ozone-depleting substances (ODS)) were proven to have an impact. CFCs were replaced with hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and other alternative solvents with minimal costs. And the problem was economically solved for the most part.
Folks proved what the problem was (ozone depletion), what was a very significant contributor (CFCs), how everything happened (in a scientific "can be repeated, with the same results every time"), set up accurate and provable models (Single Layer Isentropic Model of Chemistry And Transport (SLIMCAT), CLaMS (Chemical Lagrangian Model of the Stratosphere), etc), and how to economically mitigate the bad stuff by using less bad stuff. The last stage is arguably the most important. All of the climate change research and proof in the world is nice. But it doesn't mean jack if it doesn't produce economically acceptable alternatives.
X is bad? Fine. Accurately prove how they are bad, in a way that is relatively easy to proof in a repeatable way. Gimme alternatives that are viable (ie can be realistically implemented in a reasonable manner), that are economic (preferably cheaper, but no more than 5-10% more expensive) that are effective (preferably better, but no more than 5-10% less effiicient).
I spent time in former Soviet countries and third world countries. I'm aware of how bad pollution can be. It can be horribly nasty. I'm also not a moron, so I realize you have to be able to realistically solve the problem if you want to mitigate it. I'll bet myself $1 that I get called a climate denier, right wing puppy kicker or whatnot anyways.
Peducah, KY, USA. Slashdot mods or mod bots may redact this comment at will. God Bless.
yeah my air conditioner does not freeze my nose hairs anymore, my quality of life is ruined.
If you had asthma, and they made your aerosol medicine illegal (Primatine Mist) your quality of life would definitely be reduced. Because you spouted such malinformed arrogance on Slashdot, my quality of life is definitely reduced. Way to go. You wouldn't by chance be part of that 47% would you?
This is great news, once Macca's brings them back my kids will be able to play with all the great styrofoam happy meal boxes. Looking forward to those UFO boxes.
"...The decrease in size of the hole is probably the result of reduction in the concentration of CFCs..."
We know little if anything about the actual reactions in the stratosphere. It's expensive to monitor them. SO we don't.
If you want to know why CFCs are banned, take a look at the dates on the freon patent. You will find that it was just about to expire, and DuPont were just about to lose a very profitable chemical division. Suddenly, they switched round to supporting a ban, and then the world couldn't make Freon at all. We had to use less effective substitutes, and you won't be surprised to find that DuPont had all those tied up with nice new patents. Applied for a couple of years before DuPont's sudden reversal. Big Chemistry working with Big Green? Where have I seen that before?
zow, probably the best collection of reliable sources ever quoted.
Seriously - reason? mises? redstate!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
This is going to upset the alarmists.
It depends on the topic really. Not skeptical at all about the Holocaust, no, mostly because my Grandfather was at Burgen Belsen in 1945 with the British Army. And attempts to lump everyone who is skeptical of one thing together with anyone who's skeptical about anything is just a poor debating tactic.
The smaller the ozone hole over the antarctic, the more infrared is reflected back to the Earth and not into space. So people who accuse others of being climate change deniers, should look to mirror and do not deny that the Montreal Protocol is a major factor in global warming.
Reducing CFC's was a good thing regardless of ozone holes, etc. They are toxic and bad for the environment, period, ozone holes or no.
Reducing the carbon footprint is also a good thing as it means using things efficiently vice producing so much waste, regardless of climate effects.
Why do we need a 'spin' to somehow make it real?
Inefficiency leads to waste leads to rapid depletion leads to the disappearance of valuable resources.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
So only the sources that agree with you are "reliable"?
Way to keep yourself inside a bubble of socialist bias!
I had the same problem myself when I was younger. Going to a "public" (government-controlled) school and listening to gov-licensed media has this effect on most people. To my lasting shame, I voted for Al Gore in 2000, and even the Green Party candidate in 2004. But I did not remain ignorant forever. I've researched all sides of each issue, from economics to environmentalism, and gradually came to understand that most of what I was taught was inaccurate.
I suggest you spend more time studying the facts and less time rooting for your team, right or wrong. It won't be easy. Millions of people in the academia, media, and even big business benefit from gov interventionism, and (perhaps even subconsciously) are driven to perpetuate certain myths that maintain and expand gov power. As religious and nationalist myths start to lose their power, this power-hungry class is seeking out new, global bogeymen to use as enemies, with an environmental crisis constituting the perfect excuse. By scaring the public they can get popular support to do whatever they want - without rigorous scientific proof, and without a dispassionate cost-benefit analysis.
An honest person should have no value higher than the pursuit of the objective scientific truth.
So, without ad hominem attacks, can you dispute the factual accuracy of my statements?
--libman
I never said "ruined"; I said that "the government intervention in banning CFC's had some small negative impact on the quality of life". You have less choices in buying air conditioners, refrigerators, certain medical devices, etc - which means you either end up paying more or getting less. The same restriction applies to companies that produce / transport / sell refrigerated food, cool server farms, use industrial degreasing solvents, use fire suppression safety systems, etc, etc, etc - which means slightly higher prices for the consumers.
This is just one example of a government regulation damaging market optimization, and, when combined with all others, they have a great effect in total. You may be able to afford paying more for stuff, but that means you have less money left over to direct to more preferable ends (like perhaps philanthropy or environmental conservation). And many people in this world simply cannot afford higher prices, which has a much greater impact on their quality of life.
--libman
wait, redstate isn't a science blog?
---
Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
You are wrong. CFCs are chemically stable, non-toxic and non-flammable.
There only so many permutations possible in chemistry, and CFCs are truly a wonder of chemistry.
Alternatives are only partially up to be replacements, and are more than often corrosive, toxic, unstable.
Banning CFCs was at best a big mistake, if not outright a crime.
It is inevitable that CFCs prohibition is ended at some point, because it simply makes no sense at all.
I believe the correct scientific term is The Global Puckering!
I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.
Had a really hot summer? Boy, this global warming has gotten bad, it's going to wipe out humanity in a decade.
Terrible winter? Man, I'm tired of all those global warming alarmists - I wish it WAS warming!
BTW, it's called "climate change" now, so you can blame both events on it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
I am not a particle physicist, but your explanation of the ozone layer sounds like a "canary in a coal mine" and not a red herring. If the energy from UV radiation is transferred to oxygen high in the atmosphere, that means that less of that energy is hitting the surface of our planet. If the O_3 content drops, that probably implies some combination of reduced UV energy input and reduced energy absorption. The former is fine, but the latter means more high-energy particles will reach habitable altitudes.
| It's so much easier to win arguments with imaginary opponents who can be vilified for saying outrageous things.
| ... beloved by Lefties in particular, that "economics doesn't matterâ.
Thanks for the great example of the strawman argument.
The problem isn't that they are rightwing nutjob sites (though they are), it's that they're politcal sites.
Why go to political sites for information about science?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
[wikipedia.org][redstate.com][reason.com][mises.org]
If your best source is Wikipedia, you should re-evaluate where your get your information. Try Google Scholar for a start. Libertarians may have a good take on liberty, but, sadly, many libertarian-leaning organisations have shown a disdain for science that does not jibe with their politics. I would like to be free of gravity, sometimes, or of the relationship between calories in and body weight. But no matter how much I like freedom, we ignore physical reality at our (or, in some cases, our children's) peril.
Stephan
Just as eliminating using sulphurous coal, especially in old power plants. Fortunately, we can replace those coal plants with more economical natural gas plants. We already have enough gas online or nearly complete to be self-sufficient for at least a century.
Those coal plants often produce higher levels of lead, ozone, etc. They probably cause health problems for some people.
"The EPA estimates that more than 65%, or over 13 million tons per year, of SO2 production in the U.S. comes from electric utilities,[2] 93 percent of which is produced by coal power plants.[3] In China, the world’s largest consumer of coal, approximately 22.5 million tons of sulfur were released in 2004, and over 30% of the country now experiences acid rainfall."
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Sulfur_dioxide_and_coal
We don't have to get into any arguments over AGW to recognize the problems of coal plants worldwide. The U.S., by happy accident, will produce far less of this kind of pollution in coming years but the Chinese will more than take up the slack, to their detriment.
We should do the things today that we can all agree on and that the evidence is so clear about. Especially since natural gas power plants are so much cheaper and we needed to replace those old plants anyway. It's a complete no-brainer.
That climate change deniers will use this to argue there is no such thing as 'global warming'.
When the lesson to take from this news is that we can reverse the negative impact of our actions on our environment with decisive action.
I call bullshit on their saying the CFC ban has anything to do with it. Let's wait for it to get bigger next year.
You are wrong. CFCs are chemically stable, non-toxic and non-flammable. There only so many permutations possible in chemistry, and CFCs are truly a wonder of chemistry. Alternatives are only partially up to be replacements, and are more than often corrosive, toxic, unstable.
You are correct on the facts.
Banning CFCs was at best a big mistake, if not outright a crime. It is inevitable that CFCs prohibition is ended at some point, because it simply makes no sense at all.
You are totally wrong on the conclusions. Long term destruction of the ozone would have been a disaster.
So now what BS excuse are commercial fishermen going to use to explain the collapse of the krill population. As usual, they are loathe to admit that it is overfishing, instead coming up with fanciful explanations such as the ozone hole to explain the collapse of the krill and the devastation of the Antarctic ecosystems....
The effect of the ban on the ozone layer, if any, won't kick in until the CFC particles already released begin to exit the atmosphere many decades from now...
Emphasis added.
Too bad all that ice is still fucked.
well i'm sorry to have to say cfrs have nothing to do with the ozone. made made cfrs never got that high enough to reach the holes. since the treaty the only place on earth not using cfr's is the usa. its readally available and used everywhere else in the world,and in greater quantities. these treatys are not for the world,they are to cripple the american economy.
If your best source is Wikipedia, you should re-evaluate where your get your information. Try Google Scholar for a start.
I haven't provided any "sources" - I've provided accessible starting points. Wikipedia is a good central repository of knowledge (with some socialist bias, but I'm willing to look past that in most cases). If you don't believe Wikipedia's claim that there is no literal "hole" in the ozone layer (something that I brought up only because the word "hole" was so emphasized in the story title and some earlier comments), you can look at the more scholarly reference materials that Wikipedia links to.
The conceptual points I am making are not very complex... You need to know a system before you can conclude if it is out of balance. You need to objectively consider all possibilities as to the cause. Before interfering with a system, you need to evaluate the costs and risks of your actions. Before attributing an effect to a specific cause, you need to take into account things like the time-frame of the processes that the said cause triggers. Before accepting a research institution's recommendations as "The Word Of Science", you need to scrutinize both their data-gathering methods as well as any potential biases that could affect how the data is processed and interpreted.
After studying environmentalist claims for many years, I have found a tremendous amount of political bias in all involved institutions - not only government-funded ones, but some corporate / non-profit ones as well. People don't study to become climatologists because they think climatology is boring and climate will have very little impact on humanity! An environmental crisis turns those people from zeros to heroes; without it they may end up teaching a fifth grade science class instead! Many businesses support unnecessary government interventionism, because they have positioned themselves to profit from it. And of course the government itself is literally dying for a global climate crisis to justify its on-going existence, and create many opportunities for expanding its power.
Libertarians may have a good take on liberty, but, sadly, many libertarian-leaning organizations have shown a disdain for science that does not jibe with their politics. I would like to be free of gravity, sometimes, or of the relationship between calories in and body weight. But no matter how much I like freedom, we ignore physical reality at our (or, in some cases, our children's) peril.
My politics are based on reason. I used to be a "left-winger", but had to change my position over many years in light of irrefutable facts.
And yet, no matter how many facts I bring up, all that I typically get in response are appeals to authority...
How many "expert" bishops and rabbis and imams believe in God is not a valid argument for God's existence!
--libman
You need to know a system before you can conclude if it is out of balance. You need to objectively consider all possibilities as to the cause. Before interfering with a system, you need to evaluate the costs and risks of your actions.
You mean like the careful evaluation we did before dumping CFCs into the atmosphere, and the one we did before digging up fossil fuels and burning them like there is no tomorrow? Or the one we do before we all send all our cattle onto the common grazing ground?
Science is not perfect, but it has very good self-correcting measures. I'm impressed if you are able to independently understand the CFC/Ozone relationship, as well as the complexities of climate change. But if you do, why do you point to crappy political sites which have no scientific value at all?
Before accepting a research institution's recommendations as "The Word Of Science", you need to scrutinize both their data-gathering methods as well as any potential biases that could affect how the data is processed and interpreted.
But science does not rely on the word of a single researcher or a single research institution. Science is a collaborative effort, with many different actors cross-checking, verifying, and, where possible, refuting their respective results. It is not perfect, but it is, to a high degree, self-correcting.
And of course the government itself is literally dying for a global climate crisis to justify its on-going existence, and create many opportunities for expanding its power.
"The government" actually is many different governments, which, in many areas compete. Moreover, we have had governments in all advanced societies for the last 5000 years or so - basically, since we had advanced societies. It hardly needs to "justify its ongoing existence".
My politics are based on reason.
Does your reason tell you that to substantially engage in any single field of science, you typically need a long, expensive, and arduous education? How do you know that your "reason" is sound? Or at least sounder than that of hundreds of talented people who often spend years or lifetimes trying to discover the nature of reality?
Stephan
There ya go:
"The effect of the [Chloro-Fluoro-Carbon] ban on the ozone layer, if any, won't kick in until the CFC particles already released begin to exit the atmosphere many decades from now..."
THE ban referred to in the previous sentence. And later in the same sentence. The only ban mentioned up to that point.
My bad for assuming that my readers can read above 4th grade level...
(OK, some of my sentences do require college-level reading skills... I can't help it - that's what happens to your brain when you listen to Tolstoy's audio-books while writing a perl script that generates lisp... But that particular sentence was very simple.)
Now, do you have anything constructive to add to the conversation? Anything at all?
You haven't even yet mentioned that Ayn Rand got Social Security checks - that'll really address the points I've presented...
--libman
so, basically, anything that you believe is fact, and everything that you don't is a conspiracy. and there is nothing to debate here son. Just nut cases like you trying to pretend you have a legitimate basis for your BS.
No, I didn't say it was a conspiracy. I just think it's wrong, that's all. Your abuse doesn't really help your argument here.
The insulting and cowardly bit is the "Fred isn't a wife beater - maybe George can learn from him" style bullshit - but of course you know that since it was obviously intentional. You've taken something good and are merely using it as a blunt instrument to push party dogma.
Another bit is bringing in arguments about unknown economic costs of unknown solutions as an excuse to avoid trying to identify problems - moving the goalposts to make it impossible to justify in economic terms because costing is about twenty steps down the track. You consider economic factors after you've got a clear list of options you can work out costs on, not when you are still working out the problems.
The real icing on the cake is casting yourself as a victim right at the start so any refutation of your insulting bullshit comes across as bullying. What a class act you are. What would your parents think? Call me a bully if you like, but at least I'm not trying to mislead people here just to shove a side effect of blind tribalism style politics down their throats. So the party line is now "experts are not experts if they are in field X" - what do you do if your field suddenly becomes unpopular with the party? Climate science is not my field but the arguments used to pretend it's not a science can be applied to just about profession that the party wants to scapegoat.
Well, I actually appreciate you winning me that dollar. I knew someone would scream their head off that because I want to intelligently make decisions based on yanno, science and whatnot that I'd be a no-good darn puppy kicking climate denier. Despite the fact that I haven't kicked any puppies and I believe humans do impact the environment. Instead of arguing from a position of emotions, some folks (myself included) would like numbers so sensible decisions could be made. You used insults and personal attacks instead of logic and reason. That is the problem, and that is what will hold back real solutions.
Feel free to continue. Tis your right to an opinion. Just remember you will alienate folks, and rightly make them question the validity of your side. Which is a shame, because as I previously said, I've seen how horribly bad that insanely lax environmental policies can be. People dumping trash into the same water sources they get their drinking water from. Burning coal with no filtering. Dumping chemicals into the ground. The Soviets were not down with taking care of the planet. It was bad, and will take decades to even partially mitigate.
Nothing will change until a) enough folks care to improve things and b) we know how to actually improve things. B is equally important. Without valid and accurate results, we will be flailing around in the dark. At best, we waste a lot of money, time and effort with mild and inefficient gains. At worst, we actually make the situation worse.
Look kid, saying "I know people will get upset at this" first is no excuse for insulting lies later even if you've seen such bad behaviour on Fox.
This site is going way downhill with such idiots spewing political propaganda using techniques out of their party playbook instead of actually using their brains for something useful. If I wanted to read an anti-science site there's plenty of other places I can go so I'd rather not have such bullshit here.
You've used the ozone issue as nothing but a trojan horse to push your own political agenda - that is an insult to the readers here that prefer to read something better than things excreted from the arse end of the batshit insane wing of US politics.
I'm not sure why your post is tagged -1, but yes 2012 seems like 2002.
You need to know a system before you can conclude if it is out of balance. You need to objectively consider all possibilities as to the cause. Before interfering with a system, you need to evaluate the costs and risks of your actions.
You mean like the careful evaluation we did before dumping CFCs into the atmosphere...
Use of CFC's and banning CFC's are two very different things. All human action can potentially have unintended consequences - if we had to prove that everything is safe beforehand then no action would be possible. If any action does cause verifiable harm, then this harm can be calculated and the transgressor be made to pay for his liabilities, but presumption of innocence is absolutely essential - civilization is utterly impossible without it!
Government aggression, on the other hand, can only be justified when it is absolutely positively unavoidable.
...and the one we did before digging up fossil fuels and burning them like there is no tomorrow?
Your jab at burning fossil fuels ("like there is no tomorrow") is completely unfounded. Fossil fuels (coal, petroleum, natural gas) are the most accessible dense sources of energy that the human civilization could get at the start of the Industrial Revolution, which is the cause of countless benefits that we enjoy today. Before fossil fuels, the most common sources of energy were burning wood or manure, whale oil, draft animals, and other primitive sources of energy that were significantly dirtier and/or significantly more scarce. Without fossil fuels, you and I would probably be illiterate peasants involved in subsistence agriculture, and our lives, as well as the lives of our children, would be "nasty, brutish, and short" - until some viable energy source for industrialization could be found. Given the decrease in mortality / increase in population that was only made possible as the result of the Industrial Revolution, without fossil fuels there'd be "no tomorrow" for the vast majority of people alive today!
And, having gone past this stepping stone where fossil fuels are irreplaceable, fossil fuels will fall out of use by "tomorrow", the same way we no longer use horses and whale oil lamps today. We could have been very close to that already if not for the hippies who've sabotaged nuclear energy... and the warmongers -- Hitler, Stalin, as well as Truman, and their successors -- who've cast nuclear science in such a murderous light...
Increasing natural production of CO2 and other gases by about 4% (for a blink of an eye on the scale of this planet) is a very, very small price to pay for advancing the human civilization! As the result of this temporary increase, human beings can do things that nothing else in the known universe can accomplish, leaving this planet (and this solar system, and beyond) in a much better shape than we found them! On this planet alone we can plant farms, aid natural selection of plants to increase their productivity by several orders of magnitude, irrigate the deserts, build vast gardens floating on oceans, erect solar-concentration greenhouses that can grow bananas in Antarctica, and increase absorption of CO2 so much that it becomes a scarce commodity!
Or the one we do before we all send all our cattle onto the common grazing ground?
I (and other libertarians / pro-market philosophers) are fighting to prevent the tragedy of the commons, which governments tend to create. When it comes to environmental issues, emerging pollution-monitoring technologies can do much to make pollution a Property Rights issue, with no government intervention required. If over a billion people can maintain active accounts on one social networking site, the