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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."
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.
Except that these processes are simple enough that we can measure the high altitude concentrations of these compounds and show that their influence on the O3 concentration closely matches our understanding of the processes involved.
Ezekiel 23:20
The ozone "hole" expands and contracts with atmospheric temperature. The colder it is, the thinner the ozone, and thus the larger the hole. So the size of the hole is both seasonal, and coupled to polar temperatures. I believe the hole is the smallest ever because the temperature has been warmer, not necessarily because less ozone is destroyed by man made chemicals.
Better known as 318230.
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?
For reasons that are sufficiently messy that I certainly couldn't do them justice(and there really isn't any point in copy/pasting a pretend understanding from wikipedia and just wasting space) ozone levels vary considerably over time, both because of natural seasonal weather patterns and because of changes in the presence of various ozone-depleting synthetic compounds.
My understanding is that trends on atmospheric concentration of more or less all of the really nasty ozone-depleting compounds have been positive since regulation went into effect; but that the size and shape of the ozone hole has been a great deal more chaotic from season to season(shape counts, for our purposes, because ozone thinning over the antarctic is a bad sign; but the number of epidemiologists who care about penguin melanoma is limited, while ozone thinning over Australia is directly troublesome).
... 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.
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...
Graphical representation of a hole?
NO NO I will not post a link to GOATSE !!!
Must resist temptation
If your children ever found out how lame you are, they'd murder you in your sleep
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.
zow, probably the best collection of reliable sources ever quoted.
Seriously - reason? mises? redstate!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I did read a paper not so long ago about the Ozone layer being regulated to a large degree by cosmic rays, over the Antarctic.
And by the way, moderating dissenting voices "troll" is totally beyond the pale. Science is about skepticism. Physicists are highly skeptical of each other's results. When it comes to Earth Sciences, why is it that people crowd the paradigm like it's a sacred tome? Debates here would be far more interesting if they were actually allowed.
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.
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.
That's bullshit. R-12 and R-22 were long out of patent by the time the phaseout started.
That, unfortunately, is true.
Good job misrepresenting that. Here, let me post the abstract, literally the first thing you'd read:
This Letter reports reliable satellite data in the period of 1980–2007 covering two full 11-yr cosmic ray (CR) cycles, clearly showing the correlation between CRs and ozone depletion, especially the polar ozone loss (hole) over Antarctica. The results provide strong evidence of the physical mechanism that the CR-driven electron-induced reaction of halogenated molecules plays the dominant role in causing the ozone hole. Moreover, this mechanism predicts one of the severest ozone losses in 2008–2009 and probably another large hole around 2019–2020, according to the 11-yr CR cycle.
The paper does not say it's dependent on cosmic rays exclusively, instead it points out that cosmic ray activity seems to play a significant role in determining the activity of halogenated molecules destroying ozone. Guess which one of those parameters we've totally screwed around with from the 1970s onwards?
I'll give you a hint: it's not cosmic ray irradiation.
This Letter reports reliable satellite data in the period of 1980â"2007 covering two full 11-yr cosmic ray (CR) cycles
This should be a warning sign for you. Small data sets(and here, over short time scales) can indicate correct results, but they can also be highly misleading.
Well, that applies to the hypothesis that man-made CFCs cause it too. We don't have a record of the ozone hole over the Antarctic going back very far either, do we? For all we know, it's a natural cyclic event.
Interesting point, but therein lies the rub: The paper predicts another large hole around 2019. If that does happen, will you concede that it falsifies the hypothesis that the hole is caused by man-mad CFCs? This is how science works, after all, is it not? I will put my £10 onto the table if you will.
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.
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.
*sigh*. If you're going to quote the scientific literature in support of your argument, you need to at least make some effort to understand it first.
The paper says that cosmic rays strongly correlate with ozone depletion. The data point to cosmic-ray driven reactions of halogenated molecules as being the cause of the correlation. The *only* halogenated molecules present in the stratosphere in any significant concentration are CFCs. I'll repeat that: where the paper talks about "halogenated molecules", it's talking about CFCs, HCFCs and other man-made chemicals.
Hence, this paper is presenting an alternative explanation to *why* CFCs damage the ozone layer. The prevailing hypothesis is that photolysis of CFCs (i.e. UV from the sun breaking them apart) is what kicks off the ozone-depleting catalytic cycle. This paper says "Nah, it's not photolysis, it's cosmic-ray-induced ionisation of the CFCs that sets the whole thing off".
From the paper:
Summarising that: since 1992, there's been loads of CFCs in the atmosphere, and hence the rate-limiting step in how much ozone gets broken down is how many cosmic rays there are. Before 1980, there were no CFCs in the stratosphere, and hence cosmic rays didn't destroy any ozone. Your bet is thus meaningless: this paper is part of the argument over *why* CFCs cause ozone depletion, not *whether*.