Slashdot Mirror
Thanks To the Montreal Protocol, We Avoided Severe Ozone Depletion
hypnosec writes: Scientists say the ozone layer is in good shape thanks to the Montreal Protocol, which has helped us avoid severe ozone depletion. Research suggests that the Antarctic ozone hole would have been 40% bigger by now if not for the international treaty. "Our research confirms the importance of the Montreal Protocol and shows that we have already had real benefits. We knew that it would save us from large ozone loss 'in the future', but in fact we are already past the point when things would have become noticeably worse," lead author Professor Martyn Chipperfield, from the School of Earth & Environment at the University of Leeds, said in a press release.
The hottest decade on record is the last one and significantly warmer than the '80s & 90s.
Try reading article next time - depletion happens more quickly in COLDER winters.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
No one seems to address that possibility.
Is your google broken? This has indeed been addressed (by actual scientists) and the estimate of those impacts are of course refined as models improve.
Like here.
Someone had to do it.
I can't tell if you are joking or serious, but I'll try to explain. The ozone layer is a completely distinct problem from global warming. The presence of ozone is necessary because ozone blocks UV radiation. Ozone does act as a weak greenhouse gas, as you can see on the list of greenhouse gases here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas but it is one of the weakest. Note that if anything, this would mean you'd naively expect a lower temperature when there's more ozone (in fact the actual relation is more complicated). So the idea that the ozone hole would have caused warming is just deeply wrong.
CFC's were nasty chemicals, but they weren't generally crucial to modern life.... Go nuclear or give up.
It's a common myth that Nuclear doesn't contribute to greenhouse gasses however, in reality, CFC114 is the primary chemical input to enriching Nuclear fuel prior to its use in Nuclear Reactors. Several years ago I was curious about this and I used data available from the US EPA web site on licenced CFC emitters and discovered that the largest emitter there was from the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant.
At roughly 1,500,000Kg per year it was over 5 times more than the second on the list.
The reason this is important is not because CFC's are a more potent (20,000*C) greenhouse gas, it's because CFC's affect Phytoplankton which are the creatures that produce oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. Coupled with the secondary effect of ocean acidification from carbon absorbed from the atmosphere it interferes with the calcium content of these creatures shells forcing them deeper where photo synthesis is less effective. The same creatures are also affected by ozone depletion (which also forces them deeper) as it that careful balance of the suns radiation that allows them to produce oxygen in the first 1-10 metres of the oceans surface.
They produce more oxygen than all of the tress on earth so understanding and making sure they are ok is one of those less understood tipping points that humans are messing with.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.