Hate to point out the obvious, but none of that says the current decline in size is due to that. The decline in size from 2006 to 2007 is indeed natural variation.
But what MillionthMonkey said was that we changed our behavior and it actually produced noticeable results in the atmosphere, and that those results (a decline in ozone hole size) were a success story — which is true. The ozone hole has declined in size over the last 10 years — slightly, but it's there. It is false that we won't see the effects of that until 2030: we have already seen the effects, most notably from the removal of short-lived CFCs. That is a success story, and that current declining trend is due to our efforts. The hole won't disappear until 2050 or so, but that is a different matter from whether it is currently declining in size.
If fygment was responding to something other than what MillionthMonkey was talking about, then I apologize for my subject line, but MillionthMonkey's point and my defense of it still stand.
Yes, it is. So, again, what is the error? You do know why their argument is invalid, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be coming here and asserting how it 's not credible.
If it goes for tobacco company funded organizations and oil company funded organizations, it goes for socialist agenda-driven funded organizations as well.
Ah, how convenient for you. Simply dismiss arbitrarily many scientific arguments as "biased", it so conveniently lets you retain whatever prejudices you have.
RealClimate is funded by the Tides Foundation, which has a "social change" agenda and receives backing from George Soros. The RealClimate authors don't receive any salary from anybody for running the site, nor does EMS exert any editorial control over the site; the funding just goes to web hosting.
I wouldn't expect purely objective analysis from any agenda-driven organization. Please, point out the scientific error in their analysis.
Spending Billions to fix sometime we know little about and have an inkling that it is our fault vs. Spending Billions on say Poluted Water Cleaning where we know the problem is real it has a tangable method for fixing, and we understand much more. Yes, but the impacts of global climate change are thought to be significantly greater, in terms of gross world product, than water pollution alone. It's a question of expected value: medium probability but high potential impact, vs. high probability but relatively lower impact.
Because the new refrigerants are less efficient than the old ones, which means we use more energy (i.e. burn more coal, etc.) to get the same amount of cooling. In essence, we've decided to protect against the possibility of high-altitude ozone depletion at the cost of ground-level ozone and toxic pollution and increased CO2 production.
Your accounting leaves out the fact that CFCs are also greenhouse gases, and that when refrigeration equipment was upgraded to use the new refrigerants, it was also frequently made more efficient and with less leakage.
Some of the CFC replacements are worse greenhouse gases, although they also tend to break down quickly. So far the IPCC finds that there has been a net reduction in warming due to refrigerants.
No one even considered the big-picture environmental impact of banning CFCs, we just lurched in to action. That's a nice story, but like most stories, it takes certain liberties with reality. Check out this NYT article, published a month after the London Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The parties involved were indeed aware of, for instance, risks of an increased greenhouse effect. They chose to proceed anyway.
Considering the rate the ozone hole was growing, "lurching into action" was probably the best course, anyway. Far better than "let's wait indefinitely to learn more" which just turns into an excuse to do nothing for an arbitrarily long amount of time, canceling known benefits with uncertain risks. Better to get something underway and revise it as you know more. Indeed, even with today's knowledge, reduced CFC emissions are still regarded as a net win.
SO I guess the question really is are these connected in some way that we have not yet been willing to explore. "Not yet been willing to explore"? Don't confuse your ignorance of the issue with bias on the part of the scientific community. Connections between the two have certainly been explored.
Climate affects ozone formation/destruction through temperature, cloud formation, and wind patterns. Ozone in turn affects climate. Tropospheric ozone has a greenhouse warming effect, but that's not what the ozone hole is about; that's due to stratospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone depletion can affect climate in various indirect ways, by altering stratospheric wind and temperature patterns which can make their way down to the troposphere. However, the effect is small compared to, say, the greenhouse effect of CO2.
Co2 produced by man seems to be the popular cause and everyone who thinks otherwise is attacked personally to keep this theory alive. Yeah, that's exactly it. It can't be that those who think otherwise have been shown to be wrong. No, the only reason CO2 is thought to have any effect on the climate is because The Man is keeping the brave skeptics down with brutal personal attacks.
Yeah, except that never happened. Basically all the media scare from that period can be traced back to a single 1971 paper by Rasool and Schneider — it was hardly some scientific consensus at the time. The link goes to someone who has made a thorough effort to track down all those media stories and the science they cite, as well as other scientific papers at the time. The idea that the climate community thought "the world would be covered in ice by now" — implying, of course, that they were wrong before and therefore can be safely disregarded now — is a myth being peddled by those with a political agenda.
Note that your link is, ah, shall we say "sparse" in its supporting links to the scientific literature.
Just because the dog barked at the airplane doesn't mean the dog scared the airplane off. Who's to say that the ozone hole is not a natural phenomenon getting larger and smaller throughout the years. The ozone hole has surely fluctuated in size in the past, although perhaps not as much as it has recently. The attribution of human influences is not due to correlation of long term trends, but on an analysis of the natural and human-induced chemical processes which create, destroy, and transport ozone.
Unless I'm mistaken (and I just might be) we don't have any data describing the ozone layer for thousands or hundreds of years. And in the grand scheme of the world, tens of years is not enough to get a good picture. Ten years is not enough to get a picture of what ozone has done in the distant past, but it is enough to attribute the recent trend to human influences. We are not relying on some mere correlation between CFC and ozone levels, but rather on a detailed measurement of the individual human and natural processes which alter ozone concentrations. Both effects certainly contribute, but the human-related processes are simply larger in magnitude.
Your post is a perfect example of mixing up the ozone hole and global warming. Thanks for making my point.
You said, "`they' have been saying a reduction in the ozone was a contributing factor to Global Warming". You referred me to an article about global warming contributing to a reduction in the ozone. That is exactly the opposite of what you were originally talking about.
Climate affects ozone, since temperature influences cloud formation and reaction rates. As I said, ozone has much less effect on climate (or at least, the stratospheric ozone relevant to the ozone hole; tropospheric ozone is a different matter). Stratospheric ozone depletion has some effect on climate, as I noted, but it's not a major contributor.
With some very rare exceptions, humans are generalists. I'm not talking about complicated analysis here - but they need to know enough to be able to talk to the economists, just like the economists should be able to understand the climatologists enough to understand why something is bad. No, most of them don't. Only a minority of climatologists even make predictions of things that economists even use in their analyses.
Climatologists need to know about the climate. They don't need to run economic analyses. There are some climatologists who dabble in economics, but most economists just take climatological predictions straight out of the literature; they don't need climatologists to tell them what is economically important about climate.
I consider being able to balance at least a household budget to be a basic skill needed for anybody graduating high school. A household budget is not what was being discussed here. apparently was referring to running a balanced national budget, not balancing a personal checking account.
This is why I have trouble with all climate change scientists, on both sides. [...] Now, if the hole had increased in size by 30% do you think this guy would have said that it had gotten "somewhat larger." I don't. I suspect that if this was an increase in size this guy would have been saying its getting "significantly larger." So basically, you're condemning "all climate change scientists" for something that one scientist never said, but you suspect he hypothetically could have. Great.
Why is the hole bigger over the south than it is in the north? Here is a nice FAQ from the EPA.
CFCs are emitted mostly in the northern hemisphere but they get mixed throughout the globe. Antarctica is the coldest part of the planet (due to its polar location and large land mass, as well as the isolating effects of the circumpolar Southern Ocean). This forms stratospheric clouds which, through a sequence of chemical processes, break down ozone. In addition, the isolated Antarctic polar vortex prevents ozone rich air, and ozone depletion-slowing chemicals, from entering the Antarctic.
If is it, then why are we sure that humans have caused it (as opposed to it just being a natural part of the earth's atmosphere)? The short answer is that atmospheric chemists have studied the individual natural and man-made processes which create, destroy, and transport ozone, and have quantified through measurement and calculation the relative contribution of each factor.
Goodness. It can't be more than a month or two ago I either read or heard (documentary/news) that the ozone layer was clearly in much better shape and giving the Montreal Protocol credit for it. That's right. Do you think that this news of a smaller ozone hole contradicts that?
Another example is an article that stated "we don't understand why the ice is melting as quickly as it is, it defies all our models", then later in the same article "there can be no doubt this is caused by mankind". We don't know why this year had more ice melt than usual (although wind patterns have been implicated), but the overall trend is compatible with what models have predicted so far.
...it will be somehow, some way, spun as justification to increase everyone's taxes in the name of environmental protection, saving the earth, or what the hell ever.
Yeah, never mind the science, it's all a librul conspiracy to steal your tax dollars.
That's what all this nonsense of "going green" has ever been about.
Wow, man, you're even further in denial than the usual anti-environmentalist. Are you really claiming that no environmental problems have ever occurred and that no environmental measures have ever had a positive effect?
We don't know near enough about long-term changes in our climate to make any conclusions. If you hear any scientist declaring as a fact that it does or does not exist and we did or did not cause it, they are far from credible. Scientists can establish credibly that there have been long term ozone and climate trends, and that humans have affected them. What they can't establish is whether any data from this year alone indicates a change in the long term trend.
Couldn't the same logic be applied to global temperature averages? Yes: you can't conclude a warming or cooling trend from one year's data. That's why "record year" announcements aren't very meaningful (unless maybe it breaks a record by a lot).
There are relatively small recorded data sets for both the ozone layer condition and global temperatures, so I guess it's about which agenda you want to promote: changes either signify a pattern change, or are just abborations. No, now you are confusing annual changes with trends. There is a definite trend in global temperature, and a definite trend in ozone. We can't tell whether either trend has changed from last year, but they are there. Right now the ozone trend is pretty neutral, actually: not much increase or decrease. People have been hoping it will change to a negative trend, but it's too soon to tell whether that has started.
I would.
But there's an amusing link between global warming (other such climate disaster) panic artists and hardcore Christians: If anything they want to happen happens, it's due to human activity, or God helping them out respectively. The cheapest rhetorical trick in the book: compare your opponents to religious fanatics. Why not just Godwin the thread and call them Nazis?
If you want to dispute actual climate science findings, go ahead. But insinuating that it's all a faith issue and there's no scientific evidence involved is a political ploy, not a rational argument in support of your position.
Pardon me, but for many years "they" have been saying a reduction in the ozone was a contributing factor to Global Warming. Really? Who is "they", and when did "they" say that?
The public has been mixing up the ozone hole and global warming for many years. I don't know why; maybe because they both involve gases in the atmosphere, or that the ozone hole leads to sunburns, or something. There is some connection between ozone depletion and climate change (e.g., here), but it's not a major contributor.
There is not precise proof that CFCs causes ozone hole. There is only conjecture and hypothesis that is substantiated by biased studies.
You've got all of the FUD weasel words, that's for sure. Who cares about massive amounts of evidence? It's not "precise proof" (whatever THAT is). Experimental evidence? Logic? No, no, they're "conjecture" and "hypothesis". Hell, let's say that all the studies are "biased" (in what way?) to make them sound even less credible.
What your post is lacking, however, is actual scientific argumentation. There are plenty of studies out there which find strong connections between CFCs and ozone depletion. If you've got a problem with their evidence or reasoning, state what it is. Don't just wave your hands around.
The Earth spews more environmentally dangerous gases and chemicals that man can EVER produce.
Ah, more weaseling. Ok, does the Earth spew more, say, CFCs than man does? (Answer: no.)
The even think that man has the power to change the climate or environment of the whole planet is a sign of arrogance beyond belief.
Sorry, you can't dismiss scientific evidence by calling it "arrogant". Your opinion of it has nothing to do with its truth or falsehood.
Besides which, it is utterly obvious that man is having a global effect on this planet: just look at land use changes, ecosystem changes and exinctions, and so on.
P.S. What do you think is responsible for the observed increase in global CFCs, CO2, atmospheric aerosols, etc.? Last I checked, the atmosphere was part of the environment.
What, are you recycling anti-global warming propaganda now? We've known for 10-15 years that the ozone trend is not explicable by solar cycles. (Heck, see this report from 1994 — and we have 12 more years of data to back it up.) And we don't need ancient data to demonstrate that: we just need the solar data for the same period we have ozone data. We can see the solar cycle in the ozone measurements, but the solar trend doesn't match up with the ozone trend. Sure, more data would help, but it's not necessary to make the case.
You missed the original poster's point, which was: if it is indeed a crap shoot, "better safe than sorry" is a sound cost-benefit policy.
The problem comes down to this: this is a natural system, that existed long before our industrialization of the planet, and we have no idea if this is a naturally occurring phenomenon or one created by said industrialization.
Of course we do have an idea. Just because you want to dismiss the research doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
We have no records to refer back to
Records help, but they are not necessary. We can also apply the laws of chemistry and physics to predict to the ozone layer with and without human contributions to ozone-depleting chemicals.
And while science is supposed to be rational (test hypothesis against data), scientsists are not. A scientist gets an idea in his/her head and wants the data to confirm that hypothesis, so they alter their experimental models to try and generate the data they want to fit their hypothesis. End result: bad science and scientists everywhere at loggerheads over their pet theories, and the media fanning the flames using incomplete and sometime spurious data.
That ship has sailed: it's been 15-20 years since the scientific community hashed that issue out. Industrial contributions to ozone depletion were highly controversial in the 1970s and into the 1980s, but no longer are. Hell, if they've already awarded a Nobel Prize for it (1995, Chemistry), you know it's uncontroversial: the Nobel committee is scientifically conservative.
We know this: the hole shrank. Unfortunately, past that, we know precious little.
We can't explain why the hole shrank this year because the interannual variation depends on too many factors that we can't predict. We can, however, predict the average trend, and the observed trend is consistent with our emissions of CFCs and our knowledge of what they do to stratospheric ozone.
You have got to be kidding! We changed our behaviour and it worked? In such a short time frame? You know what? That's utter BS and most climatologists would concur. In fact, there is no clue why the hole shrank. You have provided no basis for your claim that "most" scientists agree with you. But hey, contradicting basic science makes you skeptical and cool, so rake in more mod points. Mustering an imaginary army of unnamed experts who support your claims can't hurt, right?
"By 2005, the total combined abundance of anthropogenic ozone-depleting gases in the troposphere had decreased by 8-9% from the peak value observed in the 1992-1994 time period. The overall magnitude of this decrease is attributable to the estimated changes in emissions and is consistent with the known atmospheric lifetimes and our understanding of transport processes."
I'm sure the WMO must be populated by renegade scientists who disagree with the majority findings.
Anyway, they also note,
"The shorter-lived gases (e.g., methyl chloroform and methyl bromide) continue to provide much of the decline in total combined effective abundances of anthropogenic chlorine-containing and bromine-containing ozone-depleting gases in the troposphere. The early removal of the shorter-lived gases means that later decreases in ozone-depleting substances will likely be dominated by the atmospheric removal of the longer-lived gases."
In other words, when we cut CFC emissions, we saw a significant and almost immediate change in trend as the short-lived CFCs were removed from the atmosphere (and we failed to replenish them). Now that the low-hanging fruit are gone, we're going to see a more gradual decrease in the future, as the longer-lived CFCs slowly disappear.
There are plenty of studies supporting these statements if you care to dig through the full report.
P.S. You also appear to be confusing atmospheric chemists with climatologists. There is some overlap, but mostly the ozone hole guys are not climatologists per se.
but give me a break.
It's the chase for the almighty bottom line again. Climate researchers generate very little, if any, income from their research, so their operating costs and salaries have to be paid from research grants and contracts. Oh noes! Scientists are paid from grants! Therefore scientists everywhere are all money-grubbing tools and we are free to discard any scientific result produced by such sycophants.
The rural temperature-recording stations are being encroached on by suburban and urban development, bringing them into urban heat islands, so you pull a 'correction figure' out of your ass (nobody's actually done research to determine whether the correction factor that climate researchers are applying for the heat island effect is correct) Uh, no. There certainly has been research on the strength of the urban heat island effect. You may not agree their UHI corrections, but you can't claim that no research has gone into them.
that just happens to leave a measurable net temperature gain, Urban stations are normalized against neighboring rural trends, and even the SurfaceStation effort found little difference between high quality and low quality station records.
and you can flog 'human activities are driving global warming' to whip up panic, Hey, put up or shut up. You can insinuate all day about how there's a global scientific conspiracy to falsify conclusions, but unless you are prepared to actually argue against those results, it's all FUD.
Similarly, they've flogged the increase in the ozone hole for years now, again suggesting that we're causing the hole to expand... Ok, for the record, are you seriously claiming that we're not? I would be most interested to see your proposed alternative theory. Perhaps you too can win a Nobel Prize for it. I'll also be most interested to see your theory explain why the ozone depletion trend slowed right after we cut our CFC emissions.
but now that it shrinks, they have to downplay the event so that the public -- a notoriously fickle audience -- won't just say "The ozone hole is shrinking; that problem is over" and start ignoring them, causing the research money to dry up; Uh huh. Why have ozone researchers been saying that the ozone hole is a problem and we need to cut CFC emissions (which we have in fact done)? Because they want the hole to keep getting bigger so they can ride the ozone hole gravy train? Give me a break. Believe me, ozone researchers don't want the ozone hole to keep getting bigger.
For that matter, research money is not going to dry up if the ozone hole keeps recovering. Ozone is barely in the public eye right now. You'd be better off applying your paranoid conspiracy theories to global warming than ozone research. But hey, why not apply them to a field of research, like ozone, where they're even more patently irrational. Paranoid conspiracy theories work for everything.
they have to discount the recent evidence that contradicts all their carefully-crafted theories in order to keep paranoia high and money coming in. Oh, please, tell me what recent evidence "contradicts all their carefully-crafted theories". I hope you aren't going to point to the decrease in ozone hole size this year: ozone hole size zig-zags up and down all the time due to natural interannual variability, and it has certainly decreased from one year to the next before — even while the overall positive trend continued. Interannual variability is a completely different issue than decadal trends — and, for that matter, the trend ought to start decreasing soon anyway as the ozone hole recovers.
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But what MillionthMonkey said was that we changed our behavior and it actually produced noticeable results in the atmosphere, and that those results (a decline in ozone hole size) were a success story — which is true. The ozone hole has declined in size over the last 10 years — slightly, but it's there. It is false that we won't see the effects of that until 2030: we have already seen the effects, most notably from the removal of short-lived CFCs. That is a success story, and that current declining trend is due to our efforts. The hole won't disappear until 2050 or so, but that is a different matter from whether it is currently declining in size.
If fygment was responding to something other than what MillionthMonkey was talking about, then I apologize for my subject line, but MillionthMonkey's point and my defense of it still stand.
One-sided analysis is not a scientific error.
Yes, it is. So, again, what is the error? You do know why their argument is invalid, right? Otherwise you wouldn't be coming here and asserting how it 's not credible.
If it goes for tobacco company funded organizations and oil company funded organizations, it goes for socialist agenda-driven funded organizations as well.
Ah, how convenient for you. Simply dismiss arbitrarily many scientific arguments as "biased", it so conveniently lets you retain whatever prejudices you have.
Your accounting leaves out the fact that CFCs are also greenhouse gases, and that when refrigeration equipment was upgraded to use the new refrigerants, it was also frequently made more efficient and with less leakage.
Some of the CFC replacements are worse greenhouse gases, although they also tend to break down quickly. So far the IPCC finds that there has been a net reduction in warming due to refrigerants. No one even considered the big-picture environmental impact of banning CFCs, we just lurched in to action. That's a nice story, but like most stories, it takes certain liberties with reality. Check out this NYT article, published a month after the London Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. The parties involved were indeed aware of, for instance, risks of an increased greenhouse effect. They chose to proceed anyway.
Considering the rate the ozone hole was growing, "lurching into action" was probably the best course, anyway. Far better than "let's wait indefinitely to learn more" which just turns into an excuse to do nothing for an arbitrarily long amount of time, canceling known benefits with uncertain risks. Better to get something underway and revise it as you know more. Indeed, even with today's knowledge, reduced CFC emissions are still regarded as a net win.
Climate affects ozone formation/destruction through temperature, cloud formation, and wind patterns. Ozone in turn affects climate. Tropospheric ozone has a greenhouse warming effect, but that's not what the ozone hole is about; that's due to stratospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone depletion can affect climate in various indirect ways, by altering stratospheric wind and temperature patterns which can make their way down to the troposphere. However, the effect is small compared to, say, the greenhouse effect of CO2. Co2 produced by man seems to be the popular cause and everyone who thinks otherwise is attacked personally to keep this theory alive. Yeah, that's exactly it. It can't be that those who think otherwise have been shown to be wrong. No, the only reason CO2 is thought to have any effect on the climate is because The Man is keeping the brave skeptics down with brutal personal attacks.
The world would be covered in ice by now.
Yeah, except that never happened. Basically all the media scare from that period can be traced back to a single 1971 paper by Rasool and Schneider — it was hardly some scientific consensus at the time. The link goes to someone who has made a thorough effort to track down all those media stories and the science they cite, as well as other scientific papers at the time. The idea that the climate community thought "the world would be covered in ice by now" — implying, of course, that they were wrong before and therefore can be safely disregarded now — is a myth being peddled by those with a political agenda.
Note that your link is, ah, shall we say "sparse" in its supporting links to the scientific literature.
Please, this is a highly politicized issue and climate scientists make comments like that all the time.
That response was as devoid of facts as the original.
Tell me this, everything else asside, in what world is a 30% change "slight."
It's well within normal interannual variation.
Your post is a perfect example of mixing up the ozone hole and global warming. Thanks for making my point.
You said, "`they' have been saying a reduction in the ozone was a contributing factor to Global Warming". You referred me to an article about global warming contributing to a reduction in the ozone. That is exactly the opposite of what you were originally talking about.
Climate affects ozone, since temperature influences cloud formation and reaction rates. As I said, ozone has much less effect on climate (or at least, the stratospheric ozone relevant to the ozone hole; tropospheric ozone is a different matter). Stratospheric ozone depletion has some effect on climate, as I noted, but it's not a major contributor.
Climatologists need to know about the climate. They don't need to run economic analyses. There are some climatologists who dabble in economics, but most economists just take climatological predictions straight out of the literature; they don't need climatologists to tell them what is economically important about climate. I consider being able to balance at least a household budget to be a basic skill needed for anybody graduating high school. A household budget is not what was being discussed here. apparently was referring to running a balanced national budget, not balancing a personal checking account.
CFCs are emitted mostly in the northern hemisphere but they get mixed throughout the globe. Antarctica is the coldest part of the planet (due to its polar location and large land mass, as well as the isolating effects of the circumpolar Southern Ocean). This forms stratospheric clouds which, through a sequence of chemical processes, break down ozone. In addition, the isolated Antarctic polar vortex prevents ozone rich air, and ozone depletion-slowing chemicals, from entering the Antarctic.
...it will be somehow, some way, spun as justification to increase everyone's taxes in the name of environmental protection, saving the earth, or what the hell ever.
Yeah, never mind the science, it's all a librul conspiracy to steal your tax dollars.
That's what all this nonsense of "going green" has ever been about.
Wow, man, you're even further in denial than the usual anti-environmentalist. Are you really claiming that no environmental problems have ever occurred and that no environmental measures have ever had a positive effect?
If you want to dispute actual climate science findings, go ahead. But insinuating that it's all a faith issue and there's no scientific evidence involved is a political ploy, not a rational argument in support of your position.
The public has been mixing up the ozone hole and global warming for many years. I don't know why; maybe because they both involve gases in the atmosphere, or that the ozone hole leads to sunburns, or something. There is some connection between ozone depletion and climate change (e.g., here), but it's not a major contributor.
There is not precise proof that CFCs causes ozone hole. There is only conjecture and hypothesis that is substantiated by biased studies.
You've got all of the FUD weasel words, that's for sure. Who cares about massive amounts of evidence? It's not "precise proof" (whatever THAT is). Experimental evidence? Logic? No, no, they're "conjecture" and "hypothesis". Hell, let's say that all the studies are "biased" (in what way?) to make them sound even less credible.
What your post is lacking, however, is actual scientific argumentation. There are plenty of studies out there which find strong connections between CFCs and ozone depletion. If you've got a problem with their evidence or reasoning, state what it is. Don't just wave your hands around.
The Earth spews more environmentally dangerous gases and chemicals that man can EVER produce.
Ah, more weaseling. Ok, does the Earth spew more, say, CFCs than man does? (Answer: no.)
The even think that man has the power to change the climate or environment of the whole planet is a sign of arrogance beyond belief.
Sorry, you can't dismiss scientific evidence by calling it "arrogant". Your opinion of it has nothing to do with its truth or falsehood.
Besides which, it is utterly obvious that man is having a global effect on this planet: just look at land use changes, ecosystem changes and exinctions, and so on.
P.S. What do you think is responsible for the observed increase in global CFCs, CO2, atmospheric aerosols, etc.? Last I checked, the atmosphere was part of the environment.
What, are you recycling anti-global warming propaganda now? We've known for 10-15 years that the ozone trend is not explicable by solar cycles. (Heck, see this report from 1994 — and we have 12 more years of data to back it up.) And we don't need ancient data to demonstrate that: we just need the solar data for the same period we have ozone data. We can see the solar cycle in the ozone measurements, but the solar trend doesn't match up with the ozone trend. Sure, more data would help, but it's not necessary to make the case.
In short: it's a crapshoot.
You missed the original poster's point, which was: if it is indeed a crap shoot, "better safe than sorry" is a sound cost-benefit policy.
The problem comes down to this: this is a natural system, that existed long before our industrialization of the planet, and we have no idea if this is a naturally occurring phenomenon or one created by said industrialization.
Of course we do have an idea. Just because you want to dismiss the research doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
We have no records to refer back to
Records help, but they are not necessary. We can also apply the laws of chemistry and physics to predict to the ozone layer with and without human contributions to ozone-depleting chemicals.
And while science is supposed to be rational (test hypothesis against data), scientsists are not. A scientist gets an idea in his/her head and wants the data to confirm that hypothesis, so they alter their experimental models to try and generate the data they want to fit their hypothesis. End result: bad science and scientists everywhere at loggerheads over their pet theories, and the media fanning the flames using incomplete and sometime spurious data.
That ship has sailed: it's been 15-20 years since the scientific community hashed that issue out. Industrial contributions to ozone depletion were highly controversial in the 1970s and into the 1980s, but no longer are. Hell, if they've already awarded a Nobel Prize for it (1995, Chemistry), you know it's uncontroversial: the Nobel committee is scientifically conservative.
We know this: the hole shrank. Unfortunately, past that, we know precious little.
We can't explain why the hole shrank this year because the interannual variation depends on too many factors that we can't predict. We can, however, predict the average trend, and the observed trend is consistent with our emissions of CFCs and our knowledge of what they do to stratospheric ozone.
According to the World Meteorological Organization's 2006 assessment report on ozone depletion,
"By 2005, the total combined abundance of anthropogenic ozone-depleting gases in the troposphere had decreased by 8-9% from the peak value observed in the 1992-1994 time period. The overall magnitude of this decrease is attributable to the estimated changes in emissions and is consistent with the known atmospheric lifetimes and our understanding of transport processes."
I'm sure the WMO must be populated by renegade scientists who disagree with the majority findings.
Anyway, they also note,
"The shorter-lived gases (e.g., methyl chloroform and methyl bromide) continue to provide much of the decline in total combined effective abundances of anthropogenic chlorine-containing and bromine-containing ozone-depleting gases in the troposphere. The early removal of the shorter-lived gases means that later decreases in ozone-depleting substances will likely be dominated by the atmospheric removal of the longer-lived gases."
In other words, when we cut CFC emissions, we saw a significant and almost immediate change in trend as the short-lived CFCs were removed from the atmosphere (and we failed to replenish them). Now that the low-hanging fruit are gone, we're going to see a more gradual decrease in the future, as the longer-lived CFCs slowly disappear.
There are plenty of studies supporting these statements if you care to dig through the full report.
P.S. You also appear to be confusing atmospheric chemists with climatologists. There is some overlap, but mostly the ozone hole guys are not climatologists per se.
For that matter, research money is not going to dry up if the ozone hole keeps recovering. Ozone is barely in the public eye right now. You'd be better off applying your paranoid conspiracy theories to global warming than ozone research. But hey, why not apply them to a field of research, like ozone, where they're even more patently irrational. Paranoid conspiracy theories work for everything. they have to discount the recent evidence that contradicts all their carefully-crafted theories in order to keep paranoia high and money coming in. Oh, please, tell me what recent evidence "contradicts all their carefully-crafted theories". I hope you aren't going to point to the decrease in ozone hole size this year: ozone hole size zig-zags up and down all the time due to natural interannual variability, and it has certainly decreased from one year to the next before — even while the overall positive trend continued. Interannual variability is a completely different issue than decadal trends — and, for that matter, the trend ought to start decreasing soon anyway as the ozone hole recovers.