Antarctic Ozone Hole Leveling Off 353
twistedfuck writes: "An Irish Time article reports that the size of the hole in the antartican ozone layer is levelling off and should begin reducing in size. It seems like it should be welcome news but it is tempered by the fact that more UV radiation will reach the southern hemisphere this year because the hole will persist longer. Unfortunately I can not find any details regarding the NOAA report on their website." Update: 11/06 17:31 GMT by H :Thanks to Isaac Lewis, NOAA Sysadmin and Slashdot reader, for pointing out more information, as well as pointing out the ozonelayer site.
Size will decline? (Score:2, Interesting)
Are there any meteorologists/ecologists out there who know how this works?
Mother Nature (Score:4, Interesting)
This article suggests that though the total mass of the hole is reducing in size, it is also maintaining itself for longer periods. Without research, an immediate assumption would suggest that this would be letting the same doses of UV rays reach the earth annually.
I'd say Mother Nature is attemtping to counteract our efforts and regulate the earth the way she has done for millions of years!
And given our (human) track record.. I'd give 1000:1 odds in favor of Mother Nature doing the right thing.
Additional info at EPA site (Score:5, Interesting)
And remember it's not really a hole, i.e. there is ozone present, it's just at significantly lower levels.
Here are a couple of sites I found useful :
www.epa.gov/ozone/science/hole/holehome.html
www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/
When we were in New Zealand the sun feels different ! It feels very intense and somewhat uncomfortable, and it was only the first month of spring. You HAVE to use sunscreen.
Problem with Environmental Theories (Score:4, Interesting)
Much like chemistry of 50 or 100 years ago in many ways would seem laughable to what we know now (and will again in 50 years probably), the science of the environment is a young and new science. Unlike chemistry or physics, it's much harder to do experiments, and the timescales involved are immense.
The truth is we simply know too little about the Earth to make longterm models and whatnot that are dead on. We can make GUESSES, and maybe even good guesses, but there is still so much that we don't know at this point.
As a side note-it is my understanding that CO2 levels during the time of the dinosaurs were much higher than they are today. The Earth can handle huge changes with relatively little environmental impact. It's been around (what? 5 billion years?) a long time, I don't think humanity can destroy it in a little over two century.
Scott
Another article, and my 2 cents... (Score:2, Interesting)
Every time I hear someone talk about the ozone hole that we (humans) are creating, I have a little laugh to myself. I mean, seriously... Human beings populate such an insanely small percentage of the Earth's surface (I mean, far less than half is even land anyway), how can you believe that we could really have such an immediate (read: 80 years) impact on something like the global climate? Come on, I think that's getting just a little bit of a big head... We wish we could control the weather...
Re:Hooray for regulation? (Score:5, Interesting)
a) Upon seeing problems, we've heavily cut back on all sorts of emissions under the belief that it will fix the problem.
b) Results of a) (above) will take sixty more years to manifest.
c) Problem is disappearing long before results of a) are known.
Therefore, perhaps a) was a faulty assumption that costs businesses billions annually, and the ozone hole is really just a cyclical thing?
That said, lower emissions are good, if only for two reasons - one, so that whilst canoeing the Indian Arm of the Fraser River, I don't know that Vancouver is (that way) due to the brown sky. Two, because they *do* seem to be responsible for all sorts of human respiratory problems. You know, if environmentalists weren't all a bunch of crackpots who use pseudoscience to justify whatever their jihad of the day is, I'd probably identify myself as one.
PS - The ICE at the NORTH POLE is MELTING!!! Oh NO!!!
Strange (Score:3, Interesting)
I have to use sunscreen when I go outside. I've got fair complexion and I burn up in the sun. Yet when I visit Sydney, I can spend 2 hours in the sun without as much getting a lick from sunburn.
You have to wonder what the situation is like in Hobart or Antartica.
Actually (Score:1, Interesting)
So, what would anybody who knows they can buy off the people with a nice environmental scare do?
They spread a massive chunk of propaganda and toss out some lobbyists. Meanwhile, they develop a product that is almost identical to the original, and just as bad for the environment (reactively).
So, now nothing has changed for the good or bad of the environment, but that company got to remain the exclusive source of chemicals for spray cans.
Re:I don't get something... (Score:2, Interesting)
Take a look at a map of the Arctic and the Antarctic, they are in fact almost exact opposites. The Arctic is a almost circular sea surrounded (almost) by land, roughly centred on the pole. The Antarctic is a high, near circular continent, roughly centred on the pole, surrounded by sea.
The main effect of this difference is that the Antarctic geography allows a stable polar vortex, which isolates the Antarctic atmosphere during the polar winter, allowing the upper atmosphere in particular to become very cold. The nastiness in the Ozone equilibria happens during the spring when this extremely cold upper atmosphere is irradiated by the sun.
The Arctic has a much weaker polar vortex, and hence, although ozone depletion is seen, it is much weaker.
The Polar Vortex, that's why it's there (Score:4, Interesting)
I believe there's a meteorological phenomenon called the polar vortex that causes the ozone hole to occur at the South Pole and during Antarctic summer. See this link [mmu.ac.uk] for more details. Short version is, during polar night there's a huge whirlpool of cold air that circulates there all night causing the CFC's we've emitted to more rapidly destroy the ozone in the region. By summer, the vortex stops, so the ozone hole disperses. There's also a vortex in the North Pole, but because there are a lot of irregular land masses there, the vortex up north is a lot weaker, hence the ozone hole up north is far smaller. But global warming is causing the northern vortex to strengthen, and hence increase the size of the hole up north.
This is what I get for watching too much Discovery Channel!
Re:Press Release (Score:2, Interesting)
I read a nice article (not sure if was on slashdot), that banning chlorine will be more damagin in the long run.
Because chlorine is an industrial by-product of many different chemical processes, it has to get gotten rid of somehow. Thus chlorine gas in warfare, cfc's in spray cans, pvc plastics - it's cheap!
So now the chlorine has to get bound in other materials and will pose an environmental threat some hundreds pf years later.
Maybe we should take a look at the processes having chlorine as a waste product and try and do them more environmentally-friendly
Re:Problem with Environmental Theories (Score:2, Interesting)
Funny, that's exactly what creationists say about evolution. To quote Stephen J. Gould:
The problem has nothing to do with the "theoryness" of environmental science, it has to do with the relative dearth of data with which to develop theories. In any case, as far as practical approaches, erring on the side of caution would be a prudent one. No factories are going broke because they had to install scrubbers in their smokestacks, just as loggers weren't losing their jobs because of the spotted owl. The picture of onerous environmental regulations as an unbearable crippling burden is a smokescreen thrown up by industry.