Antarctic Ozone Hole Shrinks 30 Percent 436
polar red sends us news of a story that many outlets have picked up from a European Space Agency press release: the Antarctic ozone hole is 30% smaller than it was during the previous record year. It's still about the size of North America. "Scientists say this year's smaller hole... is due to natural variations in temperature and atmospheric dynamics... and is not indicative of a long-term trend. 'Although the hole is somewhat smaller than usual, we cannot conclude from this that the ozone layer is recovering already,' [one researcher said]."
summary... (Score:4, Funny)
In short, EVERYBODY PANIC and give us grant monies!
Since I don't have kids, and probably won't, I say screw the ozone. I'm all for living indoors anyways.
Re:summary... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, really: do you want to live in a world where merely breathing the air increases your risk of cancer? Where eating fish from the ocean causes cumulative mercury poisoning? Where the forests are replaced by vast landscapes of refuse, and you can't go swimming at a beach without considering fecal contamination?
Re:summary... (Score:5, Funny)
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-We would be out of oil by now
-Our forests would be gone by now(Remember those commercials - the one with the little girl walking with her grandfather that were wearing gas masks and they were in a dry river bed and she says "Grandaddy, what was it like to have trees?")
-The ozone hole will get larger and eventually allow kill 80% of life on the planet
-Mercury poison will kill all the fish (Fictional movie about it [imdb.com])
People like me who have been through this crap before are now cynical. Are there some serious environmental concerns? Sure, but it doesn't match the propaganda. The upcoming breed of kids are taking it for hook, line and sinker.
Along the same lines but different category, Uri Geller [nbc.com] has a whole new audience to fool now and the kids today will probably think that he was some sort of magician like that other loser, Chris Angel. Uri Geller was a fake and no one will remember.
Re:summary... (Score:5, Interesting)
The world would be covered in ice [businessandmedia.org] by now.
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And 1984 was supposed to happen in 1984. Therefore, it can never happen.
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The post to which you replied said none of the things you bring up as "prophecies" from 1970. In fact, these are all ludicrous exaggerations which you use as strawmen to dismiss actual concerns of pollution.
The original post listed several specific things, none of which you addressed:
1) carcinogens in the air (which we, as humans, breathe to survive)
2) mercury biomagnification in fish, which in turn will acc
[citation needed] (Score:4, Interesting)
As for saying that the ozone hole would get larger
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No, what was actually said was that in the year 2000 oil production would peak and then start to decline. That's not the same as "oil running out" - indeed, oil will probably never run out. Production rates will get so low however that we might as well have run out. This prediction was made by a petroleum geologist working for Shell, and was based on extrapolation of trends and observed decline rates in existing fields.
Well, oil production didn't
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Unfortunately that generally causes more noise.
I find it ironic - if the ozone hole was 30% BIGGER this year they'd be crying gloom and doom. No mention of a 'randomly low year not related to the overall trend' in that situation. Amazing how "news" can be twisted and presented totally differently depending on your intended goal.
The lack of nuclear terorist attacks this year was zero. However,
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They can wear sunscreen, which is a good idea even in areas not under the ozone hole.
Personally, I've heard for years about the dangers of ozone emissions from gasoline, etc. Maybe the ozone from those has finally made its way up to the upper atmosphere.
I've always thought it interesting that ozone is considered essential in the upper atmosphere; yet is conside
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Yeah, how bizarre! Also weird is how hydrochloric acid is considered an essential component of etching silicon chips, yet at the same time is considered a bad thing to get in your eye. WTF is up with scientists?!
Re:summary... (Score:5, Funny)
In short, EVERYBODY PANIC and give us grant monies!Too late for me. As soon as I read, "Antarctic Ozone Hole Shrinks 30 Percent," I celebrated by emptying 20 cans of old hair spray that were filled with cloro-fluoro-carbons.
Whoo-hooo! The environment is fixed! Time to buy that Hummer!
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Though it seems to have escaped the public, the ozone depletion problem was solved with the ratification of the Montreal Protocol.
So what's the story? Well, don't put away the SPF-1000 sunscreen yet if you're going to be near the poles. Scientist projections estimated it would take several decades for the earth to fully repair itself. Sometime by
Re:summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Earth is our home, numbnuts.
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I think not being poisoned and irradiated to death is more a more fundamental concern than the balance of my (nonexistent) checking account, but maybe I just have screwed priorities.
Re:summary... (Score:4)
Re:summary... (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, 'fixing the earth' is a complex affair, especially if you're not going to cop out and either eliminate humanity or return us to hunter-gatherer technology levels.
To the point that any climatologist should be able to balance a budget rather easily.
You see, I'd also expect them to be able to perform a certain amount of economic analysis and at least try to identify the 'best bang for the buck' methods for reducing pollution. After all, they are talking about messing with global economies. Causing a depression for trying to enforce uneconomical standards wouldn't help their cause in the long run. A prosperous economy has more funding for pollution controls, green research, efficiency improvements, etc...
Re:summary... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Look. (Score:3, Funny)
Tell me something... (Score:4, Insightful)
But, when the hole shrinks, it's "Well let's not be too hasty about saying things are improving"
Hmm?
Re:Tell me something... (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't think it is. Actually, I hardly even see these news anymore, as that tend to be the norm.
Re:Tell me something... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe it's because all the ozone fearmongers have jumped ship to the rising tide of global warming. They realized the hole isn't going to get much bigger, and so global warming offers much more bang for your buck when you want to be an alarmist. 10 years from now the warmists will stumble upon the next great catastrophe. Starting to see a pattern? No? Think back now, remember when "overpopulation" was all the rage? Overpopulation was the hit catastrophe in the early 80's, I remember going to museums as a kid and seeing giant electronic numbers counting up, showing the size of the world's population with cataclismic charts of the world. National Geographic ran constant articles on it, everybody feared the lack of food sources. And that wasn't the first...
Global cooling gave way to overpopulation, which gave way to the hole in the ozone, which now passed on to global warming. If I was old enough, I'm sure I'd recognize what came before those too...help me out, fill in the timeline :)
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Duck and Cover [wikipedia.org]
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Look: if a nuclear exchange between us and the soviets had occurred, the entire world would not have been turned to glass. Sure, people close to ground zero's would be screwed no matter what they did, but as it turns out a huge number of people would have been in regions where their actions immediately following that first big flash decided whether they lived or died. The "duck and cover" training is an attempt to protect (a
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Re: Tell me something... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am old enough to remember this. The "second ice age" and "over population" folks were pretty much one-in-the-same. That started in the 60's. I can still remember the TV commercials when I was a kid crying about over populating the planet; "We'll all be a doublin' in thirty-two years". From the same time period I can remember newspaper articles whining about the coming second ice age; "It's already getting colder!".
Funny, I don't remember it that way at all. And I've asked for evidence for the Ice Age claims on Slashdot several times, and the only thing I've ever gotten in reply is a short Newsweek note about a single scientist who thought an Ice Age might be coming on, from around 1970.
Both congealed into the air/water pollution crowd in the 70's. The 80's saw the same groups briefly trotting out over population once again to add to their pollution sideshow. Then they discovered "ozone depletion". In the late 80's and 90's it was "global warming". Now it's "catastrophic climate change". In *all* cases it's been the same group of people screaming; "the sky is falling".
Care to name names?
What really happened (assuming my memory can be trusted) is that Sagan et al. came out with the idea of a nuclear winter that would result from a global thermonuclear exchange, and it played a big role in the anti-
Cold water! (Score:3, Funny)
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Conspiracy theory (Score:5, Interesting)
I know that in your universe, scientists drive around in pink Cadillacs screaming "M-Fer, I want more research funding and iced tea!", but in the one I inhabit, climate researchers usually point to ozone hole shrinkage as a success story: we changed our behavior and it actually produced noticeable results in the atmosphere.
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So what universe do you live in, exactly? Clearly not the one in which this article was written.
Re:Conspiracy theory (Score:4, Informative)
You've got your numbers reversed (Score:5, Informative)
We've seen interannual jumps of 30% in ozone hole size before (e.g., here [nasa.gov]); it's within the range of natural variation, and as such, does not indicate some total failure of the models.
Re: Conspiracy Theory! ... what are you smoking? (Score:5, Informative)
It may not be conclusive that the hole shrank because of what we did, but we definitely reduced the stratospheric CFC concentrations: [mmu.ac.uk] There's probably better stuff to be Googled up but I'm going to be late for work.
But they spend better than half their time screaming "M-Fer, I want more research funding". Or so my 15 years in academia and government research leads me to believe.
I find your credentialism unconvincing- in fact you don't know how many years I have over you. I've been involved in those filings myself and am familiar with what happens. What I find offensive are the accusations that the entire scientific consensus on the issue is attributable to a desire for research funding. Most scientists do not receive funding for climate research. And it's not as if climate research dollars are even in short supply- after all, allocating that money and "waiting until the results are in" is basically how the president has dealt with all these problems. [climatescience.gov]
+5 Insightful is easy when you lie (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the World Meteorological Organization's 2006 assessment report on ozone depletion [noaa.gov],
"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.
Anticlima(c)tic Rush to Judgment (Day) (Score:5, Insightful)
It seems asymmetric, but then, the situation is. There is an asymmetry in the consequences of being right vs being wrong.
If I hand you a bottle of an unknown chemical and say "go on, drink it, I think it's safe." and somehow says to you "He's a good guy, trust him." and someone else says "He's a liar, don't trust him." you're stuck with what might seem (in Fair and Balanced land) like an even choice. But, you see, the truth is that you have many choices of things to drink, and the cost of not drinking is miniscule, while the cost of drinking could be fatal. So I'm betting you won't drink it. Even though it looks like symmetry.
In this case, a large number of scientists have used words like "exponential" and "tipping point" and "cataclysmic change" in ways that suggest a deeper and more enduring truth is looming than mere lack of funding for the person speaking. But suppose we disregard the fact that considerable actual research has been done and considerable mathematical modeling has been done, and we just assume two strangers have flipped different coins and have made predictions that are quite different and unpredictable by any other means than merely trusting them, as effectively describes the days before Science.
The ordinary analysis one wants to do is to multiply the probability of the person being right times the a quantitative measure of the danger involved. In this case, both are 50% probability, since we think Scientists are not a special breed who have trained for life to predict things. So we just have to come up with a quantitative metric for "Oh, darn. We'll not have an ozone layer, we'll all get cancer, and we'll die (or in the good case we'll all move underground and only be able to come up above ground in space suits)." vs a quantitative metric for "Oh, darn. I'm embarrassed by predicting that the ozone layer was going to fail. It's true that the world will move on and we have lots of new Green technology and people are much more ecologically aware, but gosh, I'm blushing."
Something in me wants to assign a higher badness value to that first one than that second one. And hence, something in me believes more caution is warranted in believing safety than in believing a problem.
I have yet to hear a serious argument for why the world will be injured by behaving as if there is an ozone or climate problem (if there is not), and so I just don't understand why anyone ever makes this argument.
People are constantly making the argument that the people who want to do climate research are somehow money-grubbing. But so what? The people who don't want to do climate research are also money-grubbing. The world runs on money, and we're not going to get that out of the system, so we'd better stop discounting opinions because of it or we'll have no one employed to have an opinion.
Science relies on falsifiability at its core, so of course everything is a theory. That's not a condemnation, that's a statement of the bold thing that science is: a willingness to say what might be disproved and to tolerate the slings and arrows of criticism. These theories are holding up pretty well to scientific criticism, and where we don't, we're learning things. The opposition in this game isn't holding up an alternate theory--they're holding up the idea that Science has nothing to offer. If there's another theory, let's hear it, and if it's also "just a theory", let's hear an argument about why it's safe to bet the future of the human raceon that theory rather than this one.
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In short: it's a crapshoot.
Look, when it comes to this phenomenon, you have two possibilties:
Each of those possibilities has associated sub factors:
And so on. As you crawl down from the initial phenomenon to the root cause, you find that all the various subsets of forces that can have an effect on the situation each has its
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Yet science seems to work out in the end. Despite scient
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Then you're not listening.
Your own argument makes the point - most people in real life choose loss minimization rather than gain maximization. The case about global warming, er, climate change, er ANTHROPOGENIC climate change is that it's frankly incredible to normal people that human output of
Because they know what they're talking about? (Score:3, Informative)
If you accidentally read the fine article ('cause we know nobody actually tries to read it), you'll see that first off, it's 30% smaller than the record-setting ozone hole from last year. So while the value for this year is down, it looks to be about at or just slightly below the average level for the 90s. (So far, the 00s seem to have a lot of swings up and down, making it hard to visually estimate off the graph.) Furthermore, this year the hole was less centered over the South Pole than was the case in o
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goatse.cx would tend to support your hypothesis.
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not much historic data on hole (Score:5, Interesting)
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Ozone is manufactured by the sun [theozonehole.com]. So, there must always be a drop in ozone at the pole during the winter. I wonder what part of the current drop in antarctic ozone is our doing, versus what part is inevitable?
Or more precisely: I wonder if it is even possible to know what part
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Re:not much historic data on hole (Score:5, Insightful)
No one even considered the big-picture environmental impact of banning CFCs, we just lurched in to action. I'm not necessarily saying it was the wrong choice -- there were certainly non-cooling uses of CFCs that we could have (and did) cut without any significant detriment to the environment. But it would have been nice if we spent less time panicking and posturing about the ozone hole and more time creating pragmatic environmental policies.
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Re:not much historic data on hole (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:not much historic data on hole (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes, what an amazing coincidence that we started dumping massive amounts of CFCs into the atmosphere at the same time that the Earth suddenly started needing CFCs to maintain its present state. It's a shame that we were duped into banning CFCs - hopefully the Earth will decide it no longer needs them.
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It's impossible to embarrass those who produce bad science. This is the same crowd that said all oil reserves will be completely depleted by 2003, and the same ones who said that 2000 will be the beginning of a deep freeze from which we'll never escape.
The link from man-made
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Well, I'm going to try with you.
The link from man-made CFCs to ozone depletion was tenuous at best.
False. Try educating yourself [wikipedia.org].
Preliminary investigation into volcanoes shows that the amount of chlorine they spew dwarfs what man produces, and it is lost high in the atmosphere, instead of feet from the ground.
Absolute bollocks. See here [faqs.org].
But, it really troubles me to see a lot of the bad science that is repeated over and over without being checked.
Ir
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You're asking us to gamble, and bet Earth. The prize: deodorant and a fridge.
Then asking "wouldn't it be embarrassing if we gave up the gamble and potentially lost the deodorant and fridge for nothing".
Losing Earth would be more embarrassing, I'd rather not play that game.
Choice, choice... (Score:2)
global warming (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:global warming - I'll bite (Score:2)
The facts about ozone holes and warmining (some :) (Score:2)
The ozone hole is NOT created by CFCs, it is created by upper atmosphere dynami
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The only thing that this does show is that the media only wants to spin shit negatively -- Halloween is coming, scare them!
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Actually the CFCs which are the main culprit for the ozone hole are also extremely powerful greenhouse gases.
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Now, on that note, man does have the power to effect small areas (small relative to the size of the Earth) of the environment. One example is th
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CFCs break down into certain chemicals when they reach the stratosphere (for example, bromine and chlorine). These chemicals break down ozone molecules. Where exactly is the "bias"?
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.
OK, it's wrong because it's "arrogant". I don't think I've ever seen that reasoning in any science textbook
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Well, I think the point would be how data is presented or misrepresented by all involved (Media, Politicians, Scientific community).
Why only extrapolate bad news? (Score:2, Insightful)
Worst of all, we're probably going to find down the road that, because the ozone hole closed up, a bunch of carbon producing bacteria that would have otherwise been killed due to UV ra
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Global warming, on the other hand, has a TREND. Scientists extrapolate from a TREND that they know is valid. While Global Warming or Evolution are accepted scientific facts at the moment, people that know squat will still yell and shout mostly because it affects their *beliefs* how they think the earth *should* work and n
Fine, mod me troll. (Score:3, Insightful)
However, should someone lose their football game, or should a forthcoming climactic disaster suddenly dissipate (even if just a little bit), well, you know, shit happens.
Faith is a beautiful thing, eh?
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This is not a trait unique to religious folk, it's just that they are able to demonstrate in the most frustrating ways. Even scientists are vulnerable to this - they see the evidence that fits their hypothesis, and conveniently (sometimes consciously, sometimes not) glosses over the facts that don't fit their theories.
It's a sign of a person with horrid logic, not someone religious, though the two are certainly not mutually exclusive.
Nice downplaying (Score:5, Insightful)
To me, it seems that calling that "a substantial decrease" would be more truthful.
Of course, the researchers know as well that any news outlet these days would misquote or leave out the following sentence saying that the effect is probably temporary. But it's still stupid to (have to) explain a 30% decrease as only "somewhat decreased".
Re:Nice downplaying (Score:5, Insightful)
Ozone is not static, it moves in the atmosphere. 30% size decrease does not mean 30% ozone increase. We must wait at least a few years and see if there is a trend. It will not be if next year we have another record size hole. Yes, it happened before. One year the news was the hole held steady. Media was predicting that ozone may be saved. But then next year, new record size hole.
Wait for a trend. That's what the scientists try to explain to you with the "somewhat". It is a hint,hint not to overplay one data point.
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Environmental spin (Score:5, Informative)
So bad news is bad news. Good news means we can't conclude anything.
It reminds me of the 'worst headline ever' : 'Small earthquake : not many killed'. If you want to attract attention, I guess you need a bit of drama.
But maybe I'm complacent and we'll all die of avian flu or global warming or a meltdown in the financial markets causing a collapse of our civilisation.
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The thing about the environment is that if it's screwed up enough, everyone dies. I don't know that humanity even can do that if they wanted to, but I'll assume yes.
It's sort of like sticking your wang into a blender that you're pretty sure was unplugged the last time you looked. Probably, that's safe, but who really wants to take that chance?
Screwing with the environment is
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I won't defend how the media portrays the issue. In my opinion, they frequently confuse and distort issues in their reporting. However if you look into the s
Good! (Score:4, Funny)
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Will be interesting to see how the tree huggers... (Score:3, Insightful)
No matter how it's worded... (Score:2, Insightful)
That's what all this nonsense of "going green" has ever been about.
Also unreported by the major media (Score:4, Informative)
This is the only info available [newsbusters.org] because the press won't report it and I don't have a subscription to the journal "Nature".
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They report on careful measurements of the photolysis of Cl2O2, which has been a key reaction in ozone climate models for a long time. The measurements indicated that the photolysis reaction was much slower than previously believed (~1/10th the speed). If this is true, then it of course has a significant impact on the ozone component of climate models. The article reports that this would mean that instead of being able to ac
Disco Stu (Score:2)
God damn it (Score:2)
If whatever people do the effects are reported as negative, those people might as well give up and make those reports for natural disaster a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Eco zealots will be happy I assume.
obligatory? (Score:2, Funny)
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How about the US boarder holes [time.com]? Dont worry, its just a Time Magazine front cover... looking like goatse.
Disaster. Not disaster. Disaster.. (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess this is a prime example of why I couldn't care less about the current environment/global warming hysteria. Hopefully they'll eventually calm down and start to make sense, as in talking as if they actually thought things through instead of the current knee jerk reactions. It's just political "look, we care!" posturing at the moment.
For example, the total car pool of the country I live in apparently contribute something like 0.000000012% of yearly man made CO2 emissions. Yet it's virtually the only thing politicians talk about. Way to shift focus away from there being a huge energy production boost to be gained from our hydropower plants by updating the turbines, thus reducing dependency on importing power produced by oh so environmentally friendly coal power plants.
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".
I think the truth is infinitely closer to "we don't have a clue but it sure gives us lots of column space" than anything else. Doesn't hurt to be conscious of our emissions and work to reduce them either way, but the way the politicians and media is handling this is hurting more than helping imo. I'm not the only one that stopped caring long ago.
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Global warming is not the Ozone layer (Score:2, Interesting)
Holes in the Ozone layer were caused by CFCs, which chemically are interesting compounds, but one problem of which is that they were depleting the ozone layer. CFCs are not a central part of the economy however, they can be, and have been substituted, and nowadays if things go on track the ozone layer should repair itself within a few decades. The manufacturers are already using the substitutes so there is not much of
"natural variations in temperature" (Score:3, Interesting)
Early Data Points (Score:4, Insightful)
I am not trying to troll here, I really am confused about this; please correct me if you have actually answers.
My understanding is that we discovered the ozone hole in the Antarctic immediately after we started to measure south polar ozone. That is to say, we have no measurements that predate the hole.
Is this the case? 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)?
Re:Early Data Points (Score:5, Insightful)
More "westernized" nations are in the northern hemisphere, along with what used to be horrible environmental practices. The southern hemisphere has, all in all, less westernized nations. It would be fair to say that the North used to put out much more O3 destroying compounds.
Why is the hole bigger over the south than it is in the north?
Re:Early Data Points (Score:5, Funny)
Duh!
See for yourself (Score:2)
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov]
Quote from the summary (Score:2)
This is why I have trouble with all climate change scientists, on both sides. While it may be quite true that this is a one time change and the hole will go back to growing next year, the researcher quoted referes to a 30% reduction in size as "somewhat smaller."
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."
I