Signs of Ozone Layer Recovery Detected

polar red writes "22 years of banning CFCs is starting to pay off. Researchers have finally been able to measure a reduction in size of the ozone layer hole, after finding the source of its fluctuations. 'Salby's results reveal a fast decline in ozone levels until the late 1990s, then a slow rebound that closely matches what theoretical calculations had predicted, says David Karoly, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, Australia. "It is the sort of result that was expected, but is the first to provide detection of an increase in Antarctic ozone levels," he says.'"

Re:Climate Change Deniers

[mangu]

Why is it that the scientists can detect an ozone hole, provide a fix, show that the fix solved the problem, and then be LOUDLY IGNORED by the liars in congress.

Oh. The CFL manufacturers had less money than the oil people. Sorry. I forgot...

What has one thing to do with the other?

The ozone layer hole was caused by the use of chloro-fluoro-carbon gases that decompose the O3 molecules in the stratosphere.

Global warming is caused by the emission of gases, mostly CO2, that trap infrared radiation in the lower atmosphere.

The ozone layer problem was solved by substituting the CFC gases for other less harmful gases.

Solving the global warming problem is more difficult because it's difficult to replace fuels that generate CO2 with other forms of energy production without affecting some very large corporations. These corporations have created an effective propaganda effort against the idea that global warming exists.

Given enough money, you can fool a lot of people for some time.

Re:Climate Change Deniers

[tibit]

Now be careful. The CFC replacements are potent greenhouse gases [acs.org]. Potent as in 3 orders of magnitude worse than CO2. Is it better to die of skin cancer, or of hunger due to crop failures due to draught due to raising global temperature? I don't know...

Re:CFC banning is good for ozone

[bunratty]

I haven't seen anyone propose "world government" for the solution to global warming. The solution put forward has been for countries to agree to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Reducing carbon dioxide emissions will increase costs, but effects of global warming will increase costs, too. The debate is what amount of spending on reducing carbon dioxide emissions will minimize total costs.

Re:can someone please explain a couple holes I see

[Mindcontrolled]

In a nutshell, because the thermal, i.e. kinetic energy of atmospheric molecules is way too high to get separation by weight. They are moving in random directions too fast to settle down. As for the ozone layer being where it is, yes, it is being produced up there. The layer is a dynamic process - ozone being produced from oxygen by UV activation and reacting back. You get the layer at a certain height where you have the right balance of O2 concentration and UV intensity. CFCs are a catalyst that shift that equilibrium to the side of oxygen, removing the conditions that lead to the dynamic formation of the layer in the first place.

Re:Climate Change Deniers

[Mindcontrolled]

The causation paper for climate change would win you zilch at all, since the basic mechanism has been published by Arrhenius about 130 years ago. All the open questions are more in the realm of systems theory, not in the realm of basic mechanisms.

Re:Climate Change Deniers

[cryptolemur]

Oddly enough climate change is something that comes out of the physics models when you put in what we understand of the climate. It has nothing to do with correlation, it's pure mechanical causation. As it happens, the observations do confirm the model.

And it also happens, that the exact same people who were arguing against CFC -> Ozone hole causation and smoking -> lung cancer causation started arguing against climate change. They obviously can fool some of the people all of the time.

Oh, and the actual mechanism of how smoking causes lung cancer was partly revealed a few year back, but is still not completely understood.

Re:Climate Change Deniers

[bunratty]

The observation that would not fit the prediction would be little or no warming. The falsifiable hypothesis is that an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere causes warming. There are literally hundreds of published scientific papers you can read about the topic. It's been a very active area of research for decades. I'll point you to just one short summary of the research results [norvig.com].