Hole In Ozone Shrinks, So Does Press Coverage

Greening Earth Society ^ | September 23, 2002 | Greening Earth Society

[profmike23]

Ozone Good News is Bad News

The United Nations recently completed a major report on the current status of stratospheric ozone, ozone depletion, and the ozone "holes." Why haven't you heard about it? The reason is simple: The report is chock full of good news. The rate of ozone decline is slowing...the Antarctic ozone hole is not enveloping the midlatitudes...penguins are not getting more sunburn. That hardly merits major media attention with so many environmental "crises" looming.

Apparently by some miracle, we all managed to survive the worst of the ozone depletion. Global levels of ozone in the stratosphere should start increasing again within the decade and the Antarctic ozone hole will likewise shrink. Furthermore, the once-predicted expansion of the Antarctic hole over places populated primarily by human nonscientists (i.e., parts of Australia and the southern tip of South America) never really materialized. According to report co-author Paul Newman of NASA, "by 2010, we could see five to six years when the hole looks consistently smaller than during the past five years."

During the decade of ozone furor in the 1990s, a handful of ozone experts waxed alarmingly about an ozone hole forming over the North Pole that would spread over populated areas of Canada and even the United States, causing untold environmental damage, higher rates of skin cancer, and so on. But as with every single environmental scare scenario that we can think of, this turned out to be completely off the mark. Figure 1 shows the ozone record for four monitoring sites in the United States. Aside from the obvious seasonality, note that the yearly maxes and mins tended to decline in the early 1990s, the period of ozone alarmism. Since then, ozone levels have rebounded, though not quite back to 1980 levels.

One problem in this business is that you don't know if a trend is really a trend until is has already changed direction. In 1991, Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines spewed loads of ozone-eating halogens (chlorine, bromine, etc.) into the stratosphere. In retrospect, it's easy to discern that the several-year period of low ozone levels from 1991 to 1995 or so was directly related to that natural event. But at the time, the low readings generated major news headlines, government grant programs, and Nobel Prizes in chemistry.

So that's the end of the ozone story, right? All the ozone scientists at the South Pole are packing up their gear and moving on to the next hot topic? Of course not. The report notes many areas of uncertainty—levels of harmful ultraviolet radiation are still increasing in some regions despite ozone's recovery; developing nations need to abide by regulations or future holes will form; and other "surprises" still could arise at any time because of climate change (the only real surprise would be if these so-called "climate surprises" didn't make the list —Eds.).

Yes, this certainly must be the feel-good environmental story of the new millennium. In the 1980s, the world's leading scientists, through careful and persistent measurement, identified a threat to humankind. Leading scientists and politicians met and, after years of tough negotiation, hammered out an agreement that came to be known as the "Montreal Protocol" that effectively eliminated the production and use of ozone-destroying CFCs. Implementation costs were passed on to the consumers, but now, more than a decade later, we are finally beginning to reap the benefits of these concerted and humanitarian efforts. Roll credits!

And therein lies the problem. Many of the world's scientists and governments are applying the strategy that apparently worked so successfully with ozone depletion to global warming. It's easy to draw parallels, but the problem is that they're really perpendiculars. To wit:

Ozone depletion is linked to a specific series of chemical reactions related to halocarbons, of which there were very few human sources. The gases responsible for global warming have a wide variety of anthropogenic and natural sources, most of which are extremely difficult to regulate.

Replacements for CFCs were available and at a relatively low cost. The replacement for a fossil fuel–based energy stream is also readily available. It's called nuclear power, but no governments have the political backbone to start up a major nuclear power program and anger the greenie Left.

Developing nations can make significant economic progress without aerosol spray cans. The same cannot be said for electricity.

The list goes on. So the notion that governments have, via the regulatory process, actually Done Something to suppress a global atmospheric "problem" like ozone depletion could be the worst news yet on the global warming front. Under the specific auspices of the Kyoto Protocol, many countries would have little real economic price to pay to "reduce" greenhouse gas levels worldwide. But again, the so-called parallels are really perpendiculars: Unlike the Montreal Protocol, the implementing of the Kyoto greenhouse gas reductions in fact would have no measurable impact on global temperatures; what it would severely impact is the economy of the United States and therefore the opportunities and aspirations of the developing world.

[profmike23]

www.thecitizensforum.com never got scared about a hole in the ozone layer...

[FreeTheHostages]

Um, the report doesn't say that the ozone hole is declining. It says the rate of growth is de-accelerating. Those are 2 different things.

[RightWhale]

Well, that was nearly painless. Our cars cost ten times as much and spray paint cans and air conditioners don't work worth a darn anymore, but at least that pesky ozone hole is going away.

[OldFriend]

It's shrinking cause slick willie isn't spewing his usual amount of hot air into the atmosphere.

[NotJustAnotherPrettyFace]

I just sent this article to Rush Limbaugh.

[BOBTHENAILER]

The United Nations recently completed a major report

That alone, is shocking.

[TX Bluebonnet]

I just read this interesting article on My Yahoo home page under Science/Reuters this morning. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=585&ncid=585&e=9&u=/nm/20020917/sc_nm/environment_ozone_australia_dc

Antarctic Ozone Hole Could Close by 2050-Scientist
Tue Sep 17, 4:07 AM ET
By Michael Perry

SYDNEY (Reuters) - The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica may close within 50 years as the level of destructive ozone-depleting CFCs in the atmosphere is now declining, one of the world's leading atmospheric scientists said Tuesday.

Paul Fraser with the Australian government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) said he had measured a decline in ozone-destroying gases since 2000.

"The major culprit in the production of the ozone hole is CFCs and they have started to decline in the lower atmosphere," Fraser told Reuters in an interview.

"We think the ozone hole will recover by about 2050," said Fraser, from CSIRO's atmospheric division and a lead author on a U.N. report on the ozone layer released Monday.

The report said ozone-depleting gases in the upper atmosphere had been at or near their peak in 2000, but the world was making steady progress toward the recovery of the ozone layer.

It said scientific data showed levels of ozone-depleting gases in the lower atmosphere were "declining, albeit slowly," but the ozone would be vulnerable for a decade.

The ozone layer is essential for life on earth, shielding the earth from the harmful ultraviolet-B radiation from the sun and completely screening out lethal UV-C radiation.

Chlorine from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is responsible for destroying part of the ozone layer over Antarctica. CFCs have been widely used since the 1930s in refrigerators, and air conditioners and remain in the atmosphere for decades.

Under the 1987 Montreal Protocol, developing countries committed themselves to halving consumption and production of CFCs by 2005 and to achieving an 85 percent cut by 2007.

Fraser, who monitors CFCs from Australia's southern island of Tasmania, said that in 1950 the atmospheric level of chlorine from CFCs had been zero, rose to a peak of 2.15 parts per million in 2000, but had fallen one percent a year since 2000.

"We are now at a point where the atmosphere can actually remove CFCs faster than they are being released into the atmosphere," said Fraser, adding the actual decline in CFCs had not been measured when the U.N. report was compiled in 2000.

The U.N. report, the latest in a series of four-yearly reports reviewing the ozone layer since the Montreal Protocol, said the reduction in CFCs proved the protocol was working.

But the report warned that the hole over Antarctica would only close fully if countries continued to adhere to the protocol and if there were no other factors adversely affecting the ozone layer like a major increase in greenhouse gases.

"These results confirm that the Montreal Protocol is achieving its objectives. During the next decades we should see a recovery of the ozone layer," said the report.

[Bernard Marx]

I infer from your posts that you are a professional working scientist. Maybe you can help answer a question that's bothered me a long time.

Why is the scientific community so silent on the subject of 'junk science?' I hear the left wing 'science' clacque making doomsday noises all the time. They're constantly signing petitions that are published in the N.Y. Times and getting themselves involved in one publicity scam after another.

Has P.C. endangered the futures of people who speak out? Do you lose grants, job opportunities, professional standing, whatever? Are university science departments headed in the same direction as the English and sociology departments? Just curious.

[ElkGroveDan]

They imply that the reducations and out-right bans of CFC's is the result of this, which has not been proven, any more than me drinking coffee every morning is what keeps wayward elephants from storming downtown Sacramento. (even though there seems to be an observable cause effect.)

Everyone needs to remember that when the ozone hole was first discovered (I believe it was the IRAS satellite in the 1980s) no one had looked at ozone levels at the poles in that way before.

It is very possible (and highly likely) that the so-called ozone hole is a natural atmospheric phenomenon that has existed for millions of years, shrinking and growing due to natural factors.

While CFC's do break down ozone molecules in the lab and in theory they are doing it in our atmosphere, there are a whole bunch of models wherebye the global ozone levels could be fluctuating and the man-made CFCs playor a minor role.

[cake_crumb]

There have been several reports, by more trustworthy sources of studies (scientists in Antarctica) saying the ozone hole was "healing itself" or "shrinking", and THEY never got any press hooha either...in fact, those reports have been largely ignored by the left-wingnuts infiltrating the scientic journals for YEARS.

LOL..in fact, yesterday on a thread about global warming, some poster was ranting about how the hole in the ozone is growing.

(**sigh**) I miss Omni magazine...

[Jimmy Valentine's brother]

I drink two cups of coffee a day to keep wayward elephants from storming downtown Sacramento!

I concur CFC and the Ozone holes as well as cell phones causing brain cancer and silicone breast implants causing connective tissue disorder are more correctly classified as urban legends.

[cake_crumb]

If you drink beer, make sure you keep your windows closed and don't drink it outside in the open! Villiagers in India have a real problem with elephants raiding their caches of homemade brew...and then running amok. Elephants just can't hold their liquer. They turn into mean drunks.

[My2Cents]

Since Clinton and Gore left office, there's been less emissions of hot air.

[My2Cents]

Now penguins won't get skin cancer.

[RightWhale]

Why is the scientific community so silent on the subject of 'junk science?'

They aren't silent at all. Far from it, if you are in the same room with them.

But, of course, working scientists are each very busy doing actual science, or teaching science and don't have time for PR. Also, there would be little to gain by getting side-tracked on some computer model belonging to someone else. Climate models are very specialized, and for a nuclear physicist to waste time on that would detract from his own time and efforts in his own specialty.

[Dengar01]

So can I continue to smoke cigarettes, drive my SUV and use aerosol cans?

[PsyOp]

BUMP!

[Ditter]

Thanks for posting this. I just sent it to my leftie 'green' cousin in California. He has been hiding under the bed for so long, now he can come out. ;9}

[scouse]

elephants raiding their caches of homemade brew...

They tried that down here in Dixie, of course you don't see any of those Trunk waving, tusk bearing thieves down here any more.

[Hunble]