Your Thoughts on the Great Ozone Debate? 719
Hrodvitnir asks: "Yesterday the BBC reported that the hole in the ozone layer above the Antarctic is the largest on record. Today CNN says that it is recovering, or at least stabilized. Do we really know what's going on? Is this more bad science/false studies, or are they both partially right?"
What I've always wondered (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:not THAT unusual (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't know, but I have other thoughts... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/
Yet this black guy didn't find stuff, he looted it:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050830/4
Uh huh.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I'd like to take a moment (Score:5, Interesting)
Why the US? You should be focusing on China and India. While the US did not sign Kyoto, it is still taking some steps on the environment (amazing considering the prevailing attitude of the party in power). China and India signed the Kyoto treaty - in which they made no committments (not sure why signing was a big deal, honestly, since they don't have to do anything).
Kyoto was intended to keep polution at 1990 levels (I would argue to reduce it from there - but just keeping it there was a start). China and India are countries of 1.3 and 1.0 billion people where pollution is skyrocketing, and no one is talking about it. The pollution in some cities in China and its health effects are astouding - nothing in the modern US or Western Europe compares. Why can't we agree that ALL countries need to go back to 1990 levels - and then work to reduce from there.
The big unspoken reason the US rejected Kyoto was it put US manufactures at a disadvantage versus ones in China (and India, but less of a consideration), because of different environmental requirements. You must have a level playing field to compete, and the US rejected Kyoto's attempt to create a system that favoured China.
If you look at the trends out to 2050 and 2100, the US is NOT the problem - it's China and India.
Is there really reason for debate on this? (Score:1, Interesting)
Another question is, what about the magnetic field around the earth [nasa.gov]? Why is it changing? Is it because of hair-spray? Or is it due to a natural occurance of Mother Earth?
you can't stop an earthquake, hurricane, rain, ... (Score:1, Interesting)
Everything that happens on earth is not a manmade problem, nor an American-made problem. If it's hot one day and not hot the next day someplace where it's cool, it's not man made. It's not our fault. And I'm not going to sit here and accept the premise that somehow we are to blame for this. And that's what worries me the most about you liberals. Why can't you just accept that there are powers greater than us, greater than we have that may have influence over this over which we have no control? There's not one climactic event that we can stop, that we can alter, that we can detour. We cannot stop it raining harder; we cannot move thunderstorms; we cannot weaken hurricanes; we cannot steer them out of the way; we can't stop snowstorms; we can't stop drought; we can't do diddlysquat about all this, so in my mind there's no way we can cause it. You can't have one without the other. If we're causing it, then we can stop it. We can't stop it.
so saith rush
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_083105
full post:
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: This is Paul in Burlington, Connecticut. Welcome, sir, nice to have you with us.
CALLER: Hey, Rush. How can you say you're grounded in reality when you keep denying the issue of global warming? And it seems to me that the -- the answers don't fit your politics, and you're afraid of what the left has to say about this and their solutions, why aren't the conservatives on board? I think is the real issue. There's enough evidence. There's enough people saying it is, that we can't all be, you know, blame-America-first, freedom-hating sort of people -- and I've listened to you long enough to know you changed your position on it [sic]. You used to deny it existed. Now you've come to some sort of terms. "Well, it may be happening. It may be sunspots," and where are the conservative answers?
RUSH: Wait.
CALLER: It's obvious it's happening whether the hurricane was caused by it or not.
RUSH: Wait. Wait.
CALLER: Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't.
RUSH: Wait, wait. No, no, no. It's not obvious that it's happening in the sense that you guys mean it. The only stipulation I've made is, "There may be global warming, because I'm not an idiot. There have been warming cycles of the earth and freezing cycles, ice cycles, for as long as the earth has been around. We may be in a naturally warming cycle." Where I part ways from you is that man is causing it. There is no evidence of that, zilch, zero, nada. There's nothing more than a 25-year shrill campaign to create subconsciously the idea in everybody's mind that when it gets hot in July and hot in August it must be global warming; when it gets cold and a snowstorm happens in January, and happens to be a little bit more intense than it was last year, it must be global warming. Nobody can prove it. Nobody can prove that man is causing it. To me the proof that man is not causing it is there's nothing we can do to stop it. This hurricane was said to be caused by global warming. Well, this hurricane weakened right before it hit and it had nothing to do with the ocean temperature. It had to do with some dry air that it had encountered and pushed it further east (story).
But the problem that I have with you guys on global warming is it's become a political issue by which you seek to advance the liberal agenda. It's nothing more than a platform for you. Whenever I see anything designed to advance the liberal agenda, I'm going to oppose it because I hate the liberal agenda. I disagree with it. It's destructive; it's damaging, and it doesn't do anybody any good -- other than if you define it by spreading misery equally as the New York Times accurately headlined today in their coverage of the hurricane. If you want to believe it, go ahead, but I'm not going to accept you
The hole is a reality (Score:2, Interesting)
you may be right, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, the earth will probably go on its merry way oblivious to the "damage" humans inflict upon it. I think the point of understanding this phenomenon is to prevent the "humans are wiped from the planet" bit from happening sooner than later, particularly due to our own actions.
But if the earth somehow can and does care, I think it'd rather be rid of us sooner....
Idiotic (Score:1, Interesting)
You win the award for most idiotic opinion.
By your way of thinking, if my home's roof developes a leak, I should just live with it. It's part of life.
Re:Easy...... (Score:4, Interesting)
Technology got us into this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:It's cyclical (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:5, Interesting)
I did not and do not pretend that there is no scientific consensus on the matter. I also did not say I am anti-climate change. In fact, I made it rather clear that there clearly IS climate change going on. The science that documents this is all but irrefutable. My concerns lie in the research that "proves" that the change is anthropogenic.
CO2 does not destroy ozone.
I didn't say that it does. I asked how we know how much ozone there was in Antarctica's atmosphere before the industrial revolution, since the parent poster to MY post had talked about returning ozone levels to "pre-industrial" normals. How do we know what those levels were? If we do, great, but how?
CFCs destroy ozone. They were not developed until 1928, and didn't become widespread until the 1960s. You're confusing ozone studies with temperature and CO2-level studies.
No, I'm not, I'm quite clear on the difference. Perhaps I mixed the two topics inappropriately in my post. If I was unclear, I apologize. I have two separate questions.
1) What are the "normal" levels of ozone that should exist over Antarctica, and how do we know that those hypothetical levels are "normal"?
2) Although I do not doubt that global climate change is going on, I am skeptical of the research done thus far to prove that it is anthropogenic. The famous "hockey stick" graph shows temperature rising in direct correlation to the advent of the automobile (hence, CO2 emissions). However, the same graph can be found in any number of samples of utterly random information with enough red noise. Further, the pioneering and supporing research on the topic has been found to cherry-pick data series to produce the intended results. In fact, the SAME GUYS who came up with the "hockey stick" graph originally found NO correlation, and kept including and excluding series until they got a correlation, and then published THAT. Among the included series were a study of a half dozen tree rings in the Southwestern United States, which were the sole representative series for a long time period. Now, if you want to tell me it's good science to extrapolate the ring widths of a half dozen trees to be representative of a world containing billions of trees of tens of thousands different species, that's your business, but I will disagree that this is good enough science on which to base global climate policy. What's more, the original samples are now mostly unavailable, much of the original data (including WHERE the trees were found and measured, and exactly WHEN and under what circumstances) is missing, lost, or out of the recollection of the scientists involved.
For my money, if we're going to subject ourselves to lifestyle changes amounting to $100 trillion dollars to limit global temperature increase over the next 300 years to 6 degrees instead of 8, I'd like more research to back up that we are unquestionably the cause. It all SOUNDS GOOD and LOOKS good, but I'm skeptical of the original research and much of the supporting research, and I question the motives of the major players involved in the project.
You don't get more government grants by coming back and saying, "There's nothing to worry about here."
I DID NOT SAY and DO NOT THINK that global warming is not happening.
I am undecided on whether or not I think it's anthropogenic in nature. The research I have read does not prove it to me; not conclusively, not convincingly, not even suggestively. The research alone doesn't prove jack shit to me, it's when it holds up and passes a serious, critical peer review that I start to trust it, and I don't get the sense that global climate change has been given its due review. Finding flaws in it is a one-wa
Re:What I've always wondered (Score:3, Interesting)
Here's a hint: ionizing radiation not allows for the formation of ozone, but also releases free chlorine radicals from CFCs which break down ozone catalytically. A single chlorine ion will on average destroy about a hundred thousand ozone molecules before it leaves the cycle. Chlorine from natural sources has historically been the largest reducer of the ozone layer in the stratosphere (OH, NO, and Br also play roles); however, present day, 84% [epa.gov] of the chlorine in the stratosphere is man-made.
About 5% of the world's ozone layer has been destroyed between 1979 and 1990 - about three times the rate of decline during the 1970s, when it first began to be studied in depth. Naturally, there are huge seasonal variations, especially in polar regions - this is just an average. However, the seasonal variations, too, have become more extreme. This thus leads to the most pronounced effect on the ozone minimum [wikimedia.org] in polar regions.
Studies in the 1980s concluded that without CFC reduction policy (which was enacted), 30-50% of the planet's ozone layer would be destroyed by 2050, based on the concentrations of stratospheric CFCs that we'd end up with.
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:2, Interesting)
Quick, throw another log on the fire! Go global warming!
Re:No, we don't. (Score:2, Interesting)
With the exception of spotting a huge space object heading for the planet, doomsday science can be summarily ignored.
andIf a "discovery" is made that yields cool new gadgets that improve my quality of life (TV, computers, polyester, bath puffs) then I believe it.
Honestly, postings like this make me sick (nothing personal), especially when they are as well as written as this one! Sit comfortably in your chair watching your TiVo, sip your wine and hope that everything will magically fix itself in a couple of hundred years. The trees will grow up again by themselves, the water and air will clean themselves, ozone will regenarate, even oil will reappear. You have nothing to worry about.
Your kids ? Who cares about the little bastards ? We'll be long dead before they have to face the garbage dump that we left them for a planet.
If scientific research sounds too off-center, then it must be wrong, because I am sure nothing really bad can happen to me. Nice going ...
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:4, Interesting)
There are four main radicals that break down ozone: Cl-, Br-, NO-, and OH-. Cl- is easily the most damaging - the chemical reactions involved are well understood. In the early 1970s, natural sources of Cl- were dominant (there are different source molecules - CFCs aren't made in nature). We've easily displaced them in terms of quantity, however - now, 84% of Cl ions are from CFCs.
At the same time, we've watched average antarctic ozone levels cut by a third, and minimum ozone levels cut by two thirds. Worldwide, levels were been cut by five percent in two decades, with the rate accelerating as stratospheric CFC concentrations increased.
What more do you need?
hockey stick graph
What is your obsession with some "hockey stick" graph? There have been thousands of studies, and you obsess over a single graph? The physics of global warming are apparent (CO2 *is* a greenhouse gas), its concentration has increased by 20% in the past century, we can model accurately how that much CO2 got there (the rate of influx vs. outflux), and we have ice cores [umich.edu] that show an incredible correlation between CO2 concentration (as well as methane, another greenhouse gas) and temperature over the past several hundred thousand years. This is just the start of a summary of the literature, by the way - there is a *lot* more. Again, what more do you need? There's a reason that there's a near universal scientific consensus, and it's not a "hockey stick graph".
Re:not THAT unusual (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, if forest fires don't affect net CO2 levels over the long term, then burning fossile fuels (which are plant leftovers) doesn't either (just a bit longer term). Its just re-establishing the "equilibrium" that existed before plants did. (not that the global climate has ever been in equilibrium over the long term)
Re:Easy...... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:3, Interesting)
If somebody says something that runs counter to when I think is true, and quotes a source, I go look it up. I review what they quoted and if it shows no evidence of being worthy of consideration and integration into my worldview, I discard it. If it DOES seem worthy of thinking about, I then consider the source and their motivation, and then go do research on whatever it is I just read. 9 times out of 10, somebody has responded to it and refuted it. And I research THAT response, etc, until I find something that nobody has countered yet, or until the arguments are simply circular. I then absorb this whole body of knowledge and argument, and determine which one seems to me to have the least merit, and discard that one.
So, I don't care if somebody quotes "QueersLoveBush.com" or "wtfpwnedpr0n.com", if I'm discussing a controversial issue with somebody and they provide evidence to support their opinion, I'm going to go at least give it a shot. If it's truly as baseless and worthless as its "source" (despite the fact that JunkScience isn't the source for this) would suggest, it should be clear fairly quickly.
At this stage, quoting from JunkScience
JunkScience did do this research. The files containing the research are sitting on machines owned by JunkScience.com. They might have written up the summary and opinion part, but the research they are quoting was carried out by two guys, independently. And frankly, if you'd gone to read it, there's plenty of holes to poke in THEIR work, too. What amazes me is how quickly and easily Slashdotters won't even think about reviewing the material before dismissing it. Yet you're on here day in and day out blasting George Bush (rightfully) for ignoring a bodies of critical scientific effort in forming his policy.
Sorry if that sounds close minded
It does.
but after a while, anyone but the least human of us considers certain sources strong clues as to whether something should be taken seriously.
I disagree but fair enough. Are you going to at least review the work in question (ignoring JunkScience's opinion of it) and refute what it says? I'm quoting it to "PROVE" anything, I'm throwing information out there to be digested. If it's easily debunked, so be it! I'm interested in forming an accurate and informed worldview, not "proving" that "my side" of an issue is right. I'm interested in figuring out which side of an issue is most compelling. I haven't been compelled by the "man is causing global warming" research I've read. People constantly quote "hundreds" and "thousands" of anonymous "scientific studies" that "prove it" but can't ever give me a link to one along with a body of critical peer review. I only see dire predictions quoted by various scientifists that are accepted unquestionably.
Well, I'm sorry, but I'm skeptic.
I'd have laughed at someone for linking to a Greenpeace report too. Link directly to the papers, or neutral group's readings of it (Nature, New Scientist, Scientific American, you name it) if you like, but don't expect to be taken any more seriously if you link to JunkScience than if you'd linked to the Church of Scientology.
All well and good, but it strikes me as a cheap and easy way to not have to consider and rebut an argument. "Well that can't possibly be valid, look who said it!" I guess I'm less cavalier in dismissing information. Luckily, somebody else has since mailed me a number of references of fairly recent work to investigate, which is encouraging. It had seemed to me that the scientific rigour of global warming study had waned.
And this differes how... (Score:3, Interesting)
And how does this differ from the chlorine ions that reach the stratosphere from volcanic eruptions and a host of other mechanisms?
We're on a planet 3/4 covered with a salt-water ocean. The bulk of the salt is chlorides. The air is FILLED with small crystals of salt, loose ions from it, traces of diatomic chlorine, and a host of other chlorine compounds, due to the evaporation of salt-water spray from wind and wave action. Two things save the ozone layer from total destruction.
One is that the upper atmosphere is stratified. But that stratification is not absolute. A number of processes project chlorine ions, radicals, and compounds into the upper atmosphere, where they participate in ozone destruction as above, regardless of their source. Freon happens to be one of the ways it gets there. But though it's a new thing it's hardly the only thing.
The other is that the ozone layer is also full of oxygen and ultraviolet light. While the chlorine is busy breaking the ozone down, the ultraviolet light is busy making more.
Except at the south pole just now: It's the dead of winter there. That means the sun has SET and will be DOWN FOR MONTHS. Oops: No ultraviolet! Once the ozone breaks down, no more is made - near the pole. The only way for it to get there is by upper-air circulation and diffusion, and part of the point of the stratosphere is that there isn't much wind there.
So there's no ozone to block ultraviolet light from getting farther down. But there's also no ultraviolet light to block. Go a bit farther north, to where there's some light, and you fine ozone again. Golly! Guess it's not the end of the world after all.
We wouldn't even know the hole was THERE if it hadn't been for satelite sensors noticing it. Any bets on whether it was there when the dinosaurs were abroad?
Sure the size of the hole varies somewhat from year to year. (It's a weather phenomenon - which has only been observed for a few years so it's too soon to extrapolate annual differences into trends.) More chlorine (from freon, volcanos, forest fires, etc.) moves the edge out a bit further into the dim light where the sun is on the horizon. Different upper-atmosphere winds move the cholrine and ozone about differently from year to year. But I'm not holding my breath waiting for the ozone layer to disappear worldwide.
For starters, removing the layer lets UV down further, to where it finds more oxygen. So you get ozone a little lower. It's a long way down to the tropopause and the salt spray below it in the weather-busy troposphere.
Meanwhile, isn't it just an amazing coincidence that the study that claimed to find a connection between Freon and Ozone was funded by Dow Chemical, just as their patent on Freon was about to expire (making it possible for everybody in the world to make this cash-cow cheap)?
So suddenly Freon is banned worldwide just before it would get cheap and everybody has to build new refrigerators (or recharge old ones) with a NEW, patented, compound.
And it costs more. So lots of people in poorer regions can't afford refrigeration. And a bunch of them die from food poisoning.
Not as bad as the malaria death rate increase from the DDT ban (which appears to have been based on totally bogus pseudo-science claims rather than bogus conclusions hyped from an apparently real phenomenon). But still no fun.
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:2, Interesting)
That is very personal to me and I would prefer not to talk about it in a public forum. If you would like to talk offline, I would be happy to share some of my experiences with you. Generally, I have been given information that I needed, but had no access to - things that have helped with sicknesses and finances. I also have been given help in situations where I had to act on things where I "knew" what was right, but not how to do it (or lacked the requisite skills). To be honest, some of it is embarrassing (as in shows my weakness), some of it is cool (as in how did that happen), and some of it just useful.
In general, I believe that everyone is given this type of help (though I am not sure), though not every one listens...
It is an interesting topic, to be sure.
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:3, Interesting)
For the more rational crowd who accepts that global warming is ongoing, but is looking for proof that it's unnatural, the scientific consensus seems more like political correctness than actual science. Who wants more pollution? Who wants to be seen as overly critical of the global warming theory when such views have been proven detrimental to one's career. Unless one works in the oil industry, of course, in which case one's papers can simply be ignored on the basis of their source, regardless of the data, right?
Writing like this [colorado.edu] from insiders expressing how politicized the science has become shake my faith in the peer-review process in this area (that link is quite good, though it's just one anecdote). A friend of mine studying geology at Cal-Tech remarked that "if you admit your research might cast doubt on the accepted cause of global warming, you simply can't get a grant for that research". Not to overvalue anecdotal evidence, but it's disturbing. There are an increasing number of non-nutjobs making claims like this.
Average temperatures in many regions are certainly changing, and we're certainly overdue for the onset of the next ice age (which makes me happy), but is this genuinely unusual, or simply a normal cycle that out species is just too young to have discovered yet? We know the biggest driver for free CO2 is a billion-year cycle of the formation of carbonate rocks in ocean beds, the subduction of that rock, and the eventual volcanic venting of CO2, because there's solid evidence of that, but mechanisms for cycles longer than Ice Ages but shorter than geological are a mystery.
Re:We can't even agree on global warming (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that the majority of scientists that say they believe in a God or Gods are just feeding back what they expect the left half of the IQ bell curve wants to hear so they'll go away and let them do real work.
I have yet to encounter a good argument for the existence of a god. Nary a one. If you think you have one, go ahead and try; I expect I'll eat you for lunch, and generally speaking, it'll take about one average size paragraph. Nor have I ever encountered any person, regardless of how educated and/or intelligent, who can do anything but fall back to an utterly lame and unconvincing "well, I have faith it is so" in the face of moderately informed counter questioning and observation-sharing from me. And I'm not even all that smart. I know I'm not; I have very smart people who work for me, it's quite humbling. :-)
I agree entirely with the upstream comment that any scientist who seriously claims he "believes" in God, Santa, or the Easter Bunny is going to go to the bottom of my credibility index, and right quickly. If you can't think clearly about abstracts, if you accept propositions without evidence, if you are willing to accept one unanswerable and untestable proposition as the solution and/or explanation for another unanswerable and untestable proposition, then you have demonstrated that you don't understand scientific method and that should be (is, for me) a death blow to credibility in science.
What these survey readers (and givers) need to realize is that it is not "OK" to be an atheist in this country; it is a conservative, dangerous environment within which to choose to come out for atheism and it is also time-consuming -- should a person designated as a scientist make such a claim they'll likely end up spending a lot of time defending said claim to people they really don't need to be spending time with. Now, some of us -- like me -- have the time and there is no particular loss to society if I spend my time that way. Perhaps there is even a benefit; some people are just confused and will immediately understand when presented (finally) with reason over religion. But I'd hate for a scientist to spend a lot of time doing so. I'm much more interested in our learning how the world actually works than I am in hearing a scientist try to debunk the myth-makers. For these reasons, surveys that claim real, productive scientists are "religious" feel dubious to me. I'd actually be fascinated to meet one who could back up their belief system with other than the usual easily defeated lines of rubbish; but it's not happened as yet, and I'm not exactly holding my breath. I think it'd be a good use of their time, though, as it'd keep them away from the beakers, chalkboard and animal cages for a while. :-)
How do we know it's not normal? (Score:2, Interesting)
-When we developed the equipment to detect the ozone layer.
Do you know what makes most of our ozone?
-Trees, or other photosynthetic life.
Now, what is the flora of Antarctica?
-Nonexistent, at least in enough quantity to sustain a constant creation of ozone.
So, considering these facts, the hole in the ozone layer may have been there for centuries, millennia even, never causing any problems b/c the fauna there have all adapted to handle the UV rays, which are indirect to begin with. It has constantly fluctuated, sometimes getting bigger, sometimes getting smaller.