Report: Ozone Hole May Disappear by 2050
TOKYO - The ozone hole over the Antarctic is likely to begin contracting in the future and may disappear by 2050 because of a reduction in the release of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting gases[...]So that's interesting – to me, at least – because I hadn't thought that the effects of CFC's would be so quickly (relatively) reversed; I figured (well, I didn't figure at all, I just did my usual mushbrained dataless musing) that it would take centuries.
But what's with this bit:
Some, however, have suggested the hole won't heal until much later because old refrigerators and air-conditioning systems — many in the United States and Canada — are still releasing ozone-killing chemicals. Both countries curbed those chemicals in newer products.Ahh, the mysterious Some have spoken. And they are particularly concerned about the United States and Canada. Because everybody else's fridges and AC's released only oxygen and subtle floral fragrances.
Freon is great stuff! When I was a kid my grandmother had a really old fridge next to her house, where she stored gardening stuff. Naturally I hacksawed through one of the tubes coming out of the compressor, which released a cloud of sulfur dioxide that killed all of the flowers downwind. I'm sure that a newer system with freon refrigerant would not have caused such severe environmental damage.
The whole fluorocarbon anxiety is a joke anyway. If the supposed ozone hole shrinks it gets attributed to less use of fluorocarbons. If, however, the hole grows, then that is evidence that fluorocarbons are still too frequent. That's a great kind of science, where every result confirms your theory.
Posted by: Jonathan on May 20, 2006 10:57 AM
Love them sulfur compounds... back when I used to brew my own beer, I washed out all the equipment with sodium metabisulfite solution, which always made me feel as though I was slowly choking. Fun stuff.
Per the topic at hand, I mainly thought it was interesting for showing such a clear cause-effect relationship between human activity and atmospheric response. Of course, that same characteristic makes it much more suspect.
Posted by: David Fleck on May 21, 2006 07:56 AM
Reading the article I see the usual assertions backed by assumptions, and the usual environmentalist sleight-of-hand of computerized projections substituted for data. If you used such weak models and untrustworthy simulated results to market an investment fund you'd be prosecuted for fraud, yet anyone who questions our risking 10 or 30 percent of GNP on these tenuous "climate change" theories gets called names.
Posted by: Jonathan on May 21, 2006 10:13 AM