Ozone Hole Might Heal by 2050
Offline Ozone Hole Might Heal by 2050
The ozone hole over the Antarctic is likely to begin contracting in the future and might disappear by 2050 because of a reduction in the release of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone-depleting gases, according to a team of Japanese scientists.
That would be a good thing. Ozone in the upper atmosphere shields the planet from excess ratiation. The hole, monitored by satellites and ground stations since its discovery in the 1980s. is an area of depleted ozone, thought to have been created by chlorofluorocarbons released into the atmosphere.
Chlorofluorocarbon levels in the Earth's atmosphere have been declining since the mid-1990s due to international efforts to reduce emissions.
The new findings are based on a series of numerical simulations carried out by Eiji Akiyoshi of the National Institute for Environmental Studies, near Tokyo, using projected emissions of chlorofluorocarbons and other gases blamed for the ozone hole.
According to a report posted Friday on the institute's Web site, the hole is at its largest now but is likely to gradually start contracting around 2020 and disappear by around 2050.
The team's findings are in line with research by other scientists, including a favorable outlook from U.S. scientists published in the journal Nature earlier this month.
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.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking,
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The recent restrictions on CFCS not with standing, the estimate is correct that we won't begin to see a reduction in ozone depletion due to CFCs specifically until at LEAST 50 or so years from now. The half-life of CFCs is signifcantly long, and in fact the effect, if any, we see from them is going to become MUCH more pronouced before it dissapates. It takes 30-40 years for molecules such as CFCs and similar propellents and refridgerants to even reach the upper atmosphere, then several more years to break down and dissapate.
We are just now beginning to see the impact of such emmissions made during WWII. Things will get worse before they get better, and CFCs are are small concern in comparison to carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates.
The honest truth be told, even if we stop all emmissions today, we won't know if we've skirted the apocalypse for decades - and again that is if we're actually altering the environment significantly. There still is no conclusive evidence, though data does point to a problem. The real problem is if there is a problem by the time we conclusively recognize the source of the problem it will be far to late to do anything about it - in fact, it may already be too late. The truth is, we really don't know fuck-all about how the earth's environment works over periods of time significant to our species. What we did 10, 50 or 100 years ago may bite us on the ass tomorrow.
Sure, we can point out trends that took place over thousands or even millions of years from ice core samples and what not, but that doesn't really help us. Life was not the same back then, people could simply move of migrate and adapt. Now we're everywhere. We have nowhere new to go, and a drought or famine in one place will place pressures on the rest of the world. If that famine spreads, well, we're simply fucked.
I've spent my entire career since graduation on developing clean technologies. In my heart, I know it was for nothing. The damage is already done, and it continues to this day. There are also trade and moral implications involved. For example, the US and most western countries burned a fuck load of coal and oil to get where they are today - what right do we have to tell China to stop using coal for power (one of their most abundant resources)?
Sure, they could go to nuke power and so could we, but there is rediculous and for the most part unfounded resistance to that route.
Things are going to get MUCH worse before they get any better.
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That's scary. We really only started doing anything about CFC's back in the '70s.