[EnergyUnlimited]

More particulates---wouldn't that increase global dimming and therefore slow down global warming?

The problem is that hydroxyl is very important for methane oxidation process to proceed... and (as you know) methane is important greenhouse gas.
Without hydroxyl any methane released is here to stay...

Shortly, once hydroxyl is gone, you will have more dimming and more methane (means more warming...).
I wonder which process will win on the end...

My bet is that overall effect will result in more warming and poor quality of air.
Lets say some terrible smog in NY compounded with temperatures of Baghdad's.

[gg3]

.
Y'all realize that none of this would be a problem if the total human population was around 2 billion rather than the present 6.5 billion.

One way or another, we're going to get there.

[EnergyUnlimited]

.
Y'all realize that none of this would be a problem if the total human population was around 2 billion rather than the present 6.5 billion.

One way or another, we're going to get there.

If those 2 billions attempted American life style with comparable consumption per capita, problem would be about the same.
That is in respect of atmospheric pollution.

[Tanada]

Did any of you actually read the article cited above?

Ozone and hydroxle radicals are normally formed by sunlight reacting with air and water. In Polar spring the sun comes up and adds just enough energy to increase the reaction rates between the ozone/hydroxel radicals and the pollutant in the atmosphere but not enough energy to generate new ones. As a result the O/H reacts with the present pollutants and for 15 days becomes depleated in the process of oxidizing the pollutants. After the sun adds enough energy new O/H starts forming fast enough to rebuild the levels to normal.

[cudabachi]

From what I recall, the controversy centered on the use of various ozone layer-damaging aerosols....freon etc.
Did we successfully avert a disaster by banning the use of these materials worldwide? Has the ozone hole grown larger, smaller, disappeared?

[Sixstrings]

From Wikipedia:

On August 2, 2003, scientists announced that the depletion of the ozone layer may be slowing down due to the international ban on CFCs.[5] Three satellites and three ground stations confirmed that the upper atmosphere ozone depletion rate has slowed down significantly during the past decade. The study was organized by the American Geophysical Union. Some breakdown can be expected to continue due to CFCs used by nations which have not banned them, and due to gases which are already in the stratosphere. CFCs have very long atmospheric lifetimes, ranging from 50 to over 100 years, so the final recovery of the ozone layer is expected to require several lifetimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer#Ozone_depletion

Yup, it's true the disaster with the ozone was averted thanks to international cooperation.

P.S. Nice to see you post again, I always liked reading about your ranch and life in Venezuela

[green_achers]

Well, it wasn't really a controversy, at least not like climate change. I guess not as many oxen were gored, or those that were gored to achieve action were less powerful. Anyway, the science was a lot more straightforward... pretty simple chemistry. The solution was a lot more simple also.

[cudabachi]

From Wikipedia:

On August 2, 2003, scientists announced that the depletion of the ozone layer may be slowing down due to the international ban on CFCs.[5] Three satellites and three ground stations confirmed that the upper atmosphere ozone depletion rate has slowed down significantly during the past decade. The study was organized by the American Geophysical Union. Some breakdown can be expected to continue due to CFCs used by nations which have not banned them, and due to gases which are already in the stratosphere. CFCs have very long atmospheric lifetimes, ranging from 50 to over 100 years, so the final recovery of the ozone layer is expected to require several lifetimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_layer#Ozone_depletion

Yup, it's true the disaster with the ozone was averted thanks to international cooperation.

P.S. Nice to see you post again, I always liked reading about your ranch and life in Venezuela

Thanks for the info SS. Due to the lack of media coverage it certainly seemed as though the problem had been fixed or possibly taken a back seat to other more newsworthy stories such as climate change. From what I've seen, Venezuela must not have banned the use of CFC's.

Life in Venezuela has been good though I'm currently in the states for the holidays. I plan to return in January and get back to the hard work.

[dissident]

Use google and find out.

Look up Montreal Protocol and then find the recent observations of chlorine compounds in the stratosphere. The CFC induced ramp has stalled and is starting to decline. Industry switchover to non CFC compounds has been quite effective. Of course there are old fridges and AC systems that leak CFCs, as well as some cheating in the third world, but the observations are clear in that the Montreal Protocol implementation has been effective.

Inadvertently we saved ourselves from a potent set of greenhouse gases. CFC-12 is 1000 times more potent than CH4 and has a much longer lifetime in the atmosphere.

[cudabachi]

Use google and find out.

Look up Montreal Protocol and then find the recent observations of chlorine compounds in the stratosphere. The CFC induced ramp has stalled and is starting to decline. Industry switchover to non CFC compounds has been quite effective. Of course there are old fridges and AC systems that leak CFCs, as well as some cheating in the third world, but the observations are clear in that the Montreal Protocol implementation has been effective.

Inadvertently we saved ourselves from a potent set of greenhouse gases. CFC-12 is 1000 times more potent than CH4 and has a much longer lifetime in the atmosphere.

I'm curious as to why the ozone hole issue isn't brought up more, both from the standpoint of seeing how man-made products can affect the earth's atmosphere and how a concerted effort to curb their use can produce dramatic and what appear to be proveable results.

[PrestonSturges]

Ozone is also a greenhouse gas, and the ozone hole over the arctic and antarctic in the 1990s may have slowed melting of the polar regions until recently. Ironic, yes?

If the controversy happened today, Americans For Prosperity and the Chamber of Commerce would have had the teabaggers declare the CFC controversy a hoax and a tool of the New World Order.

[dissident]

That things have become more insane politically is quite true. But CFCs were relatively easy to deal with by simple substitution. It is a much bigger challenge to replace fossil fuels even though we have alternatives already. But the "it's too expensive" to change whine is simply pathetic. Clearly it is not too expensive to blow trillions on oil wars and to prop up the pyramid schemes of the financial "industry".

[rockdoc123]

Interesting bit of new research on CFS, cosmic rays and implications for the ozone layer.

WATERLOO, Ont. (Monday, Dec. 21, 2009) - Cosmic rays and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), both already implicated in depleting the Earth's ozone layer, are also responsible for changes in the global climate, a University of Waterloo scientist reports in a new peer-reviewed paper.

In his paper, Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, shows how CFCs - compounds once widely used as refrigerants - and cosmic rays - energy particles originating in outer space - are mostly to blame for climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. His paper, derived from observations of satellite, ground-based and balloon measurements as well as an innovative use of an established mechanism, was published online in the prestigious journal Physics Reports.

"My findings do not agree with the climate models that conventionally thought that greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, are the major culprits for the global warming seen in the late 20th century," Lu said. "Instead, the observed data show that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays most likely caused both the Antarctic ozone hole and global warming. These findings are totally unexpected and striking, as I was focused on studying the mechanism for the formation of the ozone hole, rather than global warming."

His conclusions are based on observations that from 1950 up to now, the climate in the Arctic and Antarctic atmospheres has been completely controlled by CFCs and cosmic rays, with no CO2 impact.

"Most remarkably, the total amount of CFCs, ozone-depleting molecules that are well-known greenhouse gases, has decreased around 2000," Lu said. "Correspondingly, the global surface temperature has also dropped. In striking contrast, the CO2 level has kept rising since 1850 and now is at its largest growth rate."

[mcgowanjm]

"The ozone hole is getting larger, deeper, and is lasting longer,"

All multi year ice in the Arctic is gone or 'rotten'.

[pablonite]

Did we successfully avert a disaster by banning the use of these materials worldwide? Has the ozone hole grown larger, smaller, disappeared?

From what I understand, ozone is O3 - 3 Oxygen atoms. Ultraviolet light can split O2 (natural oxygen) leaving O1 - which is completely unstable and attaches itslef to an O2 creating O3. As long as there is O2 and sunlight in the upper atmosphere we will have O3.

Averted disaster? Not likely but it helps usher in things like carbon control if people believe it.

If the controversy happened today, Americans For Prosperity and the Chamber of Commerce would have had the teabaggers declare the CFC controversy a hoax and a tool of the New World Order.

There was quite a bit going on behind the scenes that you may be unware of regarding the control of refrigerants.

You might want to read up on Dupont and their patent expiry on "Freon" which was not the element but the compound CFC. You can decide if the timing of that debacle was coincidence or not

This was the cheapest refrigerant ever invented, with a stroke of the pen it was denied to every third world country on the planet, keeping them in the dark age. This of course was an amateurish precursor to carbon control.

[pablonite]

Inadvertently we saved ourselves from a potent set of greenhouse gases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

James Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the air, finding a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland. In a self-funded research expedition ending in 1973, Lovelock went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 in both the Arctic and Antarctic, finding the presence of the gas in each of 50 air samples collected, but incorrectly concluding that CFCs are not hazardous to the environment. The experiment did however provide the first useful data on the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere.

Just wondering if you are starting to see the pattern here?

[mcgowanjm]

Inadvertently we saved ourselves from a potent set of greenhouse gases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuPont
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Lovelock

James Lovelock was the first to detect the widespread presence of CFCs in the air, finding a concentration of 60 parts per trillion of CFC-11 over Ireland. In a self-funded research expedition ending in 1973, Lovelock went on to measure the concentration of CFC-11 in both the Arctic and Antarctic, finding the presence of the gas in each of 50 air samples collected, but incorrectly concluding that CFCs are not hazardous to the environment. The experiment did however provide the first useful data on the presence of CFCs in the atmosphere.

Just wondering if you are starting to see the pattern here?

Sure am. No matter what info comes out it will be spun in
favor of unlimited growth. Which on a finite planet is
an Impossibility Theorem.

All gases move to the poles, which heat up the fastest.
All Climate Models being overwhelmed. Ozone Hole
Growing.

20 months and we can have a brand new climate! WEEEEE!

[Impervius]

This Ozone hole as been getting SMALLER.. We thought that would be a good thing, but unfortunately, its not. The ozone hole has been keeping Antarctica cool during global warming. As a result, models which predict the rise of the seas due to global warming have ignored the possibility of the ice-shelves in the Antarctic melting.

Since we have been so successful in repairing the hole in the ozone, the Antarctic is now being more fully exposed to the results of global warming, allowing the melting of the ice. This will cause the expected sea rise to actually be much larger. This is another example how the global warming scientists are actually UNDERSTATING the problem of global warming. Its much more serious than they are admitting.

[dissident]

There is only a full ozone hole over the southern pole. In the northern hemisphere the stratospheric polar vortex is too disturbed (by Rossby waves, which have a larger amplitude due to the differences in topography between the two hemispheres) for the vortex interior to be fully isolated from middle latitude air. So even though there is chlorine activation on polar stratospheric cloud particles the springtime reduction is nowhere near as large as in the southern hemisphere. The Rossby wave interaction with the large scale circulation also has the effect of producing more dynamical heating in the northern hemisphere winter so that stratospheric temperatures are higher. So the infrared "window" is more opaque in the northern hemisphere. Any tropospheric cooling effect associated with stratospheric ozone loss is tiny to begin with and the relatively small ozone losses in the northern hemisphere makes it basically irrelevant in the face of other driving factors for Arctic sea ice loss: warm ocean currents and warmer temperatures produce by baroclinic eddy heat flux from the tropics.

Based on chemistry climate model simulations (e.g. CCMVal) the southern hemisphere ozone hole will not go away completely even by 2070. But at least the middle latitude incidence of low ozone events will be eliminated sparing us from excessive UV exposure.