Great News

[Dana Sheets]

The time we can spend in the sun is hugely reduced here , and it hasnt been hundreds of years , not even a generation , its not just the normal sun , it`s the increase in UV rays , wearing clothing and sunscreen aint a choice but a requirement . Lots of places in the world with more sun and sun culture than NZ.

Ummm...I think the longer life span and lighter color of many contemporary residents of Oceania may have quite a bit to do with the limited exposure concept. Early man didn't worry about skin cancer, he died from it. Contemporary man would rather die from heart disease...so he finds the shade if the sun becomes the boogeyman.

That being said - I still think our superfund sites are horrible, teaching our children to be better stewards of the environment is good, and China's gonna make everything sootier for a long time unless we can find a better alternative. As was discussed earlier - man didn't leave the stone age because he ran out of stones - hopefully we'll leave the fossil fuel age before we run out of grease.

Dana

[Guest]

Ben: National Geographic is not without bias,some journalism is driven by eviro mental advocacy; here's a different viewpoint for you, another way to look at things

http://www.carleton.ca/~tpatters/teachi ... dzen3.html


Consensus and the Current "Popular Vision''

Many studies from the nineteenth century on suggested that industrial and other contributions to increasing carbon dioxide might lead to global warming. Problems with such predictions were also long noted, and the general failure of such predictions to explain the observed record caused the field of climatology as a whole to regard the suggested mechanisms as suspect. Indeed, the global cooling trend of the 1950s and 1960s led to a minor global cooling hysteria in the 1970s. All that was more or less normal scientific debate, although the cooling hysteria had certain striking analogues to the present warming hysteria including books such as The Genesis Strategy by Stephen Schneider and Climate Change and World Affairs by Crispin Tickell--both authors are prominent in support of the present concerns as well--"explaining'' the problem and promoting international regulation. There was also a book by the prominent science writer Lowell Ponte (The Cooling) that derided the skeptics and noted the importance of acting in the absence of firm, scientific foundation. There was even a report by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reaching its usual ambiguous conclusions. But the scientific community never took the issue to heart, governments ignored it, and with rising global temperatures in the late 1970s the issue more or less died. In the meantime, model calculations--especially at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton--continued to predict substantial warming due to increasing carbon dioxide. Those predictions were considered interesting, but largely academic, exercises--even by the scientists involved.
The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier. That was an especially warm summer in some regions, particularly in the United States. The abrupt increase in temperature in the late 1970s was too abrupt to be associated with the smooth increase in carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony before Sen. Al Gore's Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation between the two.
Despite the fact that those remarks were virtually meaningless, they led the environmental advocacy movement to adopt the issue immediately. The growth of environmental advocacy since the 1970s has been phenomenal. In Europe the movement centered on the formation of Green parties; in the United States the movement centered on the development of large public interest advocacy groups. Those lobbying groups have budgets of several hundred million dollars and employ about 50,000 people; their support is highly valued by many political figures. As with any large groups, self-perpetuation becomes a crucial concern. "Global warming'' has become one of the major battle cries in their fundraising efforts. At the same time, the media unquestioningly accept the pronouncements of those groups as objective truth.
Within the large-scale climate modelling community--a small subset of the community interested in climate--however, the immediate response was to criticize Hansen for publicly promoting highly uncertain model results as relevant to public policy. Hansen's motivation was not totally obvious, but despite the criticism of Hansen, the modelling community quickly agreed that large warming was not impossible. That was still enough for both the politicians and advocates who have generally held that any hint of environmental danger is a sufficient basis for regulation unless the hint can be rigorously disproved. That is a particularly pernicious asymmetry, given that rigor is generally impossible in environmental sciences.
Other scientists quickly agreed that with increasing carbon dioxide some warming might be expected and that with large enough concentrations of carbon dioxide the warming might be significant. Nevertheless, there was widespread skepticism. By early 1989, however, the popular media in Europe and the United States were declaring that "all scientists'' agreed that warming was real and catastrophic in its potential.
As most scientists concerned with climate, I was eager to stay out of what seemed like a public circus. But in the summer of 1988 Lester Lave, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote to me about being dismissed from a Senate hearing for suggesting that the issue of global warming was scientifically controversial. I assured him that the issue was not only controversial but also unlikely. In the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity. In the spring of 1989 I was an invited participant at a global warming symposium at Tufts University. I was the only scientist among a panel of environmentalists. There were strident calls for immediate action and ample expressions of impatience with science. Claudine Schneider, then a congressman from Rhode Island, acknowledged that "scientists may disagree, but we can hear Mother Earth, and she is crying.'' It seemed clear to me that a very dangerous situation was arising, and the danger was not of "global warming'' itself.
In the spring of 1989 I prepared a critique of global warming, which I submitted to Science, a magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper was rejected without review as being of no interest to the readership. I then submitted the paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, where it was accepted after review, rereviewed, and reaccepted--an unusual procedure to say the least. In the meantime, the paper was attacked in Science before it had even been published. The paper circulated for about six months as samizdat. It was delivered at a Humboldt conference at M.I.T. and reprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine.
In the meantime, the global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the summer of 1989 by Robert Redford at his ranch in Sundance, Utah. Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop research and begin acting. I suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it is also indicative of the overall attitude toward science. Barbara Streisand personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate.
By the fall of 1989 some media were becoming aware that there was controversy (Forbes and Reader's Digest were notable in that regard). Cries followed from environmentalists that skeptics were receiving excessive exposure. The publication of my paper was followed by a determined effort on the part of the editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Richard Hallgren, to solicit rebuttals. Such articles were prepared by Stephen Schneider and Will Kellogg, a minor scientific administrator for the past thirty years, and those articles were followed by an active correspondence mostly supportive of the skeptical spectrum of views. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll of climate scientists in the American Meteorological Society and in the American Geophysical Union shows that a vast majority doubts that there has been any identifiable man-caused warming to date (49 percent asserted no, 33 percent did not know, 18 percent thought some has occurred; however, among those actively involved in research and publishing frequently in peer-reviewed research journals, none believes that any man-caused global warming has been identified so far). On the whole, the debate within the meteorological community has been relatively healthy and, in this regard, unusual.
Outside the world of meteorology, Greenpeace's Jeremy Legett, a geologist by training, published a book attacking critics of warming---especially me. George Mitchell, Senate majority leader and father of a prominent environmental activist, also published a book urging acceptance of the warming problem (World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth). Sen. Gore recently published a book (Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit). Those are just a few examples of the rapidly growing publications on warming. Rarely has such meager science provoked such an outpouring of popularization by individuals who do not understand the subject in the first place.
The activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists deserve special mention. That widely supported organization was originally devoted to nuclear disarmament. As the cold war began to end, the group began to actively oppose nuclear power generation. Their position was unpopular with many physicists. Over the past few years, the organization has turned to the battle against global warming in a particularly hysterical manner. In 1989 the group began to circulate a petition urging recognition of global warming as potentially the great danger to mankind. Most recipients who did not sign were solicited at least twice more. The petition was eventually signed by 700 scientists including a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel laureates. Only about three or four of the signers, however, had any involvement in climatology. Interestingly, the petition had two pages, and on the second page there was a call for renewed consideration of nuclear power. When the petition was published in the New York Times, however, the second page was omitted. In any event, that document helped solidify the public perception that "all scientists'' agreed with the disaster scenario. Such a disturbing abuse of scientific authority was not unnoticed. At the 1990 annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Frank Press, the academy's president, warned the membership against lending their credibility to issues about which they had no special knowledge. Special reference was made to the published petition. In my opinion what the petition did show was that the need to fight "global warming'' has become part of the dogma of the liberal conscience--a dogma to which scientists are not immune.
At the same time, political pressures on dissidents from the "popular vision'' increased. Sen. Gore publicly admonished "skeptics'' in a lengthy New York Times op-ed piece. In a perverse example of double-speak he associated the "true believers'' in warming with Galileo. He also referred, in another article, to the summer of 1988 as the Kristallnacht before the warming holocaust.
The notion of "scientific unanimity'' is currently intimately tied to the Working Group I report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in September 1990. That panel consists largely of scientists posted to it by government agencies. The panel has three working groups. Working Group I nominally deals with climate science. Approximately 150 scientists contributed to the report, but university representation from the United States was relatively small and is likely to remain so, since the funds and time needed for participation are not available to most university scientists. Many governments have agreed to use that report as the authoritative basis for climate policy. The report, as such, has both positive and negative features. Methodologically, the report is deeply committed to reliance on large models, and within the report models are largely verified by comparison with other models. Given that models are known to agree more with each other than with nature (even after "tuning''), that approach does not seem promising. In addition, a number of the participants have testified to the pressures placed on them to emphasize results supportive of the current scenario and to suppress other results. That pressure has frequently been effective, and a survey of participants reveals substantial disagreement with the final report. Nonetheless, the body of the report is extremely ambiguous, and the caveats are numerous. The report is prefaced by a policymakers' summary written by the editor, Sir John Houghton, director of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office. His summary largely ignores the uncertainty in the report and attempts to present the expectation of substantial warming as firmly based science. The summary was published as a separate document, and, it is safe to say that policymakers are unlikely to read anything further. On the basis of the summary, one frequently hears that "hundreds of the world's greatest climate scientists from dozens of countries all agreed that.|.|.|.'' It hardly matters what the agreement refers to, since whoever refers to the summary insists that it agrees with the most extreme scenarios (which, in all fairness, it does not). I should add that the climatology community, until the past few years, was quite small and heavily concentrated in the United States and Europe.
While the International Panel on Climate Change's reports were in preparation, the National Research Council in the United States was commissioned to prepare a synthesis of the current state of the global change situation. The panel chosen was hardly promising. It had no members of the academy expert in climate. Indeed, it had only one scientist directly involved in climate, Stephen Schneider, who is an ardent environmental advocate. It also included three professional environmental advocates, and it was headed by a former senator, Dan Evans. The panel did include distinguished scientists and economists outside the area of climate, and, perhaps because of this, the report issued by the panel was by and large fair. The report concluded that the scientific basis for costly action was absent, although prudence might indicate that actions that were cheap or worth doing anyway should be considered. A subcommittee of the panel issued a report on adaptation that argued that even with the more severe warming scenarios, the United States would have little difficulty adapting. Not surprisingly, the environmentalists on the panel not only strongly influenced the reports, but failing to completely have their way, attempted to distance themselves from the reports by either resigning or by issuing minority dissents. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the New York Times typically carried reports on that panel on page 46. The findings were never subsequently discussed in the popular media--except for claims that the reports supported the catastrophic vision. Nevertheless, the reports of that panel were indicative of the growing skepticism concerning the warming issue.
Indeed, the growing skepticism is in many ways remarkable. One of the earliest protagonists of global warming, Roger Revelle, the late professor of ocean sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who initiated the direct monitoring of carbon dioxide during the International Geophysical Year (1958), coauthored with S. Fred Singer and Chauncy Starr a paper recommending that action concerning global warming be delayed insofar as current knowledge was totally inadequate. Another active advocate of global warming, Michael McElroy, head of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard, has recently written a paper acknowledging that existing models cannot be used to forecast climate.
One might think that such growing skepticism would have some influence on public debate, but the insistence on "scientific unanimity'' continues unabated. At times, that insistence takes some very strange forms. Over a year ago, Robert White, former head of the U.S. Weather Bureau and currently president of the National Academy of Engineering, wrote an article for Scientific American that pointed out that the questionable scientific basis for global warming predictions was totally inadequate to justify any costly actions. He did state that if one were to insist on doing something, one should only do things that one would do even if there were no warming threat. Immediately after that article appeared, Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist and a confidant of Sen. Gore, wrote a piece in which he stated that White had called for immediate action on "global warming.'' My own experiences have been similar. In an article in Audubon Stephen Schneider states that I have "conceded that some warming now appears inevitable.'' Differences between expectations of unmeasurable changes of a few tenths of a degree and warming of several degrees are conveniently ignored. Karen White in a lengthy and laudatory article on James Hansen that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine reported that even I agreed that there would be warming, having "reluctantly offered an estimate of 1.2 degrees.'' That was, of course, untrue.
Most recently, I testified at a Senate hearing conducted by Sen. Gore. There was a rather arcane discussion of the water vapor in the upper troposphere. Two years ago, I had pointed out that if the source of water vapor in that region in the tropics was from deep clouds, then surface warming would be accompanied by reduced upper level water vapor. Subsequent research has established that there must be an additional source--widely believed to be ice crystals thrown off by those deep clouds. I noted that that source too probably acts to produce less moisture in a warmer atmosphere. Both processes cause the major feedback process to become negative rather than positive. Sen. Gore asked whether I now rejected my suggestion of two years ago as a major factor. I answered that I did. Gore then called for the recording secretary to note that I had retracted my objections to "global warming.'' In the ensuing argument, involving mostly other participants in the hearing, Gore was told that he was confusing matters. Shortly thereafter, however, Tom Wicker published an article in the New York Times that claimed that I had retracted my opposition to warming and that that warranted immediate action to curb the purported menace. I wrote a letter to the Times indicating that my position had been severely misrepresented, and, after a delay of over a month, my letter was published. Sen. Gore nonetheless claims in his book that I have indeed retracted my scientific objections to the catastrophic warming scenario and also warns others who doubt the scenario that they are hurting humanity.
Why, one might wonder, is there such insistence on scientific unanimity on the warming issue? After all, unanimity in science is virtually nonexistent on far less complex matters. Unanimity on an issue as uncertain as "global warming'' would be surprising and suspicious. Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to "global warming,'' any scientist's agreement will do.
The answer almost certainly lies in politics. For example, at the Earth Summit in Rio, attempts were made to negotiate international carbon emission agreements. The potential costs and implications of such agreements are likely to be profound for both industrial and developing countries. Under the circumstances, it would be very risky for politicians to undertake such agreements unless scientists "insisted.'' Nevertheless, the situation is probably a good deal more complicated than that example suggests.

[Bill Glasheen]

From the National Geographic article.

The IPCC's 2001 report projects that sea level could rise between 4 and 35 inches (10 to 89cm) by century's end.

Well now, that's precision for you...

- Bill

[Stryke]

Dr Richard McKenzie from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) says that the ozone hole over Antarctica was remarkably small this year due to unusual weather patterns which resulted in the hole being split into two in September, well before its usual breakup period. Ozone levels in Antarctica have nearly recovered now, about a month earlier than last year.

“However ultraviolet radiation is likely to be as intense as it was last year. In New Zealand, it is estimated that ozone losses since 1980 have caused sunburning radiation to increase by 10-12%.”

there is some evidence that the Ozone levels are recovering due to the measures taken internationally but it`s a long way off , but evidence that proactive efforts can effect the enviroment in a positive sense .

it`s not some old wives tale but a genuine enviromental change thanks to pollution .
[/quote]

[Guest]

Another Perspective.


http://www.predictweather.com/ozone%20d ... /index.asp

The Nonsense That is Ozone-Depletion

"Cancer threat as deadly UV rays build up” reported the NZ Herald on September 10th. Referring to a “disturbing new study” the writer reported a finding that “increases in UV radiation over summer have occurred because of ozone depletion caused by pollution”. The article contained three assumptions:
1) UV has increased long term,
2) Ozone protects us from UV (and less now means less protection),
3) That ozone depletion is caused by humans polluting our natural environment.

Unfortunately, these claims are false on all counts. In order to simply understand the relationship between UV(sunlight), ozone and oxygen (air), think about what you see when you go to the beach. The order of things is
Water - Surf - Beach
The boundary where the water hits the beach is called surf, and in the upper atmosphere, the boundary where the sunlight hits the air is termed the ozone layer, because in that region ozone is produced as a result of the UV acting on the oxygen, in other words where the sunlight hits the air.
Sunlight – Ozone - Air
Just as the surf cannot in any way protect the land from the sea, ozone cannot ‘protect’ the air and our environment that is below it from UV. A result cannot be defined as a protector. To lament that ozone depletion is taking away “our protection” is the same as crying that surfers are wearing down the surf, and as the surf is all there is holding back the ocean, when the surf goes (due to human behavior) the water will flood over the land and destroy mankind.

As with so many theories, threads are tied together to build a case. The case is then launched to the media to attract attention. The attention is then added to by ‘further findings’, ‘disturbing new studies’ and ‘concerns’ The end result is the willing granting of research funds to research “the problem”. If the Cancer word can be attached, so much the better for the case. The public will donate any amount of money for cancer research. It only wants to see the case for it spelled out in a conclusive-sounding way.

The Case
We do know that ozone exists. We know that there are two ozone depletion zones: over each of the Earth’s poles. We know the depletion zone over Antarctic is bigger than that over the Arctic. We have found that CFCs which are man-made substances commonly used in refrigeration and aerosol cans, contain chlorine. And we know that chlorine can destroy ozone.

At this point let’s revisit school science. We breathe in oxygen and expell it as carbon dioxide. 02 is two oxygen atoms stuck together. Given sufficient energy applied, now and then three oxygen atoms will stick together, making an 03 molecule, which is called ozone. The energy required for this can come from electrical discharge through the air, such as lightning, or from the sun in the form of UV sunlight. You can smell ozone if you sniff around an electric motor that has arcing around the brushes – the pungent smell is the 03.

When in space the Sun’s energy races down here to meet Earth’s rising air, a certain amount of 03 is produced. But like the surf, it is merely the result of the photo-chemical process between oxygen and UV light. But it is the photo-chemical process itself which protects us; the ozone is a mere by-product. The air itself absorbs most of the UV radiation and disperses it. As the air contains ozone, so the ozone also combines with the UV. In the same way, if you dropped a cup of ink into the sea it would spread out and disperse. And if either the air or sunlight pack up, we will have long since suffocated or frozen to death before we start developing cancer.

There is not a ‘layer’ of ozone at all, any more than there is single layer of air; and ozone doesn’t protect us from anything. The Sun's rays hit us at exactly the same time as they hit the ozone. Therefore, protection is impossible. In the same way, 'hard' water molecules, H3O, doesn't prevent anyone from getting wet. If we could snap our fingers and make every single last molecule of ozone disappear, it would have absolutely no bearing on the amount of UV light reaching the Earth.

Now, back to the poles, where there are indeed observed ozone-depletion zones. How come? Well, there happens to be two places on Earth where UV light doesn’t meet rising warm air molecules: where the Sun shines less and where it is cold – at the Poles! Because the Earth is tilted, there is a wide area of depletion around both poles, and NZ happens to be under the southern depletion zone for much of the winter. In fact the “hole” gets bigger towards spring, because the highs and lows of the effect are modified by Earth’s wind systems and subsequently the flow of warm and cold air. That is why you see glaring headlines on sudden discoveries about ozone depletion around NZ around NZ’s springtime. But by December the hole is much smaller, and that's when NZ has its summer, when the skin cancer risk from the sun is higher.

Bricks Don't Float Up
Despite all the information you may have read, there is not one shred of supportable evidence that CFCs have found their way 40 miles up above the Earth. No one has ever found any up there because they are roughly five times heavier than air. They are like a brick in a swimming pool. It is not often that you will see a brick floating to the surface of your pool. CFCs are so dense that even as a gas you could fill a bucket with it and pour the contents of one bucket into another. Secondly there is no evidence that they can destroy anything because they are very stable and unreactive substances. Most dictionaries and chemistry books describe them as inert gases.

Faced with this rather unfortunate logic, some researchers extend the plot, claiming that in the upper atmosphere the intense UV light is sufficient to break down the CFCs, releasing chlorine which then does the damage. If that actually could happen though, then the “ozone layer” would just get replaced by the CFC layer, which would then further “protect” us from UV radiation.

There is, too, another difficulty with the theory: the fact that all the CFCs in the world are insufficient to even dent the known amount of ozone. The factor is 1 in 100,000. So we get told of yet another scenario – that in some imagined chain reaction, chlorine would keep on getting released by the UV until all the ozone was destroyed. But even if we supposed that this could happen, then all of these reactions going on would only further absorb UV, protecting us even more. We would right now be dying from lack of UV light and vitamin D deficiency.

There is no evidence that such a chain reaction would occur. Also, it is a long jump and unscientific to say that if a reaction could occur, then it would. Furthermore, there are some 192 known chemical reactions and 48 photochemical reactions occurring in the stratosphere(the ozone area) all the time. How would it be that chlorine and ozone, which are only in minute quantities anyway, should be able to carry on this reaction to the exclusion of the other 241 known reactive processes?

And who says that the “holes” are getting bigger? In 1988 NASA’s Nimbus satellite appeared to show that the southern hole was increasing. Here was supposed proof that man was aggravating the situation. The fact that the following year’s results showed the hole smaller than ever previously recorded went totally unannounced, except in obscure journals. Neither was it reported that the variation in depletion-area size seemed to correspond with increases in sunspot activity, which throws out more UV radiation.

Where did all this nonsense start?
The “CFC Depletion Theory” was first published in 1974 by F. Sherwood Roland and Mario J. Molina, University of California. Their work was treated as a joke by the world’s scientific community until the mid-80s, when suddenly there were plenty of funds available for the study of such things.

There are genuine experts concerned at the erosion of truth. In 1986 the prestigious science journal “Geophysical Research Letters” asked forty-six of the world’s leading climatologists and meteorologists to submit individual papers on their research and findings on the subject of the “Antarctic Hole” The overview of those findings includes..”despite the number of public announcements, no clear link between manmade pollutants and ozone depletion over Antarctica has been established; indeed, a number of papers in this issue present serious alternatives to and constraints on the suggested chemical scenarios..The appearance of the South Polar total ozone minimum(the Hole) and higher values at mid-latitudes in the spring has been observed since the late 1950s, well before man-made pollutants could have had important impact on the stratosphere.” The introduction went on to suggest that the hole was apparently a natural phenomenon, affected by climatic shift in the upper atmosphere.

Dr Joseph Scotto, of the Biostatics Branch of the US National Cancer Insititute has found that UV light levels reaching the ground has decreased at the rate of 0.7% a year over a ten year period in the northern hemisphere, at the same time as ozone depletion has been recorded. It is a different story according to Dr Richard McKenzie who claims that “sunburning UV has increased 15% since ozone depletion began in the late 1970s.” So who is one to believe?

Perhaps in the case of increased melanomas found to have been occurring in NZ; the increase in population is a factor to be considered and the obvious fact that less per capita than in years past now spend their working lives in the open air, resulting in a decreased average immunity for NZ skins. Also, family doctors used to instruct young mothers to put the baby in sunlight for longer and longer periods, to build up melanin which would function as an immunity. These days doctors tell everyone to cover themselves with cream and to stay indoors. The population no longer has a natural immunity as a result. And that has nothing to do with ozone.

One Hole is Larger than the Other
Let’s look at one last factor, so often reported; that the Antarctic hole is larger than the Arctic one. One would think that even if inert heavier-than-air substances could make it up into space, that they would do it more around the densely populated regions of earth – the northern hemisphere; and affect the Arctic Hole more than the Antarctic. No one is disputing that the hole over the Antarctic is definitely much bigger. The Southern hemisphere has a longer winter than the Northern hemisphere because Earth is further from the sun in July than in January. Longer winter means bigger hole. But also maybe, some chlorine is coming from some other source, instead of CFCs. Let's look around.

Aha! Just a few miles upwind from the Antarctic camp where all the readings about ozone-depletion originate from, is a rather large hill called Mt Erebus. Mt Erebus is an active volcano, which first erupted in 1982 (coincidentally about when the bigger hole was discovered). Mt Erebus spews out over 1,000 tons of active chlorine every day. Go there and look - it is puffing away all the time. This chlorine, far from being as cold as CFCs, comes out as superheated gas which shoots straight up into the stratosphere. This chlorine does break down the ozone. And Mt Erebus puts out more chlorine per year, all by itself, than all the cars and aerosol cans on earth put together could do in a decade.

It is a little tidbit of science that esteemed experts seem to have overlooked. Moreover, Erebus is not the only active volcano in the world. There are hundreds, thousands, throwing chlorine upwards every second. We can't cap all the volcanoes.

Let’s get it in perspective.
Imagine if in every supermaket in the country, the shelves were totally filled only with cans of flyspray. Imagine further, that they could be triggered magically all at once. Picture how much CFC would be involved, to be released into the atmosphere, supposedly to destroy ozone. Now cast your mind to a jumbo jet streaking across the city sky. The unfortunate truth is that every time one jet takes off and flies somewhere, it destroys more ozone than you could ever destroy by squirting all those spray-cans. We are talking 80 tons of pollutant per plane; a volume of exhaust emission equivalent to the volume of Waitemata Harbour. And that is just one jet. Tens of thousands of flights occur around the world every day. Is anyone researching an electric aeroplane?

I've saved the best till last. The Sun shines, in NZ, from the north. That's why all the houses mainly face north; to catch the day's warm sunshine. NZ is therefore south of the Sun, at all times. The South Pole is south of NZ, at all times. For the Sun to shine through the ozone hole in the south-polar skies and onto NZ to cause skin cancer, is utterly impossible unless the Sun scoots around under the south pole or Antarctica races up to sit next to Fiji. Never mind the ozone thing; what great headlines that would make. Hard as it may be to believe, no-one's ever noticed that occurring.

What we seem to have is a very handy designer-Hole, capable of being over whichever country scientists who are seeking research funds desire it to be. Is there a connection to the Moon? Yes, the average size of the hole varies with the 18.613 year lunation cycle. Has ozone a shelf-life? Yes, incredibly short. O3 converts very quickly back to O2. It is getting made all the time as the Sun hits warm air. The total amount stays constant so it is continually destructing.

Finally, a word from a reliable expert. Robert Pease, Professor Emeritus of Physical Climatology at one of America’s leading universities, sent a disclaimer about what he called the “media-endorsed ozone-depletion theory” to many United States newspapers. Only a handful published it.

Here are some excerpts:
“..The ozone layer self heals. Ozone molecules in the atmosphere are constantly being replenished, created when energetic ultraviolet light splits normal oxygen. In addition, the ozone layer is replenished by upward diffusion of smog-induced surface ozone. The belief that CFC molecules will rise and collect in the stratosphere is incorrect. Even if they did, there is a low probability of enough CFC decomposition necessary for ozone depletion. Based on Professor Rowland’s own calculations, there will be one CFC for every 136 million normal oxygen atoms in the ozone layer at 25 km altitude.
Clear-cut evidence of ozone depletion is lacking. The entire theory is based on the supposition that somehow heavier-than-air CFC molecules rise into the stratosphere unimpeded.
In no way can manmade destruction of the ozone layer be accepted as fact. Eventually a scientific debate may take place, and this ozone depletion scare might finally be laid to rest.." (R.Pease)




________________________________________

The contents of this page are regarded as intellectual property and are fully protected by international copyright. No part thereof may be reproduced and/or distributed either in written or electronic form without authorised written consent from the author.

The forecasts herein are made on a best-of-endeavour basis and carry no claim of 100% accuracy. Consequently the author and his associates can bear no responsibility whatsoever for decisions undertaken on the basis of the information.

© Ken Ring 2003

[Guest]

This part is worth repeating

I've saved the best till last. The Sun shines, in NZ, from the north. That's why all the houses mainly face north; to catch the day's warm sunshine. NZ is therefore south of the Sun, at all times. The South Pole is south of NZ, at all times. For the Sun to shine through the ozone hole in the south-polar skies and onto NZ to cause skin cancer, is utterly impossible unless the Sun scoots around under the south pole or Antarctica races up to sit next to Fiji. Never mind the ozone thing; what great headlines that would make. Hard as it may be to believe, no-one's ever noticed that occurring.


Kind of like that magic bullet init mate.

[Guest]

Mean while in china

China and motorcycles
China is the world’s biggest producer and consumer of motorcycles. Production has risen very sharply in recent years—from 49 000 units in 1980 to 11.27 million units in 1999. In 2000 China had 45 million registered motorcycle owners. Three of the five largest motorbike manufacturers in the world, Jialing, Jianshe and Qingqi, are located in China.

Motorcycles are known to be a major cause of the stifling pollution that occurs in many of China’s cities. For example in China’s ancient capital of Xian, the police traffic administration claims that motor vehicles are the third largest cause of air pollution in the city and that motorcycles are responsible for half of this pollution.

In July 2000 the pollution situation became so serious that Xian joined the growing number of Chinese cities that closed their streets to motorcycles. For more than a month Xian’s 180 000 registered motorcycle owners were not allowed to ride within the city’s ancient walls. Further restrictions were put in place during 2000 and Xian became the 58th Chinese city to make some of its streets completely free of motorcycles.

Cities such as Nantong, Shanghai and Tianjin were the first to tackle the problem of motorcycle pollution by halting the registration of motorcycles as early as 1994. A year 2000 report in the newspaper Yangcheng Wanbao said that 31 cities in China prohibit motorcycle registration altogether, while a further 27 have adopted other restrictive tactics such as extra taxes and motorcycling fees.

Some manufacturers of motorcycles are trying to deal with the restrictions of city authorities by producing less polluting bikes. For example China’s biggest scooter manufacturer, Chinan Hainan Sundiro Motorcycle Corporation, signed an agreement in 2000 with Australia’s Orbital Engine Corporation. This agreement was aimed at reducing fuel emissions.

Guess they don't drive finely tuned BSA machines

[Stryke]

Actually mate a bit more smog would help NZ , its because our airs so clean that the increase in UV effects us more so than dirty countrys elsewhere

the Ozone Hole effects the amounts of ozone in our area including over NZ , it`s not rocket science , the increase in UV is recorded ... for every scientific study you produce I could dig one up say ...Ozone good chemicals bad , but lets face it these scientists might as well be Lawyers it`s always self interest .

the only argument against not polluting this stuff is money , It wont affect me in my position at the moment so i vote for a cleaner world , as long as my rights arent affected and my libertys well I could care less about profit margins .

Heck if it was acceptable I`d go build that cabin up in a national park somewhere , grow my beard and practice kata by daybreak , and drink moonshine by sunset

[Guest]

I got a couple of chainsaws mate! tell me when.

[RACastanet]

Great research!

Rich

[IJ]

The CFC stuff is interesting and certainly, we'd all need to become experts to really comment or know with quality certainty. What I do know is that BS counter science appeals to some. There is an over the top quality to some environmentalism (duh!) and there's a predictable reaction. And its surprising how many people bouoght it when Rush said there will be no rising ocean level, because when ice melts in a glass the overall level stays the same. Well, Rush, all the ice is on land.

Here are some interesting reads in a quick google on the matter.
http://english.wunderground.com/educati ... eptics.asp
http://www.answers.com/topic/ozone-depletion
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jse ... sbid=lc01a
http://rous.redbarn.org/objectivism/Wri ... etion.html

You can spot their various leanings. Readres may be most interested in the last one because its written by someone who dislikes the environmentalist slant BUT wants to be objective and not just buy into science that contradicts it. Some other thoughts:

--light does not have to come through the ozone "hole" from a polar-positioned sun. The decreases in ozone levels are not restricted to the hole, but are more diffuse, and it does matter what happens to antarctica, not just NZ.

--"To lament that ozone depletion is taking away “our protection” is the same as crying that surfers are wearing down the surf, and as the surf is all there is holding back the ocean" Preposterous analogy. Beaches and dunes DO protect the inland from storms and when humans trample them such that they erode, we are more vulnerable to floods. Classic straw man: claim that environmentalists are proposing the earth will be washed away by the surf and debunk em.

--"But it is the photo-chemical process itself which protects us; the ozone is a mere by-product. The air itself absorbs most of the UV radiation and disperses it. As the air contains ozone, so the ozone also combines with the UV." False. Ozone IS a byproduct--that's how its being generated--but it also exists in a cycle where it absorbs UV and returns to O2. It does help, and it helps more than less reactive air. And, just because the air does some, does not mean we don't need ozone. Air protects me more than skin, yet I WILL be upset if the skin falls off.

"ozone doesn’t protect us from anything. The Sun's rays hit us at exactly the same time as they hit the ozone. Therefore, protection is impossible. In the same way, 'hard' water molecules, H3O, doesn't prevent anyone from getting wet." False. The reaction cited above involves the absorption of UV by ozone. It takes the hit so we don't. Good thing. And obviously the sun must PASS ALL the ozone and air before reaching us--same time, my butt. Plus, the analogy is false. Ozone is a shield for UV; what does hard water being wet have to do with that? Wetness isn't the issue; the question would be whether H30 is more prone to block something than H20. And that's not the issue at hand.

"Despite all the information you may have read, there is not one shred of supportable evidence that CFCs have found their way 40 miles up above the Earth." See this refuted in the skeptics link-the last one. This is made up. If gases reliably layered like this, we'd not have nicely mixed O2 /N2 / argon / CO2 throughout.

"CFC layer, which would then further “protect” us from UV radiation." Further? Maybe in place--because we're assuming O3 would be gone. But either way, CFCs wouldn't perform this role as well because they're catalysts, meaning they can remove a lot more O2 than they'd replace.

"But even if we supposed that this could happen, then all of these reactions going on would only further absorb UV, protecting us even more." False. The reactions with UV and ozone DO make a cycle and ongoing reactions mean UV is being soaked up. BUT no one ever said that these ozone destroying catalytic reactions require UV--if they did, i missed it. Anyone? So ozone could be removed without the soaking of any UV.

"Also, it is a long jump and unscientific to say that if a reaction could occur, then it would. Furthermore, there are some 192 known chemical reactions and 48 photochemical reactions occurring in the stratosphere(the ozone area) all the time. How would it be that chlorine and ozone, which are only in minute quantities anyway, should be able to carry on this reaction to the exclusion of the other 241 known reactive processes?" Inbteresting speculations. Does the author say why it wouldn't? Or hasn't? No. And so what if there are other reactions going on? I mean, people commute by train, plane, and car. Mostly be car. So can I therefore say, "why would a terrorist attack on planes occur to the exclusion of all these other modes of transportation? Or that it even would?" Makes no sense. I fail to see how there being many things going on in an atmosphere, city, or cell makes a less common but key reaction irrelevant.

As for chlorine, seen the environmentalism skeptic debunk this in my last link above.

This is the problem with junk counter science. Time consuming to refute. Easier to be satisfied with the impression all those ecowackos are just nuts. Sounds like the truth is more complicated than either position.

[RACastanet]

"Well, Rush, all the ice is on land."

Not at the North Polar Region.

Rich

[benzocaine]

[Panther]

Always thought it was interesting how Greenland was covered in snow (and therefore white), while Iceland wasn't and is shown on maps as "green".

[cxt]

Don't know, the Kyoto Accords leave much to desired.

For example they kinda leave China free to industialze as much as they feel they need.

While punishing nations that have already developed.

Not saying there is no problem, just not sure what of the best way to handle it.