One trait of an American is that he or she isnt afraid of anything. We may have a concern, but we have enough confidence to realize we can overcome any obstacle.
All those fairy tales are targeted toward a specific demographic...the same demographic that was once enthralled with The National Enquirer and then, World News Daily. Their readers have never been what one would call the brightest bulbs in the chandelier. Easily entertained and even easier hoodwinked.
It's always fun to go back through history to see what the predictions were, especially the dire dreadful apocalyptic ones. Many have so much hubris to think that first of all mankind can somehow control or greatly affect things like climate. But, here we still are going on with our lives on this spinning ball just the right distance from the sun to keep us not too warm and not too cold. With variations over the centuries caused not by mankind, but mostly by variations in the solar output. Modern history of climate data only goes back maybe a hundred years. The rest is speculation. And from that small slice of earth's timeline they think they can deduce where we are going to be a decade from now. Well, they haven't been able to do that and they don't even get it right on the weather either. But, the activists who want us to give up our lives and return to living in the 19th century won't give in. Even though returning to the 19th century's use of fuels would probably kill off about 75% of the world's population and all of us would be living much worse lives.
Heh.. No use fretting over such things.. When the Earth tires of us humans, it'll shake us off like the fleas that we are.
Sitting at a table in the Ontario Chrysler plant around 1998, I thought to myself that we are the most aggressive and destructive parasite this planet has possibly ever seen. Just gobs of steel, oil, and raw materials being drug out of the skin of our planet.
Among the topics that were in that "Chicken Little" writeup... high altitude ozone. High altitude ozone good... blocks harmful ultraviolet radiation from reaching the earth's surface. High altitude ozone depletion... bad.
The problem for "Chicken Little" is that there actually has been international action to reduce the amount of ozone-destroying chemicals that humans release into the atmosphere. The Montreal Protocol of 1987. Can it be confirmed that this international agreement is having a positive effect? Someone seems to have confirmed it. Or wants "us" to think that they have confirmed it.
For the first time, scientists have shown through direct satellite observations of the ozone hole that levels of ozone-destroying chlorine are declining, resulting in less ozone depletion.
Measurements show that the decline in chlorine, resulting from an international ban on chlorine-containing manmade chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has resulted in about 20 percent less ozone depletion during the Antarctic winter than there was in 2005 — the first year that measurements of chlorine and ozone during the Antarctic winter were made by NASA’s Aura satellite.
“We see very clearly that chlorine from CFCs is going down in the ozone hole, and that less ozone depletion is occurring because of it,” said lead author Susan Strahan, an atmospheric scientist from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
CFCs are long-lived chemical compounds that eventually rise into the stratosphere, where they are broken apart by the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation, releasing chlorine atoms that go on to destroy ozone molecules. Stratospheric ozone protects life on the planet by absorbing potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation that can cause skin cancer and cataracts, suppress immune systems and damage plant life.
Two years after the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in 1985, nations of the world signed the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, which regulated ozone-depleting compounds. Later amendments to the Montreal Protocol completely phased out production of CFCs.
Past studies have used statistical analyses of changes in the ozone hole’s size to argue that ozone depletion is decreasing. This study is the first to use measurements of the chemical composition inside the ozone hole to confirm that not only is ozone depletion decreasing, but that the decrease is caused by the decline in CFCs.
[This message has been edited by rinselberg (edited 01-18-2020).]
