September 12th, 2008 Ozone hole over the Antarctic
From NASA News
This is considered a “moderately large” ozone hole, according to NASA atmospheric scientist, Paul Newman. And while this year’s ozone hole is the fifth largest on record, the amount of ozone depleting substances have decreased about 3.8% from peak levels in 2000. The largest ozone hole ever recorded occurred in 2006, at a size of 10.6 million square miles.
The Antarctic ozone hole reached its annual maximum on Sept. 12, 2008, stretching over 27 million square kilometers, or 10.5 million square miles. The area of the ozone hole is calculated as an average of the daily areas for Sept. 21-30 from observations from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite.
What I find most interesting is this press release from last year from NASA:
NASA Keeps Eye on Ozone Layer Amid Montreal Protocol’s Success
NASA scientists will join researchers from around the world to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol.
In that PR they write:
“The levels of ozone depleting compounds in the atmosphere continue to drop, thanks to 20 years of scientific advances following the signing of the Montreal Protocol.”
“The Montreal Protocol has been a resounding success,” said Richard Stolarski, a speaker at the symposium from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. “The effect can be seen in the leveling off of chlorine compounds in the atmosphere and the beginning of their decline.”
No mention of the possibility of cosmic rays then, but in the face of a reversal, I wonder if maybe they’ll consider alternate suspects. Sometimes I think of our current atmospheric science like a stubborn district attorney that refuses to look beyond what he considers the prime suspect.
“We’ve got our criminals and their names are CO2 and CFC, I’m confident that the forensics will show them guilty beyond a shadow of the doubt”.
Trouble is, if forensics had the same sloppy data gathering and adjustment procedures as we’ve seen climate science, the defense would have the forensics tossed out easily.
h/t to David Walton
Today’s DDT limerick:
A mosquito was heard to complain
That a chemist had poisoned his brain;
The cause of his sorrow
Was Para-dichloro-
Diphenyltrichloroethane.
[Do a sing-song of ‘para-dichloro-diphenyl-trichloro-ethane.’ Helps you to remember it, so you can impress people with the full name for DDT. If they ever ask.]
By the way, even Malaria Foundation International, the group that led the fight to prevent a “ban” (really a phase-out) on the use of DDT back around ~2000 when the international treaty on persistant organic pollutants (POP) was being negotiated admits that resistance to DDT is a big problem…particularly if it is used in agriculture. They noted here http://www.malaria.org/DDTpage.html :
Furthermore, on this page http://www.malaria.org/DDTcosts.html , they note concerning resistance:
As regards the dangers of DDT to wildlife (and humans), they say:
Mind you, this is from an organization dedicated to fighting malaria and who very strongly opposed a DDT “ban”, i.e. phase-out, as part of the Treaty on Persistant Organic Pollutants (and does, unfortunately, still link to some of the more extremist pro-DDT anti-environmentalist views from their website). Those of you claiming that DDT is not harmful to animals (when used outdoors) or that resistance wasn’t a big issue when it was used more indiscriminantly (and unfortunately, as a result, still remains an issue in some areas today) are thus way out in the weeds on this. The only people who agree with you are ones who clearly have an axe to grind as part of a larger concerted attack on the environmental movement.
Wondering Aloud — here are three articles to look at (BTW, I’ve read Junkscience.com’s critiques of them and don’t find them convincing):
Porter and Wiemeyer, “Dieldrin and DDT: Effects on Sparrowhawk Egg Shells and Reproduction” Science, V. 165, July 11, 1969 pp. 199-200
Bitman, Cecil, and Fries, “DDT-Induced Inhibition of Avian Shell Gland Carbonic Anhydrase: A Mechanism for Thin Eggshells” Science V. 168, May 1, 1970, pp. 594-596
Peakall, “p,p’-DDT: Effect on Calcium Metabolism and Concentration of Estradiol in the Blood” Science V. 168, May 1, 1970, pp. 592-594
The last of these suggests that DDT inhibits enzymes which utilize calcium “when a bird was otherwise in normal calcium balance.” It also finds that DDT is more effective at eggshell thinning that other pesticides such as dieldrin and PCBs, based on field results.
FYI, for both of us to read, is an article which I just found, and have only read the abstract, which bases findings on DDT levels found in the environment, and related DDT levels in the birds to fewer fledged young:
Science 28 May 1971:
Vol. 172. no. 3986, pp. 955 – 957
DOI: 10.1126/science.172.3986.955
DDE Residues and Eggshell Changes in Alaskan Falcons and Hawks
Tom J. Cade 1, Jeffrey L. Lincer 1, Clayton M. White 1, David G. Roseneau 2, and L. G. Swartz 2
1 Section of Ecology and Systematics, Langmuir Laboratory, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14850
2 Department of Biological Sciences, University of Alaska, College 99701
Eggshell thickness after exposure to DDT was reduced by 21.7 percent in Alaskan tundra peregrines, by 16.8 percent in taiga peregrines, by 7.5 percent in Aleutian peregrines, by 3.3 percent in rough-legged hawks, and not at all in gyrfalcons. Tundra peregrine eggs contain an average of 889 parts of DDE per million (lipid basis); taiga peregrine eggs contain 673 parts per million; Aleutian peregrine eggs contain 167 parts per million; rough-legged hawk eggs contain 22.5 parts per million; and gyrfalcon eggs contain 3.88 parts per million. These changes in eggshell thickness and the pesticide residues reflect different degrees of exposure to contamination. There is a highly significant negative correlation between shell thickness and DDE content in peregrine eggs. Tundra and taiga peregrines have fledged progressively fewer young each year since 1966.
I’m trying to get this article today; I’ll make a brief additional entry if the article has anything substantially different from the abstract.
evanjones says:
This is a popular tactic, namely, to put the money spent on environmental causes against money spent on the poor. However, I think most poor countries would want us to do both. And, in fact, the cost of combatting malaria could probably be paid by the U.S. alone for some tiny fraction of the cost of fighting a war in Iraq that has made us less safe and less respected in the world or of the cost of giving the wealthiest 1% significant tax breaks.
If you really want to solve issues like poverty and disease, why don’t you just fight directly for the spending (in many cases a rather paltry amount by 1st world standards) to attack them directly rather than conveniently discovering how important they are only when we are talking about alternatives that you don’t like such as spending money to fight environmental dangers that you (in opposition to the consensus of the world’s scientists) happen to think are not real.
Well, all that lets me out.
I favor usage via by restrained but hugely effective modern methods. My gripe is why did we have to wait so long to get the ball rolling. I don’t see any satisfactory answer to that.
This is a popular tactic, namely, to put the money spent on environmental causes against money spent on the poor. However, I think most poor countries would want us to do both.
Yes. We are pleased to refer to it as “cost-benefit analysis”. And, woefully, it is not nearly as popular a tactic as I would like.
We have a limited amount of available resources. If we do not limit those resources, we cause even greater harm. And since those resources are (by definition) limited, there is a pressing moral requirement to prioritize and allocate.
If we, for example, embrace (no, I mean really embrace) Kyoto or Stern, we will reduce world growth by 1% or even more. In other words, reduce longterm world growth by a third to half. That would cause incalculable harm to the “poor countries who want us to do both”.
Or to put it in another context,
Jacques! Jacques! Jacques Chirac!
How many kids did you starve in Iraq?
Richard Sharpe says:
The India case is documented in Georgeanne Chapin & Robert Wasserstrom, “Agricultural production and malaria resurgence in Central America and India”, Nature, Vol. 293, pages 181 to 185 (1981) [ http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v293/n5829/abs/293181a0.html ]. It looks like you will have to find a library with Nature to get a copy as I did since it doesn’t appear to be available on the web for free.
evanjones says:
Unfortunately, it often seems to be doing cost-benefit analysis very simplistically and, strangely (given the uncertainty that skeptics often cite in regards to climate change), by ignoring the full range of possibilities but focussing just on the most certain, least severe ones in regards to the consequences of climate change (and ocean acidification).
Most importantly, however, it is doing cost-benefit analysis on a very restricted subset of possibilities. I.e., it is arguing, “We shouldn’t do A because B is more pressing” without acknowledging that, even if B is more pressing, why not do both A and B rather than C (e.g., going to war in Iraq), which is not only not pressing but incredibly costly and actually counterproductive.
Strange how the Montreal Protocol coincided with the expiration of important patents using CFC’s!!!
That assumes that the Iraq war is counterproductive and that the Kyoto protocols are not.
The Korean War, at the time, was widely regarded as a destructive and deadly exercise in futility (it cost the democrats the white house for eight years and dearly in congress). History, however, has (dramatically) proven otherwise. We do not yet know the longterm effect of our hard-earned victory in Iraq nor how it will compare with stalemate in Korea. We do know that an immense number of people were dying in Iraq every year for over a decade prior to the invasion.
Global temperatures increased rather sharply for twenty years. But they have remained flat for the last ten. Now they seem to be headed in a generally southward direction. I think we should take a wait-and-see attitude. If it turns out that further study confirms CO2 AGW theory (much as the last three year’s worth has tended to demolish it), we will have plenty of time and greater resources with which to act.
Joel Shore made the comment:
“I have never argued that the right-wing anti-environmentalist movement does a bad job in getting their deceptions out onto the web.”
Question – Is there really such a movement or is it the “environment at all costs” movements’ mis-characterization of the “pragmatic cost benefit” environmental folks as a means of discrediting them?
Partial Response: I think that certain talk radio hosts contribute to the sense that there is such a movement by their somewhat flippant comments where they scoff at protecting this animal or that animal. I could never understand why they do that. I’d like to think it is a poor way of getting at the cost benefit analysis…..
Also, in regards to political party differences, I could never figure out why Republicans seem to have lost the environmental conservation image. Didn’t they start it all?
Smile when you call us skeptics, pardner.
The people you routinely denigrate as ‘skeptics’ are the ones in the mainstream of science. You are not.
Skepticism is essential to the scientific method. Otherwise, those who put forth verifiably silly hypotheses like “increases in CO2 will cause catastrophic, runaway global warming” would lead us into the realm of witch doctors.
And make no mistake: the catastrophic AGW hypothesis is central to all climate alarmist arguments — even though they don’t trumpet it like Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth any more, for fear of well-deserved ridicule.
Without the AGW/CO2/catastrophe scare, they are left to argue peripheral issues like how much DDT is enough, but not too much. But those arguments have little value compared with their repeatedly falsified AGW scenarios that they used so effectively years ago to scare the public. Those good old days are over my friend. Carbon dioxide is rising, and the planet is cooling.
Which begs the question: if steady rises in beneficial carbon dioxide do not cause runaway global warming, catastrophic 20 meter rises in the sea level, etc., then why should anyone regard the AGW/CO2/catastrophe mongers as anything other than a wild-eyed fringe group that will never admit, despite overwhelming evidence, that the climate doesn’t agree with their rigged models?
When I first heard about the research suggesting this years ozone hole will be the largest ever due to cosmic rays, I immediately equated this to the ‘unprecedented’ warming of the Arctic. Of course its only ‘unprecedented’ back to the start of satellite records in 1979- there are lots of records of arctic melt before this date.
Consequently my immediate thought about the ozone hole was that it was going to be the largest since….when? I then thought to myself how do they know whether there hasn’t always been a hole but didn’t discover it until the appropriate technology existed?
I posed this very question to one of the top ozone scientists in the world at Cambridge University. He agreed it was an interesting idea and couldnt deny there had been one before, but that this particular hole was caused by cfc’s although doubt had been thrown on the theory, and research being carried out should yield results either way in a few months-probably end december now,
To my mind the 5th biggest hole- but only 1% behind the biggest- means the theory is close enough to be taken seriously. Incidentally it seems ironic but I understand that the very cold stratosphere accentuates the size of the hole, so the colder than usual antarctic weather has accentuated the hole.
Its said to be too warm at the Arctic for one to form but then we have only had records back to 1979 and if it got colder than during that period who knows that one may form?
TonyB
evanjones says:
The numbers that I have seen have the number of excess deaths higher since the invasion than before. Do you have different numbers? (And, are you talking about deaths from the effects of the sanctions or death due to Saddam’s killings? If the latter is the case, I believe it is pretty well-established that most of the deaths occurred before we implemented a no-fly zone to prevent his attacks on the Kurds. I’m not saying Saddam was inherently a nice peace-loving guy but we seemed to have him pretty effectively contained from committing the worst of his atrocities and our attempts to make things better seems to have resulted in more violence and death than before, not even to ask the cost-benefit question of whether there might be more effective ways to save lives than the $100+ billion per year we are spending on Iraq [and, which so far, as I have pointed out, seems to have cost more Iraqi lives than it has saved plus American casualties].)
Well, we’ve been told to wait-and-see for the last 20 years or so. Up until the late 1990s, a large group of corporations (including fossil fuel companies, auto companies, and others) spoke through the Global Climate Coalition ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Climate_Coalition ) expressing this point of view. That organization is now defunct because their members started to abandon this as an untenable position in light of the science. What exactly are we supposed to wait for? Until every last diehard “skeptic” is convinced? The sooner we start to act, the more gradual and less disrupting our transition to a low carbon society can be.
As for your interpretation of the temperature data, people here seem very focussed on the short term and ignore the fact that the general trend over the long term remains up. (This is true especially if you ignore 1998 as an outlier. A “theory” that depends critically on a single year of data isn’t much of a theory.) And, the climate models and past history is clear on the fact that fluctuations in climate due to El Nino – La Nina oscillation among others don’t allow accurate determination of the underlying trend over short times. That is the nature of the beast in a system where the noise on year-to-year scales is several times greater than the underlying trend. With an underlying trend of ~0.2 per decade, or 0.02 per year, and year-to-year fluctuations that tend to be many times that large, the global climate system qualifies. And, attempts to determine trends over too short periods of time are just hocus-pocus.
Smokey says:
It takes a strong disconnect with the reality-based community to come to the conclusion that it is the Heartland Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute and the like which represent the mainstream of science and it is the peer-reviewed journals, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences and the corresponding academies in all the other G8+5 nations, the councils of the American Meterological Society, the American Physical Society, and the American Geophysical Union, and even companies ranging from Dupont to Ford to Shell and BP that represent the fringe! I saw Patrick Michaels talk several years ago and at least he was intellectually honest enough and connected to reality enough to admit that his was the minority view in the scientific community, even if he still thought it the correct one.
As for the use of the word “skeptics”, I have NEVER denigrated you guys with the word. What I have tried to say (e.g., when I referred to you as “self-proclaimed ‘skeptics'” is that if you want to use this word, which I agree with you represents an essentially quality of a scientist, then you ought to act like true skeptics…And, in my view most of you do not (with a few notable exceptions, including some like Leif who get attacked here for not holding to your politically-correct viewpoints consistently enough). In that case, I think you are just co-opting a word and using to put a nice label on yourselves which is completely divorced from the reality.
To answer your question “Mike”, I am a hetrosexual female.
And that ozone hole is very large.
Gas and energy is lighter than gravity, therefore it will rise, with no place to go.
Substance that contain no vapor are usually lighter than gravity.
The Iraq war is very OT, so I will make it very short. Yes, FfO scandal-related deaths included. (And yes, though we did not do it, we should have forseen the consequences and thus bear some responsibility.) Yes, the IBC, for example. The Iraqi government has stats. The Lancet Report is a severe outlier (reporting many times more Iraqi deaths than during the Iran-Iraq war). Deaths include terrorists, however, while pre-war deaths were entirely innocents. But the vital point is that war is virtually over and the death rate is way down, and will dwindle to nil going forward. Same for the monetary costs. Had Saddam remained in power the death rates would be much higher today and for the foreseeable future. One must also consider that if Saddam had died or fallen from power without US/UK forces in place, there would have been a far, far more deadly civil war with very poor prospects for democracy. As with AGW, one must consider both sides of the equation. And, no, it hasn’t been cheap.
As for the temperatures, I am okay with going from 2001. If one skips the 1998 El Nino, one must also skip the 1999-2000 La Nina.
From 1976 – 2001 all six major cycles (PDO, IPO, AO, AAO, AMO, NAO) all flipped from cool to warm. That would seem to account for the increase. Now the PDO has flipped back to cool and we see a cooling. This correlates better than with CO2. Not proof, but good circumstantial evidence.
We can (probably) discount CO2 as a major factor because of the Aqua Satellite data which indicates that CO2 positive feedback loops are not at issue.
Yes, the periods are short, but we only have reliable data from 1979; previous data is suspect (and has been adjusted upward c. 0.3C from the beginning of the century, according to NOAA/USHCN-1. USHCN-2 is worse).
then why should anyone regard the AGW/CO2/catastrophe mongers as anything other than a wild-eyed fringe group that will never admit, despite overwhelming evidence, that the climate doesn’t agree with their rigged models?
I say we regard them as looter mobocracy thugs! They’re getting rich now and will make many of the rest of us poor! They’re again talking about a carbon tax! Even if 10 yrs down the line AGW and its adherents are finally torn to shred, we’ll STILL be paying that @ur momisugly#$%^$#@ur momisugly tax! Nothing is quite so permanent as a temporary government program.
CO2 is vapor and vapor is absorbed back into the atmosphere.
It is something lighter than gravity that cannot evaporiate it’s self.
Helium is lighter than gravity but it evaporiates.
I like Yaakoba!
IMHO, she has a bright future in Hansen’s GISS. Or maybe working with Michael Mann to provide data for his next chart.
I am pretty sure that I am heavier than gravity.
Then you won’t evaporiate.
Joel,
“…we seemed to have him pretty effectively contained from committing the worst of his atrocities…”
You wouldn’t say that if your mother or sister had been at some of his son’s “parties”.
Mike
Joel,
Is this blurb about you?
“For your editorial and marketing projects, turn to a pro. Joel Shore has the experience to create content that meets your needs in technology, retail, and banking.”
Mike
TonyB,
Well if the Arctic does get colder and another ozone hole does form above it, we all know what will have caused it.
Mike