Al Gore's Movie

[ElfDude]

If there is all this bad stuff in the air and it is or is not causing the planet to get hot, or not................................ What is all the space missions punching holes doing?

Or are they using the same hole?

One of the groovy things about the ozone layer... sunlight hitting the atmosphere creates ozone. Little holes like those made by the shuttle are repaired by a natural process.

[Walkinghairball]

So all the HOOEY about "Holes in the Ozone Layer" is just that?

A big bunch of Hooey.

[CygnusX1]

nope...just a bunch of holes

[ElfDude]

So all the HOOEY about "Holes in the Ozone Layer" is just that?

A big bunch of Hooey.

Well, there is a hole. It used to get a lot of attention. DA probably has more information on this than me, but as I recall, it spends most of its time over a polar ice cap, since that's where the sun hits the least.

From the news stories we used to hear you'd think it would reside over a big industrial city that spewed a lot of CFC's...

[Walkinghairball]

I didn't mean I didn't think there was a hole, just the hype.

Vague but true.

[schuette]

I got this in an email from the nasa newsletter...

May 26, 2006: Think of the ozone layer as Earth's sunglasses, protecting life on the surface from the harmful glare of the sun's strongest ultraviolet rays, which can cause skin cancer and other maladies.

People were understandably alarmed, then, in the 1980s when scientists noticed that manmade chemicals in the atmosphere were destroying this layer. Governments quickly enacted an international treaty, called the Montreal Protocol, to ban ozone-destroying gases such as CFCs then found in aerosol cans and air conditioners.

Today, almost 20 years later, reports continue of large ozone holes opening over Antarctica, allowing dangerous UV rays through to Earth's surface. Indeed, the 2005 ozone hole was one of the biggest ever, spanning 24 million sq km in area, nearly the size of North America.

Listening to this news, you might suppose that little progress has been made. You'd be wrong.

While the ozone hole over Antarctica continues to open wide, the ozone layer around the rest of the planet seems to be on the mend. For the last 9 years, worldwide ozone has remained roughly constant, halting the decline first noticed in the 1980s.

The question is why? Is the Montreal Protocol responsible? Or is some other process at work?

It's a complicated question. CFCs are not the only things that can influence the ozone layer; sunspots, volcanoes and weather also play a role. Ultraviolet rays from sunspots boost the ozone layer, while sulfurous gases emitted by some volcanoes can weaken it. Cold air in the stratosphere can either weaken or boost the ozone layer, depending on altitude and latitude. These processes and others are laid out in a review just published in the May 4th issue of Nature: "The search for signs of recovery of the ozone layer" by Elizabeth Weatherhead and Signe Andersen.

Sorting out cause and effect is difficult, but a group of NASA and university researchers may have made some headway. Their new study, entitled "Attribution of recovery in lower-stratospheric ozone," was just accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research. It concludes that about half of the recent trend is due to CFC reductions.

Lead author Eun-Su Yang of the Georgia Institute of Technology explains: "We measured ozone concentrations at different altitudes using satellites, balloons and instruments on the ground. Then we compared our measurements with computer predictions of ozone recovery, [calculated from real, measured reductions in CFCs]." Their calculations took into account the known behavior of the sunspot cycle (which peaked in 2001), seasonal changes in the ozone layer, and Quasi-Biennial Oscillations, a type of stratospheric wind pattern known to affect ozone.

What they found is both good news and a puzzle.

The good news: In the upper stratosphere (above roughly 18 km), ozone recovery can be explained almost entirely by CFC reductions. "Up there, the Montreal Protocol seems to be working," says co-author Mike Newchurch of the Global Hydrology and Climate Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

The puzzle: In the lower stratosphere (between 10 and 18 km) ozone has recovered even better than changes in CFCs alone would predict. Something else must be affecting the trend at these lower altitudes.

The "something else" could be atmospheric wind patterns. "Winds carry ozone from the equator where it is made to higher latitudes where it is destroyed. Changing wind patterns affect the balance of ozone and could be boosting the recovery below 18 km," says Newchurch. This explanation seems to offer the best fit to the computer model of Yang et al. The jury is still out, however; other sources of natural or manmade variability may yet prove to be the cause of the lower-stratosphere's bonus ozone.

Whatever the explanation, if the trend continues, the global ozone layer should be restored to 1980 levels sometime between 2030 and 2070. By then even the Antarctic ozone hole might close--for good.

[awip2062]

No, because the average is affected by the actual temperature difference at any given location, the area it covers and the duration. You could have slightly colder winters over the oceans, and much hotter summers over land, for instance.

Yeah, you could.

But what you said was that there is a .6 degree increase worldwide, with local decreases here and there and that you conclude from that there are BIG increases elsewhere, places unmeasured.

For an average to stay with a .6 increase overall, if you are having BIG increases about, you have to have BIG decreases elsewhere, or the BIG increases will override the smaller decreases and cause the average to increase more than .6 of a degree.

[Devil's Advocate]

No, you don't need a big decrease anywhere.

A small change over a large area would counteract a big change (in the other direction) over a smaller area.

The same is true if you substitute "duration" for "area."

[awip2062]

That would have to be a huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge area then for such a small increase.

[Devil's Advocate]

0.6 degrees is not small.

And the reported decrease was over a pretty small area, compared to the size of the world.

[ElfDude]

From today's Denver Post:

Chill out over global warming

By David Harsanyi
Denver Post Staff Columnist

You'll often hear the left lecture about the importance of dissent in a free society.

Why not give it a whirl?

Start by challenging global warming hysteria next time you're at a LoDo cocktail party and see what happens.

Admittedly, I possess virtually no expertise in science. That puts me in exactly the same position as most dogmatic environmentalists who want to craft public policy around global warming fears.

The only inconvenient truth about global warming, contends Colorado State University's Bill Gray, is that a genuine debate has never actually taken place. Hundreds of scientists, many of them prominent in the field, agree.

Gray is perhaps the world's foremost hurricane expert. His Tropical Storm Forecast sets the standard. Yet, his criticism of the global warming "hoax" makes him an outcast.

"They've been brainwashing us for 20 years," Gray says. "Starting with the nuclear winter and now with the global warming. This scare will also run its course. In 15-20 years, we'll look back and see what a hoax this was."

Gray directs me to a 1975 Newsweek article that whipped up a different fear: a coming ice age.

"Climatologists," reads the piece, "are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change. ... The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

Thank God they did nothing. Imagine how warm we'd be?

Another highly respected climatologist, Roger Pielke Sr. at the University of Colorado, is also skeptical.

Pielke contends there isn't enough intellectual diversity in the debate. He claims a few vocal individuals are quoted "over and over" again, when in fact there are a variety of opinions.

I ask him: How do we fix the public perception that the debate is over?

"Quite frankly," says Pielke, who runs the Climate Science Weblog (climatesci.atmos.colostate.edu), "I think the media is in the ideal position to do that. If the media honestly presented the views out there, which they rarely do, things would change. There aren't just two sides here. There are a range of opinions on this issue. A lot of scientists out there that are very capable of presenting other views are not being heard."

Al Gore (not a scientist) has definitely been heard - and heard and heard. His documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," is so important, in fact, that Gore crisscrosses the nation destroying the atmosphere just to tell us about it.
"Let's just say a crowd of baby boomers and yuppies have hijacked this thing," Gray says. "It's about politics. Very few people have experience with some real data. I think that there is so much general lack of knowledge on this. I've been at this over 50 years down in the trenches working, thinking and teaching."

Gray acknowledges that we've had some warming the past 30 years. "I don't question that," he explains. "And humans might have caused a very slight amount of this warming. Very slight. But this warming trend is not going to keep on going. My belief is that three, four years from now, the globe will start to cool again, as it did from the middle '40s to the middle '70s."

Both Gray and Pielke say there are many younger scientists who voice their concerns about global warming hysteria privately but would never jeopardize their careers by speaking up.

"Plenty of young people tell me they don't believe it," he says. "But they won't touch this at all. If they're smart, they'll say: 'I'm going to let this run its course.' It's a sort of mild McCarthyism. I just believe in telling the truth the best I can. I was brought up that way."

So next time you're with some progressive friends, dissent. Tell 'em you're not sold on this global warming stuff.

Back away slowly. You'll probably be called a fascist.

Don't worry, you're not. A true fascist is anyone who wants to take away my air conditioning or force me to ride a bike.

[Devil's Advocate]

I can copy & paste too. But I'll just give you the link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/p ... 005994.stm

[ElfDude]

Well... the headline alone brings up a contradiction.

"A US government whistleblower tells Panorama how scientific reports about global warming have been systematically changed and suppressed."

So... anyone who has anything to say about man-made global climate chage is automatically intimidated and silenced by George Bush, eh?

Then how does Al Gore get away with saying that there is no serious arguement out there? That the entire scientific community is in agreement that we're doomed within 10 years?

So if both statments were true, then the Bush administration has done a pretty lousy job of silencing all those who are getting in the way of his evil scheme to accelerate global warming...

[Devil's Advocate]

Gore is not employed by a government agency such as NOAA or NASA, therefore he can't be fired by order of the White House.

[awip2062]

He is doing a pretty lousy job of suppressing, but what do we expect from a hick from a village in Texas? *wink*

Fired by order of the White House?

How can Gore say there is no opposition out there if the opposition (excepting Gore for the sake of this argument) is being intimidated and silenced? If there is no opposition, there is no one to intimidate and silence.