More studies providing more questionable answers to something we haven't been able to study long enough to have a proper baseline.
Livescience
Livescience
Ozone layer foolishness
- Thread starter Gonz
- Start date
Camelyn
New Member
I don't really see what you find questionable. 
The ozone layer protects the planet from harmful UV rays. Man-made CFC's destroy the ozone layer. The hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger due to this effect. In addition to this human induced destruction, there appear to be natural forces that can also have an impact on the ozone layer, which will exacerbate even further the damage already being done.
Sounds pretty straight-forward to me.
The ozone layer protects the planet from harmful UV rays. Man-made CFC's destroy the ozone layer. The hole in the ozone layer is getting bigger due to this effect. In addition to this human induced destruction, there appear to be natural forces that can also have an impact on the ozone layer, which will exacerbate even further the damage already being done.Sounds pretty straight-forward to me.
Professur
Well-Known Member
It also completely overlooks the effects of a magnetic reversal, continental drift, and 8000 years of agriculture. Anyone who looks at anything in nature and says "there, that's the one and only cause" is an idiot who deserved to be ignored. Nature is a system. One we don't know a tenth about.
THAT is what I have a problem with. We've had the ability to actually study this phenomena for about 3 decades. Our arrogance, to think man can destroy a complex system with a few cans of hair spray, is phenomenal. We don't know diddly squat about the ozone hole. Was it opening & closing 100 years ago? How about 1000 or 5000? How about all that gas produced by humongous herbivore bird-lizards, did they destroy the ozone hole?
The alarmists are using this as an attack on progression, feeding the fears of the ignorant masses with junk science.
Camelyn
New Member
Winky said:
Who said complete destruction? It doesn't have to be completely destroyed. Just significantly reducing it's coverage is enough for a huge chunk of life on earth to start doing a pretty good imitation of an egg in a frying pan
The fact is, there is a hole in the ozone layer. We know that CFC's bind with ozone and remove it from the atmosphere. You can measure that and you can reproduce it in the lab. Whether or not the main cause for the reduction in the ozone layer is man made or not, fact is , it's still going bye bye, and that is bad, nasty bad for us, for our crops and our livestock, if it continues to get bigger. I think it greatly behooves us to study this phenomenon enough to see if its likely to get much bigger, and thus way more dangerous to us, and to determine if such things as reducing CFC's production can help to slow down the destruction, regardless of the cause.
Even if it's a natural event occurring every 1000 years or so, we still need to know about it, because 1000 years ago, there weren't billions of people, their crops, and their livestock on this planet, especially in the northern reasons, to be fried by cosmic radiation
Camelyn
New Member
Professur said:
I agree. That's just being alarmist, though more of the blame of that lies with journalistic spin for bigger headlines than it does with the actual scientists doing the science.
I don't believe this particuar article was one of those. Just reporting new research on the possible causes of the reduction of the ozone layer.
This article reports on new research showing a different cause than previous research. Which showed a different cause than other previous research. On & on it goes. With the alarmists spreading flase prophecies about our doom & gloom destruction, it becomes political instead of scientific. One of the resons it all seems like junk science. Study, determine (with insuficient facts) cause & effect & publically release data that is, at best inconclusive & at worst incorrect.
If a hole actually exists (probable), and we don't know the historical functioning & cycling, keep studying & stop jumping to conclusion. Cycles of the earth or the universe, one can bet ones on this, aren't set in mans timetable. A thirty year study (example number) on a 100,000 cycle means precisely squat. Assuming we are on one end or another of this cycle, what are we going to do? Nothing we can't do right this minute. Which is??? Move.
Unexplored theory...is the hole the windpipe of the atmosphere & the contracting & expanding hole is our witnessing the planet breathing?
If a hole actually exists (probable), and we don't know the historical functioning & cycling, keep studying & stop jumping to conclusion. Cycles of the earth or the universe, one can bet ones on this, aren't set in mans timetable. A thirty year study (example number) on a 100,000 cycle means precisely squat. Assuming we are on one end or another of this cycle, what are we going to do? Nothing we can't do right this minute. Which is??? Move.
Unexplored theory...is the hole the windpipe of the atmosphere & the contracting & expanding hole is our witnessing the planet breathing?
Camelyn
New Member
That's exactly the ways science is supposed to work. You do a study and publish the results for peer review. It's a requirement. If no one else can reproduce your results, you get debunked. You can't keep things under wrap until you are *sure*, because then you must be doing some shaky science.
Problem arises when a journalist with a degree in poly sci gets hold of data published in scientific journals and fabricates a doom and gloom scenario to sell copy to a public that doesn't have the educational background to question. We can't all be physicists. That's shady journalism, not shaky science.
Like prof said, the mechanism for this is huge, and we are tiny and trying to understand it all. The theories are going to evolve, they have to. It's the only way we are going to find out how this stuff works.
And the article didn't say that *this* is what’s' happening *instead* of this other thing. If I recall, it was in *addition to* previous discoveries. Which in my mind is exactly how things are supposed to progress as we learn more and more about our planet, as our methods and instrumentation improve.
Problem arises when a journalist with a degree in poly sci gets hold of data published in scientific journals and fabricates a doom and gloom scenario to sell copy to a public that doesn't have the educational background to question. We can't all be physicists. That's shady journalism, not shaky science.
Like prof said, the mechanism for this is huge, and we are tiny and trying to understand it all. The theories are going to evolve, they have to. It's the only way we are going to find out how this stuff works.
And the article didn't say that *this* is what’s' happening *instead* of this other thing. If I recall, it was in *addition to* previous discoveries. Which in my mind is exactly how things are supposed to progress as we learn more and more about our planet, as our methods and instrumentation improve.
chcr
Too cute for words
Probably not possible.Professur said:
I've said it before, but the earth will still be here for a very long time after we've gone the way of the dodo. The "elephant with a magnifying glass" was a very apt metaphor, Prof. I'm going to steal it for the next time my tree hugger sister chastises me about what I don't do for the environment.
Camelyn said:
Email, instead of Doubleday, would suffice for peer review, until it's far more agreed upon than something like global warming, which has lots of protractors and is losing more & more every day.
The story I presented changes the rules, it doesn't simply increase the boundies. Of course, the story was written by a hack so he may have changed the findings to suit his need. That does make my case though. These findings keep getting presented as fact when they are simply study data & since most of us aren't physicists, it's irresponsible to pass along this information as fact.
MrBishop
Well-Known Member
The question is: are the scientists presenting it as fact or are the jounalists doing so in an effort at dumbing down the tech-speak to make it acceseable to the average layman?Gonz said:
If it's the scientists...its not only reprehensible, but cause for their 'research' to be discarded. If it's the reporters... theres practically fsa that we can do becuase of the freedom of the press...they'll print a retraction on page 34, below the fold, in a small font and everyone'll forget about it. In the meanwhile...it's selling papers or airtime.
Camelyn
New Member
Well that sucks too Which is why scientist have to publish their results in scientific journals so that other scientists can rip apart, shred and render all theories to see if they fall apart under scrutiny. Peer review works pretty well in most cases, since almost as satisfying as making a new discovery that changes the face of science is discovering and pointing out the shoody science of one of your peers who only *thinks* he has
Which is why scientist have to publish their results in scientific journals so that other scientists can rip apart, shred and render all theories to see if they fall apart under scrutiny. Peer review works pretty well in most cases, since almost as satisfying as making a new discovery that changes the face of science is discovering and pointing out the shoody science of one of your peers who only *thinks* he has 
Winky
Well-Known Member
Camelyn said:
Actually that's a curious thought. If the ozone layer completely disappeared (impossible unless you remove all the Oxygen, then what would the issue be regarding life on earth) just how much of the ozone needs to be 'depleted' over a certain area to have an appreciable effect on anything short of increased sunburn???
IF the entire ozone layer was completely stripped, the atmosphere was made
Completely transparent to the ultraviolet (A B & C wavelengths) light from the Sun
yeah This place would be as lifeless as the surface of the moon.
Except for the life in the subterranean cites lol