Ozone hole nears record - a message here about lingering pollution in the atmosphere
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Posted on September 23, 2006
Filed Under Global warming/Climate change, Deep ecology, Ecological hope, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
My niece alerted me to this article at MSNBC regarding the near-record size of the hole in the protective ozone layer over Antarctica, the annual phenomenon caused by the presence of chloroflourocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere. They are released from leaks of coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners, among other things. These harmfuful chemicals were once ubiquitous in aerosal sprays, but some years ago, most countries agreed to take steps to reduce CFCs. The treaty worked, but smaller amounts of CFCs are still being leaked into the atmosphere, and it will apparently take far longer for the stuff to dissipate than scientists had hoped.
As this article notes, it could be another 60 years before the hole closes. What matters is that this layer of ozone (not the same as the layer of ozone smog that settles over our cities), protects us from the harmful rays of the sun, those that cause skin cancers, an illness that is on the rise these days.
This phenomenon offers us a warning about the time it takes for the atmosphere to heal itself. In fact, it takes time for the atmosphere to remove the pollution we put into it, depending on the type of gas and its chemical interactions with other elements in the air.
A similar problem exists with other pollution sources, such as carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas causing the heating of our atmosphere. It is one reason that scientists try to warn us that cutting carbon emissions tomorrow will not keep the Earth from heating. CO2 has a long life, with a lingering time in the atmosphere of 100 years. That’s how long the CO2 we emit today will be floating around before it finally dissipates.
So, the stuff causing global warming now was put in the atmosphere a century ago, with exponentially growing amounts added each day because of the spread of industrial production around the world, and explosive growth in gas-based transport. There is enough stuff in the atmosphere that global warming is inevitable now. The question is how long we will continue this path towards climate disaster and how bad it will get depending on when we decide to take action. The Earth could end up restabilizing at a temperature too high to sustain life as we know it, including us. If we continue on the current course, disaster awaits humanity, and millions of other life forms.
CFCs are not about global warming, (in fact, they cause cooling, so when they dissipate, global warming will manifest even more), but they tell us something very important about the damaging lingering effects of the pollution that the industrial revolution put into our atmosphere.
We just have to decide at what point we are willing to make the changes to curb carbon emissions, knowing that our children and grandchildren will already have to endure the new climate we are creating. But I would bet that they would want to hand a habitable planet on to their children, don’t you think?
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