Another damn fine article by Monbiot: This week the UN revealed that the ozone layer is recovering so fast that, across most of the planet, it will be more or less mended by the middle of the century .…… It’s coming back, and this is a great advertisement for active government. Like manmade global warming, the problem was forecast before it was observed. In the case of global warming, Svante Arrhenius predicted in 1896 that the “carbonic acid” (carbon dioxide) produced by burning fossil fuels was sufficient to raise the global temperature. In 1974, before any noticeable issues had arisen, the chemists Frank Rowland and Mario Molina predicted that the breakdown of chlorofluorocarbons – chemicals used for refrigeration and as aerosol propellants – in the stratosphere would destroy atmospheric ozone. Eleven years later, ozone depletion near the South Pole was detected by the British Antarctic Survey. Had governments not acted, the UN estimates, “atmospheric levels of ozone depleting substances could have increased tenfold by 2050.”
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 09:54:05 +0000
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