“Last month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency delayed plans to tighten ozone pollution standards until after the 2024 presidential election.”
Huzzah! More political BS playing games with the planet and all our lives.
We’re so doomed. A coworker asked if I was interested in kids and I said I would feel bad bringing a child into this mess.
Ground level ozone and the ozone hole are two different issues. The delayed EPA regulations would be limiting ozone produced. At ground level, ozone has various health hazards. The ozone hole is from ozone depleting substances reaching high altitude in the environment and destroying naturally occurring ozone. That high elevation ozone blocks UV light from the sun, and is protective for those of us who dislike skin cancer it what not.
Reading the second article I see what you mean. Still, no political momentum to correct course is annoying, though it does make a strange addition at the bottom of the article. They could have linked all manner of different protections that are being delayed if there are more.
Probably one of those times I need to lament the current state of journalism that that was included. I’d argue the ozone layer is one where there is global political momentum with an example of some recent mystery emissions such as this article. That said this article we were already discussing seems to bring up some other mechanisms for the hole enlarging beyond the usual ozone depleting substances.
This has nothing to do with the ozone layer in the stratosphere, but pollution in cities and industrial areas.
“interested in kids” I think they mighta meant something else O.O
Honestly, it just seems like this shit’ll never stop and no one gives a fuck in Washington. Everyone’s too busy playing politics
That quote is technically true, but based on the article they link, it doesn’t sound to me like the delay and the election are related.
Nor is ozone pollution related to the hole in the ozone layer.
No idea why that’s actually thrown in at all.
To catch people (like me :( ) who didn’t read the second article.
Except the second article does mention ‘it avoids a fight during an election yeah with industry and republicans’ but then later looks like they are trying to say that’s not at all why and want to take time. I don’t know, sorta seems like the election played a part in the decision
Well, zero chance of House Republicans even letting it come to a vote.
It blows my mind seeing people with little kids. Like, WTF is wrong with them?
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Okay, like china? India? Calm down. The US has a huge chunk of the co2 amount so it’s kind of important. Plus the article talks about it?
Well that’s a throwback. Not sure I care for this particular reboot of my childhood media.
We stopped using hairspray and everything :(
All those tasty cfcs
🏌️
Ah shit, here we go again
Ikr I thought we fixed this. I also thought it was in the northern hemisphere.
I also heard that we fixed it, but it was in the southern hemisphere before too.
definitly south was an issue I grew up with, we got warned about all the skin cancer this would cause
I thought we fixed this
inb4 this becomes the core argument for not doing anything to fix it again
Never underestimate the power of the sneaky, sir.
Its a seasonal issue at both poles.
It’s the 90s again, everyone stop using aerosol!
If girls start gluing their bangs with hairspray again I am done. They’re already bringing back the abomination that was mom jeans ffs enough is enough! The bangs and damaged hairlines in another generation of women is going too far. Half of us don’t even have eyebrows anymore let the 80s die 😭
Tbh, I’m rooting for team Earth. Fuck humanity.
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This affects all life on Earth, not just humans. Yes, life on Earth as a whole will likely continue on, but it negatively affects all life regardless.
Yup. Lots of life will die because of humans. But in the end, the eradication of humans is the right path for a more stable planet.
What sort of ecological disaster is going to selectively exterminate only humans and no other animals?
It’s gonna kill everything. Then, it’s gonna reboot without humans. Eventually, after a short million years or so, the earth will be back on track until another species gets too “smart” and destroys itself… ))<>((
At this point i would root for a return of cyano bacterian empire
The last paragraph is completely irrelevant, as it has nothing to do with the ozone layer. You do not want ozone in the troposphere, but you do want it in the stratosphere.
But who hadnt it happen yet? It is saturday, you have yet to drink your coffee, but your dog needs a walk so you go out, take a wrong turn and BAM! you are in the stratosphere breathing Ozone!
The only Ozone I want to end up in is the Dragostea Din Tei ozone.
Fuck. I thought we fixed this.
Me too. I’ve been carrying it around in my head as “the time we listened to scientists, and almost everyone worked together on some short term pain for worldwide long term gain”. I was even hoping we might do something like that again.
There is some speculation that the unusual behavior of the ozone layer in 2023 is a result of the Tongan underwater volcano eruption in January 2022.
The immense amount of water vapor that was injected into the atmosphere likely just started reaching the south polar region after the end of the 2022 ozone hole, Antje said.
The water vapor could have led to a heightened formation of polar stratospheric clouds, allowing chlorofluorocarbons to react and accelerate ozone depletion.
Sorry to break it to you, we stopped using CFCs because a cheaper alternative came along. That it happened to be less suicidal was a happy coincidence.
Cheaper to manufacture? Yes. Cheaper for the end user? It depends. See: Ventolin HFA.
Was literally just thinking about it this morning. Mere hours ago. Not even joking. This sucks.
I’m sitting here in the southern hemisphere wondering at what point we’ll no longer be be able to go outside unprotected.
I think that point was like 1990. After that there’s been enough excess UV that you should have been using sunscreen basically all the time.
Slip, slop, slap. I think that goes without saying.
More like Stop, Drop , and Cover this time.
Lol oh man I remember back in the 90s before everyone gave up when we were trying to actually shrink that thing
We shrunk it and it was as good as done once everyone stopped using those gases.
Over the last few years satellites have picked up greatly increasing emissions of them from China. Hence it’s opening up again.
Oh and before any hexchud wants to say this is fake news or whatever:
We show that emissions from eastern mainland China are 7.0 ± 3.0 (±1 standard deviation) gigagrams per year higher in 2014–2017 than in 2008–2012, and that the increase in emissions arises primarily around the northeastern provinces of Shandong and Hebei. This increase accounts for a substantial fraction (at least 40 to 60 per cent) of the global rise in CFC-11 emissions. We find no evidence for a significant increase in CFC-11 emissions from any other eastern Asian countries or other regions of the world where there are available data for the detection of regional emissions.
I’m curious what the actual source is. CFCs are practically obsolete and there is no point in producing them when HCFCs are cheap and hydrocarbon refrigerants are practically free. You’d think China would be using R290 and R600a in any new builds since they’re so cost sensitive. You can even straight swap R290 to replace R22 if they want to use old compressors or something.
I’m wondering if this is a pile of old refrigeration equipment that was dumped and shipped to China, and is now being scrapped in an irresponsible manner or just corroding and leaking. I’m sure there’s loads of R11/12/22 out there, as R12 refrigerators are still regularly dropped off at our local scrap pile here in Canada.
Thanks for posting the finding links. I hadn’t heard this before and it gives me a good place to start reading. Crazy that we know this is bad for the earth but we keep doing it. I wrote that sentence and mid way through realized how naive it sounds 😖
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Yes, they definitely only let the Nazi scientists work on that. Because there are definitely enough Nazi scientists to do that.
Ah yes, the cabal of Nazi holdouts spending their time on climate change research. Everyone knows about them!
/S obviously
We actually did fix it. The whole world came together and banned those gases. It was a masterpiece of global cooperation.
Unfortunately they’ve started being detected again in growing quantities in recent years.
Last I heard those emissions had starting going back down. Was there anything new on that front since then?
My theory is old vehicles and machinery are gonna release gas
Man… people really don’t like reading articles so much as they like speculating about headlines.
And, while I feel like I should copy/paste the important bits, isn’t it just as easy for people to click the link and read the whole two minute read? Should I paste the full article and bold the important bits? Why should I have to do the work for people who honestly do not care about more than comment karma.
I appreciate the article OP. I wasn’t aware of the nature of the ozone hole. I also found the linked article that was published in January to be insightful.
Reading it takes all the fun out of the guessing game. /s
To be fair, some of the confusion here is from reading the article, or at least skipping to the end.
That’s gotta be, like, the absolute worst place it could be
I don’t think anywhere is good but I would guess that being farther from the equator is better since there is less direct sunlight. I could be wrong though.
But… I recycle.
Do it but harder
Well, that’s not great
Geez…and here i was thinking “I’m doing my part in helping the environment” by using public transport instead of driving, and using paper straws…
Those damn private planes
Wouldn’t it grow to a new record size every day?
Edit: Was a genuine question…
It shrank for decades. Been growing for a little while. Now reaching the size it was when the world banded together to fix it.
Tbh, I didn’t know that it could shrink. Thought that once we fucked up, that was it
It can repair itself, we just needed to stop putting aerosols into the air. Same deal now, apparently China needs to get its shit together and stop using the chemical the whole world already decided to stop using.
Oof. I wonder how big of an impact that would make if a country that big made a change.
Yep, it’s pretty amazing how much not destroying the environment helps it recover… although the closer we get to a collapse, the more that ability to bounce back diminishes
Literally every aspect of our world is in a balance… Everything wears down over time, so the current state is basically a homeostasis between biological, geological, and astrological forces. The problem is that humans act on a far shorter time scale - 100 humans could cut down trees faster than a forest can regrow, 8 billion can change the atmospheric composition in a decade or two
Sadge. Wish I learned more about this when I was younger and that kids these learn early enough.
