BBC ever so subtly tries to blame humans – MSNBC uses a sledgehammer.
5 April 2011 – "The ozone layer has seen unprecedented damage in the Arctic this winter due to cold weather in the upper atmosphere," says an article by BBC environmental correspondent Richard Black.
"By the end of March, 40% of the ozone in the stratosphere had been destroyed, against a previous record of 30%," says Black.
Severe ozone depletion has been seen over Scandinavia, Greenland, and parts of Canada and Russia. It must have pained the BBC to publish this, because their headline – "Arctic ozone levels in never-before-seen plunge" – carefully avoids the word "cold."
However, I will give them credit for admitting – in the very first paragraph – that the damage is due to cold weather in the upper atmosphere.
Then, in an apparent attempt to switch the focus onto humans, Black reminds us that ozone "is destroyed by reactions with industrial chemicals." He also speaks of the Montreal Protocol, which was meant to control the amount of (supposed) ozone-depleting gases that we nasty humans pump into the atmosphere.
"So it's really a combination of the gases still there and low temperatures and then sunshine, and then you get ozone loss," says Black, quoting Geir Braathen with the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
"We have some winters that get much colder than before and also the cold periods last longer, into the spring," said Braathen. "The destructive reactions are promoted by cold conditions (below -78C) in the stratosphere."
Did you know that cold weather had anything to do with the so-called "ozone hole"?
"Usually in cold winters we observe that about 25% of the ozone disappears, but this winter was really a record – 40% of the column has disappeared," said Dr Florence Goutail from the French National Centre for Scientific Research.
Winters getting colder
"Research by Markus Rex from the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany suggests that winters that stand out as being cold in the Arctic stratosphere are getting colder."
"For the next few decades, the [Arctic ozone] story is driven by temperatures, and we don't understand what's driving this [downward] trend," he said.
"It's a big challenge to understand it and how it will drive ozone loss over coming decades."
An annual occurrence in the Antarctic
Though this is apparently a new phenomenon in the Arctic, ozone depletion triggered by the cold occurs annually in the Antarctic," says Black. "The longer and colder Antarctic winters often see 55% of the ozone depleted."
MSNBC mentions colder weather only once
Meanwhile, MSNBC also covered this subject. On the same day, as a matter of fact. But for some reason, they mentioned the colder weather only once.
Only once!
Colder weather in the upper atmosphere is the whole point of the story – and they mention it only once! Sort of an unimportant filler. They actually make it look as if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are the causing factor.
The record ozone loss "comes despite the 'very successful' Montreal Protocol aimed at cutting production and consumption of ozone-destroying chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons," the MSNBC article warns.
"The substances were once present in refrigerators, spray cans and fire extinguishers, but have been phased out." (Talk about trying to blame humans!)
"Nevertheless, due to the long lifetimes of these compounds in the atmosphere, it will take several decades before their concentrations return to pre-1980 levels."
MSNBC entitled their article, "Scientists: Arctic ozone depletion 'unprecedented.'" Their title, as with the BBC's, makes no mention of cold weather being the cause.
Compare the two articles. I think you'll be amazed at MSNBC's duplicity.
See entire BBC article:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12969167
See entire MSNBC article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42429967/ns/world_news-world_environment/
Republished with permission from the author.
The words are wrong when one says “ozone is destroyed” therefore the idea and the assertion is wrong. I recall from my 10 grade chemistry class and again in college 4 years later that ozone is a single oxygen atom. Now oxygen, because of it’s electrical charge does not like to be alone, so it normally combines with another oxygen atom to make a molecule of call O2, which is what all animals live on and plants exhale. Some times it will combine with Hydrogen to make H2O which is water. At other times it will combine with iron and make to make Fe2O3, or what is know as rust. So in any case the ozone is never destroyed. It is just combined in different ways to make other molecules. Sometimes O2 is broken up by lightning into 2 Ozone atoms/molecules, but unless it is involved in a nuclear reaction it is never “DESTROYED”
But I guess there are a lot of libs out there who have never taken Chem 101.
I find it interesting that the culprit in this little story is COLD weather. What ever happened to Global Warming?
Gentlemen,
Ivan; while your memory is impeccable as usual, such things don’t make for good placard slogans at protests. Likewise Steve. Global warming is passé; we are now informed it is man-made global climate change. Have to cover all our bets don’t ya’ know? Winter colder? Man-made global climate change. Summer hotter ? Man-made global climate change. Spring more tornadic? See above. Nose itch? Well, you get the idea.
It has nothing to do with science; it’s all about redistributing wealth and the few having power over the many. Look at all the environmentalists’ dancing in the streets over the EPAs’ latest ruling pulling an Alaskan drilling permit from Shell because the company neglected to calculate emissions from an ice breaking vessel. Shell spends $4 billion and now would have to begin all over, spending another $4 billion. Meanwhile we’re paying for $4 a gallon while 27 billion barrels of Alaskan oil might as well be sitting on Mars.
Yes, Bill, I hadn’t heard about the ice breaker but it doesn’t surprise me at all. Meanwhile one of the biggest oil exporters that is not Saudi Arabia, Libya, or Venezuela, is Russia. The last time I looked at the map 95% of the Russian coastline is frozen for at least six months out of the year. Does anyone think they are not using ice breakers? And secondly, does anyone believe that the Russian ice breakers run cleaner than American ones? Now, I don’t want to disparage Russia. I’ve been to Moscow and St. Pete and they are both very nice cities where the rivers and streets are quite clean, but I still think their technology is 20 years behind ours. Need I mention Chernobyl?
Maybe President O can subsidize Government Motors to build a new electric motor for the ice breakers. That way they could break 40 miles of ice before they needed a recharge.
On another chemistry subject I would like to mention coal. Mr. O said a few days ago that coal is dirty. Well, dhaa! Like we didn’t know that. But coal is carbon. The same carbon that is in my water filter, the same carbon that makes the tires on your car black, and the same carbon that is in my wife’s diamond ring. Maybe the kids today do not know about coal, but I remember the coal truck coming to our house and dumping a load of coal into our basement to heat the home. That was before the unions convinced the miners to go on strike and everybody converted to gas or oil. Well I have to go now and check the tire pressure on my car, because I’m a dumbass and I didn’t know that I should do that until the President told me.
SWEPCO is building a new coal fired electric generating plant here in Arkansas. According to the SWEPCO site https://www.swepco.com/info/projects/TurkPlant/Default.aspx This plant utilizes the latest in Air Quality Control Systems. I was at a ‘town hall’ style meeting where the company engineers said current technology for coal fired plants removes @ 93% of SO2 emissions. The new plant will remove an additional 96% of what remains. That figure is .0007% For those of you not mathematically inclined that’s 7 ten thousandths of one percent; and the Sierra Club (and our Governor I might add) are shouting; “The sky is falling into any reporter’s microphone they can find.
During this meeting when the Plant Engineers stated this a UCA college student stepped up to the mike and asked; “Why don’t ya’ll explain why you don’t just decide to quit polluting altogether and build a wind farm?” in a condescending manner.
The engineer asked; “Do you want the complex answer or the simple answer?”
The student said; “Just give me a straightforward answer.”
The engineer said; “Cause the wind don’t blow every day son; but you still expect the bulb to come on when you open the refrigerator door” The student was outraged!
Most Americans don’t know much of anything about science or engineering; it’s appalling, but true. Belief in wind farms or solar power is a mark of moral goodness and political decency, so of course, no substantive knowledge is necessary. I’ve found that most of my students (and many of my colleagues) don’t really know much about even the science that is supposed to show that human actions are heating up the planet. The just know that there’s pollution and some really bad people caused it.
I’ll mention my favorite example of this idiocy again: a few years back a guy from the French consulate in Boston came to our campus to talk about French nuclear power. He was well-informed and scientifically literate. Two students from my university started hectoring him about radiation leakage. As the discussion went on, I realized that these students did not know that there are many natural sources of radiation–they thought all radiation was artificial, produced by those nasty capitalists that own the nuclear power plants. I finally broke in and asked the students directly, and they proclaimed, in self-righteous tones, that radiation was pollution. Ye gods!
They know there is pollution? I’ll bet they have NO idea what real pollution is. I recall going to visit my grandparents who lived about 8 miles downwind from the Ford Rouge plant. In that plant they made not only autos, but all the components for them as well, even the sheet steel used to stamp out the body parts. Ford had several Bessemer steel mills where iron was heated to a liquid and then oxygen was blown in the bottom of the kettle and this would burn off the carbon and other impurities with lots of flame and sparks flying into the air. Everything around my grandparent’s home was covered with little specks of rust that you could feel when you wiped your hand over a railing or other flat surface. Sometimes we could smell the pollution in the air and when I asked what it was my grandpa told me that was the smell of money. The student you mentioned would say it was Henry Ford’s money, but my grandpa was talking about our family’s money.
Your radiation comments remind me of the time I was looking for a photo of the A-bomb for my family history book. I found a great photo showing the mushroom cloud, the Little Boy bomb, and the Enola Gay B-29. At the bottom of the page was an e-mail address for Paul Tibbits who was the pilot of the plane. I wrote thanking him for saving my father’s life because my dad was 500 miles east of Japan, on a US Navy landing ship, on August 6, 1945. To my surprise he wrote back saying he appreciated my note and he got a lot of bad comments from young people. I guess the students don’t know much about war either.
For a while when I was a kid we lived near a paper mill–stinks to high heaven. I’ve seen the River Rouge plant–now that was pollution.
I’ve always been grateful for the dropping of the bomb. My father was stateside, just back from Europe where he’d gone in on D-Day and went straight through to VE Day. His artillery battalion was slated to got to Japan after the initial landings. Once I was old enough to understand how the Japanese had planned to defend the Home Islands, I got an idea of just how big a catastrophe an Allied invasion would have been for both Allied forces and the Japanese population. The A-bombs did them a favor–and you’re right–today’s students don’t get it.
I think I have posted before that my uncle had returned from England after flying 78 missions as a tail gunner (average life expectancy 3 missions) and was slated to go to the Pacific due to the shortage of air crews for the assault on the Japanese mainland.
Our family celebrates the day.
By the way I saw many of the students/uninformed populace when I made the rounds for a utility company speaker’s bureau where I was the alternate energy expert (because I had a side business that was making money in alternate energy). At the time my kids called me the energy miser. The belief that new technologies would offer abundant inexpensive or almost free energy was hard to believe. In fact I still can’t believe it.
Next time you encounter one of these great believers ask them what they have done. The audience always did it to me then tucked their tails when I told them about my properties and side business. Our utility wisely joint ventured with me and waived conflict of interest for an executive (me) when we did projects.