The Antarctic Ozone Hole Will Recover (2015) | Hacker News Reader

The Antarctic Ozone Hole Will Recover (2015)

svs.gsfc.nasa.gov

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It's interesting to consider a thought experiment: what if the ozone depleting nature of CFCs had been discovered during the modern Internet age? Would the ozone hole be dismissed as a hoax? Would we be able to organize an international effort to successfully phase out CFCs?

There is large gulf between what 'people on the internet' think and the priorities and interests of government regulatory bodies (and corporate boards). Whether people on the internet think the ozone hole is a hoax or not would have very little impact on the process and outcomes.

I hope you are right.

Climate change denial was a corporate interest and priority which became a government interest and priority (for one party at least). The internet wasn't around when it started, but it sure helped once it went online...

Climate change denialism is similar to climate change activism in that neither actually achieves very much politically. There have been countless protests and breathless professions that the world is about to end - emissions keep going up. Denialists huff and puff, but if the price of renewables drops below the price of fossil fuels they are going to disappear like snow in summer.

We have a system in the modern economy where the if there is a substantially better option from a resource-use perspective it will be used. So far neither activists nor deniers have shown any ability to affect that system and the cheapest option is still being used. When a significantly cheaper option presents it will be used instead - again in complete defiance of whatever position people want to take on climate change.

Moving away from CFCs was irrelevant to the general performance of the economy. Moving away from fossil fuels is anything but.

I think climate change denialism has accomplished a lot. We still haven’t put a price on carbon emissions, even when it would have been prudent to do so 40 years ago.

Which option is cheaper depends on how you tax/incentives the system. We tax cigarettes so that it becomes expensive and puts pressure on the system to reduce consumption (in addition to raising awareness etc. which is not the point here according to you)

So the argument does not hold given we’ve ways to make things expensive/cheaper.

Not sure why you got downvoted, this seems like a reasonable thought experiment.

The phase out of CFCs worked for one simple reason: there was an alternative that worked well.

For all the noise and fury about climate change there is simply no alternative energy source that works very well.

Everything else: climate denial, climate alarmism, it's all noise and means nothing.

Neither the politicians (both for and against), nor the activists (again, both for and against) have any effect whatsoever.

A combination of solar, wind, nuclear, and hydro where available works just fine. I agree that the change is harder than with CFCs, but it's not that we're without a viable alternative to burning fossil fuels, outside of some special cases like aviation.

> nuclear

That one is the kicker though. What do you think the support for this is amongst the extinction rebellion crowd and the likes of Greta "I see CO² with my naked eye"[1] Thunberg? This problem would be solved already if people were actually interested in solving it as opposed to politicking about it by doing things like demanding the end of economic growth in the west.

[1] https://www.afrinik.com/my-daughter-can-see-co2-with-the-nak...

> She can see carbon dioxide with the naked eye. She sees how it flows out of chimneys and changes the atmosphere in a landfill.

Would it though? What's the lead time on training nuclear engineers, construction companies etc to start building reactors again. UK and European projects have gone massively over time and over budget.

I mean maybe US, Europe and China can do this but can the rest of the world?

> I mean maybe US, Europe and China can do this but can the rest of the world?

South Africa has problems getting conventional coal plants up and running [1][2]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medupi_Power_Station#Delays_an... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kusile_Power_Station#Delays_an...

And there is no real interest in mass roll out of solar and wind in South Africa - people would just be all to happy to get some reliability in electricity supply. So sure, the rest of the world will have problems - with nuclear and just about anything else.

The problem still remains that energy storage is not a solved problem and wind and solar can maybe generate enough electricity but not in right places and not at the right times.

Did you read the article you posted? Like two paragraphs down they say she (her mother, Greta herself never said this) doesn't mean it literally.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/naked_eye

> Eyesight, unaided by equipment such as a telescope or microscope.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/naked-ey...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/naked%20eye

https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/the-nak...

Saying X and then later saying that when you said X you obviously did not mean X is the textbook definition of gaslighting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

> Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person seeks to sow seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or in members of a targeted group, making them question their own memory, perception, and sanity. Using denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying, gaslighting involves attempts to destabilize the victim and delegitimize the victim's beliefs.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole

> Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. In rhetoric, it is also sometimes known as auxesis (literally 'growth'). In poetry and oratory, it emphasizes, evokes strong feelings, and creates strong impressions. As a figure of speech, it is usually not meant to be taken literally.

Since everyone knows gaseous CO2 is invisible to the naked eye, this is clearly an example of hyperbole. Presumably Greta's mother just gave people enough credit to realize that.

If someone says they can see jesus with their naked eye and then tell people clearly they did not mean they can see jesus with their naked eye when they said they could because everybody knows jesus is not real is not hyperbole - it is either signs of mental instability or some half arsed attempt at gaslighting.

I'm pretty sure when her mother said "She can see carbon dioxide with the naked eye", what she meant was "She can see carbon dioxide with the naked eye" and I base this belief on the fact that "She can see carbon dioxide with the naked eye" is verbatim what she said. I don't see why you are berating me for claiming someone said something which they said without qualifying that they did not mean what they said. If she did not mean what she said she also can clearly say that instead of trying to gaslight people.

This would be like Bloomberg trying to defend themselves in that case where they were fined by France for publishing fake news by claiming clearly it was not fake news but hyperbole because everybody knows it was not true - which - if it is not clear to you - would be absurd.

I'm not sure why you're so eager to write off a teenager, especially who has become the voice of a rightfully scared and angry generation.

We do __now__, but that is a fairly recent thing (within the last couple of years). When this brouhaha started the projected costs looked astronomical, and seriously economically debilitating.

The alternatives are terrible chemically-speaking. A far worse compromise than a country switching form coal to renewables in most cases.

Without any effect on the atmosphere and the global agreement on it's detriment you would be certainly be using all these banned gases in your fridges and airconditioners. They are vastly superior from an engineering perspective which is why they were chosen in the first place.

It's not a thought experiment, CFC's were a real threat, the international community came together to fix it despite the costs. Mostly to the benefit of the Southern Hemisphere who barely was responsible for most of the chemical creation of these gases. We all phased out vastly superior cooling gases in airconditioners and refrigerators across the world.

Fast forward 30 years and presented with the same threat many seem keen to blame others and wipe their own hands clean.

The solutions are clear, we could all move to renewables tomorrow with little cost for most on the planet except for those who rely on fossil fuel exports to prop up theiralready advanced economies. Everyone seems intent on blaming others when it's one of the simplest problems humanity faces. China is one of the few countries trying to tackle this, the western world is hellbent on an us or them mentality right now driven by the media and it's a disturbing trend.

I think you may have misunderstood the post you're responding to. They were referencing what you describe.

We have been actively talking about Climate change since the 1970s and have known about it theoretically since the 19th Century. We had a major world event forming the Kyoto Protocol in 1992 that set many of the countries in the world on the path of limiting the damage of climate change. A few key countries didn't sign up which included the USA.

All of this happened before the internet. The lack of action on climate change is about other things not just dumb people arguing on the internet and the political capital that gives deniers and corporations that make money from exploiting the environment.

IIRC there was a ‘Sudden Stratospheric Warming’ this year that caused the ozone hole to be much smaller than usual. As a resident of the South Island in New Zealand, I find these articles of much interest.

I remeber reading recent news about CFC emmittance raising in China recently. Does anyone know of a more recent study than the one linked here?

One of the original papers reporting Chinese CFC emissions is here

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0106-2.epdf?refer...

A later one (2019) is

https://eos.org/articles/banned-cfc-emissions-tracked-to-eas...

Both use very sparse ground based measurements, which makes good emissions localization hard. There are also confirmations from satellite measurements.

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