Re: Chicken Little?

In article <pan.2007.01.11.16.24.59.457134@xxxxxxxxxxx>, Rich Grise wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 09:23:24 +0000, Robert Latest wrote:
On Thu, 11 Jan 2007 06:06:22 +0000 (UTC),
Don Klipstein <don@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in Msg.

The way I have been hearing it, the ozone depletion that mainly
occurred
from the 1970's to the 1990's was a cause of global warming. Depletion
of ozone allows more solar radiation (specifically UV of wavelengths in
the UVB range and maybe the shortest wavelengths of the UVA range) to
reach Earth's surface.

No. The UV portion of the sun's radiaton does not significantly contribute
to global warming. It does contribute to skin cancer though.


And the whole "ozone depletion" craze is a crock of ***.

Didn't anybody learn in school that UV dissociates O2 molecules, which
then oxidizes other O2 into O3, which eventually breaks down spontaneously
anyway? It's the _OXYGEN_ that filters the UV - ozone is a side effect.

Oxygen just absorbs UV of wavelengths shorter than somewhere around 200
nm. Ozone absorbs longer wavelengths up to about 300-310 nm.

There's an ozone hole over the antarctic because there's no sunlight
there, notwithstanding the auroras, which also break down ozone. Nobody
spotted the "hole" before because nobody had ever looked for one.

The Antarctic has sunlight half the time, just like every other location
in the world.

They have been tracking the ozone hole since 1979, and it did a lot of
growing from then to the mid 1990's.

http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/sbuv2to/ozone_hole.shtml

http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/monthly/climatology_09.html
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/monthly/climatology_10.html
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/monthly/climatology_11.html

- Don Klipstein (don@xxxxxxxxx)
.