Oops, the hole in the ozone layer has practically disappeared!
A United Nations-backed scientific group charged with assessing the effects of the 1989 Montreal Protocol – an international agreement to phase out substances that deplete the ozone layer – has found that the ozone layer continues to strengthen and, more as a result, the Earth will avoid global warming of 0.3-0.5°C by 2100. The ozone hole has virtually disappeared.
Under the 1989 agreement, 99 percent of ozone-depleting chemicals, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that once kept refrigerators cool, have been banned due to ozone depletion – also known as ozone hole – over Antarctica.
According to the report, in about four decades the Antarctic hole thinning will be completely reversed. The much smaller hole above the Arctic should repair itself much sooner, DW reports .
By 2066, the Antarctic ozone hole is expected to shrink to its 1980 size, while the Arctic hole will do the same by around 2045. Depletion in other areas of the planet is expected to pick up again around 2040. In addition to CFCs, chemicals that Ozone-consuming gases, including halons, methyl chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), and methyl bromide, were once found in abundance in refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosols, solvents, and pesticides.
These compounds attack ozone by releasing chlorine and bromine atoms which degrade ozone molecules in the stratosphere.
Since these substances were banned, decreasing concentrations of chlorine and bromine have helped limit human exposure to the sun's harmful UV rays, which can cause skin cancer, cataracts and suppressed immune systems. -DW
"Thanks to a global agreement, humanity has avoided a major health catastrophe due to ultraviolet radiation pouring through a huge hole in the ozone layer," said United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last September 16, World of the ozone.
Meanwhile, with a fringe benefit that probably won't silence environmentalists, the think tank affirmed the treaty's positive impact on climate.
"By protecting plants from ultraviolet radiation, allowing them to live and store carbon, it has prevented up to 1C more global warming," said UN chief Antonio Guterres, who praised the protocol's impact on health. ozone and climate, adding that it is a "universally ratified and decisively implemented" model for global action.
However, the fight against the ozone hole was, paradoxically, simple, because it only involved the elimination and replacement of a specific category of products that already had substitutes present, and not the radical elimination of energy sources without any alternative as happens with the so-called “Climate Change”…
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The article Oops, the hole in the ozone layer has practically disappeared! comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/172481-2/ on Wed, 11 Jan 2023 08:00:33 +0000.