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Good news about climate change? Could such a thing be possible? Well, according to Richard Stolarski, a scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, there is, indeed, good news. His optimism was shared with scientists and researchers from around the world gathered in Athens, Greece to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty designed to reduce the hole in Earth's protective ozone layer.
Twenty years ago, on Sept. 16, 1987, over 100 nations agreed to limit the production and release of CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and other compounds known to degrade the layer of ozone in the stratosphere that shields life from the Sun's deadly ultraviolet radiation. Decades of use of these compounds have produced an enormous hole in the protective ozone layer over Antarctica that has been growing larger every year. Speaking at the symposium in Greece last week, Mr. Stolarski said, "The Montreal Protocol has been a resounding success. The effect can be seen in the leveling off of chlorine compounds in the atmosphere and the beginning of their decline." This is the supposed good news. After twenty long years, the amount of ozone destroying pollutants in the atmosphere is just now starting to level off and decline.
Ready for the bad news? The hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica is still growing, and in 2006 was a wopping 10.6 million square miles, the largest it's ever been. And it will continue to grow, until the level of CFCs and their like in the atmosphere decline to the point where they stop eating up ozone, which is expected to occur in the year 2070 - 63 years from now. God only knows how large the hole over Antarctica will be by then. It could cover a large portion of the entire southern hemisphere! This is a resounding success? Compared to what, I wonder?
And if that's not enough bad news for you, things are even worse at the other pole of our planet. The following is a direct quote from a recent NASA press release: A new NASA-led study found a 23-percent loss in the extent of the Arctic's thick, year-round sea ice cover during the past two winters. This drastic reduction of perennial winter sea ice is the primary cause of this summer's fastest-ever sea ice retreat on record and subsequent smallest-ever extent of total Arctic coverage.
So, while penquins are being cooked by ultraviolet radiation down at the south pole, polar bears are drowning and starving up at the north pole. This is a "resounding success"? This is the best we can do? Is it too late to fix things? Has the damage gone too far? Will penquins and polar bears soon go the way of the dodo? And if they do - if we screw up that badly - we will undoubtedly follow them into the abyss of extinction, and deservedly so. Bad news for us, I suppose, but very good news for the rest of the life in the Universe.
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