BBC: Sober exit from the ozone party (the "ozone hole" is "stubbornly resistant to going away")

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/richardblack/2009/09/sober_exit_from_the_ozone_part.html

Sober exit from the ozone party

Richard Black | 14:55 UK time, Wednesday, 16 September 2009

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The occasion: that on the 22nd birthday of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, every UN member country has ratified the treaty - the first time that's happened with any international environmental agreement.

The latest adherent is East Timor, whose Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao declared his country's pride in "joining the rest of the world in the fight against the depletion of the ozone layer and the effort towards its recovery".

Having played a leading role in East Timor's push for independence, Mr Gusmao knows a thing or two about fighting long fights; and that's just as well, as it is far from clear how long the journey to ozone "recovery" is going to take.

This graph from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), which collects and collates data on the Antarctic ozone "hole", makes clear that although the exact size of the hole varies from year to year, it's stubbornly resistant to going away.



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[GliderGuider]

1. What can I say?

The current best estimates are that the hole will be back to its pre-CFCs size by about 2050.

But it's worth reflecting that if 2050 turns out to be about right, it will have taken humanity more than a century to create, understand, discuss, regulate and solve a relatively small-scale and tractable environmental problem.

What does that timescale imply for our capacity to solve biodiversity decline, ocean acidification, climatic change, the spread of deserts, and the other symptoms of our swelling human population?

Raise a glass, if you will, in Montreal and Nairobi; but a swift sobriety ought perhaps to follow.

And people wonder why, in the face of all the optimistic blather, I continue cling stubbornly to my pessimism and look for alternative responses that don't rely on technology or policy.