Ozone Depletion Quotes

Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.

Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease—they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation. And unless we face world population head-on, we are doing nothing more than sticking a Band-Aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumor.

But even as she told herself that, she remembered the way Cal had looked today with his shirt off while he’d stood on the ladder and scraped the side of Annie’s house. Watching those muscles bunch and flex every time he moved had made her crazy and she’d finally grabbed his shirt, thrown it at him, and delivered a stern lecture on the depletion of the ozone layer and skin cancer.

Did all of Singer’s efforts to discredit mainstream science matter? When asked in 1995 where he got his assessments of ozone depletion, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, probably the most powerful man in Congress at the time, said, “my assessment is from reading people like Fred Singer.”93

How is it that you—a highly educated woman of science—don’t see? Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease—they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation. And unless we face world population head-on, we are doing nothing more than sticking a Band-Aid on a fast-growing cancerous tumor.

Maybe it's ALWAYS the end of the world. Maybe you're alive for a while, and then you realize you're going to die, and that's such an insane thing to comprehend, you look around for answers and the only answer is that the world must die with you. Sure, the world seems crazy now. But wouldn't it seem just as crazy if you were alive when they sacrificed peasants, when people were born into slavery, when they killed first-born sons, crucified priests, fed people to lions, burned them on stakes, when they intentionally gave people smallpox or syphilis, when they gassed them, burned them, dropped atomic bombs on them, when entire races tried to wipe other races off the planet? Yes, we've ruined the planet and melted the ice caps and depleted the ozone, and we're always finding new ways to kill one another. Yeah, we're getting cancer at an alarming rate and suicides are at an all-time high, and, sure, we've got people so depressed they take a drug that could turn them into pasty-skinned animals who go around all night dancing and having sex and eating stray cats and small dogs and squirrels and mice and very, very rarely- the statistics say you're more likely to be killed by lightning- a person. But this is the Apocalypse? Fuck you! It's always the Apocalypse. The world hasn't gone to shit. The world is shit. All I'd asked was that it be better managed.

It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth.

the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can’t manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data “highways,” abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer. How can we affect national policy—or even make intelligent decisions in our own lives—if we don’t grasp the underlying issues?

But it’s not just me, you know. The whole world’s sad,” I said. “It’s like a virus. It’s going to end badly. Glaciers melting, ozone depleted. Terrorists blowing up buildings, nuclear rods infecting the aqueducts. Influenza hopping from the pigeons to the humans, killing millions. Billions. People rotting in the street. The sun bursting open, shattering us eight minutes later. If not that, starvation. Cannibalism. Freakish mutated babies with eyeballs in their navels. It’s a terrible place to bring a child into,” I said. “This world. It is terrible. Just terrible.” I

all dressed in mid-1980s attire. A woman with a giant ozone-depleting hairdo bobbed her head to an oversize Walkman. A

One aspect of the effort to cast doubt on ozone depletion was the construction of a counternarrative that depicted ozone depletion as a natural variation that was being cynically exploited by a corrupt, self-interested, and extremist scientific community to get more money for their research. One of the first people to make this argument was a man who had been a fellow at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1980s: Fred Singer.

Too soon the two weeks were over and we were back in Lugano, and there we learned about Disaster. We weren’t completely ignorant. We knew about disaster from our previous schools and previous lives. We’d had access to televisions and newspapers. But the return to Lugano marked the beginning of Global Awareness Month, and in each of our classes, we talked about disaster: disaster man-made and natural. We talked about ozone depletion and the extinction of species and depleted rain forests and war and poverty and AIDS. We talked about refugees and slaughter and famine. We were in the middle school and were getting, according to Uncle Max, a diluted version of what the upper-schoolers were facing. An Iraqi boy from the upper school came to our history class and talked about what it felt like when the Americans bombed his country. Keisuke talked about how he felt responsible for World War II, and a German student said she felt the same. We got into heated discussions over the neglect of infant females in some cultures, and horrific cases of child abuse worldwide. We fasted one day each week to raise our consciousness about hunger, and we sent money and canned goods and clothing to charities. In one class, after we watched a movie about traumas in Rwanda, and a Rwandan student told us about seeing his mother killed, Mari threw up. We were all having nightmares. At home, Aunt Sandy pleaded with Uncle Max. “This is too much!” she said. “You can’t dump all the world’s problems on these kids in one lump!” And he agreed. He was bewildered by it all, but the program had been set up the previous year, and he was the new headmaster, reluctant to interfere. And though we were sick of it and about it, we were greedy for it. We felt privileged there in our protected world and we felt guilty, and this was our punishment.

The 1970s brought fears of environmental collapse and even the extinction of the human race. Since the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, this sense of impending doom has only gotten worse, with a series of panics about overpopulation, ozone depletion, peak oil, global warming, extreme weather events, deforestation, nuclear energy disasters, mass species extinction, poisoning by agricultural chemicals, electromagnetic and cell phone radiation, and rising sea levels that are predicted to drown American cities.

Shortly after Bush took office, a government scientist prepared testimony for a Congressional committee on the dangerous effects of industrial uses of coal and other fossil fuels in contributing to “global warming,” a depletion of the earth’s protective ozone layer. The White House changed the testimony, over the scientist’s objections, to minimize the danger (Boston Globe, October 29, 1990). Again, business worries about regulation seemed to override the safety of the public. The ecological crisis in the world had become so obviously serious that Pope John Paul II felt the need to rebuke the wealthy classes of the industrialized nations for creating that crisis: “Today, the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness, both individual and collective, are contrary to the order of creation.

But it's not just me, you know. The whole world's sad," I said. "It's like a virus. It's going to end badly. Glaciers melting, ozone depleted. Terrorists blowing up buildings, nuclear rods infecting the aqueducts. Influenza hopping from the pigeons to the humans, killing millions. Billions. People rotting in the street. The sun bursting open, shattering us eight minutes later. If not that, starvation. Cannibalism. Freakish mutated babies with eyeballs in their navels. It's a terrible place to bring a child into," I said. "This world. It is terrible. Just terrible.

Dr. Edward Teller, the “father of the hydrogen bomb,” and a founder of the “Star Wars” missile defense system, proposed seeding the upper atmosphere with millions of tons of sulfur or other heavy metals to create a cloud cover to deflect sun rays and prevent further heating of the earth. Some scientists warned such a program would turn blue skies milky white and perhaps cause droughts and further ozone depletion. Teller admitted the difficulty in persuading the public to allow a program that would pollute the air with metal particles, many known to be harmful to humans.

I don’t know to what extent ignorance of science and mathematics contributed to the decline of ancient Athens, but I know that the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can’t manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data “highways,” abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer.

I know that the consequences of scientific illiteracy are far more dangerous in our time than in any that has come before. It’s perilous and foolhardy for the average citizen to remain ignorant about global warming, say, or ozone depletion, air pollution, toxic and radioactive wastes, acid rain, topsoil erosion, tropical deforestation, exponential population growth. Jobs and wages depend on science and technology. If our nation can’t manufacture, at high quality and low price, products people want to buy, then industries will continue to drift away and transfer a little more prosperity to other parts of the world. Consider the social ramifications of fission and fusion power, supercomputers, data “highways,” abortion, radon, massive reductions in strategic weapons, addiction, government eavesdropping on the lives of its citizens, high-resolution TV, airline and airport safety, fetal tissue transplants, health costs, food additives, drugs to ameliorate mania or depression or schizophrenia, animal rights, superconductivity, morning-after pills, alleged hereditary antisocial predispositions, space stations, going to Mars, finding cures for AIDS and cancer. How can we affect national policy—or even make intelligent decisions in our own lives—if we don’t grasp the underlying issues? As I write, Congress is dissolving its own Office of Technology Assessment—the only organization specifically tasked to provide advice to the House and Senate on science and technology. Its competence and integrity over the years have been exemplary. Of the 535 members of the U.S. Congress, rarely in the twentieth century have as many as one percent had any significant background in science. The last scientifically literate President may have been Thomas Jefferson.* So how do Americans decide these matters? How do they instruct their representatives? Who in fact makes these decisions, and on what basis? —

The general stopped. "Pessimistic," the admiral demanded. "Pessimistic," the general repeated. "Nobody knows. The explosions and the radiation won't kill everybody. A new ice age is possible from the atmospheric dust shielding the sun. Just the opposite is also possible. If the ozone layer is depleted too greatly, man won't be able to handle it even in the southern hemisphere. Then, in theory, the species will die out. Like the dinosaurs. In that sense, it could be On the Beach. But from solar radiation."...

The IPCC had clearly stated that the unrestricted fossil fuel use would produce a “rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about .3 C per decade; this is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years.”86 Singer rejected this, asserting instead that “the scientific base for [greenhouse warming] includes some facts, lots of uncertainty, and just plain ignorance.” He concluded emphatically, “The scientific base for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time.”87 This, of course, was precisely what he had said about acid rain. And ozone depletion. It was easy to see why many working scientists didn’t like Fred Singer.

Global warming is a warning......... Mother earth is faltering due to global warming Today man –made chemicals causing ozone depletion Thousands of species becoming extinct due clearing of rain forest Poisonous gases and spillage emitted daily from factories and Mills Receding of Coral reefs due to global warming threat to marine life The mess created by our own hands, threatening the very existence of human race Man has woken up is it too late, and still no answers. Man’s threat to nature has dire consequences by Mother nature With the earths volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and earth slips Mother nature is angered With the interference from Man with Mother nature, can the world survive? Global warming and chemicals has taken its toll on Mother Nature, and scarcity of Water. Can the world be saved against this wanton destruction by Man? Humanity should band together and curb violence against mother nature Allow mother nature to recuperate and heal by growing more trees Respect God’s gift of nature without causing further damages Educate people to save the world from utter destruction Advise people to use alternate source of energy to bring change to the environment Energy efficiency could also be obtained by educating people to create awareness Fossil fuel from gasses should be done away with due to carbon emissions Let Mother nature take care of waste products by re-using it to grow. Let all the people of the world band together to heal mother nature for the future generation Ravi Sathasivam / Sri Lanka All rights are reserved @ 2017 - Ravi Sathasivam

During chemistry, it’s another experiment/observation. Alex swirls test tubes full of silver nitrate and potassium chloride liquids. “Looks like they’re both water to me, Mrs. P.,” Alex says. “Looks are deceiving,” Mrs. Peterson replies. My gaze travels to Alex’s hands. Those hands that are now busy measuring the right amount of silver nitrate and potassium chloride are the same ones that traced my lips intimately. “Earth to Brittany.” I blink my eyes, snapping out of my daydream. Alex is holding a test tube full of clear liquid out to me. Which reminds me I should help him pour the liquids together. “Uh, sorry.” I pick up one test tube and pour it into the tube he’s holding. “We’re supposed to write down what happens,” he says, using the stirring rod to mix the chemicals together. A white solid magically appears inside the clear liquid. “Hey, Mrs. P.! I think we found the answer to our problems for the ozone layer depletion,” Alex teases. Mrs. Peterson shakes her head. “So what do we observe in the tube?” he asks me, reading off of the sheet Mrs. Peterson handed out at the start of class. “I’d say the watery liquid is probably potassium nitrate now and the white solid mass in silver chloride. What’s your assumption?” As he hands me the tube, our fingers brush against each other. And linger. It leaves a tingling sensation I can’t ignore. I glance up. Our eyes meet, and for a minute I think he’s trying to send me a private message but his expression turns dark and he looks away. “What do you want me to do?” I whisper. “You’re gonna have to figure that one out yourself.” “Alex…” But he won’t tell me what to do. I guess I’m a bitch to even ask him for advice when he can’t possibly be unbiased. When I’m close to Alex I feel excitement, the way I used to feel on Christmas morning.

My gaze travels to Alex’s hands. Those hands that are now busy measuring the right amount of silver nitrate and potassium chloride are the same ones that traced my lips intimately. “Earth to Brittany.” I blink my eyes, snapping out of my daydream. Alex is holding a test tube full of clear liquid out to me. Which reminds me I should help him pour the liquids together. “Uh, sorry.” I pick up one test tube and pour it into the tube he’s holding. “We’re supposed to write down what happens,” he says, using the stirring rod to mix the chemicals together. A white solid magically appears inside the clear liquid. “Hey, Mrs. P.! I think we found the answer to our problems for the ozone layer depletion,” Alex teases. Mrs. Peterson shakes her head. “So what do we observe in the tube?” he asks me, reading off of the sheet Mrs. Peterson handed out at the start of class. “I’d say the watery liquid is probably potassium nitrate now and the white solid mass in silver chloride. What’s your assumption?” As he hands me the tube, our fingers brush against each other. And linger. It leaves a tingling sensation I can’t ignore. I glance up. Our eyes meet, and for a minute I think he’s trying to send me a private message but his expression turns dark and he looks away.

When scientists discovered the limits of planetary sinks, they also discovered market failure. The toxic effects of DDT, acid rain, the depletion of the ozone layer, and climate change were serious problems for which markets did not provide a spontaneous remedy.

In a September speech to the Royal Society, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher expressed concern about climate change, ozone depletion, and acid rain, echoing Roger Revelle’s language about the global experiment that was now underway, noting that the five warmest years in a century had all been in the 1980s, and reminding her audience of the vulnerability of the Maldives to sea level rise.

Ozone depletion, lack of water, and pollution are not the disease—they are the symptoms. The disease is overpopulation.

And so it’s hard for a certain kind of naïve mind at a restless, awakening time of year not to wonder, for example, what a seasonless world might mean for poets, for poems. Shall I compare thee to a weirdly hot, dry purgatorial spell of days broken by torrential spates of relentless rain whose climactic aberrations may be caused by ozone depletion? Or to the aftermath of Cyclone Yasi wreaking havoc in Western Australia? To devastating eruptions of the earth in New Zealand? Well, maybe yes. Because poetry is about nothing if it’s not about transformation.

another tactic being used to leverage more grant money from Congress—namely, the exaggeration of threats. Since the 1960s, environmental scientists have sequentially forecast existential threats from overpopulation, pollution, extinctions, global cooling, acid rain, global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, low-level ozone increases, and fine-scale particulates. Ocean acidification looms on the horizon as the next threat.

Paul Crutzen, the atmospheric chemist who won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for his work on ozone depletion, coined a word that has resonated. “It seems appropriate,” he wrote, “to assign the term Anthropocene to the present, in many ways human-dominated, geological epoch.

Presently, the entire world is going through a planetary transformation, instigated by lethal weather patterns, ozone depletion, geological upheaval, unending pollution, deadly untreatable diseases, a continued increase in UFO activity, and political violence that seemingly stem from prophetic Earth Changes, Revelations, and what the American Indians call the Great Purification—all variables that force social and spiritual change.

Today the concept of global carrying capacity has evolved into the idea of planetary boundaries. The boundaries set the environmental terrain “within which we expect that humanity can operate safely,” a team of twenty-nine European and American scientists argued in an influential report from 2009. (It was updated in 2015.) To prevent “non-linear, abrupt environmental change,” they said, humankind must not transgress nine global limits. That is, people must not 1. use too much fresh water; 2. put too much nitrogen and phosphorus from fertilizer into the land; 3. overly deplete the protective ozone in the stratosphere; 4. change the acidity of the oceans too much; 5. use too much land for agriculture; 6. wipe out species too fast; 7. dump too many chemicals into ecosystems; 8. send too much soot into the air; and 9. put too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

It was a graph published by the WHO the previous year delineating key environmental issues deemed by the WHO to have the greatest impact on global health. The list included, among others: Demand for clean water, global surface temperatures, ozone depletion, consumption of ocean resources, species extinction, CO2 concentration, deforestation, and global sea levels. All of these negative indicators had been on the rise over the last century. Now, however, they were all accelerating at terrifying rates. Elizabeth had the same reaction that she always had when she saw this graph—a sense of helplessness. She was a scientist and believed in the usefulness of statistics, and this graph painted a chilling picture not of the distant future … but of the very near future.

In one form or another, calcium carbonate turns up everywhere—in coral reefs, in the pores of basalt, in the ooze at the bottom of the ocean. It’s the main component of limestone, which is one of the world’s most common sedimentary rocks. “There are vast amounts of limestone dust blowing around in the troposphere, where we live,” Keutsch observed. “So that makes it attractive. “It has near-ideal optical properties,” he went on. “It dissolves in acid. So I can say with certainty that it will not have the same ozone-depleting impact that sulfuric acid has.” Mathematical modeling has confirmed the mineral’s advantages, Keutsch told me. But until someone actually throws calcium carbonate into the stratosphere, it’s hard to know how much to trust the models. “There’s no other way around it,” he said. —