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UNITE! Info #166en: 4/8 The "ozone hole" terror hoax
[Posted: 20.03.02]
[Continued from part 3/8]
09. ULTRAVIOLET (UV) RADIATION AND ITS
INTERACTION WITH OZONE
That part of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation which
is of interest in this context is shown in the table below.
All of this radiation, of different wavelengths, of course is
being emitted by the sun.
Type of radiation Wavelengths
(1 nm = 0.000,000,001 m)
[infrared (heat) radiation 700 nm - 1 mm]
visible light 400 nm - 700 nm
ultraviolet A radiation (UV-A) 320 nm - 400 nm
ultraviolet B radiation (UV-B) 280 nm - 320 nm
ultraviolet C radiation (UV-C) 40 nm - 280 nm
[X-rays 0.01 nm - 40 nm]
These various types of radiation, all coming from the sun,
are filtered out in various ways and to various extents by
the atmosphere, so that only certain proportions of the radi-
ation of the respective types reach the ground.
Visible light accounts for less than 1 percent of all the
energy emitted as radiation by the sun towards the earth, but
it's hardly filtered away at all by the atmosphere. Almost
100 percent if it (the 400-700 nm wavelengths) reaches the
ground, which is probably why human (and most animal) eyes
have evolved to perceive precisely these wavelengths.
Ultraviolet waves (UV-A, UV-B and UV-C) comprise 5 percent of
the total energy from solar radiation that reaches Earth, and
infrared waves comprise 40 percent of it. Neither ozone nor,
for instance, "ordinary" oxygen (O2) filter out any important
amounts of UV-A, so almost 100 percent of this radiation too
reaches the ground. The amount of UV-A that reaches the
ground is 100 times as large as the amount of UV-B that does
this. UV-A causes skin tans (to various individual degrees)
in white-skinned people, as does UV-B too.
UV-A, "which is not absorbed by ozone", "is not usually
thought to be especially dangerous", says Parson. He however
notes too, as do Maduro and Schauerhammer, a possiblity, sug-
gested by some scientists, that one particular kind of skin
cancers, called "malignant melanoma", might be caused by
UV-A. These melanoma have been on the rise, in some coun-
tries, since the 1940s; they are infrequent but, in contrast
to other skin cancers, sometimes fatal. They clearly are not
caused by UV-B, and my sources, from 1992-97, agreed that
there was then no certainty at all about what did cause them.
Of UV-C, only very small amounts reach the earth's surface.
Practically all of it is filtered out by oxygen, O2, in the
atmosphere, some of it (the wavelengths below 240 nm), as
seen above, breaking up some of these oxygen molecules in the
stratosphere and in particular at its region some 30-35 km
up, thus forming ozone. (Most of) UV-C, that's ozone-produ-
cing stuff.
UV-B is the biologically most active and important, both in a
positive sense and a negative one, of the ultraviolet radia-
tion types. Most of the incoming UV-B is filtered out by
ozone (O3) and also by "ordinary" oxygen (O2) before it
reaches the surface. So it's in relation to UV-B that the
ozone layer has its most important "shielding" function.
Ozone "absorbs very strongly in the ultraviolet region bet-
ween about 3,300 and 2,200 Å," (or 330 to 220 nm; Å or Ång-
ström is a unit often used earlier; 1 Å = 10^-10 m) "the
strongest absorption being at a wavelength of about 2,500 Å"
(250 nm) "where it is extremely intense", Dobson wrote in
1968 (as quoted in 1992).
That is, ozone absorbs UV radiation best at a somewhat grea-
ter wavelength, 250 nm, than the ones which create it; these
are from 240 nm and downwards. In connection with this, Par-
son asks one question and answers it:
"If the ozone is lost, won't the UV light just pene-
trate deeper into the atmosphere and make more ozone?
This does happen to some extent - it's called 'self-
healing' - and has the effect of moving ozone from
the upper to the lower stratosphere. Recall that
ozone is *created* by UV with wavelengths less than
240 nm, but functions by *absorbing* UV with wave-
lengths greater than 240 nm.
The peak of the ozone absorption band is at ~250 nm,
and the cross-section falls off at shorter wave-
lengths. The O2 and O3 absorption bands do overlap,
though, and UV radiation between 200 and 240 nm has a
good chance of being absorbed by *either* O2 or O3.
[Rowland and Molina 1975] (Below 200 nm the O2 ab-
sorption cross-section increases dramatically, and O3
absorption is insignificant in comparison.)
Since there is some overlap, a decrease in ozone does
lead to a small increase in absorption by O2. This is
a weak feedback, however, and it does not compensate
for the ozone destroyed."
So this particular "repair" effect, one of "self-healing", a
certain *rise* in the ozone formation, even, if the ozone
layer gets thinner, is not all that strong. But the constant
replenishment of ozone by the process described in point 08
above of course always goes on anyway, irrespective of
whether the ozone layer at some point in time has gotten
thinner or thicker.
10. THE BIOLOGICAL IMPORTANCE OF ULTRAVIOLET
RADIATION, IN PARTICULAR THE UV-B TYPE
UV-B is the radiation type that may cause sunburn in white-
skinned people, if their exposure to it is too large, and
possibly the non-lethal, relatively benign types of skin can-
cer too (which darker-skinned people practically never get).
But it also, in suitable doses, has quite vital positive ef-
fects. Maduro and Schauerhammer say on this (pp. 170-176):
"One unfortunate result of environmental propaganda
over the past two decades has been the growing hege-
mony of the belief that if a substance is toxic in
high concentrations, it will be toxic in very low
concentrations as well."
...
(A very striking case of this is the reactionary
phony'environmentalist' propaganda, by the 'Interna-
tional Commission for Radiation Protection' [ICRP]
and by all governments of the imperialist countries,
since some 50 years back now, saying that *all* le-
vels of ionizing radiation - from natural or manmade
nuclear reactions - are 'harmful to people', though
it has much longer been obvious that suitably small
amounts of such radiation at least are harmless and
it in the last few decades has been clearly proved
too that they are even *beneficial* for people's
health. On this, see e.g. Infos #125en and #163en.)
"The fact that a substance is toxic in high concen-
trations does not mean it will be toxic in low con-
centrations.
...
This point is entirely missed in the controversy over
ultraviolet radiation. There is no question that mas-
sive overexposure to both ultraviolet A and ultravio-
let B can severely damage the human body. But the
skin color of all human beings has adjusted to rela-
tively small amounts of sunlight found at certain
geographical latitudes; as long as that natural ratio
is maintained, there is little danger of damage.
Furthermore, ultraviolet radiation is *necessary* for
the body's metabolism. Lack of ultraviolet radiation
may be more dangerous than too much of it.
Ultraviolet light shorter than 290 nm is toxic to all
forms of *unpigmented* living cells." (The authors
point out too that UV effectively kills certain types
of bacteria.) "How then do living things on the Earth
survive exposure to incoming ultraviolet radiation?
Plants and algae have a variety of of photosynthetic
pigments: chlorophylls, caratenoids, phycobilins and
fucoxanthin; these absorb electromagnetic radiation
even into the ultraviolet range and harness its ener-
gy in ways useful to life. Most animals have fur,
feathers, or scales that offer protection. Fish are
partially shielded from ultraviolet radiation by wa-
ter. And man has a skin pigment: melanin.
The same ultraviolet radiation that is deadly in lar-
ge doses to unprotected living cells, however, is ne-
cessary to all life on this planet." (Actually, not
to all. To the subterranean anaerobic bacteria, whose
total biomass apparently is enormously much bigger
than that of all other living things on earth and
which may be the ones with which life started, UV is
sheer poison. Some of those bacteria it is that con-
vert much of the ever-present methane at great depths
into oil; see Info #28en or the homepage of Thomas
Gold: http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/tg21/.)
"No living thing" (among the higher-developed spe-
cies, at least) " - not plants, not animals, not man
- could long survive if ultraviolet radiation were
totally screened out of the Earth's atmosphere.
In human beings, normal exposure to ultraviolet light
triggers the conversion of one of the cholesterols
(7-dehydrocholesterol) found in the skin to calcife-
rol, or vitamin D, a necessary nutrient. Deficiency
in vitamin D leads to rickets and disturbances in
calcium and phosphorus metabolism.
...
Atmospheric scientist Hugh Ellsaesser maintains that
'Rickets is but one of the hazards of insufficient
ultraviolet'. Writing in the Summer 1990 *21st Centu-
ry Science and Technology* magazine, Ellsaesser pin-
points lack of sufficient ultraviolet radiation as
the cause of osteomalacia, a disease of aging:
'At present the most serious health hazard in the
United States from insufficient ultraviolet or "vita-
min D" is osteomalacia, or wasting bone loss in the
elderly. While this process can be arrested or slowed
by proper treatment, the best treatment appears to be
to assure that there is both adequate "vitamin D" and
minerals available during the growth period while the
skeleton is forming...
Bone fracture, particularly of the femur," (thigh)
"among the elderly suffering from osteomalacia is a
far more serious health problem than ordinary skin
cancer. There are some 400,000 to 600,000 new cases
of skin cancer per year in the United States, while
among the 20 million Americans affected by osteomala-
cia there are more than 1,200,000 bone fractures each
year.
These statistics strongly suggest that any increase
in ultraviolet radiation resulting from ozone loss
would, at least eventually, exert a beneficial impact
on our health greater than the detrimental one now
emphasized. This becomes even more credible when it
is realized that our bodies are far more capable of
letting us know when we are getting too much ultra-
violet than they are at letting us know when we are
getting too little.' [p. 9]"
This is one factor which suggests that a certain (not too
big) global ozone depletion would rather be a *good* thing
than a bad one. There are other factors too. For agriculture
in the higher latitudes, for instance, and for the general
well-being of most people living there too, clearly it would
be good if the ultraviolet radiation in these regions in-
creased somewhat, to the levels of the regions a few degrees
closer to the equator. (If there is really a tendency towards
a larger percentage of cloud cover over these countries
lately, as some observations seem to point to, which in that
case perhaps prevents a further fraction of the UV radiation
from reaching the ground, then it would be even better to
have a somewhat thinner ozone layer. But I don't know whether
cloud cover has actually increased or not.)
Would not a certain (not too big) global ozone depletion be
harmful to agriculture in the tropics and to people living
there, then? No, it would have very little effect in those
regions. Firstly, since the sun's entire radiation comes in
more or less vertically there, the tropical regions have al-
ways had many times as much UV radiation as the higher lati-
tudes anyway; the entire ozone layer matters much less there.
Secondly, as all agree - irrespective of whether there, in
the 1980s, for instance, *was* some smaller depletion of the
ozone over the higher latitudes, as some maintain - at least
over the tropics, the ozone layer has *not* changed in thick-
ness at all, over the time when measurements have taken
place. This suggests that any change in the mean global ozone
level would affect the ozone layer precisely over the tropics
only very little. And the known manner in which ozone is con-
tinously being created and depleted, due to natural causes,
indicates that too.
So, in the interest of practically everybody is rather a
somewhat thinner ozone layer than a somewhat thicker one.
11. YEAR-TO-YEAR PERIODIC OZONE LEVEL VARIATIONS
Ozone is formed, in the stratosphere over all regions on
earth, due to the sun's ultraviolet radiation. This formation
is biggest, naturally enough, over the tropics, close to the
equator. From those regions, a certain transport of ozone to-
wards the higher-latitude regions takes place, due to the
winds.
The various variations in the activity of the sun influence
the rate of ozone formation. One well-known cycle of sun ac-
tivity is the (approximately) 11-year sunspot cycle. The
amount of radiation, including UV such, emitted by the sun
increases with the number of sunspots.
This causes periodic, 11-year, variations in the global mean
ozone level (or total global ozone) too. Parson says that
"This correlation has been verified, although its effect is
small, about 2% from peak to trough averaged over the earth,
about 4% in polar regions.", citing Stolarski et al.
Maduro and Schauerhammer however maintain that total global
ozone peaks and throughs have been twice as big, from +2% to
-2%, i.e., some 4% from peak to through averaged over the
earth, showing on their p. 78 a graph on this and one on sun-
spots, going from 1957 to 1988, adapted from an article by
J.K. Angell in *Journal of Climate*, November 1989. There's
much more reason to believe that these authors are bringing
the correct figure on this than that Parson would be, I hold.
He on several other points shows insincerity. From the graph,
which I cannot bring, "an 11-year and a 22-year cycle in
ozone levels, matching the Sun's sunspot cycle, are clear-
ly evident", Maduro and Schauerhammer say.
These graphs show sunspot maxima, and matching ozone level
ones, around the years 1957, 1968 and 1979. There presumably
were such around 1990 and 2001 too, then. (I haven't verified
this.)
And the maxima around 1957 and 1979 are shown as bigger than
that around 1968; this indicates a certain 22-year sunspot
cycle too, whose existence I haven't checked out with other
sources either but which would make for a somewhat bigger
maximum in 2001 too. This could account in part for the ozone
layer's being thicker in 2000-2001, over the northern hemi-
sphere, than in many years before, and for the recent all-
time highs in ozone level noted here in Sweden (see point 06
above).
Another thing which makes for a year-to-year periodicity in
ozone levels, this not over the entire globe but in the high-
er latitudes, is that QBO (quasi-biennal oscillation of at-
mospheric waves, proceeding from the equatorial lower strato-
sphere) which was mentioned too in point 06 above.
This is "a sudden shift in wind patterns, governed by solar
variations, that occurs every two years." (More precisely,
according to recent SMHI information, with a period of some
26 months.) "This shift is of major significance for planeta-
ry waves, the giant waves in the stratosphere that move mas-
ses of air, as ocean waves move sea water", according to Ma-
duro and Schauerhammer, who also cite a study concerning its
effects on the particular meteorological conditions over the
Antarctic region and the ozone anomaly there - the "deple-
tion" propagandists' "Antarctic ozone hole". (More on this
under points 17-18 below.)
Apparently, this wave pattern just now, and since more than a
year back, is in a phase likewise making for a thick ozone
layer over Sweden, for instance, which also helps explain
that all-time ozone high here in February 2001 and the fact
that the present level too (March 2002) still is much above
the former all-time ozone high over Sweden, back in 1961.
As already quoted above, the Swedish SMHI says, on the pre-
sent local ozone situation:
"Solar activity is likely to remain high this year
too but is expected to decrease the next year. The
QBO will change its phase rather soon, and this means
that ozone levels will decrease in the coming winter
and spring."
How big changes, in percent, of the ozone layer thickness
over higher latitudes are caused by the QBO, this probably
is difficult to calculate. I've so far seen no data on this.
On the reason(s) why the ozone layer over regions at higher
latitudes actually, on the average, is *thicker* than over
the tropics, despite the fact that it's over the tropics that
ozone formation is largest (since the UV radiation hitting
the stratosphere is at its most intense there), I've seen no
explanation in the literature.
The mean ozone layer thickness over the tropics is only some
220-250 DU (with only small seasonal and year-to-year varia-
tions there), while that over the USA is some 300 DU (Parson
says) and that over Sweden something like 330 DU (the thick-
ness over both of these regions varying considerably with the
seasons).
As also seen under 08 above, one part of the natural process
continually destroying ozone is due to incoming UV radiation
too (some which hits and breaks up O2 and some which breaks
up O3, and then in both cases ozone destruction occurs when
an O atom liberated by this doesn't combine with O2 to create
O3 [again] but with O3, to create two new O2 molecules). This
type of ozone destruction thus must also be at its most in-
tensive in the tropics.
The explanation for the higher mean levels of ozone over the
higher latitudes must have to do, I presume, with a delay
between the formation of ozone, that process which is parti-
cularly intensive over the tropics, and the destruction of
it, more intensive too than elsewhere, in the tropics. Some
of all that ozone formed, close to the equator, obviously
gets time to blow away with the winds towards the higher la-
titudes before it's eventually destroyed, by processes which
in those regions are somewhat less intensive, on the average.
[Continued in part 5/8]
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