This is a collective response to rightwhale, ucansee2, wiscyooper and cogitator, so please excuse so unorganized a message.
I normally don’t comment on scientific or medical matters, since my profession for the years 1969 to date has been in the financial industry and my ongoing education into science has only been a hobby in passing since I have left that field. The only exceptions I have made recently, are regarding the SARS BS and blatant hogwash like the “Ozone Hole.”
My major in college was physics and worked for two summers while attending school for GE at their Missile And Space Reentry Division near Philadelphia in a lab studying the effects on communications of the plasma created around a spacecraft on reentry. This was in the mid 1960’s. My last job in the field was in my senior year for one of my professors working in his lab studying the plasma effects generated by high energy “explosions” of matter. When, in Atomic Physics, I got to the “Uncertainty Principle”, which I was supposed to believe was science, I hung up my science shoes, quit school and entered the free market of the Stock Market in which I am still involved to this day.
Now to the “Ozone Hole.” Anyone can buy any scientific opinion they want, if they have enough money, like the government. For the most part science today is the “whore” of governments. I could see this happening even in the 1960’s, but today it is happening at warp speed.
(1) Discovering the hole 1958 is like discovering that a room is dark at night when you turn off the lights. Ozone (O3) is created by sunlight which ionizes oxygen (O2). The level of ozone in the upper atmosphere is directly related to the intensity of the sun’s radiation. When in winter in Antarctica the angle of incidence of the sun is low, the ozone drops to a low level, causing the famous “hole.” Congratulations, Sherlock on your scientific discovery!
(2) Somehow this simple fact needs other factors to “make it happen,” like CFC’s, freon, chlorine, etc. I always questioned how a very heavy molecule like freon was able to rise into the upper atmosphere amongst rather light gases like hydrogen, oxygen and other carbon gases. But not to worry, even gravity will give way for enough greenbacks.
(3) Scientific education today is an oxymoron. Other than in the applied sciences, like computer technology [still working on every old theory], science is dead, especially to the masses of regular people. I got a lesson on how stupid I was recently when I ran across the graduation exam for 8th grade in a small Midwest town, which was given in the late 1800’s. I would have been very happy to get a 50% grade. Today the best Harvard PHD student would not get 15% right. But not to fear, didn’t you read that the latest SAT scores are the highest in decades? Yes, because they are liars, and have changed the scoring, tests, and whatever else they needed to do to make it so.
(4) You would be surprised how much bull-crap passes itself off as science or especially medicine today. To rule a people you only need to keep them dumb and afraid. I give you a short list of BS items, which I will not comment on, that you should beware of any pronouncements about: AIDS, SARS, HARP, Bio-chemical Attacks, Pollution, Global Warming [Cooling], Weather Modification, etc, etc, etc.
Bye.
If anyone would like further communication I suggest direct private email to me at:
"ido@bellsouth.net"As an astronomer, meteorologist and software engineer for the last 30 years, I have only one thing to say:
You are absolutely correct!
There is no such thing as an "Ozone Hole", only an "Ozone Donut", since the angle of incidence is the single most important aspect.
As you correctly stated, Ozone (O3) is created by sunlight which ionizes oxygen (O2). During the polar winters where there is no sunlight for 6 months out of the year, Ozone is no longer being created.
However, at latitudes above the polar circle, the long duration sunsets produced large quantities of Ozone. That is a simple function of solar incidence (angle between the Sun and the horizon).