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"As a rule, I have found that the greater brain a man has, and the better educated, the easier it has been to mystify him." So said master illusionist Harry Houdini. He said it during his spat with Sherlock Holmes’ creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle over the latter’s belief in seances and fairies. Despite being a literary genius, Conan Doyle nevertheless had some foolish ideas. He’s not alone. Researchers have even coined ‘Nobel Disease,’ referring to the tendency for some Nobel Prize winners to embrace unconventional beliefs. Charles Richet, for instance, won the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine...

Banana peel that ends up in regular landfill with other waste products including plastic can take up to 2 years to break down. Banana peels need the right temperature and combination of bacteria, fungi and oxygen to break down organically. Banana peels that are covered with garbage will break down anaerobically releasing methane into the atmosphere. Methane is a substance that adds to the ozone layer, capturing sunlight and heat in the earth. This causes the earth to heat up quicker. While one banana peel won’t make a lot of difference but millions of bananas thrown into landfill causes lots...

Earth’s protective ozone layer is slowly but noticeably healing at a pace that would fully mend the hole over Antarctica in about 43 years, a new United Nations report says. A once-every-four-years scientific assessment found recovery in progress, more than 35 years after every nation in the world agreed to stop producing chemicals that chomp on the layer of ozone in Earth’s atmosphere that shields the planet from harmful radiation linked to skin cancer, cataracts and crop damage. […] The progress is slow, according to the report presented Monday at the American Meteorological Society convention in Denver. The global average...

When an underwater volcano in Tonga erupted in January, it belched out more than ash and volcanic gases; it also spewed 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools' worth of water vapor into Earth's atmosphere, a new study finds. This water vapor could end up being the most destructive part of the volcano's eruption because it could potentially exacerbate global warming and deplete the ozone layer, according to the study. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it became the most powerful explosion on Earth in more than 30 years, with an equivalent force of 100 Hiroshima bombs.

A new NASA climate simulation suggests that extremely large volcanic eruptions called “flood basalt eruptions” might significantly warm Earth’s climate and devastate the ozone layer that shields life from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. The result contradicts previous studies indicating these volcanoes cool the climate. It also suggests that while extensive flood-basalt eruptions on Mars and Venus may have helped warm their climates, they could have doomed the long-term habitability of these worlds by contributing to water loss. Unlike brief, explosive volcanic eruptions such as Pinatubo or January’s Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha‘apai that occur over hours or days, flood basalts are regions...

The hole in the ozone layer is larger than it usually is at this time of the year, according to a team of EU scientists. The European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service said Thursday the ozone hole is larger than the size of Antarctica. “Forecasts show that this year’s hole has evolved into a rather larger than usual one,” said the head of the EU satellite monitoring service, Vincent-Henri Peuch. The hole makes an appearance each spring season in the Southern Hemisphere. […] Experts believe the world will only be free of harmful ozone-depleting substances in 2060, when it’s hoped...

Earth's protective ozone layer is finally healing from damage caused by aerosol sprays and coolants, a new United Nations report said. The ozone layer had been thinning since the late 1970s. Scientist raised the alarm and ozone-depleting chemicals were phased out worldwide. As a result, the upper ozone layer above the Northern Hemisphere should be completely repaired in the 2030s and the gaping Antarctic ozone hole should disappear in the 2060s, according to a scientific assessment released Monday at a conference in Quito, Ecuador. The Southern Hemisphere lags a bit and its ozone layer should be healed by mid-century. "It's...

Emissions of a banned, ozone-depleting chemical are on the rise, a group of scientists reported Wednesday, suggesting someone may be secretly manufacturing the pollutant in violation of an international accord. Emissions of CFC-11 have climbed 25 percent since 2012, despite the chemical being part of a group of ozone pollutants that were phased out under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. “I’ve been making these measurements for more than 30 years, and this is the most surprising thing I’ve seen,” said Stephen Montzka, a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who led the work. “I was astounded by it, really.”...

In the period from 2000-2015, the hole in the ozone layer shrank by more than 4 million square kilometers—nearly a billion acres—according to a new report in the journal Science. During the 1980s and into the 1990s, news of a massive hole in the ozone layer caused worldwide panic, stoked by everything from rumors of sheep being blinded by increased atmospheric radiation to the fear of a skin cancer pandemic and even comparisons to “AIDS from the sky.” Now scientists at MIT along with others have found that since 2000 the ozone hole has actually shrunk by an area half...

Another year has passed and that stubborn Ozone Hole over Antarctica refuses to go away...The Ozone Layer is known to block ultraviolet rays, shielding the surface of Earth from high-energy radiation. Scientists were concerned that degradation of the ozone layer would increase rates of skin cancer and cataracts and cause immune system problems in humans...World consumption of Ozone Depleting Substances has been reduced to zero over the last three decades

The Antarctic ozone hole has swelled this month to one of its biggest sizes on record, U.N. and U.S. scientists say, insisting that the Earth-shielding ozone layer remains on track to long-term recovery but saying residents of the southern hemisphere should be on watch for high UV levels in the weeks ahead.

SAN FRANCISCO — The banning of ozone-depleting chemicals hasn't yet caused detectable improvements in the Antarctic ozone hole, new research suggests. Instead, changes in the South Pole's ozone hole from year-to-year are likely the result of natural variations in wind patterns, researchers said here Wednesday (Dec. 11) in a press conference at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union. The findings suggest that measuring the total size of the ozone hole says little about ozone depletion, and that it's misleading to use the hole's extent alone to measure environmental progress.

A new study suggests that the ban on ozone depleting chemicals may have also impacted the rise in global temperatures. CFC gases were responsible for a massive hole in the ozone layer, but they also had a powerful greenhouse effect. The authors link a ban on their use to a “pause” or slowdown in temperature increases since the mid 1990s. The research is published in the journal Nature Geoscience. The subject of a hiatus or standstill in global temperatures rises since 1998 has been the subject of intense debate among scientists, and it has been used as a key argument...

The first ozone hole above the North Pole has been aggravated by extraordinarily cold winter temperatures, say scientists. Cooling of the ozone layer enhances the effect of ozone-destroying substances such as chlorofluorocarbons - CFC. A repeated ozone hole above the Arctic is to be expected, say scientists from the KIT Institute of Meteorology and Climate Research. About a year ago, the scientists detected that ozone degradation above the Arctic for the first time reached an extent comparable to that of the ozone hole above the South Pole. At a level of around 13 miles above the ground, 80 per cent...

Obama Administration to Ban Asthma Inhalers Over Environmental Concerns 3:00 PM, Sep 23, 2011 • By MARK HEMINGWAY Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts Remember how Obama recently waived new ozone regulations at the EPA because they were too costly? Well, it seems that the Obama administration is would rather make people with Asthma cough up money than let them make a surely inconsequential contribution to depleting the ozone layer: Asthma patients who rely on over-the-counter inhalers will need to switch to prescription-only alternatives as part of the federal government's latest attempt to protect the Earth's atmosphere. The...

During my enlistment in the Air Force, I was a meteorologist and while stationed here in Alaska, I spent my time as a meteorologist at Elemdorf A.F.B. And when Mt Pinatubo and Mt Redoubt erupted in the early 1990‘s, I personally briefed NASA pilots and provided upper air soundings (Skew-Ts) so they could conduct their missions of collecting ash samples and gas samples. And it is well known that volcanic eruptions and the gases that are present in the eruptions will increase the chlorine concentration in the stratosphere and break down the ozone layer over the arctic.

Remember the big scare of the 1980s, when we were told that between all the fluorocarbons in products like hairspray and deodorant, a big hole was developing in the Ozone layer and the entire population of the world was about get cancer at the very same time? Good News! After taking fluorocarbons out of our products the holes in the Ozone layer over the Artic and Antarctic are closing. But have no fear the Ozone environmentalists haven't lost their life's mission, they can just become global warming moonbats. A new study claims that by closing the Ozone hole we are...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – Nitrous oxide emissions caused by human activity have become the largest contributor to ozone depletion and are likely to remain so for the rest of the 21st century, a US study has concluded. The study by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency said efforts to reduce chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere over the past two decades were "an environmental success story. ... Emissions and production of those substances are regulated under the 1987 Montreal Protocol. But the treaty excludes nitrous oxides, which are emitted by agricultural fertilizers, livestock manure, sewage treatment, combustion and certain other industrial processes....

STOCKHOLM (AFP) – The ozone layer over Sweden was thicker in February than it has been in decades, just a year after the second-thinnest level was recorded, the Swedish meteorological institute SMHI said on Tuesday. Measurements taken at SMHI's station in Norrkoeping, just south of Stockholm, showed the ozone layer was at its thickest in February since recordings there began in 1988, with a measurement of 426 Dobson units (DU). At the Vindeln station in northern Sweden, where measurements began in 1991, a record high of 437 DU was recorded. "We have to go as far back to the measurements...

PANJIM, JUNE 16 (Agencies) — Manmade chemicals have damaged the ozone layer of the upper atmosphere that shields Earth from the harmful effects of the sun’s ultraviolet rays, each summer creating a hole over the South Pole that expands to nearly the size of Antarctica. But in 1996, an international treaty banned the chemical refrigerants and propellants (known as CFCs, or chlorofluorocarbons), and the hole has been shrinking. Scientists predict it may stop forming by the end of this century. But that’s not necessarily good news. A new study published in ‘Science’ says that the closing of the ozone hole...