Quote:
Originally posted by JDNSW
The destruction of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect are totally unrelated. The (manmade) damage to the ozone layer is primarily caused by the breakdown of flourocarbons in the stratosphere under bombardment by UV - the flourine ions destroy the ozone. The worldwide ban on manufacture of the relevant flourocarbons has now been in effect long enough to significantly reduce the effect, although it will be perhaps fifty years before all the flourine is gone from the stratosphere. The removal of the flourocarbons has been possible because there are alternatives.
Greenhouse gases are a separate affair altogether, and human actions are almost certainly causing an increase in the greenhouse effect due to forest clearing, farming, and the burning of fossil fuel, all of which increase the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere. (It is uncertain how much of the additional CO2 will dissolve in the oceans and how rapidly) There are also other gases that have an effect, including methane. What is less clear is whether the manmade effect is counteracting a natural cooling, and it is even less clear whether the predicted amount of warming will be a net adverse or positive to humankind as a whole. This predicted warming will result in a world that is probably about the same temperature as the world was a thousand years ago. I cannot see a major reduction in use of fossil fuels or in farming, as there are no practical alternatives. The best we can expect is a reduction in the rate of increase. Land clearing can be expected to decrease on a worldwide basis and even be reversed (as is happening here - Australia has far more forest than it had fifty years ago, mainly thanks to myxamatosis).
And 200 years ago according to Lt Collins of the First Fleet they were able to ride at ease through the Illawarra escarpment through what is now dense rainforest pre-rabbit and contemporanious with Aboriginal land management