Being Green - 25 May 2018
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Anyone Remember the Ozone Hole?
Climate change. Although you may think that the dreaded term is symptomatic of our recent, some would say, obsessive focus, on the topic and the almost daily news of fresh discoveries, warnings and political reactions to climate change, the concern about what we are doing to our environment goes back a long way. About thirty-odd years in fact.
The discovery of the annual depletion of ozone in the ‘ozone layer’ of the atmosphere above the Antarctic, was first announced in a paper by Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin which appeared in the journal Nature in May 1985. Later, NASA scientists re-analyzed their satellite data and found that the whole of the Antarctic was affected. This was one of the most significant findings in environmental research, and triggered many alarm bells. Do you remember all the fuss about CFC’s in aerosol sprays and ‘fridges, and the Montreal Protocol? It led to the banning of CFC’s and one of the success stories of international intervention.
Now here’s Jonathan Shanklin, one of the original whistle-blowers, and still going strong, speaking recently in this Natural History Museum recording…
Climate change. Although you may think that the dreaded term is symptomatic of our recent, some would say, obsessive focus, on the topic and the almost daily news of fresh discoveries, warnings and political reactions to climate change, the concern about what we are doing to our environment goes back a long way. About thirty-odd years in fact.
The discovery of the annual depletion of ozone in the ‘ozone layer’ of the atmosphere above the Antarctic, was first announced in a paper by Joe Farman, Brian Gardiner and Jonathan Shanklin which appeared in the journal Nature in May 1985. Later, NASA scientists re-analyzed their satellite data and found that the whole of the Antarctic was affected. This was one of the most significant findings in environmental research, and triggered many alarm bells. Do you remember all the fuss about CFC’s in aerosol sprays and ‘fridges, and the Montreal Protocol? It led to the banning of CFC’s and one of the success stories of international intervention.
Now here’s Jonathan Shanklin, one of the original whistle-blowers, and still going strong, speaking recently in this Natural History Museum recording…
