[HN Gopher] Chemicals released during wildfires in Australia dam...
___________________________________________________________________
 
Chemicals released during wildfires in Australia damaged the ozone
layer
 
Author : pseudolus
Score  : 210 points
Date   : 2023-03-09 14:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
 
web link (www.nature.com)
w3m dump (www.nature.com)
 
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Curiously enough, chlorine radicals and volatile organic
| compounds from coal and wood combustion have the opposite effect
| in the lower atmosphere, where the interaction _increases_ ozone
| production (due to reaction with various nitrogen oxides). This
| also generates the lung irritant PAN which is a component of
| brown smog:
| 
| https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36821
| 
| > "The chlorine radical is a potent atmospheric oxidant, capable
| of perturbing tropospheric oxidative cycles normally controlled
| by the hydroxyl radical. Significantly faster reaction rates
| allow chlorine radicals to expedite oxidation of hydrocarbons,
| including methane, and in polluted environments, to enhance ozone
| production... Even when present at low levels, Cl radicals can
| have a profound impact on tropospheric oxidation and radical
| cycling. Cl chemistry can significantly impact levels of
| tropospheric ozone, a greenhouse gas that is also a precursor for
| the OH radical, destroying it in clean environments and enhancing
| its formation under polluted conditions."
| 
| Incidentally, Australia's massive wildfires of 2019-2020 produced
| about 700 million tons of CO2, which is only about 1/3 of
| Australia's annual fossil CO2 generation from coal (counting
| total production of Australian coal, of which only about 1/5th is
| burned in Australia itself, the rest being exported).
| 
| If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just
| posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes a
| lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use.
 
  | paganel wrote:
  | > stopping production
  | 
  | And then how do you provide energy cheaply and reliably enough?
  | That is in order to maintain today's "civilizational level", so
  | to speak.
  | 
  | As far as I am aware the energy sources that are now branded as
  | alternative cannot do that, i.e. provide energy that is both
  | cheap and reliable.
 
    | photochemsyn wrote:
    | Technology is reaching the point where renewables are just as
    | cheap and reliable as fossil fuels (and note, coal plants
    | break down and gas and oil supplies get interrupted):
    | 
    | https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/australia-
    | promi...
    | 
    | It's rather interesting that some major fossil fuel producers
    | are building renewable domestic infrastructure (Australia,
    | Saudi Arabia) although they don't seem to want to cut exports
    | as quickly.
 
      | zizee wrote:
      | Both of you have good points. The world needs cheap energy
      | to function. Renewables are becoming more capable by the
      | day, and can/will be that source of cheap reliable energy.
      | 
      | But the transition is not going to be instantaneous. If
      | renewables are as cheaper/reliable/better as fossil fuel
      | (and continually improving) the economic incentives will
      | effectively push the transition as fast as is possible. The
      | transition is supply constrained as much as anything.
      | Production of solar, wind is rapidly growing, but it can
      | only grow so quickly.
 
  | nojvek wrote:
  | Coal exports are a huge part of Australia's GDP. Resource
  | exports make 67% of their total exports
  | https://www.rba.gov.au/snapshots/economy-composition-snapsho...
  | 
  | If Australia stopped exporting Coal (mostly to China), it would
  | decimate not only their economy, but affect China (world's
  | factory) making everything else expensive too.
  | 
  | Unpopular opinion: It seems with Coal or Gasoline, due to CO2
  | emissions, they've been seen as unclean and something we should
  | switch away from. However their energy density is high, only
  | below nuclear. Easy to transport, relatively safe. It's an
  | amazing source of fuel.
  | 
  | I'm somewhat hopeful that someday we'll figure out how to
  | capture 100s of millions of tons of C02 from atmosphere and
  | turn it into synthetic gasoline-like fuel. All using solar
  | energy.
  | 
  | The whole dance of global warming is because we know how to
  | burn fuels and create heat + CO2 + H20, but we don't know how
  | to do the reverse cheaply at scale.
  | 
  | Once we do that, then gasoline/ethanol is a renewable resource.
  | 
  | Lithium ion batteries are great, but gasoline is 100x denser
  | than batteries.
 
    | guelo wrote:
    | > capture 100s of millions of tons of C02 from atmosphere
    | 
    | It's way more efficient to capture it at the source, ie. the
    | coal plant. But nobody wants to talk about that because that
    | would cost coal companies money and that's not allowed. They
    | want to spew the pollution for free to keep coal energy
    | "cheap" while the whole world has to pay for the cleanup.
 
      | photochemsyn wrote:
      | It would take all the energy the coal plant produced to
      | capture all of its CO2 emissions, it's a pretty futile
      | cycle... For comparison, try to imagine a diesel truck that
      | captured all its emissions onboard as it drove down the
      | highway. It's not very plausible and would represent a huge
      | drain on power output.
      | 
      | FutureGen was a massive failure, too.
 
  | idiotsecant wrote:
  | >If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just
  | posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes
  | a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use.
  | 
  | Talk about posturing. This is the least effective way to reduce
  | carbon emissions, because it simply won't be done without
  | sufficient replacement energy generation and transmission in
  | place, as well as alternatives for spot-use of hydrocarbons
  | like automotive, heating, etc.
  | 
  | If you want to get nothing done, propose solutions that make
  | nobody happy. If you want to get something done propose
  | solutions that can work.
 
    | somewhereoutth wrote:
    | However, it would force people to do something. Restricting
    | supply increases price, and thus alternatives/efficiencies
    | become more viable.
    | 
    | An effective climate preservation campaign would focus on
    | production facilities - coal mines, oil rigs etc. Not
    | necessarily directly - for example the best way to shut down
    | North Sea oil production would be to make it impossible to
    | fly helicopters out there - protest airfields, helicopter
    | maintenance depos, protest to the pilots, disrupt the
    | logistics. Of course this then becomes a national security
    | threat, and would be dealt with accordingly.
 
      | bluGill wrote:
      | It forces them to vote you out of office and in come the
      | subsidies for coal.
 
        | bobthepanda wrote:
        | Yeah, for an example of how this works horribly in
        | practice, look at how the French yellow vests rolled back
        | their climate taxes
 
      | fnordpiglet wrote:
      | Until the supreme dictator decrees this we need to figure
      | out something that works in a market economy as we don't
      | have a command economy.
 
      | WalterBright wrote:
      | At better way is tax it. Governments are experts at taxing.
 
        | schneems wrote:
        | And corporations are experts at regulatory capture.
        | 
        | I would be amazed/surprised if one is introduced and
        | effective. But you don't get what you don't fight for.
        | Just because the odds are stacked against today doesn't
        | mean we can't do something to shift that stack a bit for
        | a better tomorrow.
 
    | photochemsyn wrote:
    | At the very least, counting the emissions from coal produced
    | in Australia on Australia's carbon emissions ledger and
    | attaching the 'externalities' to the producer makes more
    | sense.
 
      | zizee wrote:
      | Coal consumption will not go down if Australia stops
      | exporting coal. It's a fungible commodity. Whoever uses
      | Australia coal would just move to another source if prices
      | are increased to pay for the unreleased carbon.
      | 
      | If you cannot ensure a consumer is affected, it won't
      | change consumption (which is what we want).
 
        | photochemsyn wrote:
        | Well, that's why you have a global international treaty
        | treating all producers the same, so they all have to pay
        | the same carbon cost per ton of carbon exports. They can
        | pass the cost onto the consumer in the form of higher
        | prices, or they can absorb it themselves (reducing profit
        | margins).
        | 
        | It's also just easier to do the accounting on the
        | producer-exporter side.
 
  | somewhereoutth wrote:
  | Exactly. And restrictions on supply will force people to use
  | fossil fuels more efficiently, whereas just increasing
  | efficiency might actually make people use _more_ fossil fuels -
  | the Jevons paradox.
  | 
  | I would suggest the slogan 'Leave it in the ground!'
 
  | londons_explore wrote:
  | > If you want to eliminate fossil fuel use, and aren't just
  | posturing for political convenience, stopping production makes
  | a lot more sense than stopping emissions at point-of-use.
  | 
  | This. And the fact I haven't heard of any country saying "we'll
  | stop extracting coal/oil to help the environment" tells me
  | nobody really cares about the environment - everyone just wants
  | to look like they care to appease voters.
 
    | idontpost wrote:
    | [dead]
 
    | wil421 wrote:
    | Norway is the perfect example of this. Nationally they seem
    | to be moving towards EVs faster than others but they have no
    | problems producing oil.
    | 
    | The biggest lie told today is that pollution is our problem
    | and that we, as individuals, can make a decent impact.
    | Industry has to change to make any impact. It doesn't matter
    | how clean your cars or energy sources are if you keep pumping
    | fossil fuels out of the ground.
 
    | pjc50 wrote:
    | That would be leaving a substantial amount of money on the
    | table. Also, they're not necessarily the same countries or
    | people; there are for example anti-fracking movements in some
    | of the countries where that is happening.
 
    | omegabravo wrote:
    | Depriving people of energy can be just as catastrophic. While
    | not digging it up would be effective, I'm not sure some
    | people in developing* country would necessarily agree.
    | 
    | It's a complex topic, and Australia (where I live) has little
    | excuse to still be using coal fired energy so much. Politics
    | gets in the way of the obvious solutions.
    | 
    | I don't particularly like attributing CO2 to the source.
    | Unless we're going to stop counting CO2 emission internally,
    | because the oil has been extracted elsewhere.
    | 
    | edit: updated to developing, didn't realise the other was
    | offensive. My apologies
 
      | gostsamo wrote:
      | If you care about third-world countries, at least be polite
      | enough to call them developing countries.
 
        | anshorei wrote:
        | The third in "third-world" has the same meaning as the
        | third in "third-party cookies". They were the countries
        | that aligned themselves with neither the liberal (first)
        | or communist (second) worlds who were the principal
        | parties to the cold war. I wish people would stop getting
        | offended at things they don't understand.
 
        | Dylan16807 wrote:
        | > I wish people would stop getting offended at things
        | they don't understand.
        | 
        | What wasn't understood?
        | 
        | If the term third-world was being used to talk about cold
        | war political alignment, they wouldn't have objected. But
        | that's not how it was being used. The objection was
        | completely valid.
 
        | StevenRayOrr wrote:
        | Developing into what?
 
        | kevviiinn wrote:
        | Exploitation machines just like big daddy united states.
        | Unless they have resources we want ofc, then the CIA
        | simply puts in a complicit dictator!
 
        | mdp2021 wrote:
        | 'Third World' was coined - I believe, by Alfred Sauvy in
        | 1952 (following Pascal Boniface) - as an expression to
        | literally mean "non aligned in the dichotomy of NATO vs
        | Warsaw pact affiliance".
        | 
        | Stereotypes about qualities frequent in Countries of such
        | /political/ quality (such as said alleged "need for
        | development", following the poster) are not implied.
        | 
        | 'Third' is proper for "non-aligned"; 'developing' when
        | noting such state makes sense (special sense, since
        | growth seems to be a shared goal); some other term for
        | other cases - such as "rich in raw materials", etc.
 
        | gostsamo wrote:
        | I can come up with list of words that were coined with
        | some intention and gained another. Why a term was created
        | has nothing to do with how it is used and the gp comment
        | wasn't in the context of the cold war history.
 
        | tremon wrote:
        | So you are aware that the word has multiple connotations,
        | yet you chose to focus on the connotation that paints the
        | GP in the worst light... why, exactly?
 
        | Dylan16807 wrote:
        | > yet you chose to focus on the connotation that paints
        | the GP in the worst light...
        | 
        | Process of elimination.
        | 
        | There are two main connotations. The political one wasn't
        | being used, therefore it must be the other one.
        | 
        | "worst" out of two is not exactly a stretch...
 
        | mikrotikker wrote:
        | An inherent need to be offended on behalf of others, in
        | order to add some purpose to ones life.
 
        | gostsamo wrote:
        | Or I interpret it in the context it is used, referring to
        | poor countries as third world.
        | 
        | All this outrage about my remark is triggering my sense
        | of irony. Too bad I'm social drinker only.
        | 
        | PS: congrats to the gp who edited his comment.
 
        | mdp2021 wrote:
        | > _list of words_
        | 
        | No need because that is the normal process, involving
        | meaning and use - you could present the whole dictionary.
        | 
        | But it is none of our business if suddenly one individual
        | or a multitude start using 'mangrove' for something they
        | decide, and it gives no toss of credential to those who
        | after that decide that 'mangrove' does not mean
        | "mangrove".
 
      | somewhereoutth wrote:
      | With respect to CO2 emissions, it is quite simple. The
      | amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere is exactly
      | correlated with the amount of fossil fuel dug up (modulo
      | the proportion turned into plastics/whatever)
 
        | finnh wrote:
        | People will deforest their surroundings and burn wood to
        | keep warm.
 
        | kelseyfrog wrote:
        | This has the same energy as saying, "If we ban nukes,
        | then people will just TNT each other."
 
        | finnh wrote:
        | You think? People have to keep warm; they don't have to
        | bomb each other.
        | 
        | Anyway Europe is trying this wood instead of coal thing
        | right now:
        | 
        | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/euro
        | pe/...
 
        | londons_explore wrote:
        | Which is probably less harmful than burning oil. At least
        | that forest can regrow in 50 years, whereas the oil will
        | take millions of years to reform.
 
        | nick__m wrote:
        | According to The Guardian wood produces more CO2 than
        | other combustible per unit of heat1. It also produces as
        | much if not more soot than burning coal and a quantity of
        | NOx and SOx comparable to the combustion of natural gaz.2
        | It also produces copious amount of creosote a substance
        | known to cause cancer to workers in wood treatment
        | facilities.3
        | 
        | Mature trees that have reached a slower growth phase are
        | better used as construction material, that way the carbon
        | is sequestered for a long time and younger faster growing
        | trees that replace them can transform CO2 again.
        | 
        | 1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/01/po
        | llutio...
        | 
        | 2) https://wood-energy.extension.org/what-are-the-air-
        | emissions...
        | 
        | 3) https://www.epa.gov/ingredients-used-pesticide-
        | products/creo...
 
        | finnh wrote:
        | Yes, burning wood may be more sustainable in that lens.
        | Whether it is less harmful is orthogonal. Heat pumps are
        | efficient in ways that wood fires cannot be, for example,
        | so oil -> electricity -> heat pump may well be far better
        | for the atmosphere than "burn some wood".
 
        | zaroth wrote:
        | It is not. Heating and cooking with wood is absolutely
        | deadly, particularly because by definition it's done, on
        | average, by the poorest households in structures without
        | proper ventilation.
 
        | nomel wrote:
        | Or, more directly, it's proportional to energy needs,
        | with the means of production that are currently
        | economical.
 
      | tda wrote:
      | No, depriving people of energe now is only a temporary
      | inconvenience. Depriving your children with a future is on
      | a whole other level. And that is exactly where we are
      | heading: climate catastrophe leading to famine, drought,
      | flooding, unmanageable sea level rise etc.
      | 
      | People could do with a lot less energy 40 years ago, I'm
      | sure we can get by just fine with a little less.
 
        | nostrebored wrote:
        | Inconvenience is a very poor guess. Energy restriction
        | kills people.
 
        | zaroth wrote:
        | More people than the climate, that's for sure.
        | 
        | Energy production levels must increase profoundly, while
        | costs must fall. This is already happening, and not even
        | that slowly in the grand scheme of things. Personal
        | energy generation and storage is already cheaper than the
        | grid as long as you can finance the upfront investment at
        | a reasonable rate.
        | 
        | I'll say it until I'm, err, green in the face. Make clean
        | energy cheaper and more abundant and it will be used.
        | Make climate friendly products more compelling and
        | cheaper than their dirtier substitutes, and the better
        | products will win on the open market.
        | 
        | Climate austerity is not so much "saving the future" but
        | rather "murdering the poor" and I find it morally
        | indefensible.
 
        | zizee wrote:
        | > No, depriving people of energe now is only a temporary
        | inconvenience.
        | 
        | Wow. This is so incredibly out of touch. The world
        | consists of more than just wealthy people driving large
        | cars, living in large houses, flying for vacation and
        | work.
        | 
        | Even poorer people in rich/developed countries people die
        | due to lack of cheap energy through heatstroke or
        | freezing. And that is just at a micro level. At a macro
        | level a huge amount of the world's food production relies
        | on cheap energy. Take it away and there will be
        | disastrous consequences.
 
        | seiferteric wrote:
        | Roughly half the people alive today exist because of
        | cheap energy. If you take that away, it will be more than
        | inconvenient.
 
        | tenpies wrote:
        | > depriving people of energe now is only a temporary
        | inconvenience.
        | 
        | Where do you live?
        | 
        | I mean this rhetorically, because for a couple billion of
        | people your definition of "minor inconvenience" is
        | literally death.
        | 
        | Ask a Canadian how inconvenient it is to go without heat
        | in the winter.
        | 
        | Ask an elderly Singaporean how inconvenient it is to go
        | without AC in the summer.
 
    | Aperocky wrote:
    | Or maybe those countries are just realistic and didn't want
    | to put people who already live paycheck to paycheck on a more
    | desperate economic footing.
    | 
    | There's no cake milord!
 
| voytec wrote:
| I highly recommend The Juice Media YT channel and their
| caricatured series called "Honest Government Ads" [1]. They are
| covering climate change and, among others, Australian government
| incompetency in quite funny, provocative and slightly NSFW way.
| 
| [1] The Fires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BmbvTvFQ3g
| 
| [1] We're Fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOmdkN6MOwU
| 
| [1] the Safeguard Mechanism:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrkE_VaMD4k
 
  | shidoshi wrote:
  | These are amazing.
 
  | aaron695 wrote:
  | [dead]
 
  | samstave wrote:
  | Love things like this!
  | 
  | "Brought to you by the Department of Thoughts and Prayers"
 
  | swarnie wrote:
  | I thought that named looked familiar and oh my, they are the
  | RAP NEWS guys.
  | 
  | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6O6sM2Shok
  | 
  | I'm going to lose an hour of my life reminiscing about how
  | Youtube used to be and what it would have been.
 
    | kawsper wrote:
    | Sadly Hugo (the rapper) decided to go solo to focus on his
    | own career, he does some Rap News inspired videos now, it's
    | not quite the same without Giordano:
    | https://youtu.be/N4-FGp0vvck
 
    | rnk wrote:
    | Wow, that was excellent, thanks for the pointer. I also liked
    | "ultimate rap battles of history", but this rap had an
    | excellent political take on it. What kind of justice would we
    | want served on us eventually? We can do better than we have
    | so far. What great historical references, what did we do with
    | the nazis at Nuremberg, hire some at nasa, and hang some of
    | them. It's complicated but it's not wrong.
 
    | sterlind wrote:
    | Rap News was wasted on the early 2010s. Such a stable, boring
    | time compared to Brexit, Trump, Covid, the war in Ukraine,
    | ChatGPT, UAP disclosure. Why couldn't Robert Foster have been
    | born a few years later?
 
      | everybodyknows wrote:
      | Obama vs McCain was the most boring presidential election
      | ever. Because either way, we could be sure nothing too
      | crazy was going to happen in the White House for at least
      | four years. The media must have hated it.
 
        | officeplant wrote:
        | Never thought I would miss suit colors being
        | controversial.
 
      | bigger_cheese wrote:
      | I haven't thought about Robert Foster and Rap News for
      | years. I can still remember the rap about wikileaks
      | 
      | "Shattering schemes and the lies that we've been sold. By a
      | fourth estate that rolled over and did as it's told."
 
| imdsm wrote:
| So basically, chlorine compounds (hydrochloric acid) in the
| atmosphere from CFCs (old aerosols, fridges) turn back into
| chlorine thanks to the smoke particles, which wouldn't otherwise
| happen, and the sun then causes the chlorine to break down in
| sunlight to chlorine ions which "eat the ozone".
| 
| So it's a race against time between the ozone recovering through
| the decay of these CFC-related harmless chemicals, and smoke from
| wildfires making the ozone larger and not recovering.
| 
| Not all wildfires send smoke high enough though.
| 
| Interesting read!
 
  | brink wrote:
  | It sounds like a reason to do more controlled burns.
 
  | leoedin wrote:
  | They don't seem to answer the question of why the chlorine in
  | the atmosphere comes mainly from CFCs. What about all the
  | chlorine we use every day from e.g. bleach and swimming pools?
  | Does that not wreck the ozone layer because it never gets high
  | enough into the atmosphere?
 
    | Uehreka wrote:
    | I guess that would be nice background, but you can also find
    | the answer in like 5 minutes on Wikipedia.
    | 
    | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon From the
    | section on Regulation:
    | 
    | > It turns out that one of CFCs' most attractive features--
    | their low reactivity--is key to their most destructive
    | effects. CFCs' lack of reactivity gives them a lifespan that
    | can exceed 100 years, giving them time to diffuse into the
    | upper stratosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the sun's
    | ultraviolet radiation is strong enough to cause the homolytic
    | cleavage of the C-Cl bond.
 
  | chris_va wrote:
  | They also eat methane, which is a potent greenhouse gas, so
  | it's not all bad
 
  | londons_explore wrote:
  | Hydrochloric acid is a rather common chemical, produced by
  | humans in the tens of millions of tonnes. I believe it is also
  | quite common in nature - for example, your stomach acid is
  | mostly hydrochloric acid.
 
    | Groxx wrote:
    | I'm not really sure what you're trying to imply here. E.g. I
    | don't usually vomit into the upper atmosphere.
 
      | Acidium01 wrote:
      | Are implying that you sometimes, albeit not usually, vomit
      | into the upper atmosphere?
 
      | epgui wrote:
      | If you ever change your approach, I would be interested in
      | photographing this.
 
  | gonzo41 wrote:
  | Take home lesson, start wearing sun hoodies.
 
| aaron695 wrote:
| [dead]
 
| anoncow wrote:
| I read recently that wildfires should be allowed to burn down
| forests as smaller wildfires when prevented will result in larger
| wildfires in the future (because of availability of more dry
| organic fuel).
| 
| This combined with the current article makes me question the
| approach Australia currently uses for wildfires.
| 
| Do we let small wildfires burn themselves out?
| 
| If yes, why are larger fires happening? Should we actively trim
| forests periodically?
| 
| If no, why not?
 
  | MonkeyMalarky wrote:
  | Probably no one wants to take the risk or responsibility for
  | letting a small one burn in the event that they lose control.
  | No one gets in trouble for failing at trying to put it out. But
  | taking the decision to stand back? You'll get raked over coals
  | if it was the wrong decision.
 
| fwlr wrote:
| This article missed the chance to be much more interesting. While
| the 2019-2020 Australian fires were undoubtedly catastrophic,
| there have been other much worse fires in recent times. This one
| killed 34 people; a decade prior, the bushfire season killed 5
| times as many people, with 174 deaths. Four decades prior to
| that, the bushfire season burned 5 times as much land area as the
| 2019-2020 season, with over 15% of Australia's total land area
| suffering fire damage.
| 
| It was the particularly intense burning, causing smoke to travel
| much further than usual, that caused this season to loom so large
| in people's minds. There are astounding figures, like that 80% of
| the populace experienced days or weeks of heavily smoke-filled
| air, or that it arguably killed as many as 450 people indirectly
| through smoke inhalation interacting with existing respiratory
| issues.
| 
| That intense burning was due mostly to the extremely high fuel
| density of the particular areas that were on fire - forests
| rather than grasslands. And the intense burning caused some
| incredible phenomena: flames at ground level that would reach the
| 20th floor of a skyscraper, radiant heat so extreme that you
| could be standing on the other side of an 8-lane highway and it
| would still give you 2nd degree degree burns in seconds and kill
| you in minutes, fire fronts that travel for days at an average of
| 6-8 miles an hour (even an ultra-marathon runner with a head
| start could not stay ahead of the fire) and reach peak speeds
| over 80mph (overtaking you in your car)... and all throughout,
| the roar of a thousand jet engines as vegetation literally
| exploded at the fire's approach - gaseous decomposition from the
| ambient heat.
| 
| These fires were so intense that they launched smoke far higher
| into the atmosphere than fires usually do, and so we got to see
| some very unusual chemistry happen in the atmosphere.
| 
| I criticize the article for not being as interesting as it could
| be because it exhibits the same malady as so much of the other
| reporting on that bushfire season - the unique physics ignored in
| favour of using the tragedy for political purposes.
 
  | magicalist wrote:
  | > _the unique physics ignored in favour of using the tragedy
  | for political purposes._
  | 
  | A new study attempting to explain a previously noticed
  | phenomenon in the ozone layer is "for political purposes",
  | seriously?
 
    | fwlr wrote:
    | Perhaps I am being a little unfair, there is a lot of
    | discussion of the physics and chemistry in the article. It
    | may seem like a wild leap to start talking about politics
    | because of a few paragraphs at the end of the article, to
    | which I offer the defense that the Australian media landscape
    | during that season was extremely, aggravatingly politicized.
    | I did try to make sure most of my comment was focused on the
    | interesting physics of extreme wildfires, leaving my
    | criticism as a one-line post-script at the end.
 
      | epgui wrote:
      | I agree with the other commenter and I would even say
      | you're completely failing to understand the medium,
      | context, and purpose of the piece of writing you're
      | criticizing.
 
      | magicalist wrote:
      | This isn't an article about how crazy wildfires are, it's
      | about the effect on the ozone layer, so not sure why any of
      | that would be relevant.
      | 
      | If the objection is that the lead author used the term
      | "climate change" out loud, the article seems to go out of
      | its way to be precise so the "any mention of climate change
      | is political" crowd won't be aroused:
      | 
      | > _Haywood would like to see the new chemistry integrated
      | into a climate model to forecast how ozone depletion might
      | be affected if intense wildfires become more common._
 
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Is it odd that a collection of non-USA researchers published
| something similar a year earlier? the USA-based Nature
| publication here is clearly paywalled so, hard to check the real
| differences, or publication references.
| 
| https://acp.copernicus.org/preprints/acp-2022-247/acp-2022-2...
 
  | stateofinquiry wrote:
  | Not sure why you are focused on "USA" or "non-USA", but FYI:
  | Nature originated in the UK. Today, Springer-Nature is a major
  | international publisher. Springer (formerly Springer-Verlag)
  | originated in Germany, BTW.
 
  | tokai wrote:
  | No, not odd. Multiple of the authors of the paper you are
  | linking are cited in the Nature paper. Your paper also cites
  | prior research from Solomon - the first author of the Nature
  | article. It is unsurprising that the two papers don't reference
  | each other as they have been written and in review at the same
  | time.
  | 
  | They are all atmospheric researchers, so there is ofc a change
  | that their research subjects overlap.
 
| CE02 wrote:
| I think this is illustrative of a broader theme which is how
| enduring and baked in a lot of our climate degradation is. As
| much as the chlorine compounds _will_ decay, but not exactly
| anytime soon. To think we won't have an issue with this again
| before they're decayed would be ridiculous.
| 
| It's the same thing with the broader topic of global warming.
| Absolutely we should seek to minimize greenhouse gas emissions,
| that's a no brainer. But at our current stage in developement,
| especially with some countries not exactly being team players in
| this fight, a lot of the increase and future increase in
| temperature is baked in (pardon the pun). As much as I'm all for
| mitigation, much like the wildfires themselves, we will already
| have plenty of consequences to come. That's why I'm so excited to
| see focus shifting more towards mitigation and _resilience_. We
| need to be prepared for the inevitable we've caused.
 
  | Uehreka wrote:
  | Personally, I wouldn't use the term "excited". The focus could
  | just as easily shift towards nationalist movements trying to
  | hoard resources and prevent refugees from warmer areas from
  | crossing borders. There's no guarantee that "resilience" is
  | going to come in the form of technical innovation or human
  | cooperation.
 
    | CE02 wrote:
    | As much as I see the concerns, the issues that could arise
    | from resilience are issues that can arise anywhere where
    | human self-interest is present which is just about
    | everything. I am excited for firms to start focusing on
    | greener office buildings, even if their are some using it to
    | greenwash for optics.
    | 
    | Though as I mentioned, I completely see your point. I guess I
    | should rephrase to "I am excited that there is the
    | _potential_ for positive action in this space.
 
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