Link: https://theconversation.com/septembers-ozone-hole-was-the-biggest-in-20-years-the-warning-signs-appeared-months-ago-292457

We can expect 2026 to have an overall ranking within the top ten most severe ozone holes of all time.

I know the main stream bang on about this being a success for cooperation by humanity (cough) and yet we have no idea of the long term consequences of what we've done.

Oh great, now that is back.

They bang on about it because it's true. The rapid removal of the offending refrigerant did noticably reverse the damage to the ozon layer. But that doesn't mean something new can't come along to ruin it again.

I always thought that the international effort to change compressor gas had a positive effect! We can't have anything good anymore.

It did! Getting rid of CFC was a major victory for humanity. But there are yet more struggles to overcome.

Make Ozone Hole Great Again!

It had a huge positive effect. The levels are still better than they were. The hole is bigger, but the levels are better, it's just more spread out.

We might have possibly already destroyed the ozone layer tho. And by "we" I mean specifically Elon Musk and his Starlink bullshit. Those satellites are designed to orbit very low to get low latency, but that means they can only stay up there for 3-6 years (on average around 4.5 years). They just launch thousands and thousands to keep up with the rate of depletion. The satellites are small, so they burn up in the upper atmosphere, so not a problem right? Wrong as it turns out. When they burn up they drop a huge amount of aluminium particles into the upper atmosphere where they drift around for a long time. As they slowly drop lower into the atmosphere they interact with the ozone layer depleting it quickly.

It's pretty early to tell how bad the damage will be, but with the amount of satellites up there we might already be very fucked.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280

Thanks for clarifying! This calls for new regulations on satellite starts

Might be a good time for countries to start charging SpaceXAI (or however it's called these days) for their effect on the ozone layer.

If e.g. the EU estimates that it'll have to spend fifty billion euros a year dealing with the effects of LEO satellite constellations in the ozone layer then they should bill those fifty billion euros to the operating companies with each paying a proportion relative to how many satellites they have in LEO.

Likewise for every other country that has to deal with the effects of a diminished ozone layer. If that means SpaceX becomes deeply unprofitable then that's unfortunate for the investors.

It did. Only now somebody else is fucking up somewhere.

It's China. CFC-11 is being used illegally in manufacturing.

Gonna need more than a random attestation from a .world user

https://e360.yale.edu/features/how-an-illicit-chemical-is-jeopardizing-recovery-of-the-ozone-layer-china

And now it is caused by a single, very very shitty company, who is polutiong the skies with LEO satelites.

sauce?

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL109280

As with so many things in science it's not considered proven, but as with so many things in reality, the damage will be done before we can really get proof. We have evidence so we should slow TF down

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/satellite-mega-constellations-could-jeopardize-ozone-hole-recovery/

https://www.space.com/megaconstellations-threat-to-ozone-layer-recovery

We need to terraform earth back into earth like.

I get where you're coming from, but that's a pretty capitalist approach to it. Broken down it's similar to "As long as they can pay for it, we'll allow them to destroy the environment". A destroyed environment can not be replaced with money. Granted, it might work for problems that have an effect with a slow build-up, eventually hopefully replacing it with something that avoids that before its irreversible by pricing the harmful practice out.

But if the effect is close to destroying an important part of the environment, then we should outright forbid it.

Edit: Okay, I also just realized that it does not seem as easy in this case, as single countries can't forbid it, as this is about space, but then again, the world came together to ban the production and use of CFCs, so a similar approach seems possible

That's rich coming from a .zip user! /s

Everywhere I look, musk and bezos are destroying something

Billinaires are the biggest threat to humanity.

thanks!