Is it really the biggest story in conservation? I would have guessed fixing the hole in the ozone layer would've held that spot.
this post was submitted on 05 Feb 2025
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The ozone layer hole situation is another great case study in something that was fixed by humanity being proactive.
ETA: This post I made here feels good to read but it's not really true, unfortunately. Check out seefin's post in this same thread for more info.
That is somethi8ng different than conservation, but is the other massive success story.
It is a massive success, primarily because by the time the Montreal Protocol was fully ratified it was more profitable to not use CFCs.
However, speaking as someone who lives at the bottom of the world in the country with the highest melanoma risk in the world we didn’t actually fix it. We stopped the holes in the ozone layer growing and saw some recovery, with the hole over the Northern Hemisphere predicted to close by 2030-ish and ours by 2060-ish, but it’s nowhere near fixed.
And since about 2013 we’ve seen a massive increase in CFC emissions again, so the Southern Hemisphere hole is probably pushing out to 2070-ish. Not that any scientific research has definitively stated that yet, it’s mostly non-committal. The majority of these new emissions have been traced to countries that didn’t have to get rid of those specific CFCs until 2010, so it’s a good indicator that those countries may view the Montreal Protocol differently in the new millennium than they did in the 80s. Or it indicates that it’s taking them longer to cease usage than predicted. Hard to tell really.
So to say “It’s fixed!” is a little hopeful. The problem still exists, and effects are still being felt, but there’s nothing you or I can do - hence the common narrative, especially in the North, that all the hard work was done in the 80s and we’re good now.
This is so interesting. I just got done posting a similar comment to snooggums, but I didn't realize it was just a narrative. I went looking for some sources for the things you were saying and lo and behold... looks like it's not as "fixed" as is commonly claimed!
Here's NASA's data on the hole(s).
And here's an infographic I found:
I'm dumb, is the blue the hole? What do the colors mean.
Proof I'm dumb: My best guess, there is a puddle that sometimes catches on fire and a flock of yellow warblers try to get a drink.
No worries, I'm dumb too.
Here's a site with more information, and even an animation that shows how the hole fluctuates throughout the year!
Thanks! I see what they meant that it closed on 2018, then got worse it appears now. Hopefully we can get that fixed and the ocean currents stabilized and the CO2 levels down and the animals and plant life back. One step at a time, maybe a nap first.
I didn't say it was fixed, I said it was a success.
As in the damage being done was minimized/stopped through a coordinated effort.
I suppose I question if the Montreal Protocol and associated social movement was a success if we didn’t completely stop the damage (sorry if you live underneath a hole and have a stupid skin cancer rate as a result) and we’re backsliding (Oh you were a developing country when this was signed, keep using CFCs til 2010, but we won’t enforce penalties if you’re still doing it in 2013). It was incredibly impressive to get the buy in that the Protocol got, especially given the other stuff going on in the world at the time.
But on reflection I’d hesitate to call the thing a success.
Those two can't really be compared. Ozone is likely more relevant to humans on the whole (less skin cancer ).
My main issue with this study is that it's based on public sightings (no I don't know how else they would do it). During the height of whaling when they were hunted for oil they would have changed behaviors to avoid public sightings. Is it possible this rebound was not a rebound in their total numbers but just them not being terrified to go near human activity anymore since the decline of whaling? Whales live for a long time. In the 50s there could have been whales living that survived the peak of human whaling activity.
Disclaimer: I don't actually know anything.
I remember saving the whales. When I was a kid in the early 90s they had several cartoons that at least had one episode where they needed to save some whales, and they did. The first that comes to mind is Widget the World Watcher.
Just like saving the ozone layer. That was another great success. Due to banning CFCs and other ozone destroying chemicals, the hole in the ozone layer has been repairing itself for around 10 years now. It'll take a while to fully close up, but it is a success.
Not every Boomer is a villain, but EVERY VILLAIN in Captain Planet was a Boomer.
Humpback means so many things in this post.
Look at the bottom whales smug face
Humpbacks are mormon? Looks like aquatic jump-humping to me.
Mormons think that native Americans are Jewish because some Jewish people made an airtight submarine out of wood and took it across the ocean. I always thought of that airtight submarine as a fake whale when I was growing up.
The wooden boat was marvelous. It was ‘tight like unto a dish’! Whatever the fuck that means.
ehehehe whalecuck, that’s awesome
I can't say I've ever seen "save the whales" used pejoratively.
In the 80's and 90's there was strong undercurrent that activism couldn't actually change anything. It was the end of history, all outcomes are and always were inevitable, voting with dollars was the only vote that really matters. Hippy punching was in it's full flower. Environmentalism was seen as self indulgent and meaningless. "Save the whales," was spit out as a sort of, 'go waste someone else's time,' dismissal.
The 4th Dilbert collection from 94' was Shave the Whales, which already struck me as a passe gesture at hippy punching at the time, though I couldn't tell if Scott Adams was engaging in hippy punching or mocking the hippy punchers.
Seeing how Scott Adams seems to have fallen off the deep end of the far right in recent years, I would have to say it's likely the former.
Scott Adams was always weird, but without twitter, people just interpreted his work in a way favorable to themselves. Twitter let the world see an unfiltered version of himself. If you go digging into his recounts of his early life, he was always a smug little boy with a superiority complex.
The Behind the Bastards episodes on him were really good. As someone who once read his comic daily I also took some reassurance from the fact that he had an open suggestion line and was essentially publishing croudsourced jokes submitted by a large portion of the tech sector for a long part of Dilbert's run.
Same position as you. I stopped reading them at some point because they were just the same jokes reframed. It was pretty shocking when he put out his "Evolution is Bullshit" article.
I definitely did, maybe think of it in context like a sneering "don't you have some whales to save?" kind of way.
Same, similar context to 'bleeding hearts' (edit: just reread the post and saw this was already mentioned)
“Gotta nuke somethin’!”
Don't let trump see this or there's going to be mandatory whaling operations at all offshore drilling locations
Glad to see the whales are doing well
So if I tell enough people to eat shit?
Recycling!
The VSCO girls want to know how the turtles are doing.
Shoot the seals. The seals eat all the fish.
Shoot the people, the people eat all the fish /s
Deilig hvalbiff 😋
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