Ozone Depletion

Well seeing my title you might or might not know what the ozone is. The ozone is this invisible layer surround the earth, present in the stratosphere. This layer protects us from ultraviolet light that will damage our eyes.


Antarctica was the first place hit with this issues and was discovered in the 1980's. There was a ginormous hole right above Antarctica. Have you ever heard about the polar ice caps melting (I did a post about this on Jan. 14)? Well this is due to the depletion of the ozone layer. What causes this is a gas called CFC. This is produced by you car air conditioners and refrigerators. So instead of lowering your car window, you crank up the AC even though the air outside does a better job of cooling you down. Did you know that 1 CFC atom over 100,000 molecules in the ozone! So what's the harm you think, so what the ozone is getting destroyed I'll just get a better tan. Well for every 1% of ozone that is destroyed 2% more UV light is allowed to reach the earth's surface. This means more skin diseases, our ocean levels will rise and if we keep this up the earth might become uninhabitable.The ozone layer does a lot more than we give it credit for. What would we do without it? So now the question is, what are we gonna do about it? Some countries have come to the decision to ban CFC's. Some environmentalists think it's to late. My thinking is, if work hard we can definitely make a huge change. We may never be able to fix the damage we have already done, but we can change for the future. Unfortunately, even if we completely stop the usage of CFC, it will continue to linger in the stratosphere for another 100 year after. There is just to much CFC's in our environment already to get rid of. Then we think, well that's not a huge improvement, 100 years, that's just great. Then think what about the years after that those will be great. Think of our grandchildren don't we want a better future for them. Together we can make a change, try and implement some ideas of your own around your house to help with the reduction of CFCs.

You can learn more about ozone depletion at

http://library.thinkquest.org/26026/Environmental_Problems/ozone_depletion.html