But--assuming this new study pans out--a certain sense of vindication might not be entirely unearned. I've been tracking numbers since before you started posting here. The overall amount of chemicals in the atmosphere has been steadily dropping, and the hole has beem steadily getting bigger. Even a catalyst shouldn't have as much effect on a self-renewing process if there's less of it. When I pointed this out, the result here was the same as it has been for issues of global warming: how dare I pit my pathetic brain against the cream of the scientific community?

Before you celebrate too hard, you might want to consider what that means. It means the ozone threat is getting worse, we have no way of knowing when or if it will abate, we have no knowledge of what's causing it, and our most likely solution to solve the problem has been proven futile. And what's worse, any future solutions to the problem will have to overcome even more skepticism from industry and its supporters. Faith, after all, is a force not entirely restricted to mistaken lefty atmospheric chemists.

It might also mean that this damn hole over an arctic wasteland has been flipping on and off naturally for ten thousand years, driven by the same climate influences that have been driving temperatures during those times.

It might also mean that the doom of the earth from UV radiation that people were screaming aout all through the 70s and 80s was crap all along. You couldn't turn on an SF program without seeing the future being baked under the unforgiving rays of the sun.

It might also mean--again assuming this new science actually is confirmed by other studies--that a flawed scientific theory was, with considerable arrogance and self-righteousness, converted in a flying panic into a ramrod mandate that cost billions of dollars around the world, replaced inert gases with flammable and toxic ones, eliminated major agricultural chemicals, and replaced multiple categories of equipment and appliances with substitutes that work less effectively, don't last as long, and burn more energy.

It might also mean that people might be wrong who insisted they could not possibly be wrong, and furthermore insisted that those who disagreed or were skeptical were, in fact, motivated not by honest skepticism but by evil and corrupt influences.

Any of this sound familiar?