Almost as though our planet was locked into some sort of terrible, human-induced cycle of gradual warming that is slowly boiling away our ozone shield, drying out our fields, and endangering the very fabric of life as we know it, as we slide headlong into some terrifying post-apocalypse of our own making...Anyway, we'll be back to update you here next month (or shortly thereafter), when we've got another new broken heat record to look back on.
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The metaphors used in the CFC discussion (ozone shield, ozone hole) resonated better with non-scientists and their concerns. The ozone case was communicated to lay persons "with easy-to-understand bridging metaphors derived from the popular culture" and related to "immediate risks with everyday relevance", while the public opinion on climate change sees no imminent danger. The ozone hole was much more seen as a "hot issue" and imminent risk compared to global climate change, as lay people feared a depletion of the ozone layer (ozone shield) risked increasing severe consequences such skin cancer, cataracts, damage to plants, and reduction of plankton populations in the ocean's photic zone. This was not the case with global warming.
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Sheldon Ungar Climatic Change February 1999, Volume 41, Issue 2, pp. 133–150 Is Strange Weather in the Air? A Study of U.S. National Network News Coverage of Extreme Weather Events While the greenhouse effect per se is essential for life on earth, the case was quite different with the ozone shield and other metaphors about the ozone depletion. The scientific assessment of the ozone problem also had large uncertainties.
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But the metaphors used in the discussion (ozone shield, ozone hole) reflected better with lay people and their concerns. The chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) regulation attempts of the end of the 1980s profited from those easy-to-grasp metaphors and the personal risk assumptions taken from them. As well the fate of celebrities like President Ronald Reagan, which had skin cancer removal in 1985 and 1987, was of high importance. In case of the public opinion on climate change, no imminent danger is perceived.
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Ozone-oxygen cycle in the ozone layer. The ozone layer or ozone shield is a region of Earth's stratosphere that absorbs most of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. It contains a high concentration of ozone (O3) in relation to other parts of the atmosphere, although still small in relation to other gases in the stratosphere. The ozone layer contains less than 10 parts per million of ozone, while the average ozone concentration in Earth's atmosphere as a whole is about 0.3 parts per million.
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NASA projections of stratospheric ozone concentrations if chlorofluorocarbons had not been banned The full extent of the damage that CFCs have caused to the ozone layer is not known and will not be known for decades; however, marked decreases in column ozone have already been observed. The Montreal and Vienna conventions were installed long before a scientific consensus was established or important uncertainties in the science field were being resolved. The ozone case was understood comparably well by lay persons as e.g. Ozone shield or ozone hole were useful "easy-to-understand bridging metaphors".
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To support successful regulation attempts, the ozone case was communicated to lay persons "with easy-to-understand bridging metaphors derived from the popular culture" and related to "immediate risks with everyday relevance". The specific metaphors used in the discussion (ozone shield, ozone hole) proved quite useful and, compared to global climate change, the ozone case was much more seen as a "hot issue" and imminent risk. Lay people were cautious about a depletion of the ozone layer and the risks of skin cancer. In 1978, the United States, Canada and Norway enacted bans on CFC-containing aerosol sprays that damage the ozone layer.
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While the greenhouse effect, per se, is essential for life on earth, the case was quite different with the ozone hole and other metaphors about ozone depletion. The scientific assessment of the ozone problem also had large uncertainties; both the ozone content of the upper atmosphere and its depletion are complicated to measure and the link between ozone depletion and rates of enhanced skin cancer is rather weak. But the metaphors used in the discussion (ozone shield, ozone hole) resonated better with lay people and their concerns. The CFC regulation attempts at the end of the 1980s profited from those easy to grasp metaphors and the personal risk assumptions taken from them.
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