We all know THAT there is a hole in the ozone
layer... but how did we actually discover it? how did we find a solution to it? And why was this problem solved so much faster
than, for example, global warming is today? Today we will cover the process from the discovery
of ozone all the way to the modern day. I won’t go into detail on the science involved
with the ozone hole as this channel focuses on history and not so much on science… see? “History”. For the discovery of ozone, we have to go
back nearly 2 centuries, to 1839, when a chemist noticed a strange smell after lightning would
strike the ground. After identifying the chemical responsible
for this smell, he named it ‘ozone’, after the Greek word ‘Ozein’, which means ‘to
smell’. Then in 1867 we discovered that ozone was
a molecule that consisted of three oxygen atoms and discovered it occurs naturally in
the higher atmosphere. And up until this moment, ozone was just a
curiosity in chemistry books without any real value to humans. But all that would soon change. The year is 1913 and two physicists decide
to measure the light coming from the sun. So they set up some detectors and created
a graph with how much of each type of light the sun was emitting. As you’ve probably learned in physics classes,
humans can only see a small portion of all the light being emitted by the sun and these
physicists wanted to know how much light the sun was emitting in all the invisible types
of light as well. And when they looked at the light spectrum
of the sun, they found something very peculiar. There was almost no UV-B light. UV-B light is the specific type of UV light
that causes cancer, with the B being there to distinguish from other UV light. Now there were two possibilities: either the
sun doesn’t emit UV-B light or something was blocking UV-B light… and there was only
one chemical known to absorb UV-B light: ozone. And from previous experiments of the atmosphere,
they knew that ozone was present in the atmosphere. So they discovered that ozone blocks UV-B
light from coming to the surface of the earth… and that's good too, because UV-B light is
the specific type of UV light that gives you sunburns. So scientists thought it was something worth
studying further. They spent 30 years, from 1928 to 1958, setting
up a global monitoring system for the Earth’s ozone layer. They would do this by looking at UV-B light,
if there was a change UV-B then we’d know there was a change in ozone in the atmosphere. So now we know ozone exists, we know there
is a layer of ozone around the earth, and we know it protects us from dangerous UV-B
radiation. But so far this was still just a curiosity
without a lot of practical value… but this curiosity would soon turn into a global panic. But why was this so important? Why is it so bad to get UV-B radiation? You see, UV-B radiation causes cancer. If the ozone layer would disappear, then almost
every living thing on the surface of the earth would die. Not only people would get cancer, but also
our pets, our livestock, and our crops. As people start dying and crops start failing,
the global supply chain would collapse as famine ravages the world. Anyone who has not protected themselves and
their food source from UV-B light will die and this green earth will turn as barren as
the rest of the planets in our solar system. Imagine Mars but with an ocean, that would
be what the earth’s surface will look like. The problems became visible in 1976. Scientists were researching ozone and a new
type of chemical called a CFC. CFCs are a type of chemical that is very durable,
isn’t poisonous to humans, and doesn’t react easily with other chemicals. This made it perfectly suitable for various
types of products, from hair spray to refrigerators, to asthma medicine. So they were big business! And these scientists discovered something
very concerning: CFCs destroy ozone. But so far only in a lab, there was no evidence
to suggest that CFCs would go into the atmosphere and destroy ozone there. So in order to discover whether CFCs were
dangerous to life on earth, various governments decided to spend money to research this problem. And this is where something interesting happened:
policy makers from countries around the world started trying to ban CFCs before they were
certain whether it was dangerous or not. Better safe than sorry, afterall. But as I said before “CFCs were big business”. So companies lobbied against any form of regulation,
funded ‘scientific research’ if they concluded CFCs were harmless, and one chairman went
as far as saying that ozone depletion was "a science fiction tale … a load of rubbish
… utter nonsense". For years, policymakers would fight a slow
battle against lobbyists and fraudulent science. And so, this scientific ‘curiosity’ became
very important. So if anyone ever tells you that science without
tangible results is a waste of money, please tell them it saved their lives. And thanks to these policy makes, the USA
managed to ban aerosol cans but in the European Union a CFC ban was rejected outright. And you might wonder ‘what about the rest
of the world’. But keep in mind that these were the 1970s
and many developing countries at the time lacked a significant CFC industry. And while CFC production did drop in the 1970s,
by the 1980s production was back in full swing. So in order to create a worldwide ban, 20
countries came together in 1985 to create a framework for negotiating future treaties
for banning CFCs. But that’s not all that happened in1985. And for this we have to go to the British
Antarctic Survey. They had just hired a new young graduate named
Jon Shanklin and being the new guy, he was given the task of processing raw data on the
ozone levels in antarctica from the past 30 years. At the time all they had were some sheets
of paper with handwritten numbers on them. Without compiling the data together to give
the actual amount of ozone in antarctica. When he finished putting all the data together,
he found something shocking. This is what their data showed them. Ozone levels remained steady until about 1981. But then sharply decrease in the following
years by 10-20% per year. And there was something else that was very
strange: the ozone levels were at their lowest during the antarctic spring, each year. As a result, the data you see about the ozone
layer usually pertain to springtime ozone levels. Showing the worst part of the year And so in May 1985, one of the most influential
research papers of all time was published in the journal Nature. And the news spread like wildfire: a hole
had appeared in the ozone layer in the antarctic, half of all ozone was gone on the southern
continent! And they were not the only ones researching
this. That same year, in august 1985, NASA announced
that their satellites detected this same drop in ozone. But they had something the British team did
not: satellite images. NASA was able to show just how big this hole
was thanks to their satellites. So if anyone ever tells you that space exploration
is useless... Just tell them it saved their lives. This blue spot you see here in this image
only has half the amount of ozone compared to normal levels and it’s about the size
of Russia. And, in my personal opinion, this is one of
the best pieces of environmental marketing ever created. In order to really make clear that this is
a big problem, they had to present the information in a way that anybody would be able to understand,
even if you don’t understand the science behind, you still understand the problem. The first thing they did was to call the ozone
layer a ‘shield’ that protects humans. They called the UV-B light UV radiation. UV radiation sounds a lot more negative than
UV-B light. And then, if you tell people UV radiation
causes cancer, they will believe it. Next, they called this blue area a ‘hole
in the ozone layer’. This technically isn’t true, there is still
ozone in this area but there’s a lot less ozone here. So they framed it as a hole in the earth’s
shield to protect against dangerous radiation that will cause cancer. And of course, a hole has to be filled. So people understand the problem, understand
the danger, and understand the solution. Compare this, for example, with global warming. Here we’re told that ‘the earth will get
a few degrees warmer and will lead to more natural disasters’, which is actually very
vague and requires more research to understand for regular people who aren’t climate scientists. But ozone problem is a lot clearer: “If
we lose the ozone layer, we all die. CFCs destroy the ozone layer. Therefore: ban CFCs”. And so the countries who produced the most
CFCs came together to solve this problem, working wth the framework they had created
before the new scientific data was published. The solution to the problem, however, wasn’t
as simple as you might think. Yes, ban the production of the harmful CFC
chemicals… but HOW do you ban them? You can’t ban them immediately, there were
hundreds of products that people used every day and thousands of people worked in the
related industries. So the governments decided that companies
would be given a period of time to find alternatives to CFCs and governments would help to fund
research into such alternative. But CFCs wouldn’t be completely banned,
some medicine required CFCs to work so it was okay to use them for critical medicine. Furthermore, they had to ensure that developing
countries wouldn’t start producing their own CFCs and negate all the progress being
made here. So they agreed to help developing countries
to transition away from CFCs, both now and in the future. And lastly, the leaders of the world recognized
that the science wasn’t fully understood yet and this treaty might not be enough. So they decided to periodically meet to update
the treaty in case they needed to do more to save the ozone layer. And so, in only 11 years, the world went from
the first scientific data that there might be a problem to a comprehensive treaty phasing
out all chemicals known to destroy the ozone layer. And they called this treaty the ‘Montreal
Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer’... or simply: the Montreal protocol But did the treaty actually work? Well, CFCs are now illegal across the world
in 197 countries. From Syria to Sweden (the least free and most
free countries), From South Sudan to San Marino (The youngest and oldest countries), and from
China to the Holy See (The most and least populous countries). And this has had a noticeable effect. If we look at the data again then we see that
the ozone layer is finally starting to recover, despite some very recent changes that came
out after I finished writing the script. And while the treaty had to undergo 9 revisions
since it entered into force in 1989, it has been effective. And according to various predictions, if we
had not taken action 30 years ago then hundreds of millions more people would have suffered
from cancer. But instead, the ozone hole will become history
within many of our lifetimes around 2060. And not only that, this is the first time
humanity came together to solve a global crisis that would affect everyone. So if anyone ever tells you international
cooperation is a waste of effort… just link them to this video and I’ll set them straight. If you liked this video then please give it
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