Are you sure you haven't gotten your catastrophes crossed? Ozone depletion was a different crisis and people did enact change, the ozone hole has been closing fairly steadily. Wikipedia [0] thinks the prospects for the ozone layer are pretty good.
Some climate models expect permafrost decay and/or mere GHG rise to erode the ozone layer. It’s not 1:1 proven, but there’s indication that in a post-4C world (with feedback loops), we might slowly lose our protection against the sun’s radiation.
I don’t recommend getting into the literature, it’s… depressing.
(Your point about the global, concerted effort to limit the “holes” in the ozone layer reminds me that we can, when pressed, come together to tackle serious issues.)
I'm quite happy to read literature, typically what happens when I do is I come away with the impression everything is pretty good. If you've found something that is actually going to be a problem then you're the first person in something like 5 years and I'd like to know about it. What models are you referring to?
> The same CO2 radiative forcing that produces global warming is expected to cool the stratosphere. This cooling, in turn, is expected to produce a relative increase in ozone (O3) depletion in polar areas and the frequency of ozone holes.
Mark Lynas was my introduction to the matter. I agree with you (and the author) that things were pretty good, but I think my final years (and those of my family) won’t be very pleasant.
Hydrogen sulfide is the other ozone killer the author references, in case the oceans become anoxic and the “wrong” kind of bacteria proliferate.
Without the ozone layer’s protection, even short-term exposure to the sun would cause severe sunburn within minutes and cause DNA damage. It would also wipe out food production at scale. Not a good world to live in.
I'm not seeing any predictions here that there is a problem with the ozone layer. The citation for the wiki quote you include seems to be saying that they still expect improvements in the ozone layer vs the present because we have made changes that should lead to the ozone hole repairing itself. This is also the overall conclusion that the Wiki article appears to support too. The sulfide modelling paper is saying they have expect problems at sulfer emissions far greater than currently anticipated.
I'd say that the reason nobody is doing anything is there does not seem to be a threat being detected. There are scarier problems to work through (mainly war and access to energy).
> is expected to produce an increase in ozone depletion … and the frequency of ozone holes
Sounds bad to me. Not the worst to come out of climate change, but potentially very negative if it comes to happen. More ozone holes and more ozone depletion can’t really be spun positively.
I think it was more that the change required was relatively simple, and the industry was sort of already phasing out CFCs anyway. Banning them in fridges and aerosols was mostly frictionless and a win for everyone.
Turning the entire planet carbon neutral is so much harder a problem.
Also the fossil fuel industries have been trying to bury research on global warming since long before social media existed
I don’t recommend getting into the literature, it’s… depressing.
(Your point about the global, concerted effort to limit the “holes” in the ozone layer reminds me that we can, when pressed, come together to tackle serious issues.)