On this day when the indefinite detention provision of the NDAA appears to be back on, here’s a bit of good news.
At least I think it is. However, can we ever precisely identify and delimit, for sure, just what factors are at work in this or any situation? Even “controlled experiments” aren’t, not really. There’s always the possibility of some factor that hasn’t been considered, torquing the results. And when the scientists’ experimental laboratory is Earth’s entire biosphere? As if we can actually exhaustively model that? Assume we know everything about it so that we can say just what causes what? Furthermore, isn’t the Newtonian assumption of linear cause/effect chains passé enough already?
Let’s face it. There are no closed systems in nature. Everything not only affects, but flows together with and interpenetrates, everything else. Nature — our own human nature, Earth’s biosphere inside the infinite mysterious cosmos — is ONE.
On the other hand, international cooperation, so rare, is always a good thing. YES!
Ozone Hole Shrinks: 25 Years of Montreal Protocol is Model of International Cooperation
September 18, 2012
by Good News Network
The international agreement unveiled 25 years ago on September 16 to phase out chemicals harmful to the Earth’s ozone shield continues to reap results that show the giant hole in the stratosphere is shrinking.
Signed by 197 states and the European Union, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer became a showcase for successful global environmental cooperation.
The agreement banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that were once used in refrigerators and spray cans, and remain in the atmosphere over a long lifetime.
Not expected to fully recover until 2050, the ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet rays, has been slowly improving and, as a result, millions of cases of skin cancer and eye cataracts have been prevented, according to the UN’s World Meteorological Organization.
The hole in the ozone layer over the Antarctic is expected to be smaller this year than last.
(READ the story in the Reuters)
