I may have posted this before, but, I am posting it again! Making political decisions to benefit the petroleum/fossil fuel industry is dangerous and completely irresponsible. The USA must lead in this change in paradigm and the sooner the better.
By Damian Carrington
Humanity’s enormous emissions of greenhouse gases (click here) are shrinking the stratosphere, a new study has revealed.
The thickness of the atmospheric layer has contracted by 400 metres since the 1980s, the researchers found, and will thin by about another kilometre by 2080 without major cuts in emissions. The changes have the potential to affect satellite operations, the GPS navigation system and radio communications.
400 meters is a quarter of a mile. One kilometer is about 6 tenths of a mile, over half a mile. The issue isn't just the height or thickness of the stratosphere. It is also the weight of the AIR/GAS and it's formation as it lies on top of the planet. The ice melted and it wasn't just that the ice melted, but, the weight of the ice as a solid maintained a certain tilt of the Earth. Now that it is redistributed around the planet the tilt has changed. That can effect all sorts of things when the angle of the sun is no longer "normal."
The discovery is the latest to show the profound impact of humans on the planet. In April, scientists showed that the climate crisis had shifted the Earth’s axis as the massive melting of glaciers redistributes weight around the globe.
The stratosphere extends from about 20km to 60km above the Earth’s surface. Below is the troposphere, in which humans live, and here carbon dioxide heats and expands the air. This pushes up the lower boundary of the stratosphere. But, in addition, when CO2 enters the stratosphere it actually cools the air, causing it to contract....
