we never hear of it now...has it gone?is it still there?was there one at all?

my spelling has a bigger hole

You made me have a look myself to see what is the latest information, and found this very informative website, dedicated to the ozone hole.

Besides the very informative homepage, at the bottom you'll find links to the latest reports etc.

the ozone hole

The ozone hole over the Antarctic is a seasonal feature.

And likely to have been since it's formation.

What's interesting is that there are large cycles and small cycles, just like weather. For example, we have seasonal weather on a yearly scale: hot summers, cold winters, moderate springs and falls ... depending on where you live. Then, we also have long-term cycles that occur over decades: some decades are colder or warmer than others; we also have long-term cycles that occur over centuries: some centuries are colder or warmer than others ... however, I'm not saying, for example, that the 19th century was different than the 20th century. Our calendar has nothing to do with it. What I'm talking about are warming and cooling trends that last over multiple decades up to a century. We can see some of these changes in historical accounts, but a good reference is to look at what people wear. Likewise, we have warming and cooling trends lasting thousands of years, including ice ages and global warming, and periods in between.

The ozone layer likewise changes the same way. There are seasonal changes, and there are also, according to recent theories, changes that last years, decades, even trends lasting longer ... theoretically.

Yes, and ozone levels were declining when the technology first appeared to measure them.

Isn't it interesting that the whole ozone scare came up when DOW was about to lose their patent on freon? A very easily and cheaply made refrigerant that anyone and their brother could make and sell cheaply to consumers. In fact, if you were in a room with freon in it, it is inert. It will not hurt you, but the new stuff DOW developed could kill you. Yes, if you fill a tube full of ozone and inject freon into it, it does destroy it, but freon is too heavy to even reach the ozone layer. In fact, the only man made thing that can reach the ozone layer is the machines made by NASA.

The ozone hole gets bigger and smaller just like the Sahara. Does anyone remember back in the day when the big threat was the Sahara consuming all of Africa and parts of Europe. Oh wait, it got smaller, then it got bigger, then smaller again.

The ozone hole is a bunch of crap, just like global warming. Anyone remember when eggs were supposed to be bad for you? Then they were good for you. Then bad again. It all matters who does the studies and who is paying for the studies.

Just clean up your back yard and recycle to save money. Don't worry too much about things you can't control.

I think it is this that is not really understood by Joe public, and the fact that to our knowledge all major ice ages have been proceeded by a dramatic increase in temperature. Temperature variations/fluctuations are natural occurrences on the Earth and we overestimate our significance in these events. We are passengers. When it comes to our understanding of the Earth we are still like kids playing in the sand at school.

This site has a nice sliding graph charting the Earths temperature back 420,000 years, it's a nice site to look around too:

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/Pal...ology_IceCores/

This is one of my favorite sites, I love reading about paleoclimatology. It is a great source of information.Its a US department of commerce site, beware, I always get lost in here:

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/paleo.html

Direct to a Paleo Perspective on Global Warming:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/home.html

A good account of global warming PR:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archi...reenhouse-gases

When it comes to understanding the Earth I prefer to learn what the Earth itself can tell me, not a scientist looking to publicize a new book or a politician wanting to manipulate a countries budget. Trust the ice cores and tree rings.

Exactly!

It's fixing itself.