It’s Always Bloody Ozone
Posted by keith on February 22nd, 2010
I don’t watch a lot of television – well, that’s probably no surprise – but if I am free on Sunday lunchtimes I do like to watch Countryfile on BBC One. There are all sorts of interesting items about all sorts of different things, and this week was no exception: focusing on Somerset, there were items about the use of willow, tree identification in Cheddar Gorge, and prehistoric tracks in peatlands. There was also a good, balanced item in the “John Craven Investigates” strand about generating your own energy – I particularly liked the woman with the ceramic stove who was just the right side of smug, knowing that at any time the power supply could give out!
This item starts at about 10′ 30″ on BBC iPlayer, by following the link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00r3rzv/Countryfile_21_02_2010/ (Note: This will expire on February 27, 2010)
Early on, and you can see this at 11′ 30″, something I hear time and time again from both children and adults is said by a young girl in response to a question about why we should generate our own electricity:
“Because our ozone layer is slowly going, and we will be polluting it more if we don’t start thinking about it a bit more now.”
In all fairness she sounds pretty bright, so the only explanation for this gobbledigook is that she has been given this information by an ill-informed teacher who hasn’t learnt the subject properly. The school in question seems to have shoehorned the wind turbine into everything (“Today, children, we will be learning about ants by watching them climb up the pole of our lovely new wind turbine”), and it’s likely that every teacher, knowledgeable or not, has been told to talk about a number of environmental issues; in the process completely getting it wrong.
Do I have to say this? The ozone layer has nothing, in any meaningful sense, to do with climate change. Damage to the ozone layer is a related, but physically discrete topic from the effects of greenhouse gases on global temperatures. There are some chemicals that feature in both topics (CFCs and some of their global heating replacements), but I very much doubt the person teaching the poor girl – and thousands of teachers like him or her – is aware of this. They simply don’t know enough about the subject to teach it, so should not be doing so!
We will be moving to Scotland shortly, and one thing going for the school system is that you are not allowed to teach a subject in secondary school if you do not have a related degree-level qualification. This will not help primary children, but just a little knowledge in this case would go a long way. Next time, if you hear anyone talk about the ozone layer in relation to climate change or greenhouse gases, please put them right; then perhaps they will pass the information on themselves, and kill off once and for all that really annoying piece of misinformation.