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Science

Report shows the ozone layer is rapidly repairing itself faster than anyone imagined

The world came together in to solve the problem. Let's do it again.

ozone layer, united nations, climate change
via NASA

Snapshot of the Antarctic ozone hole.

There are many reasons to worry about climate change's effects and whether the world’s leaders are brave enough to make the bold decisions necessary to abate the growing crisis. But a new report from the United Nations shows that when people come together and follow the science, it’s possible to stop environmental disasters before they happen.

An executive assessment from the UN has found that the hole in the Earth’s ozone layer is on track to be completely healed within the next two decades. If current policies remain in place, the ozone layer should recover to 1980 levels by around 2066 in the Antarctic, 2045 in the Arctic and 2040 throughout the rest of the world.

The hole was first discovered by scientists in 1985 above Antarctica and it caused immediate worry. According to Discover magazine, the ozone layer acts as the planet’s sunscreen and without it, we’d be exposed to harmful ultraviolet rays that cause skin cancer and cataracts. The radiation is also harmful to marine life and plants and would cause a major disruption to the world’s food supply.


“In the upper stratosphere and in the ozone hole we see things getting better,” Paul A. Newman, co-chair of the scientific assessment panel of the Montreal Protocol, said according to the Associated Press. He added that the two biggest contributors to the hole, chlorine and bromine, have dropped from their peaks in the '90s.

That bromine and chlorine levels “stopped growing and is coming down is a real testament to the effectiveness of the Montreal Protocol,” Newman said.

The Montreal Protocol is an international agreement signed in 1989 that helped eliminate 99% of ozone-depleting chemicals including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). At the time, these were found in spray cans, refrigerants and air-conditioning units.

Although much of the world has stopped using CFCs, they can linger in the atmosphere for a century.

“The protocol marks an important milestone for the future quality of the global environment and for the health and well-being of all peoples of the world,” former President Ronald Reagan said after the agreement was signed in 1988. “Unanimous approval of the protocol by the Senate on March 14th demonstrated to the world community this country's willingness to act promptly and decisively in carrying out its commitments to protect the stratospheric ozone layer from the damaging effects of chlorofluorocarbons and halons, but our action alone is not enough.”

“It’s a bit like waiting for paint to dry, you just have to wait for nature to do its thing and flush out these chemicals,” David Fahey, a scientist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said according to The Guardian.

If political leaders hadn’t taken action back in the '80s, we would be having some serious problems in 2023. World leaders should take the positive lessons learned by the fight against ozone depletion and use them toward fixing climate change before it becomes irreversible.

Unfortunately, the fight against climate change is more difficult because greenhouse gasses stay in the atmosphere much longer than CFCs and asking people to change their refrigerants is a lot easier than asking them to stop driving cars.

“CO2 is another order of magnitude when it comes to its longevity, which is sobering,” Fahey said. “Getting every person on the planet to stop burning fossil fuels is a vastly different challenge.”

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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