Learning about Ozone Depletion
Paul J. Crutzen¹ and Michael Oppenheimer²

¹Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany

² Woodrow Wilson School and Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, New Jersey, USA

Stratospheric ozone depletion has been much studied as a case history in the interaction between environmental science and environmental policy. The positive influence of science on policy is often underscored, but here we review the photochemistry of ozone in order to illustrate how scientific learning can occasionally mislead policy makers. The latter may occur particularly in circumstances where limited observations are combined with simplified models of a complex system, such as may generally occur in the global change arena.

Responsible for this page: Katja Scherbov
Last updated: 13 Feb 2007