ONLY THE BRIGHTS' EGOS ARE FRAGILE:

Atmosphere's self-cleaning capacity stable: study (AFP, 1/07/11)

An international team of researchers has found that the atmosphere's ability to cleanse itself of pollutants and other greenhouse gases, except carbon dioxide, is generally stable.

The study, published in Friday's edition of the journal Science, comes amid a fierce debate over whether, as some experts believe, the atmosphere's self-cleaning ability was fragile and sensitive to environmental changes.

The research team, which was led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), measured levels in the atmosphere of hydroxyl radicals, which play a key role in atmospheric chemistry.

Levels of the agent only fluctuated a few percentage points from one year to the next, not 25 percent as some studies had estimated, the researchers found.