A new modeling based paper in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics takes on that question directly.
Of course the result is another “saved the world” moment according to some:
[ Source: http://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/442342191067693056 ]
I certainly don’t have a problem with reducing CFC’s, but Andrew Dessler’s comment speaks to the hero syndrome some of these scientists seem to have, which sometimes results in the “noble cause corruption of science” where the end justifies the means. Here is the paper abstract, link to full text follows.
Abstract.
Ozone depletion by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was first proposed by Molina and Rowland in their 1974 Nature paper. Since that time, the scientific connection between ozone losses and CFCs and other ozone depleting substances (ODSs) has been firmly established with laboratory measurements, atmospheric observations, and modeling studies. This science research led to the implementation of international agreements that largely stopped the production of ODSs. In this study we use a fully-coupled radiationchemical-dynamical model to simulate a future world where ODSs were never regulated and ODS production grew at an annual rate of 3%. In this “world avoided” simulation, 17% of the globally-averaged column ozone is destroyed by 2020, and 67% is destroyed by 2065 in comparison to 1980.
Large ozone depletions in the polar region become yearround rather than just seasonal as is currently observed in the Antarctic ozone hole. Very large temperature decreases are
observed in response to circulation changes and decreased shortwave radiation absorption by ozone. Ozone levels in the tropical lower stratosphere remain constant until about
2053 and then collapse to near zero by 2058 as a result of heterogeneous chemical processes (as currently observed in the Antarctic ozone hole). The tropical cooling that triggers the ozone collapse is caused by an increase of the tropical upwelling. In response to ozone changes, ultraviolet radiation increases, more than doubling the erythemal radiation in the northern summer midlatitudes by 2060.
Full paper: http://t.co/8LRrUDb3Yf
I do have a strong suspicion about the whole CFCs issue.
As I recall, the chemical was banned on the grounds that lab tests and models showed that it could damage ozone – there were few actual observations in the field, and those which were done were inconclusive.
I also believe that the banning also came at a very convenient time for DuPont, which would otherwise have lost the patent on a very lucrative chemical, and seen other companies undercut it heavily.
I never gave the issue a lot of thought before, but it is so similar to the AGW exercise, that you have to wonder…
They took CFCs out of my asthma inhaler and replaced it with something less effective. I won’t forgive them for that.
Another modeling exercise….yawn.
cfc’s are too heavy and can not rise up, they sink rapidly, thump.
I’m extremely dubious about the whole ozone/CFC linkage. Too much reliance on lab tests and, once again, computer models, and precious little actual real world measurement. And once again based on a startlingly short observational period, we discovered the hole, and to my knowledge have no idea how natural or artificial it is. I recall reading one quote where one of the activists involved in banning CFCs saying it mattered little if it was an issue or not, that the real benefit was that banning CFCs served as a model for how to get world government type unified action accomplished. More of a trial run towards global socialist governance.
ozone depletion was another green scam. I’m sure lots of these green con artist made a fortune on it.
This is a precursor to “Ozone depletion over the Antarctic is responsible for record Antarctic sea-ice.” (Paper due late 2014) /sarc
The ozone hole hysteria calmed down, when some bright scientist realized that the holes might have been there long before discovered. The holes are located close to the magnetic poles and are affected by the stuff that the sun is throwing at us.
I might be wrong, but as far as I heard, CFCs are still produced and used i Asia …
Because they are so good at atmospheric modeling.
Aka, “messiah syndrome.” They are going to save all of us wallowing in original sin from ourselves. Because they are so visionary, doncha know.
Oh…so they proved it
snark/
I want my Freon-12 back!
The concentration of ozone in the Ozone layer is almost entirely dependent on the temperature, which is why we had ozone depletion in the 1970s.
Not long ago it was found that ozone amounts above 45km increased between 2004 and 2007 at a time of inactive sun.
The earlier observed decrease in ozone occurred during a period of active sun through solar cycles 21 to 23.
Ozone amounts control the temperature of the stratosphere and the height of the tropopause.
What has been happening since 2007 ?
The stratosphere appears to have stopped cooling around 2000 which is around the time that ozone began to recover and at the same time we descended from the active solar cycle 23 to the relatively inactive solar cycle 24.
Observations therefore suggest that the reduction of ozone and cooling stratosphere of the late 20th century was a consequence of high solar activity.
Our CFCs might have had some effect but it appears to be swamped by natural variability, rather like our emissions of CO2.
Rubbish, if analyzed using physical chemistry instead of politics:
1) The sun’s UV-radiation forms ozone from dimeric oxygen molecules of the atmosphere during the day. Ozone is unstable molecule and degrades back into dimeric oxygen during the night. This is accentuated by solstice.
2) The molecular mass of even the simplest CFC (CCl3F) is significantly heavier than that of any other atmospheric gases. They more likely to stay on the round level than to float into the stratosphere.
sunshinehours1 says:
March 8, 2014 at 10:20 am
They took CFCs out of my asthma inhaler and replaced it with something less effective. I won’t forgive them for that.
This also increased the price of the inhalers from $5 to $50, effectively eliminating it for thousands, if not millions of poor asthma sufferers.
Just like biofuels, its euthanasia of the poor.
Hal
Solar & Halogenated gases affect Ozone and Global warming
See QB Lu for an alternative theory:
Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change
QB Lu – International Journal of Modern Physics B, 2013 – World Scientific’
Now which model will prove to be more accurate?
PS See
Response by Qing-Bin Lu to “Qing-Bin Lu revives debunked claims about cosmic rays and CFCs” at Climate Science Watch
I thought it was it was now known that the rate of photolysis was too high for the hole theory.
http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html
The so-called ozone hole was noted in the IGY, an early detente with the USSR that pooled science resources.
http://www.theozonehole.com/ozonelayer.htm
At one time the seasonal thinning of the ozone hole seemed to be well explained by the absence of sunlight and natural environmental factors.
The theory of CFC’s as a catalytic destroyer of ozone took hold in the 1970’s and led to a substantial ban of CFC’s over a number of years.
But the hole seems to be about the same as it ever was, raising questions about some of the current assumptions. But now ozone has also morphed into an explanation of ‘climate change’, which seems very convenient for something so far away, so difficult to measure and so subtle in its impacts……
It’s a model, so it must be true – in the same way that Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell (those well-known climatologists) are models – and everything they say is true – if not full of (or based on) ‘substance’…
Sorry to repeat this yet again but several years ago I asked a fundamental question of Cambridge university and the Max Planck institute.
The question was ‘ how do we know if there hasn’t always been an ozone hole prior to our ability to measure it from the late 1950’s?’
Both institutions admitted that they had no answer to the question and that it was possible holes had existed prior to imstrumental recordns but they thought the holes had become larger through mans actions.
Whether any means has since arisen to hind cast levels I don’t know.
Tonyb
http://drtimball.com/2012/effect-of-environmentalists-crying-wolf-over-ozone-thinning-appear/
So what is the effect of Ozone absorbing in the 9.6 micron band?
There still are more questions than asnwers in the whole CFC/ozone case…
One of the main steps in the chemical reactions leading to ozone depletion seems to be much slower than initially expected which doesn’t prove that CFC’s aren’t involved, but maybe at a much smaller rate than expected/modelled.
Further many of these reactions are taking place at the surface of ice crystals, at temperatures of minus 80°C, which only occurs seasonally around Antarctica and occasionally around the Arctic. It is there that most of the depletion happens during a few days/weeks (Arctic) to a few weeks/months (Antarctic). For the rest of the lower stratosphere there is little depletion as ozone is continually created (and destroyed) by UV light, mainly in the tropics. Despite the much thicker UV layer in the tropics, people (plants, animals) there receive 5 times more residual UV light in full sun than people at high latitudes, due to inclination and longer path through the atmosphere.
Thus the question remains where the reduction in ozone depletion / increase in UV would take place and where there would be health effect, if any…
BTW, skin cancer is mainly a question of choosing the right parents: if you live in Australia and your parents are aboriginals, there is near no chance to get skin cancer. But if you are a decendant of some pale skinned and red haired ancestors …
And indeed Dupont was quite willing to switch to HFC’s, for which they had brand new patents, while these for CFC’s were near expired…
The Montreal Protocol was the dress rehearsal for Global Warming. It worked so they thought the big one would… The link paper is 2009…????
ColAr says:
March 8, 2014 at 10:53 am
Very interesting. I have been trying to find a time series of measurements of chlorine in the upper atmosphere, but those data appear to be hard to find. However, there were several stories just this past December about there still being no signs that the CFC controls are having any effect, as here.
What if they find during this Sunspot minimum the whole gets larger for as pointed out in South CAROLINA, natural ozone production has dropped from critical to normal over the last several years. In other words, no ground level production of Ozone may allow it the layer to be depleted again and the hole will open up regardless of our legislation. Lack up adequate temperature, 82 degrees is needed for Ozone production at grass level. As the Earth cools through 2035, we should revisit this as often as Alarmists report on Polar bears and thawing Arctic Ice.
Paul
I have read the polar holes of the ozone layer are regarded as evidence of its depletion from human activity. It is known some industrial compounds (chlorofluorocarbons or CFC’s) chemically react with the O3 molecule of the ozone layer of the stratosphere thus depleting it and allowing heat to escape, effectively “countering” the dreaded man-made global warming effect.
IMHO there are more important explanations; the ozone layer is relatively thin (at 1 atm it would be less than 1/8 of an inch thick) and in a constant state of replenishment as well as depletion. 12 to 25 miles up high energy UV splits the O2 molecule into two atomic O1 molecules that then combine with O2 to form the unstable, temporary O3 ozone molecule which absorbs low energy UV.
It is my understanding the reasons for the changing polar ozone hole sizes are natural and include the seasonal lack of light in both areas, the atmospheric fluid dynamics at the polar vortices, the naturally occurring nitrous oxide molecules (lightening) and most importantly; the solar variances in UV radiation.
I have no skin in this game as I’m not a climate scientist. I’m just a curious guy and these are my thoughts. Apologies for the over simplification.
The reports I have acknowledge that the CFC/ozone push was a pilot to see if global regulations could be put into place to supposedly prevent an environmental catastrophe without having to prove anything. When it worked we got the AGW hype next.
The UN and who it funds have never made any pretenses that these models premised on ‘hard’ science are to gain political power to reshape economies and social and political structures. That has been consistent from the 70s on.
Now with the virtual reality worlds of gaming and the all-digital Common Core curricula Pearson (with Microsoft) and Amplify (a NewsCorp sub) have developed for the classroom, students’ beliefs about how the world works will be influenced by whatever beliefs the model creators have programmed into the software. With the constant refrain of pushing students to act and relying on biased institutions like the Smithsonian and National Geographic, it is likely the models will be propaganda. The game designers admitted as much at last year’s ISTE annual conference.
Funny how all these studies are invariably carried out by folks with a vested interest (often emotional) in the outcome. And where are the critical reviews that are always required?
The only thing that may have been avoided are disasters that only exist in the imaginary future
predicted by some model. Models need to be verified. It’s a simple as that.
Jaakko Kateenkorva says:
March 8, 2014 at 10:48 am
2) The molecular mass of even the simplest CFC (CCl3F) is significantly heavier than that of any other atmospheric gases. They more likely to stay on the ground level than to float into the stratosphere.
The molecular mass only plays a role as long as no mixing takes place, mainly by wind/turbulence. Once mixed in, even the heaviest molcules (scents e.g.) stay in the atmosphere for years if not rained out or chemically destroyed. See the Brownian motion effect…
“hero syndrome”…
How else is a nerdy college professor ever going to get a chance to save the world?
I have always questioned this. Below is something I wrote to a liberal friend about this. I have never found anyone who could answer my questions.
The basic laws of physics say that lighter materials will float above heavier materials. So, if the atomic weight of a free Nitrogen molecule (N2) is 14 amu’s and that of a free Oxygen molecule (O2) is 16 amu’s and that of a free CFC-12 molecule is 64 amu’s, 4.57 time heavier than a Nitrogen molecule and 4 time heavier than an Oxygen molecule, the question to ask is how did something so heavy, comparatively, get up to the ozone layer, between 50,000 and 115,000 feet above us?
The next question to ask is, if the vast majority of CFC’s that were in use prior to the ban were in the Northern Hemisphere, why was the hole in the Ozone Layer that was so frequently referenced located over the South Pole and not the North Pole? It would seem that with air currents basically flowing from a polar region to the equator and back again, that the major portion of any destruction of the Ozone Layer would have been at the North Pole.
With the above questions comes the question are CFC’s really as dangerous as was stated? The mechanism that was stated as the cause of the breakdown was that once CFC’s were transported into the upper atmosphere cosmic rays broke down the CFC’s giving us a Chlorine ion that reacted in the following manner:
Cl· + O3 → ClO· + O2
ClO· + O3 → Cl· + 2 O2
This regenerative process of the Cl–– ion was stated to be very damaging because it could continue to react with Ozone ions over and over again. Being we are talking about the effect of a Cl–– ion, why has no one addressed the issue of the chlorine that evaporates into the atmosphere regularly from the chlorination of water systems, swimming pools, hot tubs, and other uses of chlorine. It would seem far more likely a mechanism for the above reactions, being that a chlorine molecule (Cl2) only weighs 34 amu’s and a chlorine ion Cl¬–– would only weigh 17 amu’s, much lighter than that of a CFC molecule and therefore more easily transported to the upper atmosphere.
Recently reported in the journal Nature.com, that the key chemical reaction referenced above that was purported to have been the cause of the destruction of the Ozone Layer is almost 10 times weaker than assumed. As a result, at least 60% of the stratospheric ozone loss in recent decades can no longer be explained.
Back in the late 1980’s, during the heated discussion of the banning of CFC’s, there was an article on the back page of Discover magazine that basically said that the banning of CFC’s had nothing to do with the destruction of the Ozone Layer and everything to do with the expiration of the patents, which would allow anyone to produce CFC’s without paying royalties to the large chemical companies that held the expiring patents.
I don’t know if this is true, that corporations would take subversive actions to protect their profits, but a wise man one said that if you want to know the truth, follow the money.
You know, during the winter in either the arctic or antarctic, there is a die off of some of the microscopic critters that tend to concentrate chlorine and bromine from seawater. This can release bromine and chlorine into the atmosphere during the winter in a region where the tropopause is closer to Earth’s surface and the storms can break through the tropopause sending vapors into the stratosphere. Work was done back in the ’80’s looking at gases in the stratosphere(about 36km) and bromine was one of the substances that was detected using neutron activation on the collected samples.
I still don’t understand the mechanism for fairly heavy CFC molecules to get from the Northern hemisphere to the South. What propelled them?
Some years ago when Dr. Tim Ball was a “regular contributor” of essays and other postings in Canada Free Press (CFP) he wrote an excellent essay on exactly this subject. I was sure I saved that article somewhere but I am unable to locate its whereabouts at the moment.
If Dr. Ball sees this, I do hope he re-posts his essay here. It is well worth a read. – Well, the said article was his work so really only he can do the/any “re-posting” in any case.
“How else is a nerdy college professor ever going to get a chance to save the world?”
(asked wryly, by Ed Fix at 11:28am today, but, makes a powerful point incidentally)
Here’s how:
Dr. Frederick Banting — Insulin
My great-uncle died of Type I Diabetes (childhood onset) at about the same age about the same time Banting’s little friend died of it. I never got to meet him. Today, millions of families are spared the deep pain of losing a child. THAT is saving the world in meaningful sense.
And what a message of hope to all of us whose careers have, due to disappointment, followed the road “less travelled by” … . But for Banting’s medical practice never thriving, he likely never would have gone into that laboratory… . God truly does work in “mysterious ways.”
YOU GENUINE SCIENTISTS (AND TEACHERS) ARE HEROES!
Always remember that. You ARE making a difference for good.
Each part of the body has its important work to do. (I. Corinthians 12:15-26). Every cell matters.
Hi, O. H. Dahlsveen,
I believe his son DID post that essay, here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/08/claim-what-would-have-happened-to-the-ozone-layer-if-chlorofluorocarbons-cfcs-had-not-been-regulated/#comment-1585759
I hope that is what you were hoping for,
Janice
O H Dahlsveen says:
March 8, 2014 at 11:53 am
See above @
David Ball says:
March 8, 2014 at 11:11 am
I am saying Stephen Wilde is right.
Ozone concentration (and that of peroxides, nitric/nitrous oxides) at the TOA are a function of solar activity which in its turn is governed by the movement of the planets. The more of these substances TOA, the more deflection to space, the less insolation of earth.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
The whole CFC scare was exactly the same as the current carbon dioxide nonsense.
Bart! One of the FINEST heroes of science I know.
According to the “great minds think alike” maxim — I must be pretty smart!
#(:))
It was a load of garbage right from the start. Another scam and they were playing it for all it was worth – I’m sure funding was good for it – then environmentalism took centre stage and they all saw even more dollar signs and climbed on that bandwagon. I want to see them do jail time for it.
Thank you Ferdinand for raising one of the AGW proponents’ favorite arguments, Brownian motion, in this context.
What bothers me with it is that atmosphere itself is not homogeneous. Most obvious example even in troposphere is that water vapor isn’t evenly distributed, but forms clouds. How is that possible if Brownian motion was a significant factor?
So, how can we take for granted that a wide family of CFC molecules mix randomly, float into a separate atmospheric layer and stay there? In addition CCl3F boiling point is 23 °C and it would go through phase transition well before reaching the stratosphere.
wasn’t there an article on this site a few months back showing the holes have been there long before CFC?
If only they would stick to forecasting the past. They would then get to be approximately and smugly correct, and the rest of us could get on with more important things without having to listen to their failing forecasts of the future.
Doesn’t “crying wolf” imply deceptive alarmism?
Did the whole world ban cfcs? Or just USA?
Find it hard to believe that the ban in the USA could save the world. Like coal. US is trying to reduce use of it, while the rest of the world increases it’s use of coal.
Have to admit I am ignorant on this issue, it was way before my time.
policycritic:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/08/claim-what-would-have-happened-to-the-ozone-layer-if-chlorofluorocarbons-cfcs-had-not-been-regulated/#comment-1585760
@polycritic
I actually did answer your question
here
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2011/08/11/the-greenhouse-effect-and-the-principle-of-re-radiation-11-aug-2011/
the 9.6 um absorption causes some trapping of heat
but overall the effect of less ozone (& others) is that of warming
but we are currently cooling
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2013/plot/rss/from:2002/to:2013/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2014/plot/hadsst2gl/from:2002/to:2014/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadcrut3gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1987/to:2002/trend/plot/rss/from:1987/to:2002/trend
the reason for the cooling is that ozone and others have been increasing since 1995.
Does anyone recall research done, perhaps by a Russian scientist in the last 10 years or so, which concluded that the basic reaction rate of the key equation was off by an enormous amount? As such, to achieve the claimed reductions in ozone, it would have taken an enormously long time.
If accurate, the research showing the slower rate meant the claims of the Montreal Protocol could not have been true. Looked for it recently, but didn’t see it.
Perhaps some could post a link, so we could review those findings too. Commentary on that work would also be appreciated.
What would have happened without the CFC ban is exactly the same as what did happen. An empty but very expensive gesture. Un-ban Freon!
So we have the fictional confirmation of the fictional success of an all too real and expensive solution to a fictional problem. This could only be considered good news by those who do not live in the real world!
One of the issues I have is how these theories are presented or sold to the world.
They are marketed in a way that convinces targets of the marketing that this is proven, rock solid, settled science. They want people to put a speculative theory in the same category as gravity or the earth revolving around the sun or………..photosynthesis(never mind that last one, photosynthesis has become the Rodney Dangerfield of the science world).
Instead of being honest about the authentic level of confidence/speculation based on empirical data, a plan is put into place that misrepresents this level, 95% and 97% are two often used levels of confidence about a theory that supposedly had it’s science settled and the debate was over 6 years ago.
Yet, most of the evidence since the “science was settled” and the debate was supposed to be over has been very lopsided in favor of the side that was supposed to be silenced for questioning the theory of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.
It’s clear that there are large groups with tremendous control that see their responsibility as being that of determining what is and what is not settled science and what will be done about it. Then, they aggressively exert their powerful influence to dominate/control in order to accomplish their agenda(s).
This is how the world has always worked in general for centuries but science is not supposed to be this way.
Of course Dupont’s patent running out on CFC’s had nothing to do with banning CFC’s, so that people had to instead buy Duponts more expensive, patented CFC replacement.
It was all simply a big coincidence, a conspiracy theory dreamed up by CFC deniers. the science is settled. We know that CFC’s and only CFC’s can explain the Ozone hole. It isn’t like there is a Polar Vortex scrubbing the poles of Ozone. It is simply a coincidence that the same polar vortex is found on other planets with an atmosphere. Such a vortex is physically impossible on earth. We know this from models. Thus, it must be CFC’s.
I agree with Ferdinand Engelbeen’s comments and also remain skeptic on the exclusive role attributed to the CFC’s (BTW Ferdinand, there is one glitch in your comment: “Besides the much thicker UV layer in the tropics…” should be “ozone layer…”.)
Nevertheless, the increase in ground level UVB with a thinning ozone layer is easy to observe: see my recent comment here:
http://meteolcd.wordpress.com/2014/03/08/raf-revisited-total-ozone-column-and-uvi/
which shows very recent measurements at meteoLCD (Diekirch, Luxembourg).
Sounds a lot like the DDT soft eggshell scam.
Dessler claims “we saved your lives”, but the truth, as with the DDT ban and the CO2 inanity was increased death, disease and poverty from banning CFCs. The cost of storage and transport of refrigerated medicines and food in the developing world increased due to actions of gangrene-caped crusaders like Dessler.
Ozone levels are controlled by solar variation. Even before satellites, the data from sounding rockets led the russians to surmise that ozone would be thin if not non-existent over the poles. Now we know volcanic bromine would have a vastly greater effect than human CFCs if such trace gases were even capable of effecting ozone being created an destroyed on a daily basis.
The good news is that the pre-internet sucesses the greens achieved in increasing world misery have encouraged them to stick their necks right out this time. Every one of them is now compromised by global warming advocacy and a permanent record of vilifying sceptics. Green crusader Dessler is about to find out that that green cape is actually a putrefing albatross and “Noble cause” is no shield when you have called sceptics “Holocaust Deniers” to silence them.
Andrew Dressler says “You guys cried wolf about ozone depletion. Actually we saved your lives.”
Good thing they didn’t get all of their CO2 regulations and restrictions in place back around 2000. Dressler would be pointing to the pause right now and claiming that they once again saved our lives for the second time. Instead, with the same data that they would be pointing to and claiming they saved us all, they are pointing at and saying we are all going to die.
Would “Holy Wildcat” have won the upcoming race at Gulfstream Park had my bet on him not jinxed him ??
Results in 3 minutes 🙂
Before Al Gore was off on Global Warming, he was off on (in?) the Ozone Hole.
Enough said.
Apparently a few people think it would be impossible for kites to fly as they are heavier than air.
Agree Stephen, it is the solar that is causing the variations of ozone imo also
From ‘DDT’ to ‘PCB’ to ‘acid rain’ to ‘alar’ to ‘ozone’ to ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ the watermelon globalists have led us from panic to panic – abandoning each “catastrophe” as the initial scare subsides. Witch hunting in the 21st century.
I have always been puzzled by the Southern Ozone Hole’s size when most of the CFC we’re used up North! And also why it varies so much during the year when CFC are no longer used.
Francis Massen
Nevertheless, the increase in ground level UVB with a thinning ozone layer is easy to observe: see my recent comment here:
Henry says
this is something that I am still investigating
we know that solar activity varies, causing a little shift within TSI
More extreme UV would seem to cause more ozone (&peroxides & others)
more ozone & others deflects more UVB to space
The opposite would cause exactly what you say has been observed…
There are large short term variations in the ozone concentration but don’t let that take away your eyes from the long term trends.
it all comes back to what I have already proven from observed measurements.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2013/04/29/the-climate-is-changing/
A very important development – the influential (among politicians, business leaders and senior government and institutional employees) Economist magazine has published this article:
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21598610-slowdown-rising-temperatures-over-past-15-years-goes-being
Titled “Who pressed the pause button?
The slowdown in rising temperatures over the past 15 years goes from being unexplained to overexplained” it goes on to mention many of the competing explanations. I don’t know how reassured they will be by the final paragraph:
“The solar cycle is already turning. And aerosol cooling is likely to be reined in by China’s anti-pollution laws. Most of the circumstances that have put the planet’s temperature rise on “pause” look temporary. Like the Terminator, global warming will be back.”
Explaining the pause twice over takes some explaining away. Thinking readers may start to question their advisers.
They can model what they want but we will never know. Some say the Ozone hole was always there. Fancy that!
R. Shearer says:
March 8, 2014 at 1:17 pm
I have a kite. Last time I looked it was still lying on the garage floor.
The ozone hole was discovered during IGY (International Geophysical Year) back in 1957 – before there was substantial amounts of freon. I was told this back in 1974 – by someone who participated in IGY. The whole scam is the same old thing. Sheep going blind due to uV – a pink eye epidemic. CFCs escaping from airconditioners and refrigerators in the nothern hemisphere sneaking down to the antarctic where these rather heavy molecules were magically lifted up against gravity to go up into the stratosphere where they were disassociated into chlorine atoms while ocean spray chlorine ions were washed out of the atmosphere by rain just like the chlorine atoms injected into the stratosphere by an active volcano down there.
A researcher back in the 80s from Cato Inst. followed the money and discovered that DuPont had been funding the whackos so that freon 12 would be banned since it was nice, efficient, safe, and running out of patent protection and unfortunately, the replacement was not efficient, not safe, and not inexpensive to produce.
It couldn’t have been the competition, nor any track bias, that relegated the horse into 4th place,
it was the jinx 🙂
I’ll stop now.
CFCs are amazing molecules. They are emitted in an ozone rich environment, and despite being highly reactive, they eschew the “dirty” ozone from our tail pipes, defy gravity, and then fly up above the troposphere to munch on the much tastier ozone deposited by lightning in our upper atmosphere.
This molecule exhibits preference and mobility. Could it be a new life form?
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/csd/assessments/ozone/2010/twentyquestions/Q2.pdf
“Stratospheric ozone is formed
naturally by chemical reactions involving solar ultraviolet
radiation (sunlight) and oxygen molecules, which make up
21% of the atmosphere. In the first step, solar ultraviolet
radiation breaks apart one oxygen molecule (O2) to produce
two oxygen atoms (2 O) (see Figure Q2-1). In the second step,
each of these highly reactive atoms combines with an oxygen
molecule to produce an ozone molecule (O3). These reactions
occur continually whenever solar ultraviolet radiation is present
in the stratosphere. As a result, the largest ozone production
occurs in the tropical stratosphere.”
Conversely, because there is naturally far less sunlight, the smallest ozone production will occur at the poles i.e. there has and always will be, holes at the poles.
Scam, scam, scam!
I think due to the millions of babies the Left has murdered, there tiny bit of humanity in these
soul-less monsters, that they want to claim they have saved someone- anyone.
We need some sort of “actual data” publishing service to help research the core facts behind a *large variety* of claims. Every time I try to do it, I get a “look at this paper” which refers to other papers which refer to other papers which refer to other papers ad nauseam.
I keep seeing model results referenced as readings and hypotheticals later taken as results. This is far from limited to climate science, medical science is at least equally polluted.
A lot of supposedly otherwise-trained people seem to be producing what they think they should produce instead of accurate and repeatable results.
Pittzer says:
March 8, 2014 at 1:39 pm
CFCs are amazing molecules. …..defy gravity
Individual gas molecules do not obey the laws of buoyancy like objects in water. Gas molecules diffuse all over the place when mingling with other gas molecules. It is just that when CFCs get to extremely cold places like above Antarctica in winter, they take part in certain reactions. All gas molecules from helium to radon mix more or less evenly where the atmosphere is thickest. The only exception is water since it condenses out at a certain temperature. Of course, the concentration has to be right as well. If there are too few water molecules, then two water molecules may not meet so then cannot condense out. That is why extremely low concentrations of water can be found very high up.
As for defying gravity, if we had a perfect vacuum on earth and some CFCs evaporated, the molecules would promptly fall to earth.
Here are some thought provoking papers on ozone and CFCs. [News articles link to papers]
for which he won a Nobel prize…
“Air-conditioning sales are growing 20 percent a year in China and India, as middle classes grow, units become more affordable and temperatures rise with climate change.”
“The oldest CFC coolants, which are highly damaging to the ozone layer, have been largely eliminated from use; and the newest ones, used widely in industrialized nations, have little or no effect on it.
But these gases have an impact the ozone treaty largely ignores. Pound for pound, they contribute to global warming thousands of times more than does carbon dioxide, the standard greenhouse gas.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/21/world/asia/global-demand-for-air-conditioning-forces-tough-environmental-choices.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
Not to be overly condescending, but the CFC issue was child’s play compared to the CO2 issue,
yet after all these years still requires a leap of faith and speculative models to convince the scientific community. Of course, the biggest piece of nonsense here is the implied connection between the two issues. Validating a climate model will not be accomplished by referencing irrelevant previous issues concerning CFCs and their behavior. That’s elementary school logic. So far, climate models have had a long period of time to convince and have done precisely the opposite – we pay less attention to them now than we did before, and all because of their total inability to explain and predict.
What would have happened to the ozone layer if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had not been regulated?
1. My air conditioners would have been cheaper and worked more efficiently.
2. The ‘inhaler’ that I use occasionally would cost less and deliver the medicine more effectively.
3. An enormous amount of misdirected capital and labor would have been better utilized.
4. Other than that, nothing else would have changed.
You guys laugh, but thousands of polar bears and penguins are thanking the Montreal Protocol for keeping them free of skin cancer.
Meanwhile, I notice that the antarctic ozone hole hasn’t changed much since the protocol was introduced, but then I haven’t updated this chart recently. The big increase in the hole seems to coincide with the big increase in our satellites’ ability to measure it.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/ozone_hole_2010.png
If CFCs were damaging the ozone, and it’s been over 20 years since they were banned, shouldn’t the ozone layer have started “recovering” by now?
“CFCs are amazing molecules. They are emitted in an ozone rich environment, and despite being highly reactive, they eschew the “dirty” ozone from our tail pipes, defy gravity,”
********************************************************************************************
CFC’s are NOT highly reactive until a chlorine free radical is formed by UV-C in the stratosphere. The Cl neutral free radical then catalyzes the decomposition of the stratospheric ozone. Stratospheric ozone is the only atmospheric molecule that that absorbs the near UV-C wavelength. All wavelengths of UV-C are hazardous. Less energetic UV-B is required to form vitamin D. UV-B is only partially absorbed by ozone.
As a bulk gas, CFC’s would hug the ground, but once mixed with air, CFC’s could move anywhere the air moves in the atmosphere and would reach the stratosphere because it is so chemically unreactive.
I suspect that when and if we ever figure out the “wicked” climate problem and the somewhat less “wicked” CFC problem, the answers will be that both CO2 and CFC’s have theoretical but trivial effects on our respective climate and ozone layers.
Francis Massen says:
March 8, 2014 at 1:00 pm
Thanks Francis for the correction… Some time ago that we have had some mail exchanges…
Do you have some figures of the evolution of the UV influx over the years in Diekirch? And/or from other parts of the globe?
R. Shearer (1:17pm): “Apparently a few people think it would be impossible for kites to fly as they are heavier than air.”
Jaakko Kateenkorva (12:26pm): “Thank you Ferdinand {and Shearer, apparently} for raising one of the AGW proponents’ favorite arguments, Brownian motion, … So, how can we take for granted that a wide family of CFC molecules mix randomly, float into a separate atmospheric layer and stay there? In addition CCl3F boiling point is 23 °C and it would go through phase transition well before reaching the stratosphere.”
Dr. Tim Ball (in his above-linked article):
“
{this is how the pseudo science was done:}
Source: http://drtimball.com/2012/effect-of-environmentalists-crying-wolf-over-ozone-thinning-appear/#sthash.zYbqfG3S.dpuf
**********************************************************
Leave the kites to Ben Franklin. OR…. better yet….
“Let’s Go Fly a Kite!” — from Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964)
#(:))
“Life’s short. Don’t miss it.”
(Ferris Bueller)
Yet another model untested (untestable, in fact) against prediction.
I guess it’s only good fortune that the major manufacturer of CFCs (DuPont) enjoyed financial gain from supplying more expensive substitutes for the banned CFCs at the same time the original patents were expiring, Their world was certainly saved.
Why did they need to ban something when the hole was there in 1956 and probably always has been? What if they looked in 1900 or 1870? Would the ozone hole have been there?
Why didn’t Du Pont push for a ban then?
“You guys cried wolf about ozone depletion.” Whomever Dressler adresses here were apparently falsely crying about a hazard that didn’t exist, since that is what “cries wolf” means. What he meant to say is “you guys wouldn’t cry wolf.” Conclusion: Andrew’s verbal skills lag his analytical ones.
“Actually we saved your lives.” I do not recall that the entire world was in danger over ozone depletion, but only the surface of the south polar oceans. Nonetheless Andrew takes credit for something he had no part in as he was in undergraduate/graduate school during the relevant time period. Conclusion: A common characteristic among these climate scientists that they take credit for things they didn’t do. There must be a fancy name for this pathology.
Wait a minute, in 2011 the ozone hole was as big as ever.
Not again with this BS on patents!
DuPont did not have a patent for CFCs. Those had been discovered long before and had long been out of patent as chemicals.
They had a few expiring process patents, that allowed them to manufacture them slightly cheaper than their competitors.
Nor did DuPont have patents on their replacements, which had been discovered long before. CHF3 was first made in 1894!
The mixture which is the main replacement, R-410A, was invented and patented by Allied Signal (now Honeywell) in 1991. So apparently DuPont conspired to give Honeywell an advantage!
(DuPont has a lot of valuable trademarks in this field. They are actually more valuable than the patents, as they don’t expire. But then it still has all the previously very valuable Freon CFC trademarks, so if anything it has lost in the shift.)
A hole appears in the dynamic doughnut once every year, over and over again like a repeating cycle. When it appears in the Antarctic spring, the dough surrounding the hole grows thicker.
Now that’s very interesting, because the Hole-in-the-Sky Game is contingent on you being ignorant of that fact, paying no attention, turning a blind eye, or pretending it doesn’t happen when people bring it to your attention.
What you see on graphs—if you look at the whole picture instead of just the hole–is a displacement of dough, not a depletion.
The CFC hypothesis was a fiction built to mulct us for DuPont.
“Wait a minute, in 2011 the ozone hole was as big as ever.”
I think his argument is that if they hadn’t banned CFCs, the ozone hole would’ve devoured the world by now or something. Science!
Stephen Wilde says:
Not long ago it was found that ozone amounts above 45km increased between 2004 and 2007 at a time of inactive sun.
The earlier observed decrease in ozone occurred during a period of active sun through solar cycles 21 to 23.
It is exactly that. Solar activity is increasing, decreases ozone and temperature in the stratosphere.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/strat-trop/gif_files/time_pres_TEMP_ANOM_JFM_NH_2014.gif
Rich Carman says:
March 8, 2014 at 2:24 pm
CFC’s are NOT highly reactive until a chlorine free radical is formed by UV-C in the stratosphere.
Seconded!
There are some misconceptions by some here about the possibilities of mixing heavier and lighter molecules in the atmosphere:
– If there is a huge release of any gas or vapour that is heavier than air, it will spread over the ground and can do a lot of damage. But with sufficient wind and turbulence, it will mix up in the rest of the atmosphere and ultimately spread from pole to pole and from ground level to the stratosphere.
– Once mixed it wil stay mixed, except if absorbed (CO2 by plants and oceans), destroyed (most organics) or raining out (SOx, NOx). It may take a year or two to get from one pole to the other (the intertropical convergence zone allows only some 10% air exchange between NH and SH) and from the ground to the stratosphere (as the exchanges are limited).
– In stagnant air like is the case in compacting snow (firn) once a certain layer thickness is reached, some separation of the different molecules and isotopes does occur. For the Law Dome firn measurements, the measured enriching of CO2 at the bottom was about 1% over 40 years, for which was corrected for in the ice core CO2 measurements.
– That doesn’t play much role in the atmosphere where there is a lot of wind/turbulence and where even sand particles, weighing a thousand time more that air, are carried over thousands of kilometers…
Kevin Kilty says:
March 8, 2014 at 2:44 pm
Conclusion: Andrew’s verbal skills lag his analytical ones.
=================
more likely his analytical skills match his verbal skills.
Apparently you do not know about sulfur hexafluoride. Let Rosie and Anna explain it to you:
BTW, sulfur hexafluoride has a molecular weight of 146 g/mol. Many CFCs weight more than that.
That does not mean that some molecules can reach the stratosphere, though. The problem is that they will concentrate in warmer areas because vapor pressure depends on temperature. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vapor_pressure ) CFCs are more concentrated at the equator than at the poles. If CFCs were the cause of ozone deplection, it should be more noticeable at the equator that at the poles, because CFCs are more concentrated at the equator and also because chemical reactions go faster as temperature increases.
Also, solar radiation and therefore halogen radical formation is higher at the equator. So, ozone destruction should be higher at the equator. But it is not, the “holes” appear at the poles. The correlation CFC concentration – ozone destruction is negative, The more CFC there is in the stratosphere, the more ozone is in the stratosphere. CFC cannot be the cause of ozone destruction.
In fact ozone does not need anything to decompose, it decomposes by itself.
Janice Moore says:
March 8, 2014 at 2:31 pm
From Dr. Ball:
CFCs are four times denser than air, so there was a transport question – how did they get to 15 km above the surface? The answer is they didn’t. ***
From:
http://uars.gsfc.nasa.gov/uars-science/CFC.html
CLAES made the first global measurements of CFC’s (chlorofluorocarbons) in the stratosphere. CFC’s enter the stratosphere through upwelling in the tropics. The CFC’s decrease with height as they are broken down by UV radiation. CFC’s are the major source of stratospheric chlorine. Red indicates large amounts of CFC-12.
In the tropics, CFC-12 is rather evenly distributed (0.3-0.5 ppbv) between ground level and 30 km altitude, decreasing in height and concentration with latirude.
Ozone is not stable. It naturally breaks down into O2, which is then combined with other O2 in the presence of UV to make O3.
Breaking down O3 into O2 with CFC’s would simply make more O2 to be combined into O3 with UV and thus add protection.
Worse case if you make the O2 unavailable with chemical absorption it will simple be absorbed by lower level O2.
O3 is the result of protection, not the source.
Will Pratt at 1:44 pm & Keitho at 11:41 am: Agreed. With most of the world’s industry in the northern hemisphere, logic would dictate that the hole at the north pole would be at least as big as the hole over the south pole.
I just found a graph depicting concentration of CFC-12 (molecular weight 120 g/mol) versus lat.itude: (It is from nasa)
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000800/a000829/a000829.mp4
As you can see, CFCs are more concentrated at the equator, and therefore if they were destroying ozone, they should be destroying more ozone at the equator.
Dennis Hand on March 8, 2014 at 11:36 am
You’ve got it right …! There’s more to it though. LPG works almost as good as CFCs as a cooling agent, but that’s natural and therefore can’t be patented, so it isn’t allowed for this purpose. Just in “favour” for the industrial production … (Yes, no problems with refilling AC/ACC’s in vehicles with LPG instead of the expensive and patented R134a, but that’s not legal at least in EU … (Don’t forget the lubricator for the compressor!) Safety issues? Well, the combo refrigerator/freezer in my kitchen scares me far more, as it can leak at any time … [/sarc last sentence])
ferdberple on March 8, 2014 at 12:56 pm
Very good sarc!
MarkW on March 8, 2014 at 2:16 pm
It’s in the same category as “The Forest (acid) Death” and “AGW” – plain political/economical scam.
Ian on March 8, 2014 at 1:22 pm
Most possible due to natural causes, just as the climate change naturally … It’s too complex, so no one knows enough to explain, even though some persistently try to claim they do. Conservatism don’t exist in nature … When people would like to know, but can’t find answers for events in their surroundings, very often happens that they rely on faith – a very, very old tradition that can be traced to the human species’ “childhood … but we should know better today …(?)
The fact that NASA pushed the false meme that the ozone hole first opened up in 1985 (the first time it was observed from a satellite) suggests to me that they had a weak case, and needed to beef it up, much like the AGW folks did with Mann’s hockey stick. They ignored Dobson’s ground-based measurements starting in 1956, prior to widespread use of CFC’s. I call BS on the whole thing.
I did read that this was one of those ‘scientists’ sat round a desk for one afternoon and deciding things, which must have gone something like :
There is a hole in the ozone layer
We must be responsible
CFCs can affect ozone
CFCs are destroying the ozone layer
QED
End of ‘science’ [Not that it started]
The ozone layer had just been investigated so there was no previous knowledge. Absolutely no investigation as to whether the holes were natural, just the assumption that we were somehow responsible. After all why would ozone, caused by the Sun’s rays, be less at the poles? It just doesn’t make sense!!! No scientist could EVER think this was a natural event. IT MUST BE MANKIND’S FAULT!
I think this is when the Greens realised the politicians were complete idiots and would swallow anything, like CAGW. They could get away with anything barring a complete collapse of Western economies. Luckily this was was on their list of ‘things to do’. At the moment only Europe is on the brink of collapse, although Obama wants to play ‘catch-up’. The non-Western nations simply want 100 billion dollars per year compensation plus costs for any unusual weather. Not too much to ask, surely!
[There may be some sarcasm in the above comments]
How much does ultra-violet radiation reaching the Earth – where the population actually lives- vary in proportion to levels of ozone in the upper polar atmosphere? Had there been a secular and injurious increase before CFC’s were banned?
Too often in these affairs some substance is demonized because of its supposed effect which, after it is no longer used, is not measured overmuch since the result must be as the model forecast.
All that happens is that the southern polar vortex reaches a peak cold/peak intensity in September and the Ozone gets pushed out to the sides of the vortex. The total amount of Ozone remains the same but it is moved out of the vortex to the side, where record levels of Ozone can then be recorded. When temperatures recover/the vortex intensity declines in November/December, the Ozone goes back to normal.
The highest Ozone readings in the world are at the edges of the vortices in September in the southern hemisphere and Feb/March in the northern hemisphere.
The northern hemisphere has record Ozone levels right now at the edge of the vortex , 560 Dobson units, basically as high as it can get .
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/sbuv2to/gif_files/sbuv16_nh_latest.gif
The southern hemisphere right now is a nice, higher than the rest of the planet, 360 Dobson units.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/stratosphere/sbuv2to/gif_files/sbuv19_sh_latest.gif
urederra and others
The issue of heavy gas molecules getting into the stratosphere have been covered many times on this blog. What do you suppose would have happened to Rosie and Anna’s SF6 if they had had a fan running in their aquarium? SF6 has be measured in the stratosphere, as have CFCs, they are not just modeled to be there.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/93JD02258/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/96GL00244/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
In addition, while you surmise that ozone depletion is faster in the tropics than at the poles, what do you suppose the difference in ozone formation is between the two? And you are completely ignoring the demonstrated effect of ice crystal catalysis on ozone depletion.
Look, to you and others who think you are experts on gas phase chemistry, I am a CAGW skeptic. I repeat Steve McIntyre’s advice, our arguments are only as strong as our weakest claims. Stop making weak claims.
Anthony,
“the hero syndrome some of these scientists seem to have,”
Seem to have? Surely you are joking. They may have the worst case of the syndrome in human history. OK, maybe the prosecutors for the Inquisition were slightly worse, but climate scientists are very close to the worst in history, and don’t have the excuse of a Medieval education.
One of the more amusing aspects was that a Chinese company was making an ‘allowed’ CFC, but a byproduct CFC was not. The EU paid them a hundred times what is cost to create the bad CFC to destroy it. The Chinese thought for two seconds and then started creating a LOT of the ‘bad’ CFC. Last I heard they had over 2 billion Euros from the EU! Suckers always pay, big time!
R. Shearer @ 1:17…
You are flying your kite. The string breaks. What happens to your kite?
How do we hook those itty-bitty strings onto all those CFC’s ?
Dang! Dropped my magnifying glass again!
As a retired chemical engineer I spent a lifetime running computer models. The output from an unproven computer model is just about worthless. I think the IPCC found that out.
When the whole AGW CO2 discussion started i was most afraid that we would set about reducing greenhouse gases and that years later, when the earth did not burn up the good folks at big green would claim to have saved the world. I imagine the ‘pause’ would be very real and very significant in warmist eyes had CO2 emissions been curtailed.
Sweet Old Bob, if the wind and lift is strong enough, it doesn’t matter if the kite has a string or not. Without the string, it might not be held to the ground at all. Of course, CFCs don’t have strings to hold them to the ground. CFC-11 and CFC-12 are gases with boiling points of ( ~24C and -30C, respectively). Of course there could be stratification in an unmixed vessel subject to gravity, but a couple of others above pointed out the obvious – Brownian motion. Of course, don’t forget the wind and thermal mixing.
anticlimactic on March 8, 2014 at 3:30 pm
Yes, it’s bad within corrupt EU, but I wouldn’t say we’re ahead of USA … (In the richest country in world, how is it possible that some resident people practically can’t afford to live there …?) Some countries here in Europe/EU, despite the bad economics of the “Olive countries, did manage the last economical crise quite well. If we still would have the previous left wing government here in Sweden, we would have a completly different story in this country, just like we had the previous crise. We have a national election this year and media are trying their best for a change back to left wing deteriorating policy’s … (The effect by left wing school policy’s have reached all the way up in their political hiearchy. It’s enough for them to just open their mouths nowadays … Oh, sorry! Those are already open, filled with feets … Worst thing is that too many voters here still believes in their Münchhausen stories …)
Urederra, do you really think that the SF6 will stay in the aquarium indefinitely? Does water which has a boiling point of more than 100C greater? There are several mixing mechanisms in play that result in detectable amounts found in every corner of the room once the bottle of the SF6 is opened. It will not stay in that aquarium for long simply because of diffusion. Even helium will diffuse out of a balloon.
By the way, the “C” in CFC stands for carbon. SF6 is not a CFC, but yes it is denser than air and is good for demonstrating bouyancy principles.
Models all the way down. Bleah.
Back when this interested me, I looked up the UV index for the south pole. It’s usually 2. The highest reading I could find was 4. Directly under the hole, naked to the solar maelstrom, the best they could come up with was 4.
Check your local newspaper to see how this stacks up with midwinter North America.
Couple days ago MIT posted the discovery of a process in Earth’s magnetosphere that reinforces its shielding effect, keeping incoming solar energy at bay.
Plasma plumes help sheild Earth from damaging solar storms
Maybe, just maybe, ozone isn’t the only thing protecting the Antarctic from harmful solar rays.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fick%27s_law_of_diffusion
I don’t think CFC’s made a difference. There are far too many other trace chemicals in the Stratosphere that react with Ozone for the piddling amount of CFC’s produced by humans to matter.
Basically any huge gale or hurricane tears the surface of the sea into a froth of seething spray, and that spray gets sucked right up to the top of the troposphere and into the stratosphere by those super storms. Not only does a surprising amount of sea-salt wind up where the sea has no business being, but also a whole slew of hung-over plankton find themselves looking down at earth from miles above, muttering, “How the heck did I wind up here?”
Now, it may be politically incorrect to say this about a living entity, but the holistic oneness called a “plankton” is made of basic elements. Being sea critters, this includes Iodine. The funny thing about elements ending in “i-n-e” on your periodic table is that they refuse to be politically correct and accepting of ozone. Instead they are, sad to say, reactionary.
Plankton also includes bromine, chlorine, and fluorine. Gosh! Look at that! They also end in “i-n-e”! What an amazing coincidence!
In other words, rather than humans, the ones to blame for the “Ozone Hole” are plankton. (And I for one always thought those critters had a suspicious look about them.)
Our representatives in the United Nations are seeking ways to regulate and punish (and bribe, with large doses of powdered iron), plankton, however plankton unfortunately are represented by a gifted lawyer who is a bit of a scofflaw and has even been know to blow the highest ranking judges away. (The lawyer’s name is, “Mother Nature.”) (Of the firm Seemigh, Powers, and Weep.)
Plankton has been messing with the Ozone for a long time. When the Ozone Hole gets too big it actually reduces the population of plankton in the teeming seas around Antarctica. Likely there is evidence of reduced plankton populations in the core-samples from the sea bottom, showing that Ozone Holes existed before CFC’s were ever dreamed of.
All it would take is a good UN scientist to produce the incriminating evidence, and those smartypants plankton wouldn’t stand a chance in the UN court of law.
It is high time we show plankton who is boss around here.
R Shearer..not saying CFCS don’t mix in the atmosphere , just that the kite analogy dosen’t fly very well..{:< ))
I could reply to you but I would need more than one sentence and since you have onli read the first sentece of my post, then I am not going to waste my time with it.
Read the rest of my post, and my following post if you really want the answer.
Do we have continuous stratospheric chlorine content observations since the implementation of the Montreal Protocol? As far as I know CFCs, being compounds insoluble in water and containing chlorine, are only supposed to serve as vehicles to transport chlorine to the stratosphere which does its ozone thing there under extremely cold conditions.
Therefore I don’t really care how time series of the mixing ratio of each kind of CFC looks like at the surface. It would be much more interesting to see in situ history of chlorine itself high up in the stratosphere. Could it be the case that people were so careless that a long term monitoring program of the actual agent was not initiated along with an international agreement on some specific compounds?
Seriously.
Oh, here Pearse goes again! I chime in everytime the topic comes up and repeat that oxygen is magnetic and all the other atmospheric gases are diamagnetic, i.e. repulsed by a magnetic field. Changes is magnetic field strength and possibly events on the sun that enhance or reduce magnetic field strength. There is not only an ozone hole, but also a nitrogen, CO2 and noble gases “hole” only O2 is attracted to the poles and all others are pushed away. My earlier posts on the subject were a little short on empirical evidence. However, today I have some:
1) There is an observed CO2 hole at the poles
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=82142
and: Scripps measured the same thing since 1957 only they didn’t know what they had!!
http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/graphics_gallery/mauna_loa_and_south_pole/mauna_loa_and_south_pole.html lower CO2 at the south pole
2) The piece de resistance! Oxygen is attracted to the poles. This link is a very dramatic one with oxygen blasted out into outer space by the solar wind and is captured by the earth’s magnetic field and returns to earth at the poles!! “MAGE/HENA observes the oxygen ions, expelled from the Earth’s atmosphere by the solar wind, return to the polar regions via the magnetic field.”
http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a002400/a002445/
I have had sympathetic remarks on the “Pearse Ozone Hole Theory” in earlier threads but mainly kindly explanations as to why I am wrong. Now if anyone has data on the noble gases distributions and nitrogen to further support my theory, I’d be pleased to get the links. Maybe I could then find time to compose an illustrated post for WUWT.
Working for one of the major European producers of CFC’s in the early 80’s there was no secret made of the fact that they supported the findings and ongoing research at the time due to the patents running out and they were keen to get on to the next technology (HCFC) as China and India were getting ready to get into this market and they feared a drop in price, which indeed happened before the Montreal protocol was fully implemented and the signatories could not use CFC 11, 12 and it’s blend any longer. Certain other chlorinated products were also banned.
Can’t say anything about any link between CFC and ODS’s but no doubt a model can be developed that pinpoints it to the accuracy as shown in the article, haven’t we seen that elsewhere.
Not involved in that kind of product any longer but from what I have been reading I got the impression that the ozone layer was improving these days and the Montreal protocol is generally regarded as a success. My impression can be wrong on that one of course.
In addition, while you surmise that ozone depletion is faster in the tropics than at the poles, what do you suppose the difference in ozone formation is between the two? And you are completely ignoring the demonstrated effect of ice crystal catalysis on ozone depletion.”
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The above comment is correct except that the original comment suggested that the ozone depletion SEEMS LIKE IT SHOULD be faster in the tropics – even though it isn’t faster there.
The stratospheric ice crystals over the south pole in the Antarctic winter provide a heat sink during the high energy free radical reactions and this helps to prevent the reaction from going backwards once the the ozone destruction reaction has occurred. Thus the ice crystals act as though they are heterogeneous catalysts even though they are not involved directly in the chemistry of the reaction. These stratospheric ice crystals form mainly over Antartica during winter in the southern hemisphere. Such ice crystals don’t seem to form very much over other parts of the globe such as the tropics and not much over the Arctic.
First, It is not a conjecture, it is a fact that ozone decays faster as temperature rises. It simply follows the principles of chemical kinetics. http://www.lenntech.com/library/ozone/decomposition/ozone-decomposition.htm
Second, answering your question, ozone forms faster at the equator, and does not form during the winter at the poles because solar radiation is needed to form ozone. That is the old Dobson’s theory which still explains the “holes” and their seasonal variation without having to add CFCs into the equation.
Uh? The ice crystal catalysis is more a hollywood physics explanation than a demostrated effect.
First. Ozone is an unstable compound with a short half life. The decomposition reaction has, per sé, a very low activation energy. Catalysts work by reducing the activation energy, the more the activation energy is reduced, the better they work, the faster the reaction goes. In this case they cannot be very effective because the decomposition reaction has already a very low activation energy. There is not much room for improvement via catalysis. When ozone and water collide, they react. O2 and 2 OH- are formed, That is not a catalysis, it is just a reaction.
Second. There are no CFCs in the so-called ice crystal catalysis.
Third. The high altitude clouds only reach the lowest part of the stratospheric ozone layer. They do not touch the vast mayority of the ozone layer.
Fourth. Those clouds are almost non existant in the artic, where they also a “hole” is formed.
Those high altitude clouds are desperate attempt of saving a failed theory.
Yeah, probably somebody put ozone and ice crystals together (and maybe some CFCs) and they found that the ozone is destroyed a faster rate, but it is because it reacts with water, not because the ice crystals catalyses (reduces the activation energy of) any reaction.
Rich Carman says:
March 8, 2014 at 5:26 pm
“The stratospheric ice crystals over the south pole in the Antarctic winter provide a heat sink during the high energy free radical reactions and this helps to prevent the reaction from going backwards once the the ozone destruction reaction has occurred. Thus the ice crystals act as though they are heterogeneous catalysts even though they are not involved directly in the chemistry of the reaction. These stratospheric ice crystals form mainly over Antar[c]tica during winter in the southern hemisphere. Such ice crystals don’t seem to form very much over other parts of the globe such as the tropics and not much over the Arctic.”
= = = = = = = = = = =
from Bill Illis:
“The highest Ozone readings in the world are at the edges of the vortices in September in the southern hemisphere and Feb/March in the northern hemisphere.”
If you look at the maps you will see that Bill is correct, Rich.
So how exactly do those stratospheric ice crystals + CFCs explain the recurring pattern of distribution?
What explains the increased concentration of ozone that surrounds the region of depletion?
They have no way of comparing ozone reduction to past times. Volcanoes may influence it, or again it is something from outer space. The position of the sun in different countries too. Land of the midnight sun, for example. Anyway ozone is a poisonous gas, that is what you smell when there is a thunderstorm and lightening strikes.
Sweet Old Bob, I sarcastically pointed out that there are still people who think that something heavier than air cannot rise (fly). It wasn’t an analogy really, or at least not a good one.
Urederra, I know enough about SF6. It’s a very dense gas, and very unreactive, as well as having good dielectric properties. It is not a CFC. But despite the fact that it is heavier than air, it reaches high altitude and remote locations, such as Niwot Ridge in Colorado. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/insitu/cats/conc/nwrsf6.html
You say that ozone reacts with water. What are the products of this reaction?
If there is no records to which recent readings can be compared, you can’t really prove your hypothesis.
george e. conant says:
March 8, 2014 at 10:25 am
cfc’s are too heavy and can not rise up, they sink rapidly, thump.
Always wondered why CFCs got that high to destroy ozone, but couldn’t seem to accomplish the same thing at ground level.
“This also increased the price of the inhalers from $5 to $50, effectively eliminating it for thousands, if not millions of poor asthma sufferers.”
Asthma inhalers are around the AUD10 here mark and have been for years. If anything, their price hasn’t kept up with inflation, unlike say, petrol. It’s a bit disturbing to see ozone depletion (a proven effect) linked with AGW “theory”, as a scam. While a long-term AGW doubter, I’m happy to believe that ozone depletion was real, they’re not linked directly and the ozone layer is recovering since CFCs were banned (and there are effective substitutes- may car a/c works just as well, if not better, than old cars with CFCS). As a skin cancer sufferer, I have every reason to fear UV radiation.
His arrogance is really astonishing. Switching from CFCs to HFCs didn’t save anyone’s lives. Nobody dies from moving a couple of miles closer to the equator.
The incidences of skin cancer and melenomas are greater than in UK. Do yer reckon its because people in Australia not being brown, go out in the midday sun and laze on our beautiful beaches. The original indigenous Aborigines did not suffer from skin cancer. And those up in Northern Australia arewere darker skinned than the ones down south. Just because the holes are there, stopping UV from hitting the planets surface, the angle of the sun in Australia is straight overhead at 12 noon, and the angle of the sun is different too in England and parts of North America. When any scientifically based thesis is prepared, especially if there is a grant being paid for its conclusion, one has to take in all the variables that can affect the conclusion.
Polar bears don’t get skin cancer, you nut, they wear clothes and sun screen. LOL
Actually, ozone depletion affects higher latitudes. Australians have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Tasmania in summer has the highest UV indices- the saving grace there is the cool climate leads to covering up more. There are few populated zones at high latitudes in the southern hemisphere, where ozone depletion is the worst. Even Tasmania is “high latitude” only relative to the mainland, not to populated areas in the Northern Hemisphere. The sun is overhead at noon in Australia? For some places, at limited times of the year, maybe. I live in the subtropics- it’s hot so I wear shorts/shirt, leaving much exposed, so that gets covered in icky sun cream. The danger times are 1000-1500, but one can still be burnt at 0900 given exposure and lack of protection (hat, sunglasses, sunscreen).
How do you know polar bears don’t get skin cancer? Cats and dogs in Australia are very prone to them, their lives are artificially prolonged by not having to hunt for food or deal with predators.
R. Shearer says:
March 8, 2014 at 1:17 pm
Apparently a few people think it would be impossible for kites to fly as they are heavier than air.
@ R. Shearer
I guess all molecules are held up by madly running children with strings attached to said molecules.?
“Actually, we saved your lives.”
I am stunned. Where does the government-funded hubris ever end?
John M:
RIGHT ON. I am also a GAGW skeptic. The denial that CFC has a chemical impact on ozone levels is worrisome.
What if the ozone holes don’t change with changes in atmospheric CFCs?
I have some difficulty accepting we made enough CFCs in terms of sheer
tonnage to affect something as large as the atmosphere, for as long. I keep
wondering if it was just coincidence.
What if it is really high-energy cosmic rays? The muons Svensmark has linked to
low tropospheric cloud formation aren’t fussy about where they go. If it’s not muons
could it be something else? What else? Has cosmic radiation been completely ruled out?
Considering the polar holes are repairing, it seems reasonable that CFCs did have some effect. CFCs supply chlorine to the stratosphere (no matter that they’re “heavy” molecules, they still get there) and their half-life is such (the time it takes them to be completely broken down) is measured in thousands of years, so a small amount goes a long way. Considering the number of old fridges dumped, and the manner of “recharging” auto a/c (dumping the old gas, in with new stuff) there was plenty of it going into the atmosphere. Not like CO2 volumes of course, but each molecule of CFC could do a lot of dirty work.
Ferdinand Engelbeen:
Do you have some figures of the evolution of the UV influx over the years in Diekirch?
Yes Ferdinand: please look here for the trends in (biologically effective) UVB, UVA and total solar irradiance, as well of those of ground ozone and TOC in Diekirch, Luxembourg (lat. ~50°N).
http://meteo.lcd.lu/data/trends/meteolcd_trends.html
(trends calculated more than a decade, often 16 years)
Claim: What would have happened to the ozone layer if chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) had not been regulated?What would have happened if global warming alarmists had not been born?
No green taxes – so the poor could afford to eat and warm their home.
No windmills – paid for by poor people.
No biofuel additives – so rice and other commodity food would be more affordable by the poor.
No mass installations of PV panels – paid for by taxes on the poor.
No inefficient electric cars – less pollution from battery manufacturer plants.
No overnight loss of traditional industries such as coal.
No false targeting of science – thousands of scientists would work on worthwhile projects.
No corruption of a generation of scientists – who now believe the ‘story’ is the most important thing.
What would not change if we had no alarmists?
We would still have extremely stupid politicians (all countries)
We would still have an uncritical media (all countries)
Our education systems would still be degenerating.
Our power grid systems would still be fragile and decaying.
Oh for a world where engineers get voted into positions of responsibility!
“New satellite ozone data and other atmospheric studies based on actual measurements confirm that the ozone layer is not a homogeneous, flat and that atmospheric dynamics, not chemistry, is the driving factor that determines the thickness of the ozone layer. The scientific research reported here strips any shred of credibility from the claims of the ozone depletion theorists leaving the Montreal Protocol backed only by the Malthusian ideotogy of its founders.
The dramatic new satellite ozone data, featured on the cover, are from the Crista-Spas ensemble of instruments, designed by scientists at the University of Wuppertal in Germany, which was deployed by the Space Shuttle in November 1994. The Crista team announced its first results at a press conference in Bonn on Nov. 6, 1995, but the results of the mission were barely covered in the European press, and not covered at all in the United States.
Crista-Spas is a group of instruments (Crista), deployed on a space platform (Spas), that measures atmospheric gases in such detail that it can create three-dimensional images of the distribution of the gases in the stratosphere (see Crista-Spas Project). As the German scientists told the press, these 3-D images show that the models behind the ozone depletion scare are completely, and axiomatically, wrong. In the words of Germany’s Die Welt newspaper Nov. 7, the evidence presented at this press conference means that “all ozone computer models produced so far have, in effect, turned into waste paper. [Makulatur].””
Mike T says:
Actually, ozone depletion affects higher latitudes. Australians have the highest rates of skin cancer in the world. Tasmania in summer has the highest UV indices- the saving grace there is the cool climate leads to covering up more. There are few populated zones at high latitudes in the southern hemisphere, where ozone depletion is the worst
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Look at the distribution map and explain how the annual cyclical phenomena can affect Australians negatively. (Hint: it can’t.)
As has been pointed out several times, the highest concentrations of ozone appear around the so called “hole”. In September in Australia, the sun streams through an ozone layer that has either normal or elevated concentrations. See for yourself:
http://www.gse-promote.org/gallery/o3hole/ozonehole_1995_2004_09.jpg
http://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/robert-johnson-new-perspectives-for.html
After listening to this interview you also will come to the conclusion that ‘Economists” who sold out to Political systems and big Idealists are no different from our ‘beloved’ Climate Scientists. Both use ‘models’ that are setup to give a pre-determined result.
regards
what always got me..apart from the dupont and the fact ENRON had a LOT to do with working out the CFC trading scams ..and their methods I suspect are still used for the Co2 scam..
was the not insignificant fact that so many MILLIONS of cars aircon home fridge freezers etc etc as well as useful vital firefighting units all got trashed!
and most of that cfc etc all got sent to the atmosphere anyway!
and then he mining production and new gas etc for all the replacer units.
NOT a SMALL enviro cost was it??
same crap now with millions of TVs radios etc being dumped due to forced Digital broadcasting,
and then the msoft biz with billions pf pcs being trashed due to the new programs sysems requirements
and people mindlessly doing it, instead of losing msoft and going to linux etc.
I know that, The only reason I mentioned CF6 is to counterargument the kite example.
I also said, in my first, second and third posts. that CFCs are heavy gases, like SF6, and therefore they are not well mixed. That does NOT mean that they do NOT mix at all, It means that the concentration of those gases in the atmosphere depends on altitude and temperature.
I even produced, in my second post, a graph from nasa proving that the concentration at the equator is higher than at the poles. Here it is: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000800/a000829/a000829.mp4
If you bother to click on the link, you will see that the concentration of CFC12 at 30 Km of alititude is 0.3 ppbv at the equator but only 0.05 ppbv at 70 degrees of latitude. (btw, ppbv means parts per billion)
And, for the third time, I want to point out that since there are more CFC molecules at the equator, the ozone destruction rate should be higher at the equator. More CFC molecules mean more more collision with O3 molecules, and more collisions mean more destruction rate.
Also higher temperatures at the equator mean that the molecules travel at faster speed, which means more collision between molecules and also more energetic collision, which should render faster reaction speeds (higher ozone deplection) That is basic chemical kinetics.
But that is not happening, meaning that CFCs do no have an effect on ozone deplection.
Again, CFC concentration does not correlate with ozone deplection. CFC concentrations is high in the equator and low at the poles, but ozone concentration is higher at the equator than at the poles. It is the opposite as you would expect if CFCs destroys ozone.
As I said in my previous post. O3 + H2O renders O2 + 2 OH (radicals)
(Then the OH radicals also cause a lot of damage on organic molecules, that is why ozone is used as water disinfectant)
It is also in the link I provided in my previous post, If you bother to look.
“Mike T says: March 8, 2014 at 7:45 pm
It’s a bit disturbing to see ozone depletion (a proven effect) linked with AGW “theory”, as a scam. While a long-term AGW doubter, I’m happy to believe that ozone depletion was real, they’re not linked directly and the ozone layer is recovering since CFCs were banned (and there are effective substitutes- may car a/c works just as well, if not better, than old cars with CFCS). As a skin cancer sufferer, I have every reason to fear UV radiation.”
The discussion seems to be drifting a bit off the topic, but find Mike T’s concern valid from sociopolitical perspective meriting further consideration:
To protect the climate CFCs are now strictly restricted – even banning for laboratory and analytical use http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ozone/ods/index_en.htm, including controlling quality of medicines and identifying falsifications. This endangers the health of all patients – a high cost and in return for what exactly?
In my opinion this offers one of the clearest examples where misanthropocentrism slaps human rights straight on. Being one of the reasons why I’m not so happy to believe in AODS-fears, but question (especially due to, in my view, rather unscientific generalization of laboratory experiments e.g. to a whole family of substances and then up-scaling them to earth systems without proof).
But, don’t take me wrong. I understand your and Camburn’s concerns and think recycling CFCs is far more sensible than releasing them into the atmosphere. What’s the harm listening to those asking questions Anthony Watts, Dennis Hand, Rich Carman, Gary Pearse, urederra and many others? There is no obligation to agree with all the proposed answers.
Juvenile megalomania.
Urederra
Thanks for the review. After more than 40 years as a chemist, it’s never too late for me to review my fundamentals.
So if the activation energy is so low that a catalyst can’t make a difference, why does temperature make a difference? After all, reaction rate is proportional to e^(-Ea/RT). The only reason temperature has an impact is becasue Ea is non-zero. If Ea large enough for T to have an impact, it’s large enough for a catalyst to have an impact.
Indeed catalytoc effects can be measured even in solution
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01919510208901614
Catlalytic effects are even more important in the low concentrations encountered in the stratosphere.
And I’m glad we agree that ozone formation and destruction are both occurring in the tropics and at the poles. It’s not the reaction rate of a single reaction that’s important, it’s the balance of the two. Just because Dobson’s theory is old doesn’t mean the two reactions can’t be impacted differently by CFCs and catalytic reactions in the two regions.
Ozone depletion was the trial balloon for the CAGW Con.
The UN first Earth Summit was in 1972 where Maurice Strong rounded up the eco-nuts, paid their way to the confrence and gave them their marching orders. (It included Global warming even back then BEFORE the continued cold spell of the 1970s)
The large foundations then funded them and turned them into the Astro-turf movements we have today.
Funders of GREENPEACE (click Related Foundations)
A few from that very long list:
Energy Foundation – came from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
Liberty Hill Foundation – founded in 1976 by Larry Janss, Anne Mendel, Win McCormack and Sarah Pillsbury. The foundation’s stated purpose involves social engineering and leveling “class inequality.”
Turner Foundation
Fidelity (Investments) Charitable Gift Fund
Harold K. Hochschild (CEO American Metal Company) Foundation
John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
John Merck (Merck Pharmaceuticals) Fund
Joyce Foundation – Obama as there Rep. helped set-up the Chicago Carbon exchange for Maurice Strong and Al Gore.
New York Times Company Foundation
Rockefeller Brothers Fund
Rockefeller Family Fund
Rockefeller Foundation
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation – daughter of former Standard Oil president William Rockefeller.
Charles Schwab Corporation Foundation
J. P. Morgan Charitable Trust
Levi Strauss Foundation – Several other related foundations from various family members.
Max & Victoria Dreyfus Foundation
Merrill Lynch & Co. Foundation
GEICO Philanthropic Foundation
Pfizer Foundation
Did anyone actually measure the concentration of CFCs at that hight in the stratosphere?
If so, reference please.
The “ends justify the means” mentality is strong with regard to Climate Change. Having talked to many coworkers about why they don’t seem interested in learning more about the “settled science”, many of the greener types simply say that they believe in green and sustainability (and see fossil fuels and their companies as evil and greedy) and it wouldn’t change their support of the remediation steps. In a sense, they are fine with using Climate Change as a Trojan Horse to get their actions implemented. The strong activists realize this overtly, but there are many who don’t realize that this is their position – they have backed into it subconsciously. It is a sad, frankly.
Ed Zuiderwijk says:
March 9, 2014 at 6:36 am
Google (or in this case, Google Scholar) is your friend.
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,39&q=measurement+of+cfcs+in+stratosphere
John M, very well said. This chemistry is complex. Ureddera is giving it some good thought but is making it out to be too simplistic. There is nothing fundamental about ozone (or CFC) stability. It all depends on the environment (temp, press, etc.) and collisions with other species. One molecule of ozone in a vacuum would be stable indefinitely. There are hundreds of reaction rates involved in this and this is a case where computer models can do what humans cannot. (That doesn’t necessary make them right of course.) The problem is simplified in that we can think of it as pseudo first-order in CFCs but not in ozone or any of the other photochemically active species involved. These things are changing all over the place, regionally, diurnally, etc.
With regard to OH radical formation from ozone and water, it is NOT a primary reaction, but involves photolysis to O 1D . See below. I would agree with most everyone that this problem is not very well understood, but is certainly less complex than the climate system.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v442/n7099/fig_tab/442145a_F1.html
R Shearer,
Thanks. Oddly enough, I have some support for those who argue that there was an overreaction to the ozone scare. I can recall ridiculous “peer-reviewed” papers involving “frogs under glass” to measure the impact of small changes in UV exposure and hyperbolic claims about blind Argentinian sheep that should have had some journalists dismissed for malpractice. And after all these years, I’m not sure anyone can show the ozone hole is recovering as fast as the proponents of the CFC ban said it would, which I think could mean that they underestimated the complexities of the entire system and perhaps weighted the effect of CFCs over “other” factors too highly. Of course, it could also mean CFCs were even more potent that thought, but the point is, we still don’t know.
And getting back to the topic of this post, I am hard pressed to see what long-term damage waiting 5 or 10 years would have done, other than some CFC replacement patents would have lost some value. 🙂
But having said all that, if we can at least get folks to stop saying silly stuff like “everyone knows CFCs are too heavy to make it to the stratosphere” or “a catalyst can’t have an effect on a fast reaction”, it will have been a good weekend.
John M said:
“ozone formation and destruction are both occurring in the tropics and at the poles. It’s not the reaction rate of a single reaction that’s important, it’s the balance of the two. Just because Dobson’s theory is old doesn’t mean the two reactions can’t be impacted differently by CFCs and catalytic reactions in the two regions.”
Exactly.
But consider the two reactions (ozone creation and ozone destruction) being impacted differently at the tropics and the poles as a result of variations in solar activity.
That has the potential to produce the observed climate zone and jet stream changes.
That fits with the multitude of papers proposing a top down solar effect on the global air circulation.
That fits with the now well recognised change in global atmospheric circulation that has been developing since around 2000 when the previous poleward / zonal drift of the jets and climate zones went into reverse just as we saw the decline from active solar cycle 23 to inactive solar cycle 24.
John M, March 9, 2014 at 7:18 am. Assuming AODS-hypothesis is valid, articles about stratospheric chlorine load are more convincing than those reporting it’s CFC content. The reason is that CFC molecules are inert, but in accordance with AODS-hypothesis they are dissociated. If they are dissociated, how can they be analyzed and reported as molecules with their CFC codes? And wouldn’t the dissociation deplete the stratospheric CFCs?
Apart from that, it seems logical that the biggest enemy of an ozone molecule is another highly reactive molecule, like another ozone molecule.
Brant Ra The reason this work was not well known is the people in the Ivory towers certainly did not want to hear that. After all they cannot have data destroy our their nice ideas and models.
A little logic goes a long way: look at an image of the ozone hole defined as depletion to below
220 Dobson units. http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/facts/hole_SH.html
Now look at the “collar” of high ozone encircling the “hole”. This shows that the ozone “depleted” over Antarctica is, in fact, just pushed beyond the edge of the hole thereby thickening the ozone in a ring, like a turtleneck sweater. Surely, if we calculate the volume of ozone in the collar we could see if it can be distributed over the hole demonstrating how much, if any, ozone has been actually lost. This collar is what gave me the idea that its diamagnetic character caused it to be pushed away from the “hole” (along with all other atmospheric gases EXCEPT O2 OXYGEN WHICH IS COMPARATIVELY STRONGLY MAGNETIC – illustrated in my post above:
Gary Pearse says:
March 8, 2014 at 5:16 pm
Anyone, please offer an alternative to magnetics for causing a concentration of ozone in a collar around the ozone hole. If you appeal to winds, please still explain the concentration in the collar and how it shows that ozone has been destroyed.
@Stephen Wilde
I am sure you are on the right track!
I did some analysis of ozone data from a station in the Alps, somewhere in Switzerland. They had data going back to the 1920s. I remember pinpointing the date when ozone starting decreasing as being around 1951. The ozone concentration started increasing again in 1995. This was established from the bending points in the polynomial that fitted best to the actual data.
The 1995 date came also up when looking at more recent data from a station in the SH.
These dates are significant when you compare them with my best fit for the drop in the speed of warming when looking at maximum temperatures.
http://blogs.24.com/henryp/2012/10/02/best-sine-wave-fit-for-the-drop-in-global-maximum-temperatures/
“I have seen this happen before, of course. We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80% of the measurements being made during that time were either faked, or incompetently done.”
-James Lovelock
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock/print
I’m surprised nobody in the MSM has picked this up. Guess they would have if Lovelock had worked for big tobacco.
Jaakko Kateenkorva says:
March 9, 2014 at 8:48 am
Not sure what you’re getting at here. Are you saying that we can’t measure chlorine radicals in the stratasphere and since we can’t measure them they can’t be there?
Anyway, they can be measured.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/94GL02781/abstract;jsessionid=D3C9FE7FCC92E2990B4026D24A892D2C.f03t03?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false
Are you saying it’s all or nothing? Either they are completely dissociated or not dissociated at all?
Nobody’s saying they have an infinite lifetime
As has been pointed out, the reaction chemistry is complex with many competing reactions. The ice crystal/halide mechanism is thought to enhance the net destruction of ozone at the poles relative to what happens in thei absence of CFCs. There is no “all or nothing” in atmospheric chemistry. It’s not unusual to have competing reactions, each with their own mechanisms and each impacted by different catalytic chemistry.
They are already lining up the new excuses just in case the CFC ban does not close the Ozone hole. News just in today from the BBC.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2109
R. Shearer says:
March 8, 2014 at 4:06 pm
“Sweet Old Bob, if the wind and lift is strong enough, it doesn’t matter if the kite has a string or not. Without the string, it might not be held to the ground at all.”
And, if my grandmother had wheels, she’d be a wagon. How do you get the lift? By enforcing a consistent angle of attack on the kite via the tension in the string. When the string breaks, does the kite continue flying upward? Perhaps briefly and randomly, but not for very long.
Were that not the case… Do you have any idea how many kite strings break per year? By now, the poles should be swarming with errant kites built up over centuries of distressed kite-flyers, if your analogy had any validity. We’d need an international kite-flying protocol to phase out kites.
Bad analogy. Find another one.
John M says:
March 9, 2014 at 10:20 am
Do you have any non-paywalled resource which discusses stratospheric ClO over time since the phase-out? Given that there is apparently no conclusive evidence that the phase-out has done any good, I would expect, if the threat is significant as claimed, that stratospheric ClO basically would show little decline over the interval.
This seems to suggest that either A) ClO is declining, but its effect on the ozone layer was dramatically exaggerated, or B) ClO is not declining, and the protocol has been unsuccessful.
Is there a third option which I am not considering? Either of these suggest that the phase-out is either futile, or ineffectual, neither of which is very confidence-inspiring.
Bart,
Here’s one that’s available.
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/5321/2011/acp-11-5321-2011.pdf
As I said above, it appears that ozone recovery is not as “robust” as proponents of the ban indicated it would be. I don’t know why, and I’ve got no quarrel with those who think things don’t quite add up. In my own mind, I don’t know if the sluggish recovery argues for or against the ban, but I do have a hard time convincing myself that waiting a few years would have been disastrous.
All I ask is that people recognize the difference between thoughtful skepticism and raving cynicism.
Kramer,
One would presume that Lovelock doesn’t include his own work in that category.
“In 1974 I made the first measurements of the CFCs and carbon tetrachloride in the stratosphere and showed them to be declining there as the ozone depletion theory required.”
http://www.jameslovelock.org/page3.html
John M says:
March 9, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Thanks, John. My mind is open on the question. I try not to react strongly one way or the other until I have evidence. E.g., my suggestion to R. Shearer above is merely to find a better analogy than kites. But, I am not dismissing the possibility, even high probability, that some chlorine ions for which we are responsible get transported to the upper reaches of the atmosphere. The question in my mind is, in what measure?
That the ions are there appears to be irrefutable. How did they get there, if not transported from the surface? I cannot provide any other answer, and I know of no other available mechanism. But, are all, or even most, of the ions generated at the surface a result of our activities? Do we actually know the ratio of human to natural inputs?
I am entirely open to the possibility that the the CFC ban was necessary. There just does not appear yet to be any evidence that it helped. So, I wonder just how much of that ClO concentration was being driven by us? It would be nice to see an estimate of human production rates, which we could compare to the concentration curves to see how well they correlate, if anything like that is available.
Then, of course, there is the question of whether ClO levels make much difference on ozone levels anyway. However, given what a caustic substance chlorine is, I can well see a reasonable justification for erring on the side of caution.
Vis a vis the relationship to the climate debate, that is the key consideration which divorces the two entirely in my mind. CO2 is, after all, the stuff of life itself.
Dupont funded the study that claimed that CFCs were destroying the ozone layer. Dupont then funded the hype to demonize the main CFC which was theirs, out of patent, and becoming cheap around the world. So, it was banned around the world and people could not afford the new refrigerant and people died.
Dupont just happened to have a replacement, much more expensive replacement already under patent and ready to go.
Now, 20 years later, with that new refrigerant out of patent, they admit that the CFC-demonizing science was bogus and that actually it is nitrogen gas in the atmosphere interacting with solar radiation that eats the ozone. It has nothing to do with CFCs, nada, zilch.
Mike T, I doubt your consensus that Polar bears get skin cancer. Dogs and cats do get cancer on the skin, but generally not caused by the holes in ozone layer. If they get sunburned sure it affects them, especially the short haired or bald haired breeds. Anyway, I lived in Sydney, and the beaches there are packed during the summer with lots of tourists who do not realise how strong our sun is. I had lived in Cyprus and got very badly sunburned once, so I was very cautious.
Anyway the argument was about the ozone layer, not polar bears, as the ozone layer over the arctic I believe has closed up now.
Bushbunny, it’s an opinion, not a “consensus”. I doubt many wild animals live long enough to die from cancer, skin or otherwise, because if a prey animal they’d slow down and be eaten, if a predator, they’d become unable to hunt. Even in humans, cancer has become a “modern disease” because we live long enough to die from them. None of this stops wild animals from developing skin cancers, or other cancers, in theory, in practice they don’t usually live long enough (it would be worthwhile looking at statistics for animals in zoos, perhaps). Pets have their prey presented every day in a bowl, so live much longer than their wild counterparts, plus they are selected for traits which may predispose them to skin cancer (eg ginger cats, birds with genes connected with albinism).
As for the ozone “hole” affecting Australia, I suggested that Tasmania would be the state most affected by the thinning, and any increase in harmful UV rays reaching the surface. The brouhaha has had at least one positive side effect- and that’s sun awareness. I’m pretty old, and many of my skin cancers are in part due to exposure as a youngster- when suncreen, apart from white/pink zinc paste, hadn’t been invented. That was in Sydney- but almost anywhere on the mainland in summer is dangerous, with or without stratospheric ozone depletion. Tasmania, probably more so, on the rare hot days because the population would shed their warm clothing and the UV indices are very high. I now live in an area frequented by “backpackers” mostly from Europe and they allow themselves to be burned black in some cases. Europeans seem to worship the sun, and get as much as they can when it’s around for the winter when they will hardly see the sun and be rugged up solidly against the cold.
@Dennis Hand:
“a chlorine ion Cl¬–– would only weigh 17 amu’s, much lighter than that of a CFC molecule and therefore more easily transported to the upper atmosphere.”
I believe it was going to be regulated through OSHA back in the 90’s attempted to highly regulate chlorine use for public use such as swimming pools and washing machines.
For swimming pools they attempted to pass legislation to wear a full chimerical suit gloves and full face-mask when poring chlorine into the swimming pool.
chlorine is a widely used chimerical for many products. Lobbying groups from many corporations and organizations was able to stop the bill from passing in California and many other states.
A quick Google search I see they have pass something that must of been a weaker law then what was proposed in the 90’s:
http://www.educatingwellness.com/natural-health/dangers-of-bleach/
higley7 says: “actually it is nitrogen gas in the atmosphere interacting with solar radiation that eats the ozone.”
OH! i think you hit on something they can ban Nitrogen in car tiers, Liquid Nitrogen and everything else based on Nitrogen! I bet the public would buy it to!
DDT is another fake science that was eliminated though it’s ended up killing millions of people.
The belief in the flat earth was easy to pass off as real just as it is today.
Glaciation is coming sooner or latter and no one is even disguising a to do list for when it takes place. I can see an easy billion people dieing when it does hit.
John M says: March 9, 2014 at 10:20 am
“Are you saying it’s all or nothing? Either they are completely dissociated or not dissociated at all?”
No. I’m writing that the AODS-hypothesis contains too many assumptions, paradoxes and assertions to be plausible in my opinion. Many have already been discussed. Only to note a few:
The CFC can either be assumed accumulating (and measurable in molecular form) or ozone dissociates significantly to deplete ozone in stratosphere (and we can no longer assert the source of the ions). I don’t see how it could convincingly do both at the same time. During a discussion of an ozone layer in the layer called stratosphere, the assertion of atmosphere as a homogenous entity also seem a bit misguided.
The AODS-hypothesis bears many signs of being upscaled from laboratory to earth without the use of Occam’s razor, let alone proof. You seem to agree somewhat, but from high. There are others with academic degree in natural sciences and decades of experience, only perhaps different than yours.
Dennis Hand
“Being we are talking about the effect of a Cl–– ion, why has no one addressed the issue of the chlorine that evaporates into the atmosphere regularly from the chlorination of water systems, swimming pools, hot tubs, and other uses of chlorine.”
It is not chloride ion (Cl-) or chlorine molecule (Cl2) that reacts with ozone. It is chlorine atom (Cl). CFC breaks down into chlorine atoms. The chlorine in your swimming pool is Cl2. The one in seawater is Cl-.
Dessler has been sniffing the hydrocarbons again … he already has brain damage.
Back in ’93 I read a comment from the British Antarctic Survey which mentioned Mt Erubus. They sampled the volcano’s gases and estimated that several tonnes of hot chlorine were coming out per day during the time they were there. If this is correct, it would be reasonable to assume that much of the Cl found in the stratosphere came from the volcano as it had been actively erupting for some time. Does anyone have real info on this?
Ralph Kramden says:
March 8, 2014 at 3:47 pm
As a retired chemical engineer I spent a lifetime running computer models. The output from an unproven computer model is just about worthless. I think the IPCC found that out.
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Good to hear from an engineer, a member of the profession that invented modeling. Do not count on the iPCC ever admitting that their models have failed. That is not the way climatologists and such types work. To confess failure would jeopardize their funding and their livelihoods. Andrew Dessler could confirm that, if he ever had a mind to be truthful.
John Knowles
That gas emitted by volcanoes is hydrochloric acid (HCl). It dissociates into chloride ions (Cl-). No that’s not the one that reacts with ozone.