Dr. Will Happer of Princeton wrote “The Montreal Protocol to ban freons was the warm-up exercise for the IPCC. Many current IPCC players gained fame then by stampeding the US Congress into supporting the Montreal Protocol. They learned to use dramatized, phony scientific claims like “ozone holes over Kennebunkport” (President Bush Sr’s seaside residence in New England). The ozone crusade also had business opportunities for firms like Dupont to market proprietary “ozone-friendly” refrigerants at much better prices than the conventional (and more easily used) freons that had long-since lost patent protection and were not a cheap commodity with little profit potential” (link).
Even James Lovelock agrees. James Lovelock formulated the Gaia hypothesis, which postulates that the biosphere is a self-regulating entity with the capacity to keep our planet healthy by controlling the chemical and physical environment. He later became concerned that global warming would upset the balance and leave only the arctic as habitable. He began to move off this position in 2007 suggesting that the Earth itself is in “no danger” because it would stabilize in a new state.
James Lovelock’s reaction to first reading about the CRU emails in late 2009 was one of a true scientist:
“I was utterly disgusted. My second thought was that it was inevitable. It was bound to happen. Science, not so very long ago, pre-1960s, was largely vocational. Back when I was young, I didn’t want to do anything else other than be a scientist. They’re not like that nowadays. They don’t give a damn. They go to these massive, mass-produced universities and churn them out. They say: “Science is a good career. You can get a job for life doing government work.” That’s no way to do science.
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.
Fudging the data in any way whatsoever is quite literally a sin against the holy ghost of science. I’m not religious, but I put it that way because I feel so strongly. It’s the one thing you do not ever do. You’ve got to have standards.”
On a March 2010 Guardian interview, Lovelock opined:
“The great climate science centres around the world are more than well aware how weak their science is. If you talk to them privately they’re scared stiff of the fact that they don’t really know what the clouds and the aerosols are doing…We do need skepticism about the predictions about what will happen to the climate in 50 years, or whatever. It’s almost naive, scientifically speaking, to think we can give relatively accurate predictions for future climate. There are so many unknowns that it’s wrong to do it.”
Will Happer further elaborated:
“The Montreal Protocol may not have been necessary to save the ozone, but it had limited economic damage. It has caused much more damage in the way it has corrupted science. It showed how quickly a scientist or activist can gain fame and fortune by purporting to save planet earth. We have the same situation with CO2 now, but CO2 is completely natural, unlike freons. Planet earth is quite happy to have lots more CO2 than current values, as the geological record clearly shows. If the jihad against CO2 succeeds, there will be enormous economic damage, and even worse consequences for human liberty at the hands of the successful jihadists.”
LIKE GLOBAL WARMING THE DATA DOESN’T SUPPORT THE THEORY
The ozone hole has not closed off after we banned CFCs. See this story in Nature:
Scientific Consensus on Man-Made Ozone Hole May Be Coming Apart
As the world marks 20 years since the introduction of the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer, Nature has learned of experimental data that threaten to shatter established theories of ozone chemistry. If the data are right, scientists will have to rethink their understanding of how ozone holes are formed and how that relates to climate change.
Markus Rex, an atmosphere scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute of Polar and Marine Research in Potsdam, Germany, did a double-take when he saw new data for the break-down rate of a crucial molecule, dichlorine peroxide (Cl2O2). The rate of photolysis (light-activated splitting) of this molecule reported by chemists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, was extremely low in the wavelengths available in the stratosphere – almost an order of magnitude lower than the currently accepted rate.
“This must have far-reaching consequences,” Rex says. “If the measurements are correct we can basically no longer say we understand how ozone holes come into being.” What effect the results have on projections of the speed or extent of ozone depletion remains unclear.
STILL COMING
Yet like the cultists whose spacecraft didn’t arrive on the announced date, the government scientists find ways to postpone it and save their reputations (examples “Increasing greenhouse gases could delay, or even postpone indefinitely the recovery of stratospheric ozone in some regions of the Earth, a Johns Hopkins earth scientist suggests” here and “Scientists Find Antarctic Ozone Hole to Recover Later than Expected” here.
“The warmers are getting more and more like those traditional predictors of the end of the world who, when the event fails to happen on the due date, announce an error in their calculations and a new date.” Dr. John Brignell, Emeritus Engineering Professor at the University of Southampton, on Number Watch (May 1) PDF
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Lovelock seems to be mentally unstable. He invents Gaia as a mythical entity for Earth worshippers, but says he isn’t religious. He knows how insecure climatologists are, and how flaky the Global Warming conjecture, yet he ponders to remove democracy because authoritarian regimes would be better in pushing through total CO2 emission reductions.
Had he ever been able to think before opening his mouth, the world would be a saner place today, with less insane books and less insane followers.
Typo alert:
and were not a cheap commodity with little profit potential
I think you meant:
and were now a cheap commodity with little profit potential
(Unfortunately, for reasons known only to the typing gods, I make that one with some frequency… I suspect because it’s ‘same hand – same motion’ but a symmetry swap about the centerline of the hand…
Though I do see it is in the original which you quote, so I’m not sure what you can do about it…
So, what I understand about the ozone hole is that it appears during the Antarctic winter, then disappears as it “warms up”. The wind currents help isolate the stratosphere and isolate the atmosphere, increasing the rate of depletion.
I can’t help but notice this is both seasonal and isolated, and that the conditions center around the cold forming “natural” ozone depletion agents (and, by the by, the Ozone Hole Website states CFCs are formed by sulfuric acid, nitric acid and ice, which is interesting as none of those molecules contain either carbon or chlorine). If the cold is the cause of the ozone drop because conditions are ideal for ozone depletion, then it stands to reason that the Little Ice Age was a very bad time for ozone globally. Of course, we weren’t measuring ozone back then, so making conclusions about the destruction of the ozone without historical data is alarmist, at best.
Dr. Dave says:
January 8, 2011 at 8:45 am
Few of us stop to consider exactly what the CFC ban costs were to society. Refrigeration and A/C became much more expensive. Millions of otherwise perfectly functioning poeces of equipment had to be scrapped.
Not to mention the number of people burned in fires which could have been controlled by Halon extinguishers.
To: ge0050 January 8, 2011 at 9:49 am
RE: Your comments
Are you a Marketing Manager/Strategist for the Green Movement?
Why spend money defending freon when it was losing its patent protection? Better to let the cheap stuff get banned and sell the more expensive replacement. Same was true with DDT which was off patent and cheap.
We need to find a way to protect diffuse interests or things will continue to organize in a manner that maximizes the benefits of concentrated interests. The ozone hole and DDT are simply emergent properties of the system. A difficult problem and not sure of an answer.
It’s great to see Lovelock getting something of a rehabilitation in this article. I have been saying for a long time that his first book on the Gaia hypothesis is a *must read* for anyone interested in Earth and it’s atmosphere and oceans.
ge0050 says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:49 am
“The Precautionary Principle tells us that we should never bathe, because the single biggest cause of accidents and death in the home is the bath.”
I am sealing my baths immediately. Has Al Gore heard about this ongoing calamity?
A question: This post seems to be a nice summary of material previously reported on elsewhere and here at WUWT. It does not include comments or links to the WUWT posts. For example:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/study-shows-cfcs-cosmic-rays-major-culprits-for-global-warming/
And, it does not have up-to-date graphics. Here is the September 2010 image of the ozone hole.
http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/monthly/monthly_2010-09.html
So, is there something new I’ve missed?
Bah. The Precautionary Principle tells us that we should never, ever turn our affairs over to ideologues with an agenda.
Regards,
Ric
ge0050 says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:49 am
“The Precautionary Principle tells us that we should never bathe, because the single biggest cause of accidents and death in the home is the bath.”
Not to mention the dangers of the Dihydrogen Monoxide used in these baths. /sarc
Not wanting to go too much off topic but the Lovelock Gaia hypothesis cuts two ways.
If the Earth is a self stabilising system with an agenda of its own then we are part of it and we are Gaia’s creation as are all our works and the consequences of them.
Who is to say that the ultimate intent of Gaia is not a world with far less diversity and with a single supreme species that in due course learns how to restrain population growth voluntarily and is entitled to use the Earth’s vast resources freely in the meantime?
The UN population figures keep bringing forward the date when global population will peak before a slow long term decline develops. Industrial activity and its consequent wealth always results in a breeding rate less than replacement level.
One could even propose that excessive environmental protection is against the broader concept of Gaia and likely to delay the eventual outcome required by Gaia.
Anyway, back to the topic. The ozone issue is now starting to look as flaky as the CO2 issue because much the same processes are involved. Namely the effect of variations in the mix of photons and particles received from the sun on the upper atmosphere with a consequent change in the energy budget of the entire globe.
And it looks like solar/atmospheric chemistry is the real issue and not radiative physics.
Time for a complete change of tack it seems.
I believe that that measurements taken in Antarctica during the IGY in 1957-1958 may show an ozone hole. If the data could be recovered from some archive, it could prove the existance of a large winter ozone hole over the Antarctic before Freon was common as in later decades.
Pops says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:37 am
I have little doubt that the pretty much worldwide ban on CFC has done some good…
Sorry, but I really don’t like this attitude. There is no way such a statement can be made in the absence of reliable data. The whole thing was a farce and nothing good can be said about it unless you’re willing to do some real science and show the benefit. Lacking that, zero tolerance for pseudoscience is the order of the day.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I agree with you, Pops.
Stephen Wilde says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:56 am
No doubt. My only point was that the original citation was outdated. A skeptical viewpoint requires accurate information, and why have an obviously outdated link sitting there as a softball ready to be whacked?
With regard to your comments about stratospheric cooling, I would be interested in whatever you’ve found with regard to observed vs. modeled stratospheric temps. As I’m sure you know, stratospheric temperatures have responded to major volcanic eruptions by increasing significantly and then reestablishing a new but lower baseline. AGW proponents have grasped onto this by emphasizing the downward long term “trend” and claiming it to be “consistent with” climate models, even though the behavior is in no way, shape, or form linear.
Usually, I see just hand-waving or simple denial when the stepwise nature is pointed out, but on occasion, I’ve seen “modeled” vs “observed” results shown, such as here (poor resolution unfortunately).
http://cybele.bu.edu/courses/gg312fall02/chap06/figures/fig7.gif
I’ve been meaning to look into the details of the “modeled” curve, but haven’t had time. Have you looked into these in detail, and why would a volcanic eruption establish a new baseline?
This comment by Lovelock was a part of the interview:
“There has been a lot of speculation that a very large glacier [Pine Island glacier] in Antarctica is unstable. If there’s much more melting, it may break off and slip into the ocean. It would be enough to produce an immediate sea-level rise of two metres, something huge, and tsunamis.”
Is there actually that much mass in this glacier to physically raise sea levels this much by simply adding the ice mass to the ocean or would it have to melt first (which would remove heat and help keep rise contained)?
Also from wikipedia:
“U.S. Patent #3258500) was set to expire in 1979. In conjunction with other industrial peers DuPont sponsored efforts such as the “Alliance for Responsible CFC Policy” to question anti-CFC science, but in a turnabout in 1986 DuPont, with new patents in hand, publicly condemned CFCs. DuPont representatives appeared before the Montreal Protocol urging that CFCs be banned worldwide and stated that their new HCFCs would meet the worldwide demand for refrigerants.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorofluorocarbon
From the book Kicking the Sacred Cow by James P. Hogan, starting at page 252,
Sigh.
CFC regulations have more to do with DuPont profit margins than with the ozone hole over the South Pole. Freon had lost its patent protection, it was now a commodity. DuPont needed to have a market for different, and less efficient, refrigerants. The rest is history.
Even as a kid I was getting skeptical about the dangers of cfc’s when the penguins, and marine life just kept on living and living; had they only known they would have been washing up on the coast like the dead, but well-informed, crabs, manatees, and fish of today.
Alexander Vissers says: When I was a child I was really worried about what would happen to our planet, extinction of all those beautyfull fluffy animal species, polution, cancer etc. It was the age of the Club of Rome.
Ah, yes, the Culb Of Rome and the “Running OUT!!!” meme…. (Limits to Growth, Meadows et.al.). Increadibly broken thesis. According to them we ran out of natural gas in 1980 ….
FWIW, I’ve seen reports that The Club of Rome is also behind the AGW scare. I’ve not looked into it much, but it ought to be discoverable.
We are NOT running out of resources.
We are NOT warming the planet with fuel use.
We are NOT hurting the ozone with CFCs.
Something else is afoot…
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
James Lovelock
“We should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science…”
It should be noted that James Lovelock is well qualified to talk about the ozone hole because he invented the electron capture detector, which ultimately assisted in discoveries about the persistence of CFCs and their role in stratospheric ozone depletion.
References
http://www.jameslovelock.org/page2.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article7061020.ece
Solar cycle 23 peaked co-incidentally with the Ozone Hole minimum. The Ozone Hole, and thus CFC’s must drive the solar cycle.
I may be a bit cynical . . . but . . .
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords Shot Outside a Grocery Store in Tucson … –
Giffords also voted to repeal subsidies to big oil companies and invest the savings in renewable energy. “We put our national security at risk by relying on oil from unstable regimes in the Middle East and Latin America,” Giffords told her colleagues in a speech on the House floor during debate on the Clean Energy Act. The act repeals $14 billion in subsidies given to oil companies and establishes a Strategic Renewable Energy Reserve to increase research in clean renewable energy, to develop greater energy efficiency, and to improve energy conservation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabrielle_Giffords
Wade says:
January 8, 2011 at 8:53 am
“When it comes to the ozone hole, I always wondered how freon destroyed the ozone over the Antarctic in the southern hemisphere when the majority of people and the majority of air conditioners were in the northern hemisphere.”
I have never understood the theory behind, how the use of freons in the Northern Hemishere could have such effect on the Ozone layer above the Antartic partly because of the point made by Wade but also due to the high molecular weight of the chemicals/molecules involved. How do these molecules migrate to such heights in sufficient concentration to break down the Ozone layer in the stratosphere? I have never seen a convincing explanation of this and would appreciate someone enlightening me as to the physical processes involved since it just sounds so far fetched.
Damn good question! No answers from me though – just a little history.
http://www.junkscience.com/Ozone/ozone_seasonal.html
http://tinyurl.com/2wbrj4x
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/Ozone/history.html
CFCs were causing growth of the antarctic ozone hole. They do cause ozone depletion. For all the questions you can possibly think of try:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/
The reason the original 2007 nature article was so shocking was because the mechanisms by which CFCs cause ozone depletion are pretty well pinned down. What had happened was a measurement that seemed to contradict the theory.
Subsequently that 2009 paper suggests the perceived problem may indeed be down to an error
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090507/full/news.2009.456.html