From the Harvard University news service and the what are they smoking department, comes this suggestion that apparently it never was ozone damaging CFC refrigerants at all, it was those nasty thunderstorms wot done it. They say:
“Recent studies have suggested that the number and intensity of such storms are linked to climate changes…which could in turn lead to increased ozone loss and greater levels of harmful UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and potentially higher rates of skin cancer.”
I have a pretty hard time believing this one, because, well, it’s like Rube Goldberg machine construct where lots of things have to happen to get the end result of skin cancer, plus, there’s a “could” spanner thrown into the works. I did a search for data on global thunderstorm frequency and found what I think is the basis for the claim:
Changes in severe thunderstorm environment frequency during the 21st century caused by anthropogenically enhanced global radiative forcing Robert J. Trapp, Noah S. Diffenbaugh, Harold E. Brooks, Michael E. Baldwin, Eric D. Robinson , and Jeremy S. Pal Edited by Kerry A. Emanuel, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, and approved October 25, 2007 PNAS
They say in the notes: Based on a compilation of data from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center and the U.S. National Weather Service Office of Climate, Water, and Weather Services (www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats.shtml) from 2000 to 2004
As anyone knows, four years does not a climatic trend make, and I could not find anything else that might be relevant. But there is a proxy for thunderstorms; tornadoes. Without strong thunderstorms, tornadoes don’t happen.
While the USA is not the world, it does have the most extensive and complete tornado database, and it suggests no upward trend in tornadic thunderstorms at all in the last 60 years:
UPDATE: Chip Knappenberger adds in comments: From Hicke et al., 2008, Trends and interannual variability in surface UVB radiation over 8 to 11 years observed across the United States, JGR (available here):
“Our study illustrates that, using a well-calibrated instrument record, the 10 years beginning around 1995 did not show significant trends in surface UVB irradiance at stations across the United States.”
Sooo, I think the leaps of logic in this paper are Olympic class ones.
Climate concerns
Harvard researchers find link between climate change, ozone loss and possible increase in skin cancer incidence
For decades, scientists have known that the effects of global climate change could have a potentially devastating impact across the globe, but Harvard researchers say there is now evidence that it may also have a dramatic impact on public health.
As reported in a paper published in the July 27 issue of Science, a team of researchers led by James G. Anderson, the Philip S. Weld Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, are warning that a newly-discovered connection between climate change and depletion of the ozone layer over the U.S. could allow more damaging ultraviolet (UV) radiation to reach the Earth’s surface, leading to increased incidence of skin cancer.
In the system described by Anderson and his team, water vapor injected into the stratosphere by powerful thunderstorms converts stable forms of chlorine and bromine into free radicals capable of transforming ozone molecules into oxygen. Recent studies have suggested that the number and intensity of such storms are linked to climate changes, Anderson said, which could in turn lead to increased ozone loss and greater levels of harmful UV radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, and potentially higher rates of skin cancer.
“If you were to ask me where this fits into the spectrum of things I worry about, right now it’s at the top of the list,” Anderson said. “What this research does is connect, for the first time, climate change with ozone depletion, and ozone loss is directly tied to increases in skin cancer incidence, because more ultraviolet radiation is penetrating the atmosphere.”
Unfortunately, Anderson said, we don’t know how this process will evolve over time.
“We don’t know what the development of this has been – we don’t have measurements of this deep convective injection of water into the stratosphere that go back in time,” Anderson said.
“But the best guide for the evolution of this is to look at the research that connects climate change with severe storm intensity and frequency, and it’s clear that there is a developing scientific case that the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is increasing climate change, and in turn driving severe storm intensity and frequency.”
While it’s impossible to know how many skin cancer cases may be related to ozone depletion over the U.S., the link between ozone loss and increased incidence of the disease has been extensively studied, Anderson said.
“There has been a major effort by the medical community to define the relationship between decreases in ozone and the subsequent increases in skin cancer,” he said. “The answer is quite clear – if you multiply the fractional decrease in ozone protection by about three, you get the increase in skin cancer incidence. There are 1 million new skin cancer cases in the U.S. annually – it’s the most common form of cancer, and it’s one that’s increasing in spite of all the medical research devoted to it.”
But it isn’t only humans who have to worry about the effects of increased UV radiation.
Many crops, particularly staple crops grown for human consumption – such as wheat, soybeans and corn – could suffer damage to their DNA, Anderson said.
Ironically, Anderson said, the discovery that climate change might be driving ozone loss happened virtually by accident.
Though they had worked since the mid-1980s to investigate ozone depletion in the Arctic and Antarctic, by the early-2000s, Anderson’s team had turned their attention to climate studies. In particular, they were working to understand how the convective clouds – updrafts that cause storms to build high into the sky – contribute to the creation of cirrus clouds.
“It was in the process of looking at that mechanism that we came to this unexpected observation – that the convective clouds in these storm systems over the U.S. are reaching far deeper into the stratosphere that we ever expected,” Anderson said.
While earlier tests performed in the Arctic had demonstrated that water vapor was a key component in creating the “free-radical” compounds that break down ozone, Anderson said the latest finding is much more troubling, because it suggests the process can happen at much higher temperatures than initially suspected.
“The bottom line is that if you increase the water vapor concentration, you actually increase the threshold temperature for executing this chemical conversion – from the stable forms of chlorine to the free radical form,” Anderson said. “If the amount of water vapor and the temperature over the U.S. satisfies the conditions for rapid conversion of inorganic chlorine to this free-radical form, we’ve got a real problem, because the chemistry is identical to what we previously demonstrated is taking place over the Arctic.”
Also surprising, he added, was the realization that, to throw water vapor high into the atmosphere, storms needn’t be unusually large.
“We have hundreds of measurements world-wide addressing the photochemical structure controlling ozone, but only a limited number of flights over the U.S. in summer,” he said. “The flights were studying average storms over the middle-west, and of the 20 observations we made over the U.S., about half demonstrated significant penetration into the stratosphere,” he said.
The next step in the research, Anderson said, is to conduct a series of tests to confirm whether the free-radical form of chlorine and bromine are present in the stratosphere at significantly elevated levels in the presence of convectively-injected water vapor.
“In my mind, this is not just a broad public health issue,” Anderson said. “This is about actually being able to step out into the sunlight – it’s about your children and your children’s health. Of course, we don’t know how rapidly the frequency and intensity of these storms will increase, so we can’t place a time scale on this problem, but the core issue here is quite straightforward and simple, because we understand this chemistry.”
Predictably, The New York Times has covered this, not questioning the conclusions at all:
Storms Threaten Ozone Layer Over U.S., Study Says
By HENRY FOUNTAIN
Strong summer storms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, adding that the risk of damage may increase as the climate warms.
h/t to Harold Ambler at Talking About the Weather
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OK; so here’s a tailor-made reference point for all those who dispute that climastrologists have ever predicted “Catastrophic” AGW.
“For decades, scientists have known that the effects of global climate change could have a potentially devastating impact across the globe,”
So maybe DAGW (Devastating AGW) would be fairer? Whatever, I’m easy. Catastrophic vs. Devastating is a distinction without a difference.
Sparks says:
July 26, 2012 at 2:59 pm
It must be officially called “global climate change” now.
It looks like “anthropogenically enhanced global radiative forcing” is now officially in the running, though. The acronym rolls so trippingly off the tongue: AEGRF (pronounced “Aiyeeee-gruff!”)
In case you’re actually impressed by Adams’ logic, the point where it fails is the finite fractionation of infinity. All fractions of infinity are also infinite.
The ozone hole is a cycle , too. It gets bigger and smaller in relation to the seasons.
The location is at the poles. The Antarctic one is bigger than the Arctic one. Why, go figure.
Next they consider night and day also being caused by humans.
First, please don’t misconstrue what I’m about to say, as I completely agree that this ‘latest research’ on might-maybe-coulda-possibly-but-we’ve-no-baseline-or-data sounds like completely – or nearly completely – bogus chicken little squawking.
That said, to be fair I have to note that typically even the very best research will always end with “more research is needed.” This is true in any field and one would be nuts to not ‘go there.’ The thing is that with good solid research, the ‘more research is needed’ will actually make sense and be for something that clearly stands a good chance of furthering knowledge – not just producing more confirmation bias or grant money. A good scientist will draw on the work just done to suggest various directions one should go in the future in order to add to the state of knowledge. In other words, as irksome as the ‘more research is needed’ statement can seems, that in and of itself is not a negative reflection on the work already done. So rip this ‘ozone-thunderstorm’ paper to bits, but not because they say more research is needed, but because the base paper is flawed, and the ‘more research’ suggested is also poorly conceptualized.
The ozone problems caused by refrigerants was invalid research. It was a jumped too conclusion by a BAS scientist. It has turned out to be associated with solar energy variations. How thunderstorms affect the ozone I cannot imagine since the ozone is way above the max. height of Cb cloud.
Nerd says:
July 26, 2012 at 2:47 pm
“There has been a major effort by the medical community to define the relationship between decreases in ozone and the subsequent increases in skin cancer,” he said. “The answer is quite clear – if you multiply the fractional decrease in ozone protection by about three, you get the increase in skin cancer incidence. There are 1 million new skin cancer cases in the U.S. annually – it’s the most common form of cancer, and it’s one that’s increasing in spite of all the medical research devoted to it.”
It’s going to awkward when they start to realize that it’s the UVB that prevents skin and other cancers… It’s called vitamin D. Of course, if you do it right…
I would think that widespread vitamin D deficiency is the root cause but it’s going to take 20-40 years for them to admit it like everything else.
I think this is partially correct.
The main reason why UVb reduces cancer is that it is the only wavelength that triggers the production of melanin which protects the skin from a broad spectrum of UV wavelengths.
UVa oxidises the melanin and turns the skin grey rather than brown it also damages the skin .
High ozone levels increases the ratio of UVa to UVb and is a bad thing.
Until recently sunscreen removed UVb but not UVa so this was also a bad thing. Although correlation does not prove causality the increaasse in skin cancer over the last 80 years is precisely correlated with the increased use of sunscreen.
There is also some evidence that vitamin D helps to repair cell damage so you get a double wammy.
The evidence contradicting the thesis in this paper is very strong.
The greatest incidence of skin cancer globally is in Australia and New Zealand which have the HIGHEST level of ozone in the world.
The lowest incidence of skin cancer occurs in people whose occupations expose them to the highest levels of direct sunlight (e.g farmers and roofers).
Sun related melanomas are almost entirely suffered by white skinned races. Although dark skins can produce melanomas these are randomly distributed over the body (like soles of feet) and are thought to be genetic .
I personally think that sunscreen is as big a scam as global warming. The evidence I have cited comes from research from a Caltech lecture I found on the internet about 5 years ago. When I tried to listen to it again the following week I typed in the same Google search but the there was no sign of it! Someone had paid to have it removed?
One of the predictions that the professor made was that by 2008 all the media would be telling you about UVa . The reason? The pharmaceutical companies had known about the problem since about 2000 and had been rushing to get approval for new products which would remove UVa. Now if you Google melanoma you do get papers on the effect of UVa but if you look carefully you will see that a number of these refer to peer reviews going back to 2002. We were not told then because there was too much money at stake.
Kind of interesting that . . .
The holes form over the poles, where not many actual people live, in winter when the sun isn’t shining on the ground where these few people may be found. Hard to get more human skin cancer out of that I would think.
I always believed that the original assertion that CFCs were responsible for the original ‘ozone hole’ was poor, unjustified science, probably incorrect, and an activist precursor for the big Climate Change scam.
The key thing that made the Montreal Protocol work was the support of Dupont – the very first unholy alliance between activists and big business. Each gained – Dupont stopped competitors using a patented chemical which was about to lose protection….
This is clearly part of the master plan of Dr EVIL. We need to get Austin Powers on the case!
Here is Dr Evils plan!!
And it’s on the front page of the NYT. *eye roll*
I thought lightning produced ozone.
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/50/19719.short
“This study addresses the question of how severe thunderstorm frequency in the United States might change because of enhanced global radiative forcing associated with elevated greenhouse gas concentrations. We use global climate models and a high-resolution regional climate model to examine the larger-scale (or “environmental”) meteorological conditions that foster severe thunderstorm formation. Across this model suite, we find a net increase during the late 21st century in the number of days in which these severe thunderstorm environmental conditions (NDSEV) occur.”
Based on the summary, the whole thing is speculation- no actual measurement of trends in thunderstorms or of ozone. Worthless junk like this is a direct result of too many billions government grants to study AGW. Cut off the AGW grants and increase grants for studies of ice ages by billions, and you’ll see a similar gaggle of papers on AGC(ooling)
gaggle of papers fear mongering a possible new ice age-
cal says:July 27, 2012 at 3:03 am
regarding vitamin D: one of its attributes is that it used in some cells, perhaps actually on, not in, to differentiate between our own body cells and foreign cells so the immune system can eliminate the foreigners. Sorry this is not technically more complete, I came across it while researching sarcoidosis granulomous. It is a rare condition which Vitamin D appears to exacerbate, apparently inhibiting the body/foreign cell differentiation, and the body attacks its own cells.
This does NOT mean that they will let us start using CFC-22 again. Besides, too many people are making too much money on the ‘Freon-22’ Black Market.
“What this research does is connect, for the first time, climate change with ozone depletion, and ozone loss is directly tied to increases in skin cancer incidence, because more ultraviolet radiation is penetrating the atmosphere.”
Dollar signs. Dollar signs, everywhere. That’s the money line.
‘We found a new way CO2 is gonna kill us! Better fund research on how to stop it!’
Headline coming to a news outlet near you: “CO2 CAUSES CANCER!”
Juergen Uhlemann (July 27, 2012 at 1:41 am) wrote:
“The ozone hole is a cycle , too. It gets bigger and smaller in relation to the seasons. […]
Next they consider night and day also being caused by humans.”
Exactly.
1+1=1984
Law of Authoritative Ignorance &/or Deception
The darkness faced by bright forces is extreme.
As the French say:
Bon Courage.
“and it suggests no upward trend in tornadic thunderstorms at all in the last 60 years:”
Hmmm, last 60 years. Again, I haul out my Worst-blank (wildfires, tornadoes hurricanes floods, etc.)-in-over-60yrs model and note that the tornado graph is just starting to look like the beginning of the build up from the early 50s to the ensuing 30 year stormy period. We should be careful here not expecting a build up of tornado activity for the next few decades. WHEN the increased incidence of stormy weather comes to pass, then there will be a lot of crowing by the climate change fellows. We should be advising that it is natural variation now and even predicting a stormy future for the first third of the present century.
In 1986 Al Gore wrote in ‘Esrth in the Balance’ that increased UV light from the hole in the ozone layer was turning salmon and rabbits blind (as in loss of sight) in Patagonia. This appears to be remakably presecient, as there were virtually no instuments monitoring incoming UV in those days.
Rational Db8 says: @ur momisugly July 27, 2012 at 1:41 am
First, please don’t misconstrue what I’m about to say….
_______________________________
I doubt any one here has a problem with funding research. Heck I have done research. But we do have a problem with agenda driven pseudo-research. Actually I feel rather sorry for the poor guys who have to kiss rumps to get funding and put the CAGW get out of jail free card on their research to get it peer reviewed.
Bias does not belong in research. Unfortunately we see it all the time and it is getting worse. Someone named the newest version Hansenkoism which I feel is quite appropriate.
Geoff Sherrington says:
July 28, 2012 at 2:48 am
In 1986 Al Gore wrote in ‘Esrth in the Balance’ that increased UV light from the hole in the ozone layer was turning salmon and rabbits blind (as in loss of sight) in Patagonia. This appears to be remakably presecient, as there were virtually no instuments monitoring incoming UV in those days.
Argentinian gummint vets stated there was a rash of UV-induced blindness in cattle being reported by ranchers after Uncle Al made that statement. The cows suddenly “got better” when the ranchers were told the cattle would have to be euthanized and there was no program to compensate them for any losses.
The hole in the ozone layer(in the south Atlantic) corresponded with a magnetic anomaly in the same spot. I’m no scientist, but I thought that was a pretty remarkable coincidence. I’ve never seen mention of this.
I believe that the reason Mars has no atmosphere is that it’s molten core solidified, bringing an end to the magnetic field that shielded it from the sun. Maybe the earth’s magnetic field has a more direct relationship with these atmospheric events than does any human activity.