Guest Opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
My grandmother told me “Your sins will find you out.” I don’t know if it’s original, but it certainly seems true when you look at the sins of those who created the ozone hole and global warming deceptions. Exposure of the sins is not surprising because many of the same people produced the template used in both cases. It involved creating unnatural scenarios that would eventually be out of phase with natural events. The truth is slow, but it eventually catches up, because, as Aldous Huxley explained,
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
There is not now and never was a “hole in the ozone.” The phrase was a public relations construct to mislead and exploit fear as the basis for a political agenda. The procedure used in the exploitation of environmental and climate for a political agenda is to take normal patterns and events and present them as, or imply, they are abnormal. It works because most people don’t know what is normal. Global warming became the largest exploitation of this practice, but it was based on the knowledge gained from reported ozone depletions over Antarctica. The ozone deception served as a forerunner, a practice run, for the global warming deception to follow.
Background
The objective is to link the normal change or event to human activity to form the basis for a political agenda culminating in control of people. The change must be global to bypass national governments and establish the need for a world government. A 1974 Club of Rome comment said, “The Earth has cancer and the cancer is man.” Their anti-humanity theme continued in the 1994 Club of Rome book, The First Global Revolution. It was written in 1994 but is more reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984.
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill … All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
Why do we need “a new enemy”? First they create the false or exaggerated problem, and then, they offer the solution. It is wrapped in the guilt that ‘you caused it’, but they offer salvation. Give us control and money so we can save you and the planet. Like all religious leaders, they claim the power of absolution. Pass the collection plate.
There is and always was an area of thinner ozone over Antarctica that is totally due to natural causes (Figure 1).
Figure 1 shows the level in Dobson Units explained in Figure 2. As with CO2, it is important the public understand the volumes and distributions so involved. Applying the information in Figure 2 against the conditions in Figure 1, you can see that the global average of 300 Dobson Units means if you compressed the ozone down to the surface at 0°C and one atmospheric pressure you have a layer 3 mm thick. The level over Antarctica in Figure 1 is 150 DU or half the average – thinner, but not a hole.
The entire story of ozone depletion due to Chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) was just that, a story, a scientifically created deception. It was a forerunner and template for the much larger deception of global warming entirely due to human produced CO2. Now, the evidence, much of which was known at the start but deliberately ignored, is emerging.
Sins Being Exposed
A recent headline illustrates the problem created by the deception that CFCs were causing Antarctic ozone depletion. Sir Walter Scott’s observation about tangled webs applies.
At a total extent of 28.2 million square kilometres, this year’s ozone hole was surpassed by only Sept 24, 2003 (28.4 million sq km), Sept 24, 2006 (29.6 million sq km) and September 9, 2000 (29.9 million sq km).
Why did the ozone hole grow so large this year? It was a combination of just how persistent ozone-depleting chemicals are in the atmosphere, and just how cold the atmosphere got over Antarctica during the past month.
Gradually they are presenting arguments that approximate the truth without disclosing they were wrong. They hope nobody will notice. NASA GISS is at the center of the strategy. Consider the following bureaucratese waffle.
Twenty years after the Montreal Protocol, Antarctica’s ozone hole isn’t growing substantially larger each year, but it isn’t actually –recovering – clearly growing smaller each year – yet, either. Atmospheric scientists reported that conclusion on December 11, 2013 to an audience of Earth scientists at the 2013 American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. These scientists presented results of two new studies, indicating that variations in temperature and winds drive year-to-year changes the size of the ozone hole. Susan Strahan of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland presented this work, saying:
Ozone holes with smaller areas and a larger total amount of ozone are not necessarily evidence of recovery attributable to the expected chlorine decline.
… meteorology [not chemistry] was responsible for the increased ozone and resulting smaller hole, as ozone-depleting substances that year were still elevated.
The trouble is ten years earlier a 2003 report said,
The rate at which ozone is being destroyed in the upper stratosphere is slowing, and the levels of ozone-destroying chlorine in that layer of the atmosphere have peaked and are going down — the first clear evidence that a worldwide reduction in chlorofluorocarbon pollution is having the desired effect, according to a new study.
The Ozone Layer
Ozone is created in the upper atmosphere in a process called photodisassociation. When ultraviolet (UV) radiation, which is a small part of the total electromagnetic energy from the sun, strikes free oxygen molecules (O2) (Figure 3). The molecules are split into single oxygen molecules (O), which combine with other O2 to create ozone (O3). (Figure 4) Ultraviolet is critical because it is the major factor in the creation of O3. Ultra means ‘beyond’ so it is light that is beyond the violet (400 nanometers) on the visible protion of the spectrum. It is visble because it is detectable by the human eye.
Formation of ozone occurs between 15 and 55 km above the surface with maximum concentration between 15 and 30 km. Densities vary horizontally and vertically, so levels over any region change hourly with air movement in the upper atmosphere. The Ozone Layer is self-healing because as UV penetrates further into the atmosphere it encounters more free oxygen.
Solar rays strike the atmosphere at a gradually decreasing angle from 90° at the equator to 0° at the poles. In his September 20, 1995, Congressional testimony Professor Fred Singer explained,
“A projected 10 percent UV increase from a worst-case global ozone depletion is the equivalent of moving just 60 miles closer to the equator….New Yorkers moving to Florida experience a more than 200 percent increase in UV because of the change of latitude.”
External Societal Dynamics of Deception
An important point to raise at this juncture relates to my first threatened lawsuit. It followed a radio debate with a dermatologist who made dire threats and urged use of sunblockers. I pointed out that humans require ultraviolet radiation to limit scrofula, a form of tuberculosis, that is created by a bacteria that is killed off by the UV. It also creates vitamin D that is necessary to prevent rickets, a form of bone disease. I told the audience that keeping children out of the sun and reducing the amount of UV exposure was potentially dangerous. This demonization of UV ignores its benefits. The same situation is true of CO2 and its essential role in the life of plants and all life.
It was additionally problematic because until recently the blockers only worked for UVB. Here is a comment from 2014.
Sunscreens are important skin-care products used to prevent photoaging and skin cancer. Until recently it was believed that blocking UVB radiation and sunburn were the only measures needed to prevent sun damage. The SPF rating was developed to measure the ability of a sunscreen to block UVB radiation.
Now we know that UVA radiation also damages the skin. Although the FDA has proposed a rating system that lets you know how well a sunscreen blocks UVA, that proposal has not been approved yet.
The dermatologist disagreed with my comment that sunscreen producers were a major promoter of the dangers. Recent revenue from just three US companies was $355 million with a 2.6% annual growth. Increased lifespan explains the increase in skin cancer, not ozone thinning. Save money, put on a hat.
False Assumptions
Global warming and ozone thinning each began with a hypothesis and in both cases were supported by completely false assumptions designed to predetermine and isolate a human cause. With warming, it was the assumption that an increase in CO2 causes a temperature increase. The only place in the world where that is true is in the IPCC computer models. With ozone thinning, the assumption was that solar energy and, therefore, ultraviolet radiation is constant. Since ozone is created by the interaction between UV and oxygen, assuming UV is constant eliminates it as an explanation for variation in ozone levels. It eliminated the most obvious natural variation, which is precisely what they wanted. It also required identification of a man-made product, even if it also occurred naturally like CO2, to blame. In the case of ozone, the product was chlorine, which is part of the refrigerant chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) commercially known as Freon.
Keeling and others, in conjunction with the IPCC, identified human produced CO2 as the problem. Crutzer, Molina and Rowland produced the science necessary to point the finger at CFCs. They, like Gore and the IPCC, received a Nobel Prize for their work. Their award reads in part,
“…for their work in atmospheric chemistry, particularly concerning the formation and decomposition of ozone”.
The award is arranged to give their work political credibility, a practice that makes the Prizes a mockery.
Notice it does not specify destruction of ozone in the Ozone Layer. They didn’t and couldn’t simulate atmospheric conditions in the Ozone Layer. With the pseudoscientific evidence, the political agenda could proceed. With both CFCs and CO2, they abandoned the scientific method and determined to prove rather than disprove their hypotheses. The imperative was to ban CFCs not to test the theory. Like the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) hypothesis, the consensus was determined before the research began, and contradictory or conflicting research ignored.
They ignored variations in ultraviolet radiation, which we now know is the major cause of variation. They also ignored the effect of other gases, especially water vapor in the form of ice crystals. They ignored the properties and effects of other gases at the extreme temperatures of -70°C and colder (see Strahan’s comments above). These crystals created what were initially ignored, namely Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSC). In 1998, the University of Cambridge said,
“the precise chemistry and details of PSCs are not fully understood…” “We do not yet fully understand the mechanism for PSC freezing, and this remains one of the largest uncertainties in stratospheric ozone modelling.”
This revelation is ten years after the “science was settled” with the signing of the Montreal Protocol.
Another parallel between the CO2 and CFC deception was production of a “wanted list” of similar planet destroying chemicals. It is another form of the consensus argument; if there are many, it must be true. With CFCs the list identified Ozone Destroying Chemicals (ODC). With CO2 the list identified Global Warming Potentials (GWP). The UNFCCC list identified dozens of GWPs but does not include water vapour, which they eliminated by their limiting definition of climate change for the IPCC.
By 1987, the manipulators persuaded over 190 countries to sign the Montreal Protocol. It called for elimination of ODCs by countries that signed, committing them to limiting all production. Interesting differences with the Kyoto Protocol resulted in similar political outcomes. The US and other industrialized nations ratified the Montreal Protocol. Later AGW promoters argued it was proof that the Kyoto Protocol would work. However, two countries, India and China said, you reduced your food losses by 30 percent through the refrigerant CFCs that you said was an environmentally safe neutral gas. Now, you are saying that we can’t reduce our food losses by using the same refrigerant. They proposed that the developed nations reduce their use and allow them to raise their level. The proposal was rejected. It was another example of what Paul Driessen wrote about so effectively in his book Eco-Imperialism, which Wikipedia defines as follows.
Eco-imperialism is a term coined by Paul Driessen to refer to the forceful imposition of Western environmentalist views on developing countries.
Another parallel involved the challenge of separating the human-produced chemical from the natural. Chlorine was the active ingredient in CFCs that they claimed destroyed ozone in the high atmosphere. They claimed the chlorine from CFCs was different than natural chlorine.
Susan Solomon became interested in stratospheric chemistry and did her thesis research with Paul Crutzen of Nobel fame. Later from lab work at NOAA Susan Solomon produced a theoretical paper about the role of chlorine dioxide and the destruction of ozone. There has never been, to my knowledge, in situ evidence. Solomon went on to work as a contributing author for the IPCC TAR (2001) and co-chair of working Group I of the FAR (2007). These were two of the most influential IPCC Reports on policies driving the recent Paris Conference.
The false science was exposed in “The Holes in Ozone Hoax” As they wrote
“Omitted from this story of mass destruction is the fact that the amounts of chlorine contained in all the world’s CFCs are insignificant compared to the amount of chlorine put into the atmosphere from natural sources”
The CO2 equivalent to the chlorine deception involved claiming that the CO2 produced from burning fossil fuels differed from “natural” CO2. Similarly, the volumes produced by humans are within the error of the estimate of at least two major non-human sources. It would be an insignificant amount, even if it were causing global warming. The only way the IPCC was able to claim human CO2 was the major factor involved eliminating almost all other possible sources of change. Promoters of the CFC fiasco did the same earlier and achieved their goal. No wonder they tried it again with CO2.
Mark Twain observed that a lie can be half way around the world before truth can pull its boots on.
Please less comments, because we must save the Planet , your pleasure to explain everything drive the use of energy too high: your brains are hotter , your metabolism is higher , that means a lot of CO2 extra, the use of servers means higher electricity consumption, that means much CO2 to produce it and so on… Please do more restraint to save the Planet !
What is this Planet to talk about greenhouse effect as long our Planet Earth it is an open system.
I hope you didn’t took me seriously ! .
Next up is nitrogen.
http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/nitrogen-and-climate-change-dave-reay/?sf1=barcode&st1=9781137286956
I suspect that methane will be the next target, as a small amount of it is associated with the evil oil and gas companies.
Now that they feel they are all justified in taxing the air we exhale, now they will concentrate on justifying taxing our farts.
About time.
And oxygen is bl..dy dangerous too, look at fires.
I guess once we’re breathing vacuum they’ll be happy.
You’ll know it’s time to run when you see the headline “Wild fires to be controlled by reducing oxygen emissions …”
It’s a joke. Isn’t it? Someone please tell me it’s a joke? Please. He can’t be serious, can he? Can he? Can he?
Sorry, that was a reply to the nitrogen comment.
The nitrogen oxides were the key in the volkswagen diesel software.
I keep trying to make this point but the Ozone Hole is not as a result of Ozone getting destroyed.
It just gets forced out of the south polar vortex to the mid-latitudes. It gets “swept out”, not destroyed.
When the Ozone Hole is peaking in September/October, the Ozone concentrations in the middle south latitudes peak at the opposite time of the year. This is the end of the cold winter at the south pole. When the Sun returns, the Ozone moves back in.
Maybe this chart will provide some proof for some. The average of these two latitudes hardly changes at all throughout the year and it has not gone down over this period.
http://s1.postimg.org/p25kctw9b/Ozone_Shifts_Latitude_Nov15.png
Data from the Climate Explorer.
http://climexp.knmi.nl/select.cgi?id=someone@somewhere&field=o3col
From my reading on the subject, the bulk of Earth’s ozone is created in the equatorial stratosphere. It moves polewards both because of a lesser partial pressure of ozone at higher latitudes, and also because of equatorial heating and cooling at the poles. In any event, ozone has a relatively short half-life, and in the absence of sunlight, there is no new ozone created at the poles in the Winter to replenish what naturally decays. As I remarked in a previous post, anomalously high concentrations are routinely recorded outside the Antarctic circumpolar vortex. I’m not sure of the exact mechanism that stalls the migration, but the evidence is visible. As to the photolysis and catalytic destruction when the sun first comes up over the horizon, I’m pretty sure it happens, but the effect is probably overemphasized.. The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer was was unable to measure Winter ozone levels because it required sunlight, something in short supply over the South Pole in the Winter. So, what we see is during the earliest possible measurements, there is low ozone which continues to decrease in concentration until the vortex breaks up and the ozone sitting outside the vortex can mix with the depleted air. Once the sun gets high enough in the sky, it is capable of actually producing some ozone over the pole, although it is by then also supplemented by ozone from lower latitudes as it is free to migrate into that area in the absence of the vortex.
In order to accept your hypothesis that the ozone is “swept out” of the high latitudes, you need to provide a reasonable mechanism for extracting it that does a better job of explaining the process than what my summary above does.
Bill and Clyde
Ozone is destroyed continuously faster than it is being created when there are more GCR’s than there is sunlight, i.e. at the poles. The ingress of tropical ozone into Antarctic air is blocked by wind for part of the year, plus there is no sunshine in winter for a long time.
For this reason I lean more towards Clyde’s explanation but add that ozone is not a very long-lived molecule. It is continuously subtracted in the presence of chlorine, bromine, GCR’s and lack of sunlight. That CFC’s contain chlorine is co-incidental and minor. The ocean output vastly dominates the total.
I would have thought dihydrogen monoxide would be the next?
Everything, however finely spun, finally comes to the sun.
A wall with cracks will soon collapse.
The truth will out, eventually.
That first line is Biblical, from Numbers 32:23
This goes against the two scares.
First, if there is umprecedent warming, how come the atmosphere in Antarctica got so cold?
And second, Chemical reactions slow down as temperature drops. How come ozone gets depleted faster?
The stratosphere has cooled because increasing greenhouse gases cool the top radiative level of the atmosphere by increased emission of radiation. Colder polar stratosphere temperature favors the ozone-destroying reaction because it is catalyzed by polar ice clouds.
Donald, how did the greenhouse gases skip by the troposphere to get to the stratosphere? troposphere has not warmed……
This would only be true if there were a mid-to-upper tropospheric “hot spot” in tropical regions, required by the physics of the global circulation models if there is warming. The cooling of the stratosphere is, theoretically, supposed to be “compensation” for that hot spot.
However, no hot spot has been detected instrumentally. Sherwood et al. claim to have found it after dramatic and very questionable torture of the data, but the instruments still say it isn’t there.
Latitude asks about greenhouse gases skipping the troposphere: The uppermost troposphere has cooled and the lower troposphere has warmed over the period of the satellite record, which an increase of greenhouse gases would cause.
Does Trenberth know this or is he still looking for the stratospheric hotspot that “proves” global warming? You sound like the people who predicted warmer winters because of “global warming” and when cities like Boston get hit by the worst blizzard in years then it is also because of “global warming”. If North pole ice extension gets a record low, it is global warming, if South pole ice estension gets a record high, it is also global warming, if great lakes ice cover increases, guess what? also manmade global warming.
First, even catalyzed reactions slow down at colder temperatures and go faster at warmer temperatures.
And second, and more important. CFCs are out of the picture in the polar ice clouds hypothesis. So, if ozone depletion is catalyzed by polar ice clouds instead of CFCs, can we use our CFCs again?
Actually, the polar ice clouds hypothesis is even more ambiguous than the CAGW hypothesis. It looks like somebody saw some stratospheric clouds in the south pole and thought “that must have something to do with the ozone hole”. And that’s it. Nothing else is known. What is the reaction mechanism? Are CFCs involved in the reaction? If yes, then how? What are the structural features that make ice a catalyst for thar reaction? Does the ice on the poles or at the top of the mountains catalyze the reaction too? If not, why not? What is the difference of the free energy or activation between the catalyzed reaction and the non-catalyzed one? With that difference of free energies of activations we can calculate how much the reaction is catalyzed by applying the equation:
DeltaG = DeltaGº + RTln(cat/uncat)
For an example about a mechanism of action of a catalyst check: http://www.jbc.org/content/242/22/5212.full.pdf
The predicted upper atmospheric hotspot of rapid warming is not anywhere in the stratosphere, but in the middle-upper troposphere in a subset of the tropics – in and near the intertropical convergence zone. The fact that this is essentially nonexistent is evidence of climate change models considering feedbacks to be excessively positive. That issue apparently arose due to climate models being tuned to hindcast the past with an assumption of lack of multidecadal oscillations such as AMO or multidecadal patterns in frequency and intensity of El Nino or La Nina. So, the climate models seem to have been tuned to assume that the great warming from the early 1970s to 2005 was all manmade and none of it was from a natural cycle that started its downswing phase early in this century.
Ice on the poles and on mountains does not assist the destruction of stratospheric ozone because there is no stratospheric ozone on the polar surfaces or on mountains.
“First, even catalyzed reactions slow down at colder temperatures and go faster at warmer temperatures.”
With the PSC the chemical reaction is getting in a total different “environment”: The reaction move from the gas phase into the liguid phase when the temperatures plunges under a certain level. Thus the temperature dependency is not covered with your equation alone. In the different phases you have significant different reaction rate coefficients. The other questions can be easily answered using the usual online resources: I would recommend to study this:
http://www.ccpo.odu.edu/SEES/ozone/oz_class.htm
When you are thru you will be able to judge stuff you find on ozone hole in the web.
Duh. “unprecedented”.
Depleted because not renewed as it becomes O2.
ultimately don’t the Club of Rome have to claim credit for the human population collapse that they are so busy trying to achieve? Or is the idea to just manage from crisis to crisis always blaming the industrial system as the world suffers environmental collapse.
What collapse? Stats show major improvement.
Brian the point of the Club of Rome is to advocate for a “post industrial” society and a human population of around half a billion worldwide. That’s the “thinkers” behind the neo Malthusian wing of the AGW crowd. A human population reduction by 6.5 people on scales less than millennia would be a collapse!
Before that it was DDT
Susan Solomon will be judged by history as the equivalent of Rachel Carson. Both gained fame through bogus science that caused the deaths of millions of humans
Carson’s folly: DDT is not carcinogenic, but rather is immensely effective in killing malaria-carrying mosquitos. Millions of African children (in particular) have died due to banning of DDT.
Solomon’s folly: Human use of CFC’s changes the south-polar ozone concentration. We now know that polar ozone is largely governed by variations in solar UV radiation (hmmm … no human effect there). Montreal-protocol-forced reductions in CFC production have only made refrigeration more expensive, which reduces human-engineered cooling in hot climates and makes food storage more expensive.
These two women will share historical excoriation with Margaret Sanger (Planned Parenthood founder and architect of the Negro [eugenics] Project) as enemies of humanity, killers of millions, and icons of false science.
Our civil right to control our own bodies matter a lot to many of us females.
Good summary GeologyJim.
DDT is only banned for mosquito control in about a couple dozen countries, mostly ones more prosperous and industrialized than the ones in the malaria-stricken regions of Africa.
News: DDT is not even an insecticide, but a repellant that disrupts the ability to sense direction of CO2 sources. (DDT into a cloud of mosquitoes does not produce a rain of bug corpses, but a flight from the area.)
You seem to have a unique view of the properties of DDT: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT
“Before that it was DDT”, in competition with Acid Rain.
Tim Ball loves to start his essays with quotes. Note above he quotes Aldous Huxley. In prior posts he starts his formulaic essays with a quotes from Winston Churchill or John Saul etc. There are a couple of reasons for this. 1) Borrowing wisdom. It is much easier to convince somebody of something if you plant an accepted truth, a well known truth is best, to prepare your reader that MORE wisdom is yet to come. It doesn’t have to be even relevant to the essay, just so long as it cultivates the mental soil, so to speak. 2) Tim wants us to believe that he is erudite. Quoting people is one of those methods to let y’all know that he has read stuff before. Again, it is to make us pay attention and maybe even awe him. Ok fair enough. He especially likes to make reference to quotes that sound like Shakespeare but are really from more obscure writers. Shakespeare is so ordinary. He also like to quote the bible, but oddly, he never attributes the origin of his quote to that source? His grandma apparently said “your sins will find you out”. Only she wasn’t the first to have said that. That is a quote from the Old Testament Numbers 32:23 “But if you fail to do this, you will be sinning against the LORD; and you may be sure that your sin will find you out.” Not specifically quoting Northrop Frye’s work The Great Code wherein Frye makes the case that all great literature has roots in scripture, so too did Ball’s grandma. I suspect Ball knew that but a defect runs deep in Dr Ball.
“Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.”
Okay , you are no fan of the messenger……..what is wrong with the message ? I deal with many people ….some who seem to have been weaned on a dill pickle….and sometimes they are right…..it seems best to agree when they are right, and to let the rest go. YMMV.
Just right, Bob. Paul W’s criticism isn’t, as far as I can see, criticism at all. Just pointless waffle. There are some interesting challenges that could be made on the substance of Dr. Tim’s post but this sort of stuff is so distracting (perhaps that’s the idea?) that I’ll leave it for when cooler debate prevails.
Sweet Old Bob December 5, 2015 at 3:31 pm
Okay , you are no fan of the messenger……..what is wrong with the message ?
Plenty, he has no clue about the mechanism of ozone depletion and misrepresented what is known and observed.
Saying you do not like a man’s sources or quotes while finding nothing wrong with them does not mean anything. Neither does saying the man has a defect, we all have defects. But the fact remains that many people on WUWT think Dr Ball is a good writer, an honest man, and everything he has said is worthwhile. I have yet to see any substantial refutation of his work.
Paul, if it’s so terrible to use quotes, why did you do it? And what’s wrong with “borrowing wisdom”? Expecting everyone to reinvent the wheel instead of learning from the wisdom of others is pure foolishness. There’s nothing wrong with quoting others, even if they were quoting or paraphrasing someone else. Writers do it all the time. Your diatribe reeks of personal animosity. I fail to see any real basis for your complaint.
So what was the point of your post?
Very interesting observations, Paul.
Well, on second thoughts, not very interesting really, just observations.
Westhaver……The great defect lies in you.
Paul,
When they say “Don’t play the man, play the ball!” they do not mean that you should attack Dr. Ball.
I think that that advice is given to encourage you to swallow the zealous bile that clearly rises in your throat, and to affect a demeanour of emotional detachment, such that you can reveal your antagonist’s error with perspicuity and decorum.
Since you have disregarded that aphoristic counsel, you find yourself in the embarrassing position of hypocritical self-impalement.
Your assertion that ” That is a quote from the Old Testament Numbers 32:23″ is false; you are confounding ‘quote’ and ‘paraphrase’.
Tim’s grandma’ formulated (apparently) her own truism with input from the translation of the bible that she was familiar with. You appear to ignore that and, then, go on to begrudge Tim his nostalgic recollection.
You launch into a sophomoric psycho-analysis of Tim’s literary style, projecting your own puerile prejudices onto his motivation. You scour the “Compleet Workes of Shakespeare” (ThanK god for google) to validate your hypothesis of “Oblique Allusion”. You resort to a number of curious ploys, like folksy “y’all” to impute condescension. You seize this “god-given” opportunity to quote your favourite book. You throw in a revered (by some), Canadian academic, along with the title of one of his books. That’s not to suggest erudition. Is it?
Why?
It’s got nothing to do with Ozone!
Paul. Why are you so restrained today? Been taking your tranquilizers again?
I consider this to be ad-hominem argument. So what if he likes to quote others?
“When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.” — Michel de Montaigne
I guess when you lose to the argument, it is not surprise you reach for the ad hominem.
So what! Who doesn’t .It detracts nichts from the article.Damn pettiness.
And the long running debate continues: is there such a thing as originality, in the pure sense, or is everything just a rehash of the ideas of others?
How now Horatio, you tremble and looke pale.
Is not this fomething more than fantafie ?
What thinke you on’t ?
I see that you cannot dispute the facts, so you foolishly display your ignorance by attempting to demean the author. So sad.
Still waiting for a reply.
Do try to be courteous, if you please.
Your time has run out.
Sturgis Hooper
Is there any error in any of the points that Dr Ball raised you you know and want to share?
Tim writes….”Their anti-humanity theme continued in the 1994 Club of Rome book, The First Global Revolution. It was written in 1994 but is more reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984.”
1994/1984 has a nice numerical alliteration but the book was published in 1991 (by Pantheon Books in the US, I have a British copy which was published by Simon & Schuster Ltd, Copyright © Alexander King and Bertrand Schneider, 1991).
Getting the publication date right is important, firstly as getting simple facts wrong affects how the veracity of the entire article is perceived.
More importantly 1991 predates 1992. The book was in print and therefore this important document was influencing policy makers in the run up to and during the Rio ‘Earth Summit’ of 1992 ( http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html ) which under (Conference Secretary-General) Maurice Strong produced ‘Agenda 21’.
You mention the Hole in the Ozone Layer and Global Warming. Another pseudo-scientific scare you did not mention was Acid Rain. Lakes in Northern Ontario were found to be acid. This was blamed on wind borne pollutants from the Detroit area..Scandinavian countries blamed the UK industrial Midlands for giving them acid rain. What the reporting “scientists” failed to mention was that the lakes whose acidity they measured were in the middle of coniferous forests. Conifers turn the earth around them acid and this leaches into lakes. Anyway, CO2 in the air will dissolve into raindrops forming carbonic acid. Another manufactured scare.
James: Maybe so, but we had real acid rain from the smelters at Sudbury and Rouyn. And if you ever spent a gusty summer’s day in Flin Flon. Honest, you could hardly see across the street.
Now they have found they can make money by trapping the SO2 and selling sulphuric acid (at Sudbury, anyway). The market provided a solution.
Yes, and the vegetation regrowth at Sudbury, Ontario is nothing short of fantastic compared to what it looked like in the 1960’s and 70’s. Haven’t been to Rouyn/Noranda or Flin Flon, Manitoba recently though.
Quote: “water vapor in the form of ice crystals”
Tim Ball you just blew “introduction to science 101”
Look, MFK,
Kudos to you for pointing out that whole ‘water’, ‘vapor’, ice thing!
Since you’re so clued in on this topic; which college offers “introduction to science 101”? Are you enrolled? Or, are there pre-requisites?
Is it a course in the Linguistics program?
Perhaps you might like look up the definition of cirrus clouds and, while you’re at it, the processes of sublimation and deposition.
@MFKBloulder,
What wrong with the phrase? Don’t clouds form when water vapor condenses to form ice crystals? I don’t understand your complaint.
It is simply as this: It is vapor or it is ice crystals.
And to make it a little bit tricky: when it is ice crystals it is likely that there is liquid water as well.
Please don’t show your scientific ignorance by trying to be clever and find fault. At the temperatures involved water vapor goes directly to ice crystals in the process of sublimation. That was part of the point I made when talking about Crutzer, Molina and Rowland’s inability to recreate temperatures and pressures at altitude over Antarctica.
Now you’re showing your scientific ignorance. The type I PSCs involved in O3 depletion are not water crystals, rather they are crystals of nitric acid trihydrate, or spherical drops of nitric acid and sulphuric acid solutions.
Talking about showing ignorance:
Tim Ball, you are comparing the Chemistry noble laureates appointed by (parts of) the scientific community with the peace Nobel Peace Price awarded by a committee appointed by politicians.
This spells ignorance IMHO.
Further on you write: “The award is arranged to give their work political credibility, a practice that makes the Prizes a mockery.”
At the time Rowland, Molina and Crutzen were awarded Nobel Price in Chemistry, the Montreal Protocol was already singed since 8 years. Why would they need the political credibility?
this is not a quote from the book
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill … All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.”
The real quote which has quite a different interpretation:
http://www.archive.org/download/TheFirstGlobalRevolution/TheFirstGlobalRevolution.pdf
The common enemy of humanity is Man
In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill.
In their totality and their interactions these phenomena do constitute a common threat which must be confronted by everyone together. But in designating these dangers as the enemy, we fall into the trap, which we have already warned readers about, namely mistaking symptoms for causes.
All these dangers are caused by human intervention In natural processes. and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself.
And that changes the interpretation how exactly?
Chlorine from natural sources is different, due to its valence. It is in the form of chloride ions such as in salt, or hydrogen chloride which dissociates into hydrogen ions and chloride ions in contact with water such as cloud droplets that form in ascending air. These chlorine compounds are also water soluble and hygroscopic, and have a high rate of being rained out instead of even making it to the stratosphere.
True, but chlorine has nothing to do with the ozone hole, which will always be there.
Always?
At least it wasn’t there when Dobson went for his first measurements in 1957.
I wouldn’t be too quick to bet your paycheck on the claim that the so-called ozone hole didn’t exist before TOMS data started being collected in ’78. From Wikipedia, “The vertical distribution of ozone is derived using the Umkehr method [using the Dobson spectrophotometer]. This method relies on the intensities of reflected, rather than direct, UV light. Ozone distribution is derived from the change in the ratio of the same UV-pair frequencies with time as the sun sets. An ‘Umkehr’ measurement takes about three hours, and provides data up to an altitude of 48 km, with the most accurate information for altitudes above 30 km.”
This means that Dobson wouldn’t have been able to take profile measurements until the sun stayed above the horizon in the Spring for about 3 hours. More importantly, if the measuring station was located under the ‘hole,’ the spectrophotometer would be measuring the vertical distribution of ozone along a slant range south of the ‘hole.’ So, the reality is, we don’t have good vertical profile data prior to the launch of the first TOMS satellite.
All I said is that there are measurements during antarctic spring since 1957: measured was total ozone coulmn. This gives a fairly good measure for the ozone minimum. Do you have any indicator that in the last 50 years there were ozone column minima below 140 DU before the 80s?
The CFC exception for Primatene Mist (an over-the-counter epinephrine inhaler) expired a couple of years ago, so they took it off the shelves, even though there is as yet no non-CFC replacement.
The only over-the-counter alternative, AsthmaNefrin inhalers, quickly clog and fail, and they are not very portable.
Albuterol, the prescription “emergency” inhaler, is generally not as effective, is not available over the counter, and is not effective against allergy-related anaphylaxis.
As a result, the Montreal Protocol is killing people in the US, since there is no other over-the-counter medicine which will stop anaphylaxis in its tracks. For asthmatics this situation is an utter disaster.
Albuterol, the prescription “emergency” inhaler, is generally not as effective, is not available over the counter, and is not effective against allergy-related anaphylaxis.
Agree totally. I used to recommend and carry Primatine Mist, epinephrine, as a substitute for the immediate, on the spot and possibly life-saving treatment of Anaphylaxis and Asthma for anyone otherwise unprepared. There’s still no substitute.
Annie, Jpeden. I agree with you.
I use inhalers now that have a counter starting with 124 puffs. Well all of these inhalers need 2-3 puffs to start delivering medication. Then when the counter is about 20 or so they stop delivering medication. And rarely, I get one that either doesn’t have any medication included or somehow has eliminated the efficacy of the medication. I too miss Primatene Mist inhalers.
And if you calculate the volume or mass of the earth’s atmosphere and compare it to the propellant in all the inhalers ever made. A complete scam, and, as you say, deadly.
I’m glad somebody mentioned this so I don’t have to.
But yes- there is now a fully adequate solution:
AsthmaNefrin ampules are available from Walmart. The AsthmaNefrin nebulizer is total crap and the company certainly is fully aware of it. Apparently they have not been ragged on enough, yet.
However, there are other nebulizers that are good. One of those is the Mabis Minibreeze which will put out like a fog machine at and Alice Cooper concert.
Albuterol and Ipratropium do NOT stop an attack; adrenaline stops one in seconds, not minutes.
So nothing can substitute for adrenaline.
AsthmaNefrin is o.t.c. but the other drugs are not. While cheap (4$ for 20 ampules) they require you to pay a medical professional to scrawl something moderately legible on a special little form. That’s not so cheap.
So I’m interested if anybody has an idea how to figure out the number of deaths due to the banning of Primatene inhalers?
During the time from the drying.up of supply (a few months after the ban, the hoarded supplies became too scarce to find at any price) to the appearance of the AsthmaNefrin ampules, I enjoyed a morning waterboarding almost every day. It got so bad I wrote my will and made my peace. I can’t imagine everybody else so afflicted were quite so lucky.
In praise of Dr. Tim Ball:
This man had immense pressures brought to bear on him in an attempt to crush him.
He never broke. That’s a hero.
Paul, he’s not in competition with you for the throne of punditry. He’s not even playing in that sandbox.
If you throw yourself against him, you will be scratched and you will be broken because Dr. Tim is Mohs 12.
You are just talc.
I want to thank Paul Westhaver for confirming the validity of my article in the most traditional way possible.
“Argumentum ad Hominem (abusive and circumstantial): the fallacy of attacking the character or circumstances of an individual who is advancing a statement or an argument instead of trying to disprove the truth of the statement or the soundness of the argument. Often the argument is characterized simply as a personal attack.”
Believers seem to be running out of valid arguments, and slander is the currency of a bankrupt argument.
Yep, he’s guilty…sadly to this day they teach this crap in university courses across many disciplines, including biology and chemistry classes (and mathematics/statistics, too)..
IMO, your best article, and 100% correct on Ad hominem. Any individual using that tactic is slime.
BTW, did you ever delve into the DuPont R12 patent expiry and its relationship to the “Ozone Hole” in order to wind up with the newer refrigerant.
Kakoda asks: “did you ever delve into the DuPont R12 patent expiry and its relationship to the “Ozone Hole””
I doubt you’ll ever find anyone to admit that, the evidence as always going to be circumstantial. It was awfully convenient wasn’t it? The timing was perfect. I have an EPA Mobile HVAC Technicians certificate now so I’m able continue restoring antique cars from the 60’s and 70’s without being forced to convert them to R-134A, but I still pay about 4 to 6 times more for R-12 than I would have, so does anyone in an “undeveloped” country who’d like to maintain their refrigerator. No one’s ever going to prove the link. Ozone doesn’t form in the Antarctic because it just doesn’t get enough sunlight, nothing more to it.
What gets me is the green movement is so easy to co-op. You’d think they’d be smart enough to see they’re being manipulated by the same people they’re trying to regulate? Then they turn around and call me a tool of Big Oil or DuPont when I try pointing out the lies to them. It’s hard to watch it happen. Big Oil got them to shut down nuclear power. Now they’ve convinced all of them to stop fossil fuel exploration and development, knowing full well what that’s going to do to the energy markets. Give Exxon a choice between selling 100 barrels today for $50 each or 10 barrels tomorrow at $500? Which are they going to pick? The oil isn’t going bad on the shelves or anything.
It’s the almost criminal stupidity of these folks that bothers me more than anything else I think.
“BTW, did you ever delve into the DuPont R12 patent expiry”
Wikipedia says R12 was invented between 1930 and 1935. That means the patent should have expired about 1950, about 40 years before the ozone scam.
I did. Nothing to it. I am not a fan of dupont but they had nothing to do with cfc being banned., in fact they fought it.
Here you go…
Montreal Protocol fashioned by DuPont in lieu of an expiring patent and environmental pressure,
https://eng.ucmerced.edu/people/awesterling/copy_of_ESS141.2010/Assignments/DuPont
Equally unacceptable are the related tu quoque attacks.
It was good to see that none of those were present in Dr Ball’s article.
Monkies learn by mimicking other monkeys. We shouldn’t be surprised when an ozone ruse begets a CO2 ruse. What will be the next ruse whipped up by the rising political group ?
global cooling ?
residual pharmas in the water supply ?
runaway urban sprawl ?
deforestation ?
runaway quarks ?
runaway genetic mutations ?
self modulating artificial intelligence ?
the son of dengue ?
:::: fingering my thick beard … which one has the highest potential ROR ::::
Paul, are you there? Any comment Paul?
I wrote about this once…
http://www.floppingaces.net/2009/11/28/the-conspiracy-of-the-centuries-reader-post/
“There is and always was an area of thinner ozone over Antarctica that is totally due to natural causes”
What is the empirical evidence that there ‘always was’ such an area? The quoted claim occurs prominently early in the article, and I was expecting something in the rest of the article to back it up. It is impossible that there would be any direct observations beyond the fairly recent past, as Antarctica wasn’t even discovered until the late C18, but could we have some evidence from, say, 1950 onwards?
Please note that I am not saying I dispute the claim, but I would like some direct empirical evidence for it. From the article as it stands, it seems to be merely an inference from the geometrical fact that the incidence of solar radiation is less (per unit area) at the poles than at the equator.
I think the implication is that the “natural’ cause of depletion is due to colder temps in the stratosphere: less solar incidence, lower temps at the poles, of the air column as a whole. It can be reasonably inferred from this that the ozone would be “thinner” over the poles: expected and “natural”.
Probably not the ‘complete’ answer you’re looking for, but good evidence showing a close correlation between temperature and ozone since 1985,
http://www.awi.de/en/science/long-term-observations/atmosphere/antarctic-neumayer/meteorology/ozone.html
Then there’s this on the Arctic ozone hole in 2011 that,
“A NASA-led study has documented an unprecedented depletion of the Earth’s protective ozone layer above the Arctic last winter and spring that was caused by an unusually prolonged period of extremely low temperatures in the stratosphere.”
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/unprecedented-arctic-ozone-loss-occurred-last-winter
As was stated in Tim;s article; they knew / know the true science, it just doesn’t help them push the cart (meme) so they say something “different” to get the speed up.
So, I guess the South Pole discriminates against cold and CFC caused depletion preferring only the CFC sort, and the North Pole prefers cold caused depletion. Well, I guess they are polar opposites, right?
Cheers!
The data shows t he ozone hole has been stable since the early 1990’s (http://ozonewatch.gsfc.nasa.gov/statistics/annual_data.html). How long does isd the effect of CFCs supposed to last?
They originally said 15 years.
The issue is not only CFCs, but also chlorocarbons and hydrochlorocarbons. A significant one is carbon tetrachloride, whose estimate for breakdown rate was recently lengthened, and it is still being present in the atmosphere to a greater extent than expected. I suspect possibility of a rogue source that is not obeying the Montreal Protocol or taking advantage of poor enforcement.
2015 Antarctic ozone hole 4th largest on record
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/uk/news/articles/climate-and-environment/2015-antarctic-ozone-hole-4th-largest-on-record/59252/
“How long does isd the effect of CFCs supposed to last?”
How long is a piece of (climate science) string?
The first reference to “Crutzer” should instead be “Crutzen.”
It’s the job of environmental scientists to find and help solve issues. These could be toxic hazards, carcinogenic hazards, etc. More often than note, they provide valuable societal benefits. The fact that the growth of CFC’s could be measured at trace atmospheric levels (by Lovelock’s electron capture detector – the Lovelock of Gaia fame) allowed a number of scientists to wonder whether there might be some unknown detrimental effects from CFCs. Of course, getting funding naturally leads to some exaggeration.
Perhaps lessons were learned in how to politicize science around the ozone hole, and many of the same people were involved, but while the science of ozone depletion may have been oversold, it was not a dry run for AGW, which was theorized decades earlier.
True, but we’re dealing with a revival of old FUD that’s a good fit for the current global political state.
Therefore more exaggeration leads to more funding? That’s not a slippery slope, that’s a precipice. Especially when exercised by those referred to by Reed Coray on Pointman’s blog (https://thepointman.wordpress.com/about/#comment-93) when he wrote: “…the large sums of money available for research have, in my opinion, flooded the process with charlatans.”
Conventional climatology proposes that an active sun increases ozone in the stratosphere whereas observations showed a decline in ozone with a cooling stratosphere during the late 20th century.
Being contrary to the usual assumption the observations were explained by proposing that human activity was depleting stratospheric ozone faster than the active sun was creating it.
There is now evidence that an active sun depletes ozone above about 45km in the mesosphere above the poles whilst increasing it below 45km above the equator.
That gives us an opportunity to explain a great deal as set out here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
The concern of manmade ozone depletion is at altitudes where most stratospheric ozone is, which is well below 45 km.
If you read my link you will see that solar induced changes in ozone above 45km an above the poles feed down through the stratospheric polar vortices to affect the ozone concentrations lower down.
Stephen Wilde December 6, 2015 at 1:57 pm
If you read my link you will see that solar induced changes in ozone above 45km an above the poles feed down through the stratospheric polar vortices to affect the ozone concentrations lower down.
The evidence from Ozone profile measurements over the S Pole show this not to be true.
Here’s a recent one, note the total depletion of the O3 between 20 and 14 km altitude, but above at 22 km the O3 concentration is unchanged from earlier and much higher than at the lower altitude.
Try again:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/webdata/ozwv/ozsondes/spo/iadv/SPO_2015-10-12.21.png
That is a single snapshot and so is not helpful for long term changes acrosss decades.
Stephen Wilde December 7, 2015 at 7:52 am
That is a single snapshot and so is not helpful for long term changes acrosss decades.
It’s sufficient to debunk your hypothesis that the ozone hole is caused by downward transport of ozone deficient from above, which was my point.
Since we have similar data on a weekly basis since 1990 your following comment is also rebutted.
The hole is created by seasonal effects.
The average size of the hole across decades is influenced by the mechanism described in my hypothesis which you have not rebutted.
Stephen Wilde December 7, 2015 at 7: 52 and 8:52 am:
You find these snapshots on a weekly basis: these are showing that Phil’s argument shatters your hypothesis.
Those charts show seasonal effects only and are no assistance in identifying ozone hole variability from the top down solar effect over decades.
Walk under any High voltage lines (the ones on tall 4 legged towers) and you will smell Ozone. Working in a substation, where the wires with this very high voltage are closer to the ground at times makes me feel like I am breathing a toxic chemical. What happens to all of this Ozone?
in to any clean room, you smell ozone.
Go in to…
At the warmer temperatures and higher pressures associated with where people usually live, work and travel, ozone breaks down quickly. During smog alerts, the ozone problem is during the daytime and mainly outdoors, because ozone in smog is a result from a combination of sunlight, oxygen and pollutants that continuously forms ozone and maintains its presence while it is unstable.
I hope nobody ever warns these so-called ‘experts” about the dangers of hydroxylic acid.
Al Gore was involved in both scares.
You will note that the illustration at the beginning of the article shows an ozone-high crescent on one side of the so-called hole. Commonly one sees these as even more continuous arcs approaching a ring. Ozone is produced in much greater abundance in the equatorial stratosphere, where the UV is strong. It migrates polewards, and is stalled outside the Winter Antarctic vortex. It sits outside there until the circumpolar vortex breaks up in the Spring with the arrival of the sun showing up over the horizon. Note that during all the time that there is low ozone, the sun is never directly overhead. Indeed, sunlight is absent entirely during a considerable portion of the Winter. When the sun does finally start to illuminate Antarctica, it has a long slant range that causes sunlight to pass through portions of the stratosphere outside the vortex with normal and even anomalously high ozone concentrations. The transition between the Winter and Spring conditions can temporarily leave some orphaned patches of low-ozone air wandering around.
Back before the Montreal Protocol, I was struck by the fact that all I ever saw was claims about the low ozone and the POTENTIAL for creating cataracts and skin cancer. I never saw any measurements of actual surface UV fluxes. Therefore, I built a simple, yet sophisticated computer model to predict surface UV values. I used Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer data for ozone, made corrections for the changing footprint of a bundle of light rays with the seasons, and even had a correction for the ellipticity of Earth’s orbit. I made an assumption of approximately a 5% increase in UV during sunspot cycle peaks. Basically, what the model showed was that there appeared to be a slow drift upwards in UV during the Southern Winter over a period of years; however, during the Summer when the sun was highest in the sky (and when people get sunburns) the predicted surface UV was constant over the same period. Since humans, and presumably other animals, have evolved to deal with UV, they probably were at little risk from Summer UV levels that were much lower than are found in the tropics and did not seem to be increasing.
Basically, I agree with Ball that this was something blown out of proportion and an early example of poor science. It had the potential for being interesting science, but it got high-jacked by those with political agendas and little understanding of even where the sun is on the horizon during the different seasons.
The easy solution would have been to use R12a and R22a, both based on propane. They work at a lower pressure and save electricity. R410a is marketed as good for the environment as it does not reduce ozone. It does much more damage than CO2 could ever do. Europe has thousands of appliances running on R22a. No problem with the “boom” factor. Insurance institutes have no problem with it.
New study here with usual rider that we must be vigilant and the Ozone hole is bigger this year.
http://www.reportingclimatescience.com/news-stories/article/antarctic-ozone-hole-has-grown-this-year.html
Think of all the salt in the ocean. It’s NaCl… plenty of chlorine. You can smell it. It’s called the sea air.
The chlorine in sea salt is in the form of chloride ions, which do not damage ozone. Also, sea salt has a low rate of reaching the stratosphere, because it is hygroscopic and rising air forms clouds.
You can smell the “sea”, the salt is not smelling.
Why choose Hansen’s presentation to the U.S. Cogress as a start date? The 1985 Villach Conference was earleir, and the 1988 Toronto Conference and Thatcher’s 1989 address to the UN were both far more important.
Tim
Find yourself a copy of
Thomas, D.S.G and Middleton, N.J. (1994). “Desertification: Exploding the Myth”. John Wiley & Sons
and have a read.
And I reckon I can point you to another practice run
I have read that and agree with you that desertification was another early example. I remember when a group of Scandinavian scientists looked at the satellite coverage and showed the Sahara was not expanding. Of course, if you only focus on temperature you do not consider the variations in precipitation.
No mention of the ‘half-life’ of ozone?
Just a quote from “The Nonsense That is Ozone-Depletion”
by Ken Ring (2009) at http://www.ourcivilisation.com/ozone/king.htm
QUOTE
One Hole is Larger than the Other
Let’s look at one last factor, so often reported; that the Antarctic hole is larger than the Arctic one. One would think that even if inert heavier-than-air substances could make it up into space, that they would do it more around the densely populated regions of earth — the northern hemisphere; and affect the Arctic Hole more than the Antarctic. No one is disputing that the hole over the Antarctic is definitely much bigger. The Southern hemisphere has a longer winter than the Northern hemisphere because Earth is further from the sun in July than in January. Longer winter means bigger hole. But also maybe, some chlorine is coming from some other source, instead of CFCs. Let’s look around.
Aha! Just a few miles upwind from the Antarctic camp where all the readings about ozone-depletion originate from, is a rather large hill called Mt Erebus. Mt Erebus is an active volcano, which first erupted in 1982 (coincidentally about when the bigger hole was discovered). Mt Erebus spews out over 1,000 tons of active chlorine every day. Go there and look — it is puffing away all the time. This chlorine, far from being as cold as CFCs, comes out as superheated gas which shoots straight up into the stratosphere. This chlorine does break down the ozone. And Mt Erebus puts out more chlorine per year, all by itself, than all the cars and aerosol cans on earth put together could do in a decade.
It is a little tidbit of science that esteemed experts seem to have overlooked. Moreover, Erebus is not the only active volcano in the world. There are hundreds, thousands, throwing chlorine upwards every second. We can’t cap all the volcanoes.
At the time of the ozone debate NASA built a lunar landing type vehicle and sent it down into the crater of Erebus. It reported the high levels of chlorine that you note, but, like with so much counter evidence, it was ignored. As usual, the mainstream media were the biggest culprits.
The media is the biggest culprit because, as Dr. Ball pointed out, the media do not ask questions about the crap disguised as science about which they report. Typically, they don’t bother reading the paper before they write their stories. Most of the time what gets reported is the press release which is normally crafted, not as a summary of the paper and its conclusions, but rather as a justification for more grant money. As such press releases are long on scary predictions but short on facts.
Volcanic chlorine is in the form of hydrogen chloride, which gets sucked up in cloud droplets that form in air rising from the surface to the tropopause. The water solution of hydrogen chloride is hydrochloric acid, whose chlorine is in the form of chloride ions that do not damage ozone as well as having a high rate of being rained out before reaching the stratosphere.
Mt Erebus does not emit anywhere close to 1000 tons of Chlorine/day, it does not not get ejected into the stratosphere as a superheated gas. It gets emitted from the surface of a lava lake in the crater and convects over the lip of the crater where it reacts with the condensed water and ‘snows’ out of the atmosphere.
Chris Curnow December 6, 2015 at 12:01 am
I had an email exchange with Rowland 8 years ago in which I raised a question about Erebus. He completely evaded the issue.
May be you have a good point about the ozone Tim, but I think this article contains some very irresponsible claims about skin cancer, such as:
This is just plain wrong, and it is easy to prove that it is wrong. We have good statistics for cancer incidents. Many quite young people die from skin cancer. Statistics from
Cancer research UK
Show that skin cancer has increased in all age groups.
Furthermore, you insinuate that the skin cancer risk is just something the sunscreen producers have made up:
This is irresponsible talk, because more people will die of skin cancer if they stop using sunscreens if they believe in this. However, the benefits of sunscreens
has been firmly demonstrated.
/Jan
Hm my links seems to have been destroyed. The links I meant to use are:
http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/sites/default/files/cstream-node/inc_asr_age_p_mmelanoma_0.pdf
and:
http://www.cancer.org.au/news/blog/prevention/world-leading-research-confirms-regular-sunscreen-use-can-prevent-melanoma.html
/Jan
that’s interesting.
do i see 1991 pinatubo fx on that chart?
Gnomish
It is hard to find any traces of Pinatubo or other short lived events on the cancer statistics. The reason is that cancer is caused by exposure during many years, and the incidents are distributed over a long time period. This makes it difficult to spot any cause and effect form a single event.
/Jan
Not so fast, Jan. The overuse of sunblocks affects getting the right amount of Vitamin D, and doctors where I live (southwest) are now really concerned about it. Ten to 30 minutes of sun without sunblock is the best source of Vitamin D; there is no better source. Pills just don’t cut it.
You can slather all the sunblock on that you want, but if your diet is such that your blood is acidic (high sugar use), then cancer has the ideal ‘soil’ in which to grow.
Even so, count me in with Tim Ball here also for public health. The reasons are as follows:
Perhaps even before Australopithecus Lucy natural selection has favored individuals addressing sun’s UV rays appropriately. For example, most northerners avoid exposing their pale skin to bright spring sun.
Regrettably UN Montreal protocol has introduced heavy red-tape on ozone depleting substances. At least the EU has extended the application even to essential laboratory uses. But has anyone thought about the impact on the quality of sunscreens? Or of medicinal products? Or even worse, that the molecular from of some anesthetics shares a lot in common with CFCs? And that’s tough, burns and accidental trauma can be very painful.
I consider that you are right to raise the Cancer Research findings. There appears good evidence of a link between excessive exposure to harmful rays and cancer,
Dr Ball is right that there are some benefits to exposure to the sun’s rays, and thus it is, as usual, a balancing act. and one of moderation. It is good to be out in the sun, but never to the extent that one gets sun burnt. One should also be aware that very high factor sun blocks may contain excessive and/or harmful chemicals the side effects of which are not yet known or fully understood. That might mean that it is better to stay out of the midday sun, than be exposed to it but using high sun block as a protector.
As I say, what is required is a bit of common sense in getting the right balance.
Agreed.
frankly..CRAP! since people started fearing the sun and staying in n covering up..let alone smearing chem goo overthemselves to bake it into skin..yeah skin cancer reports rose
and how many that are NON invasive or benign get counted holus bolus in the figures?
curious that so many over 70/80yr old who worked outdoor all their lives prior to the scare campaigns didnt have serious skin cancers?
incidence appears mainly indoor dwelling suburban low Vit D level sporadic sun seekers.
The old time outdoor workers used to cover from the sun. Almost everyone had a hat or cap on the head, and long armed shirts were the most common.
There can often be several decades between cause and effect in cancer. This is an aspect which may hide the relation from a layman’s observation. Therefore I don’t think we should make assertively claims based on sporadic nonprofessional evidence. This advice can after all cause peoples death.
The official advice from professional sources like academic institutions and cancer organization is clear: Sunscreen use saves lives.
BTW, Richard has a very good comment, which I agree to.
/Jan
About the CLUB OF ROME
“The Club of Rome is focusing in its new programme on the root causes of the systemic crisis by defining and communicating the need for, the vision and the elements of a new economy , which produces real wealth and wellbeing; which does not degrade our natural resources and provides meaningful jobs and sufficient income for all people.”
Mission of Club of Rome
These are the current programs of Club Of Rome:
1 – Redefining the objectives and operation of our economic systems
2 – Decoupling well-being from resource consumption
…
“The Club of Rome is a global think tank that deals with a variety of international political issues. Founded in 1968 at Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, Italy, the Club of Rome describes itself as “a group of world citizens, sharing a common concern for the future of humanity.” It consists of current and former heads of state, UN bureaucrats, high-level politicians and government officials, diplomats, scientists, economists and business leaders from around the globe.” Wikipedia Club of Rome
Is United Nations bureaucrats in general and Cristina Figueres by any means influenced by Club of Rome?
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for the, at least, 150 years, since the industrial revolution,”
– Christiana Figueres, who heads up the U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change
I can think of a few others who had personal ideas about bringing about huge changes to our society. It didn´t always turn out well.
Who voted for Christina Figueres by the way? None!
And that is quite peculiar – as the United Nations is also concerned about human rights, which states:
Article 21. (3) The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
It seems like United Nations might be a mingling place for megalomaniacal unelected bureaucrats.
When I search for “United Nations” at the Club of Rome web page there seems to be quite a few influencing links between Club of Rome members and United Nations:
Here is one:
Kate Raworth is a British economist focused on the rewriting of economics to make it fit for addressing this century’s realities and challenges. She is the creator of the doughnut of social and planetary boundaries which, since being first published by Oxfam in 2012, has gained widespread international recognition and influence in reframing sustainable development, including shaping the United Nations’ post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.
By its charter United Nations was supposed to:
– To maintain international peace and security…
– To develop friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples …
– To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character,
– To be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.
“The UN was not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”
— Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General from 1953 to 1961
War is hell – a vision of a new economic model is an attempt to take mankind to heaven by the flawed method of inductive reasoning.
United Nations is far out of line with it´s charter.
Who will bring about glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”) in United Nations? (Glasnost and perestroika was Gorbachev’s policies of reorientation of Soviet strategic aims which contributed to the end of the Cold War.)
The influence by Club of Rome and “The limits to growth” on United Nations is very evident in this
Summary:
«Graham Turner’s comparison of 30 years of historical data and scenarios presented in the Limits to Growth was provided as an example to illustrate that business-as-usual will result in an economic collapse by 2030.»
2013 Economic and Social Council Integration Meeting (13 May 2013)
“Achieving sustainable development: Integrating the social, economic and environmental dimensions”
http://www.un.uz/images/2012-09-17.jpg
The Logo is somewhat misleading. It should have read something like:
UN – Building a bloated idiocracy based on what seems to work fine inside our heads.
And given the success United Nations still seems to think they have had with Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – it is no surprise that the United Nations unelected bureaucrats wants to do it again:
Conclusions and recommendations:
…
• An intergovernmental committee on sustainable development should be set up to bring together all stakeholders.
…
I´m running out of words.
Tim,you talk about the money involved in the Sunscreen Industry. However this is peanuts compared to the drugs sold by the Major Drug Industry for the Explosive Diabetes Epidemic. Back in the 60,s Albert Gore, Sr. and George McGovern both big D Senate members along with World Health Org ,Changed the World Diet. This was the early intervention ie The Bad Thing Government does to our lives. Think about it they control the population this way with Big Brother and Big Money. Please view you will see the Science used to do it. Even Prof Judith Curry used this example in her testimony to congress. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvKdYUCUca8
There has been evidence of one anthro activity causing climate probs.
In the early 1930s Syria was experiencing a withering drought. (They get ’em all the time, but sssh.)
Anyway, the Minister of the Interior, acting on a complaint from the Mufti of Damascus, banned the newly popular toys called yo-yo’s, because their “exasperating motion” was causing the drought.
Three days after the ban was introduced it rained.
This is actually detailed in a recent history of the French Mandate. Don’t know if yo-yo’s have made it on to the Paris agenda, but there’s always COP 22.
I see this comment section is growing a ‘laundry list’ of things that many feel got out of hand — scientific hypotheses that were accepted without due diligence and once co-opted and corrupted by the political process, suffered little subsequent effort to confirm or falsify. All of these deserve proper process, and we have seen many unintended consequences over the years that might have been avoided.
Please allow me to add the Linear no-threshold model of ionizing radiation (LNT) which has been used to establish “safe” limits to exposure, but is also commonly mis-used to disingenuously pivot an infinitesimal completely-lost-in-noise dose into large populations to achieve an integer number of projected ‘deaths’ for the purpose of terrifying people in headlines, where such deaths do not and cannot provably exist. I will not go on about it here, but Rod Adams has laid out a good roadmap of articles that cite primary sources and studies that beg reexamination of LNT along with recent developments. One such development is truly one for the books — a letter to the editor in chief of Science Magazine alleging a 59-year old case of scientific misconduct.
Applying LNT for ionizing radiation is really tough to argue against in ways I’m sure you climate folk are all familiar. A bold claim was once made which seemed reasonable and ‘precautionary’ to make at the time, and the principals making the claim were able to freely admit among themselves that extraordinary proof is necessary. But the issue was co-opted by others for their own direct purposes and public campaigns launched that distorted and exaggerated the issue, and — ironically, at the very time science needs it most — funding that should have been applied to settle the issue with a valiant attempt to falsify the hypothesis, dried up. So here we are years later and the un-proven mantras for AGW have found their way unchallenged into textbooks.
I’m sure there are some folks who will find it positively galling that I bring up the topic of LNT in this debate, because they consider the role of CO2 to have been distorted in public opinion yet they feel certain that radiation is a monster deserving of zero tolerance.
Which is why I am stuck at the crossroads here, because — more thick delicious irony! — it appears that a great many nuclear energy professionals are wholly convinced that AGW is a dire and immediate threat. It’s complicated. They thought they were holding in the palm of their hand the most elegant solution to achieving a carbon-neutral endgame. As the AGW scare grew, they really did expect to be called up on stage to thunderous, tearful applause. But the demographic that persists in irrational gloves-off distortion of AGW happens to be the very same one who are irrationally terrified of radiation. They are disillusioned by this.
But in these interesting times both AGW and LNT are central to energy policy. This is hurting us.
I bring up the topic of radiation and LNT on climate forums.
I suggest a reexamination of AGW claims to nuclear professionals.
I advocate nuclear energy to folks who think wind and solar will save the world.
I am universally reviled.
It gets lonely sometimes.
Tim correctly points out that ozone is created by the reaction summarised as 3O2 + energy => 2O3. What seems to be missing in all this debate is that by this reaction, oxygen is protecting us from damaging cosmic and gamma rays from the sun. Oxygen and Nitrogen provide most of the protection, ozone only protects us from a few residual wavelengths in the ultra violet. The reason the ozone is there in the first place is because of this reaction. There is no reaction at the poles in winter because the pole is facing away from the sun, thus one would expect holes to form in winter. The question is not why there is a hole at the south pole but why there is not a hole at the North. The answer seems to be that while no new ozone is formed in the northern winter, ozone is able to circulate into the region and in any case the rate of dissociation of the ozone is slow. However in the southern winter the south polar vortex produces a column of ice crystals into the stratosphere and the reaction 2O3 => 3O2 + energy takes place much faster in the presence of ice. (it would happen even faster still if the ice contained fluorocarbons but the net effect is the same).
davidl December 6, 2015 at 6:24 am
The destruction of O3 involves UV as well as its creation so in the winter there is no creation or depletion of O3, the destruction of O3 occurs in the spring when UV returns after the sunrise.
Phil, I’m afraid you are wrong about this. Note that the Wikipedia article on ozone depletion states, “The greatest Arctic declines, up to 30%, are in the winter and spring, when the stratosphere is coldest.” There is no sunlight present in the Arctic during the winter, and yet ozone levels decline. Thus, it follows that there should be similar degradation of ozone in the winter in Antarctica. Ozone is an unstable compound and naturally decays. Catalytic photolysis can speed things up considerably and there will be a decline in ozone until such time as more ozone moves into the area formerly shielded by the vortex.
Clyde Spencer December 7, 2015 at 9:05 pm
Phil, I’m afraid you are wrong about this. Note that the Wikipedia article on ozone depletion states, “The greatest Arctic declines, up to 30%, are in the winter and spring, when the stratosphere is coldest.” There is no sunlight present in the Arctic during the winter, and yet ozone levels decline. Thus, it follows that there should be similar degradation of ozone in the winter in Antarctica.
Then you can allay your fears because I am right about this.
In the Antarctic O3 levels are stable through July and well into August (winter) and the rapid decay is during September into October (spring):
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/dv/spo_oz/1220plot.html
The behavior over the Arctic is different than the Antarctic which is why your simplistic extrapolation from the Wikipedia article (which isn’t that accurate in any case) doesn’t apply.
For example from https://www.ucar.edu/learn/1_6_1.htm
The Arctic region is typically spared the worst of the ozone destruction because its vortex normally breaks down several weeks before the sun returns, dissipating the ice clouds. The larger percentage of land masses in the northern latitudes, particularly mountains, prevents an excessive build-up of ice clouds. Geography isn’t always enough to dissipate the vortex, however. The North Pole’s vortex was unusually strong and long-lived during the winter of 1992-1993, for example. When sunlight appeared, it drove down Arctic ozone levels well into March. Because there is more ozone over the North Pole to begin with, this decline didn’t create a hole. However, it did send ozone-depleted air over populated areas of the Northern Hemisphere when the vortex broke up.
Your claim about the instability of O3 applies in the lower troposphere however it is pressure and temperature dependent and in the stratosphere photolytic decay is the primary mode. In the stratosphere during winter O3 is stable, in the spring once UV returns decay starts, particularly in the presence of PSCs.
Phil, I am aware that the overall situation is different in the Arctic than what it is in the Antarctic. You missed the point! You claimed that sunlight has to be present for ozone to break down. Yet, there is an ozone decline in the Arctic in the absence of sunlight. How do you reconcile the contradiction to your statement?
Phil, the “simplistic” UCAR link you provided states:
“As the percentage of ozone in the atmosphere decreases, the amount of UV-B radiation reaching the surface increases. It’s the UV-B radiation, not the ozone itself that concerns scientists, because the invisible wavelengths are linked to skin cancers and other biological damage.
Measuring UV-B is tricky. Levels are affected by time of day, day of the year, latitude, weather conditions, and the amount of ozone aloft. … Most of this is UV-A light, only mildly associated with sunburn and DNA damage and relatively benign to most plant life. But the ill effects increase more than a thousandfold in the shorter wavelengths referred to as UV-B. Below 300 nanometers, the rays are sparse but very damaging; near 315 nanometers they’re more numerous but much less destructive. Close to 310 nanometers lies the middle ground, where the number and impact of rays combine to cause the greatest harm to humans and plants. Engineers face enormous challenges when designing instruments that can measure individual wavelengths, yet such precision is necessary to determine the amount of dangerous light entering the atmosphere.”
More precisely, the article should say that the UV-B varies with the listed parameters and is affected by ozone concentration and the emissions from the sun.
It is interesting that after all these years, researchers are still focusing on just the ozone, and not the actual amount of UV-B reaching the surface. Might there be compensating factors such as lower-level ozone, albeit shorter lived but more rapidly recreated, that reduces surface UV-B? Before you quickly claim it is impossible, please point me to the measurements that support any such claim. Note that I have previously claimed that the sunlight is usually entering the atmosphere outside the ozone-depleted region. And, in those situations where the sun is low on the horizon, even light passing through the depleted regions has a long slant-range and the vertical column measurement is not a good predictor of absorption. Indeed, there is no situation in which the sun is directly above the depleted air masses.
Clyde Spencer December 8, 2015 at 9:22 am
Phil, I am aware that the overall situation is different in the Arctic than what it is in the Antarctic. You missed the point! You claimed that sunlight has to be present for ozone to break down. Yet, there is an ozone decline in the Arctic in the absence of sunlight. How do you reconcile the contradiction to your statement?
Decay of O3 above the arctic takes place in the spring not during the winter, you are misinformed.
For example:
http://www.nature.com.ezproxy.princeton.edu/nature/journal/v478/n7370/images/nature10556-f2.2.jpg
Fig 3 shows that during the ‘Unprecedented arctic ozone loss in 2011’ there was no loss at all until early february and most of it occurred in late feb/early march. ClO concentration didn’t start to drop until March.
Phil,
The link you provided is behind a privileged gateway. However, if you go to this link, http://www.theozonehole.com/arcticozone.htm , scroll down a little more than half-way and review the animation, it is clear that your assertion is wrong. Low-ozone regions come and go sporadically during January and February under the cover of darkness. What is more interesting is that there are very high ozone concentrations outside the vortex that have the potential to mix with air at lower latitudes. Additionally, one should ask why these very high ozone levels also decline during the Arctic night. Obviously, ozone can decay in the absence of UV. The situation is much more dynamic than you present it.
You didn’t respond to my other comment about the lack of measurements of the assumed consequences at the surface of low stratospheric ozone levels.
Clyde Spencer December 9, 2015 at 9:25 am
Phil,
The link you provided is behind a privileged gateway. However, if you go to this link, http://www.theozonehole.com/arcticozone.htm , scroll down a little more than half-way and review the animation, it is clear that your assertion is wrong. Low-ozone regions come and go sporadically during January and February under the cover of darkness. What is more interesting is that there are very high ozone concentrations outside the vortex that have the potential to mix with air at lower latitudes. Additionally, one should ask why these very high ozone levels also decline during the Arctic night. Obviously, ozone can decay in the absence of UV.
The photochemistry doesn’t change but as pointed out before the Arctic polar region is less stable in winter than the Antarctic. Regions of the stratosphere can move south where the PSCs sublimate releasing ClO etc and in the presence of sunlight deplete the O3.
The ‘high ozone concentrations outside the vortex’ are sufficiently far south to still receive sunlight but not cold enough to be exposed to PSCs so will decay somewhat.
Try the NOAA website: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/arctic’s-first-ozone-hole
“In general, the colder the stratosphere is over the winter, the more of the reactive, ozone-destroying chemicals that build up. The return of the Sun to the polar regions in the spring triggers the ozone-destroying reactions. As the temperatures begin to warm up, fewer stratospheric clouds form, and so the creation of ozone-destroying forms of chlorine slows. The ozone loss bottoms out for the season, and the ozone layer gradually regenerates over the summer. (Ozone naturally forms when oxygen is exposed to ultraviolet radiation from the Sun.)”
Phil,
At the time of the Winter Solstice, everything north of the Arctic Circle is in darkness. From the illustrations in your last NOAA link, three weeks later there are already ozone-low areas. (Actually,the illustrations makes it look like there are much lower values over the equator!) The article says, “Within the hole, more than 80 percent of the ozone between 18 and 20 kilometers altitude had been destroyed by the end of winter, according to an analysis of the event by an international team of scientists.” Was this a careless choice of words? Should they have said, “…was destroyed in early-Spring?”
In any event, this is now the third time I have asked for measurements demonstrating the presumed increase of surface UV-B resulting from decreased ozone at the poles. This is really more important than how much ozone is destroyed and when
Clyde Spencer December 9, 2015 at 9:25 am
Phil,
The link you provided is behind a privileged gateway. However, if you go to this link, http://www.theozonehole.com/arcticozone.htm
That link also shows the same graph clearly the O3 depletion took place in the spring.
http://www.theozonehole.com/images/arcoz2011tic39.jpg
Clyde Spencer December 10, 2015 at 8:34 am
Phil,
At the time of the Winter Solstice, everything north of the Arctic Circle is in darkness. From the illustrations in your last NOAA link, three weeks later there are already ozone-low areas.
The plot of data which I posted shows that averaged over the vortex area the ozone concentration doesn’t start decaying until the middle of January and most of the decay was during February. At 70ºN there are 4.5 hrs of sunshine on January 31st, by February 28th this has increased to ~9.5 hrs.
The article says, “Within the hole, more than 80 percent of the ozone between 18 and 20 kilometers altitude had been destroyed by the end of winter, according to an analysis of the event by an international team of scientists.” Was this a careless choice of words? Should they have said, “…was destroyed in early-Spring?”
The meteorological definition of winter in the N hemisphere is Dec, Jan & Feb which is based on temperature so that is probably what they are using. Most relevant for the destruction of O3 is the solar season because as I have pointed out it is the UV that causes the O3 decay. In the S hemisphere which was where this discussion started the M. winter is June, July & August and as I stated the depletion occurs in September/October, Spring.
In any event, this is now the third time I have asked for measurements demonstrating the presumed increase of surface UV-B resulting from decreased ozone at the poles. This is really more important than how much ozone is destroyed and when.
To you maybe, the Dobsonmeter which has been used to measure O3 concentration is based on measuring the ratio of UV-B/UV-A, so there are plenty of the measurements you seek. UV-B can also be reduced at the surface by pollution, I recall that in industrial cities in the Nth of England you wouldn’t get sun-burned on a sunny weekday, but on Sunday you would (more red sunsets during the week too).
Phil, you said:
“the Dobsonmeter which has been used to measure O3 concentration is based on measuring the ratio of UV-B/UV-A, so there are plenty of the measurements you seek”
The ratios only allow one to calculate the ozone. I was asking about surface absolute UVB flux values because they determine the actual risk to biological organisms. With low ozone and low light there is no risk! With high ozone and high light levels there is some risk. To properly put the issue of UVB danger in context, one needs to know the surface flux levels and the duration of exposure. It isn’t sufficient to simply say that low ozone levels create a potential risk for plants and animals. That is why I was pressing you for information on UVB.
During the debate that led up to the Montreal Protocol there were very few absolute UVB measurements. All one ever saw was hand waving about declining ozone. It was about a decade after the MP that the USDA put in monitoring stations. They have not discovered any extraordinary events. The ozone hole scare has been an exercise in focusing on a potential cause rather than the dreaded effects. This seems to be typical of modern research where some proxy for a future undesirable event becomes the focus of attention and little attention is paid to the hypothetical event(s). In a similar manner, people are making heatwave forecasts based on average temperature increases instead of the rate of increase of diurnal high temperatures.It seems that the specialists aren’t seeing the Big Picture.
It’s very difficult to persuade a man to agree with you when his salary depends on his disagreeing with you.
– Upton Sinclair
Can we call it the Age of Hyperbole? I have a sign on my office wall that says “Instant gratification isn’t fast enough for me.”
I always thought that “Acid Rain” was the first trial balloon, but then what do I know.
I’ve long suspected myself that it was a step in how to then get political action on global warming. Good work Dr. Ball…
This CFC nonsense is actually killing people – namely asthmatics and people suffering from COPD. Since 2013, even Primeatine Mist was taken off the shelves.
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm353701.htm
Sorry JP Asma is caused by Lung Surfactant from a low Saturated Fat high Carb Diet ie all grains sugar ect ect . go to the 51 minute point of the attached video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vRe9z32NZHY
Russell, either you misunderstood my post or you’re just trolling. My post had nothing to do what causes asthma and everything to do with what once was inexpensive life saving treatments via the old inhalers.
No matter what it’s *caused* by, JP’s point is that a medicine that *relieved* it is no longer available. For what it’s worth, I’ve had asthma since well before such diets became common. Heck, I even remember potato crisps being a new thing here.
H. L. Mencken described these frauds quite nicely, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary”.
That quote sounds more like Thomas Henry Huxley than Aldous. Please check it.
That was Mencken. I have read Mencken for years and I can guarantee that one is Mencken. But why believe me?
See this: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hlmencke101109.html
The Weatherman Knows
Was referred to this site yesterday. Quite the little running record of accuracy.
Also, rather straightforward you tube description of natural variability weather patterns and the cooling that’s a coming starting in 2019-20.
Retired NOAA scientist neer do well.
http://www.globalweathercycles.com/
Would love to hear opinions from the land of skeptics.
This is why GHGs have no net thermal effect:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/10/for-discussion-can-convection-neutralize-the-effect-of-greenhouse-gases/
and this is how solar variations account for observed climate changes:
http://joannenova.com.au/2015/01/is-the-sun-driving-ozone-and-changing-the-climate/
Those are the critical two issues that need to be addressed.
Dr Ball,
Thanks for an excellent article. I have one small criticism, which is that you don’t point out that Al Gore and the IPCC were awarded Nobel PEACE prizes, which are of course, awarded in Norway by politicians and their appointees. The Peace prizes need to be kept apart from what I regard as the real Nobel prizes, awarded by the appropriate bodies in Sweden.
I find the story of the ozone hole being caused by CFC’s convincing. Measurements of CFCs in the atmosphere tailed off precisely when the protocol came into effect:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/publictn/elkins/cfc11_95.gif
They are still lingering near a plateau, and are only slowly going down. So, the situation is very like the “pause” in global temperatures – yes, new temperature records may be set now and again, but overall, there is no trend.
Similarly for the ozone hole, we are at a plateau. The size of the hole will bobble around a bit, but long term, as CFC concentration decreases, it should go down.
At the very least, I will not be convinced that the hypothesis is wrong until I see CFC concentration decrease markedly while the hole remains, or CFC concentration increase markedly with humans not contributing to it. We are not in a position to call that one yet.
One of the biggest bones I have to pick with the CO2 Climate Crisis sham is that it brings into disrepute all areas of science. When the climate crisis is finally declared over, and the scandal laid bare, there will be a legitimacy question, and all kinds of pseudo-science are going to be promoted. How will the advocates of Evolution, for example, respond when detractors sneer, “Yeah, well, you really nailed that Global Warming thing, didn’t you?”
In effect, the AGW agitators borrowed from the account shared by all of science, and they are in the process of overdrawing it. Real scientists of all stripes should have stood up against the farce, and closed off access to the account, instead of letting their ne’er do well shirttail relations bankrupt them.
Try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because the AGW pseudoscience is bad does not mean all science is bad.
Actually, the bobbling ‘ozone hole’ plateaued about 4 years before the the Montreal Protocol was enacted. It took awhile for the agreement to be implemented. So, there is a peculiarity that needs to be explained.
A more up to date graph shows the drop since the peak:
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/oceans/images/nhemispherecfcs5.png
The rise of the UN and its Political-Industrial Complex.
National Geographic reports on how we are making progress in ‘closing the ozone hole’ but wrings their hands at how ‘closing the ozone hole’ will speed global warming.
Make up your mind already.
From May, 2010: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/05/100505-science-environment-ozone-hole-25-years/
Big pharmacy reaped a huge reward in falling in with the CFC ban because they had to develop HFA as a propellant. Suddenly they had 17 more years of patent protection on their asthma and COPD.inhalers and what should cost the consumer $10 costs $80.
It’s a shame the author couldn’t quote the title of “The Holes in the Ozone Scare” correctly, nor name the author(s). Sloppiness of this kind puts the rest of his assertions into question. MOST of his assertions, I can’t check. When I find one I CAN check, I check it, so as to evaluate the ones I can’t.
Fail on this one. And it’s SO EASY to get right.
I’m with you NJP, 110%.
A time wasting article. Just hot air without verifiable references.