The Ozone Hole and Lower Stratospheric Temperature
2 days ago Guest Blogger 160 Comments
or Should the Montreal Protocol be terminated?
Mike Jonas,
For years, I had wondered about the Montreal Protocol and the ozone hole that started in 1979, and whether the science behind it all had been twisted to suit DuPont or others. But where would you look to find the answer? Then, last year, I saw a report that the ozone hole, which had been recovering as expected, was suddenly as large as ever. It could have been this report. So I started downloading some data. I knew that it would be a lot of work, I had no idea exactly what I would be looking for, and I suspected that I wouldn’t find anything. Lots of others must have looked and found nothing.
I was stunned by the first significant thing I found: There was an ozone hole long before 1979.
But first, why did I suspect twisting by DuPont? Well, I think ‘everyone’ did back then, but no-one could prove anything. It certainly looked like some sort of shenanigans were going on. For a start, the ozone hole was defined in the 1980s as the area of ozone less than 220 Dobson Units (DU). Why precisely 220? Well, it was clear that the number 220 was chosen so that the ozone hole started in 1979. A different number would have given a different start date, and it seems they really did want the ozone hole to start in 1979. It had nothing to do with 220 DU being some sort of safe level, the number was plucked out of the air just like today’s ‘need’ to restrict global warming to precisely 1.5C. DuPont’s lucrative patent for Freon (basically a chlorofluorocarbon (CFC)) expired in 1979. In 1974, with their Freon income to protect, the Chair of DuPont said that “ozone depletion theory is “a science fiction tale … a load of rubbish … utter nonsense”“. But in the 1980s DuPont changed its tune when it was clear that they would profit more from a replacement product. The prime function of the Montreal Protocol seems to be to sustain the manufacture of unnecessarily expensive refrigerants. Incidentally, Wikipedia joined in the shenanigans, no doubt for its own purposes, using the ozone hole to attack Fred Singer. Wikipedia (thank you, Wayback Machine), said: “Some atmospheric scientists (for instance Fred Singer, founder of SEPP and also a global warming skeptic) and industry-sponsored advocacy groups question or completely deny a link between CFCs and ozone depletion. It is fairly common to see completely nonsensical arguments …“. Today’s Wikipedia entry has no mention of Fred Singer or the “completely nonsensical arguments” which appear not to have been said by him anyway.
But I digress.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2024/03/06/the-ozone-hole-and-lower-stratospheric-temperature/
