At http://phys.org/print303390618.html … we have a piece on sea floor methane hydrates, a potential energy source – but also a potential source of global warming (if released as a result of rising sea temperatures, or used as a fossil fuel source). At the same time microbes are eating the methane – and apparently it involves a microbial tungsten enzyme that thrives in low temperature eco systems (such as the bottom of the oceans). The study appear in Environmental Microbiology. The microbes excrete carbon dioxide and this reacts with water to form calcium carbonate. Apparently, there are giant mountains on the sea floor made of calcium carbonate.
Tin Cullen has a post at http://malagabay.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/methane-myopia-2-energy-science/ … which starts, the science of methane is very political because there are large reserves of natural gas (which has been tapped) and massive reserves of methane gas hydrates (which are not being harvested). Hydrates require a combination of high pressure and low temperatures to form. As yet, we are told, the technology to tap into this ocean bottom resource has not been found. Tempering the enthusiasm for new gas hydrate technology are 'environmentalists' who think that by tapping the vast resources it will cause the climate to warm uncontrollably. This appears to be the message of the Phys Org abstract – global warming. It is well known that Wikipedia's CAGW thought patrols actively rewrite any post on energy they find not complying with the CAGW 'one true message', especially anything involving a greenhouse gas such as methane. They have been eerily quiet about a new technology that is capable of utilising methane hydrates. This is what is meant by 'queering the debate'.
The same kind of thing has been happening for years in respect of the ozone hole. However, we can't entirely blame environmentalists in this instance as it seems the manufacturer of CFCs (the patent was coming to an end and anyone could manufacture it afterwards) suddenly came up with the new refrigerant gas (which they had applied for and received a patent). To everyone's surprise they stopped opposing the use of CFCs. The reason was there was more money to be made in manufacturing the new refrigerant gas. That is another way of 'queering the debate'.
We now have a new paper on ozone – see http://phys.org/print303315553.html … which claims that plugging the ozone hole helped cool the planet. It seems another piece of funded research that has been rushed out of academia in order to counter the bad publicity surrounding the flatlined temperatures of the last 15 years or so. It seems Joe Public was not persuaded by the hype over the latest IPCC Report. They are now desperate to explain away the cooling over the last few years – as sceptics have been using it to mock their science. So, they have resorted to dredging up that old environmental victory, the Montreal Protocol, when CFC use was banned (in fridges and aerosol sprays, including medical use such as asthma sprays) – which occurred way back in 1989. Not only did the ozone hole disappear as a result of banning CFCs (conveniently forgetting the hole has never gone away but simply gets bigger and then gets smaller, all the time) but now it is claimed the banning of CFCs has caused temperatures not to rise as well. At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/11/busted-messaging-cfcs-cause-warmin… … Anthony points out that the ozone hole is now associated with both cooling and warming the earth, but there appears to be some confusion over the status of the lead author. The Phys Org abstract claims she was an atmospheric physicist but Anthony quotes Nature Geoscience which describes her as an ecological economist. I don't suppose it matters much if she is committed to CAGW. Anthony goes on to point out that in 2010 scientists were claiming that by closing the ozone hole the global climate would rise even more dramatically. Some 'queering of the debate' is going on.
On 13th October 2013 Nature News blamed the ozone hole shrinking for warming southern Africa. Actually there is still an ozone hole over the Antarctic and temperatures there have been far from supportive of CAGW. The ice is continuing to grow – as it has for many years (conveniently ignored by the CAGW people that have preferred to concentrate on melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean) – which is queering the debate.
Nature, in 2007, published a paper that claimed chemists had poked holes in the ozone theory – see www.nature.com/news/2007/070924/full/449382a.html some 20 years after the Montreal Protocol was signed – due to vociferous environmentalist lobbying of governments and the UN. It is the chloride compounds in CFCs that were supposed to be the problem. It is thought they took a very long time to break down – years and years and years (meaning they had the ability to remain in the atmosphere and just keep destroying the ozone for decades or more). This is your normal type of environmentalist tactic – exaggerate, and exaggerate again. What the chemists found was that the chloride compounds broke down very quickly. In effect, this meant, in a nutshell, that CFCs could not possibly have caused ozone depletion as they were not in the atmosphere for long enough. Ozone destruction at the poles was therefore due to an unknown mechanism. Nobody has sought to discover what that mechanism might be – within mainstream (apparently satisfied with the consensus view) – which is a case of 'queering the debate'.
At http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/22/study-shows-cfcs-cosmic-rays-major… … a paper by Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, blamed a concentration of CFCs and the cosmic ray flux for climate change (global warming) rather than co2 emissions. His observations came from satellite data, ground based and balloon measurements, as well as computer simulation. In a previous paper Lu claimed there was global warming between 1950 to 2000 and global cooling since 2002 (which nobody else has noticed). He went on to say it will continue to cool for another 50 years (which again nobody else has dreamed up). Part of his evidence revolved around the fact that between 1850 and 1950 there was no global warming (it flatlined he said) in spite of co2 gushing into the sky from all those factories in Europe and N America during the industrial revolution. Howeve, HH Lamb catalogues global warming between 1910 and 1940 – when temperatures were at least as high as the 1990s. Lu seems to be 'queering the debate'.
At www.nature.com/news/2009/090507/full/news.2009.456.html … Nature 449 (2007) says that Francis Pope, an atmospheric chemist at NASA JPL, and colleagues, came up with the discovery that chlorine peroxide generated when CFCs are split apart by light (photolysed). Chloride compounds degenerated too quickly to have much of a connection with ozone depletion (as noted earlier). It seems other scientists were quick to disagree – one group claiming sample impurity (an old trick used all the time when a disagreeable result is published). This is therefore a case of queering the debate.
However, the group went on to prove Pope and his team had got it wrong (or so they said) by using mass spectrometry in order to keep the samples pure (or something like that). They provided warmth and comfort to the CAGW consensus – and Pope was effectively hamstrung. He required funds to redo his experiment – but the funds are controlled by the CAGW consensus – thereby queering the pitch. The same study popped up at Anthony's place – see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/08/new-rate-of-stratospheric-photolys… … in a post by weather man Joe D'Aleo. He begins by saying that Will Happer of Princetown called the Montreal Protocol to ban freons (CFCs) was the warm up exercise for the IPCC. Many early IPCC scientists and environmentalists gained a reputation by stampeding the US Congress into supporting the ban on CFCs. The fact there was also business opportunities to market 'ozone friendly' refrigerants at higher prices than they were getting for CFCs (which is where we came in) and bigger profits from the new fridge gas = a bigger hole in the wallets of Joe Public.
Joe D'Aleo goes on to say that James Lovelock (hippy love-in hero and author of the 'Gaia Hypothesis') claimed the biosphere was self regulating. However, Lovelock also began to fear global warming would upset Gaia – but abandoned this view after 2007. He is on record as saying 'we should have been warned by the CFC/ozone affair because the corruption of science in that was so bad that something like 80 per cent of the measurements being made during that time were either fabricated or incompetent … ' and we really are talking about his fellow scientists. In a 2010 Guardian interview Lovelock claimed climate scientists were well aware how weak CAGW was. Will Happer is also on record as saying, 'the Montreal Protocol may not have been necessary but it had limited economic damage. It has caused much more damage in the way it has corrupted science. It showed how quickly a scientist can gain fame and fortune by purporting to save planet earth. We have the same situation with co2 now but co2 is completely natural, unlike freons. Planet earth is quite happy to have lots more co2 than current values as the geological record clearly shows. If the 'jihad' against co2 succeeds there will be enormous economic damage and even worse consequences for human liberty at the hands of the successful jihadists.
D'Aleo goes on to say the ozone hole has not closed in spite of banning CFCs – and we can see environmentalist politicos have been queering the debate for too long by suggesting the Montreal Protocol achieved its goal.
This is where James Hogan comes in (a member of SIS until his death). An extract of his book, 'Kicking the Sacred Cow' (page 252) reads, 'CFCs don't rise in significant amounts to where they need to be for UV.C photons to break them up. Because ozone absorbs heat directly from the Sun the stratosphere exhibits a reverse temperature structure – it gets warmer with altitude rather than cooler. Hence, the number of CFCs splitting is vastly lower then the original hypothesis assumed, for the same reason there aren't many marraiges between Eskimos and Australian Aborigines etc.
Not only that – the ozone hole was over the Antarctic. CFCs were principally in the northern hemisphere. How did they reach the other other side of the world … and so on. Volcanoes, we may note, are the biggest source of chlorine compounds in the atmosphere. Who is queering the debate.
A comment by Jim Owen at 1.38pm is interesting. He says that in 2002 he was tasked with determining whether to shut down the UARS spacecraft programme. One reason held for keeping it operational was that it was a prime data source for ozone hole monitoring. When looking at the data record it was obvious the hole went up and down all the time. As he personally knew the man who had 'discovered' the ozone hole he asked his opinion. He said the hole was real but the science was hype. It was a natural occurrence that varied on a periodic basis based on factors that have never been pursued. He adds, he was not the person credited with discovering the ozone hole, who died recently to great acclaim in the media, but somebody that had failed to get his discovery published as quickly as the well known person. Being quick off the block queered the debate it would seem.