A good article on ozone depletion sent in by Robert Farrar – did we really save the ozone layer? The link is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/26/did-we-really-save-the-ozone-layer/ … by guest blogger Steve Goreham who says that over the last few years the ozone hole has reappeared and is still growing over Antarctica in spite of it being 30 years since the banning of CFCs. That is a long period of time with no result – in spite of the great and the good proclaiming a success because the ozone hole appeared to have got much smaller in the intervening years (then got bigger and then got smaller and now is getting bigger again). One can understand the politicos being silent – they only did the banning because the environmentalist lobby was so strident and they wanted to shut them up (damn everybody else). What we had is a lot abandoned fridges (as new fridge gases were adopted, inferior to the ones banned) and various ways for criminals to make money (exploiting the banning of CFCs by manufacturing them and then claiming monies from the West, you know, those countries with a big guilt complex sitting on their shoulders).
The ozone layer is located between 6 to 25 miles high in the stratosphere, a long way from human influence you would think – but not to environmentalists, they firmly believe humans are capable of affecting the climatic system of the planet in a variety of ways. It isn't limited to co2 by a long way. That sounds a bit like the theory of chem trails being used by the federals to spy on rural America but truth is very often stranger than fiction as some people even got a nobel prize for blaming the ozone hole on CFCs. The stratosphere is the part of the atmosphere that is most obviously influenced by the Sun – mass coronal explosions that shift the solar wind at very fast speeds towards the planets (which is where the magnetosphere comes in) so what is more likely to affect the ozone layer – humans on the surface playing the games that humans do or a powerful injection of plasma from space?
Since 1986 world consumption of CFCs has declined by 99 per cent, virtually nothing. This involves not only fridge gases but hair sprays and a variety of everyday manufactured products. The Montreal Protocol (where the politicos had their arms twisted) is hailed by one and all as a great success. We can expect politicos to hail all they do as a success, it comes with the vote we imprudently give them, but environmentalists continue over and over again to take the virtuous line that banning CFCs was best practise even when the evidence is clearly telling them that it was nonsense. That is the nature of the beast I suppose, ignore the science and carry on regardless. Is anything they say reliable, anything?
If the Montreal Protocol was such a success why do we still have the problem of a growing ozone hole – just like what was occurring in the 1980s when the enviro hype was at its summit. The logical answer is that ozone was being depleted by natural means and puny human efforts had little effect, if any. Scientists have shown over and over again that a big burst of solar wind can redistribute the ozone layer and there is in fact no hole at all – it amounts to a thinning process that over a period of time reverts back and recovers – all quite naturally and nothing to get concerned about at all. Goreham claims Al Gore was up to his mischief even in the 1980s, claiming fish were going blind as a result of ozone depletion (and various other unlikely scenarios). I wonder what his epitaph will say?
What the state of the ozone layer was prior to 1979 is anyone's guess – as the depletion was only discovered in that year and humanity had lived in bliss of the ozone hole for several million years. Jumping to the conclusion that the ozone hole was unique was pretty foolish it could be argued but the environmentalists are shrill and shouty and the politicos don't like people on the street yelling and screaming – it puts them off the cream in their coffee. When politicos become all unctious like a priest being mealy mouthed about some disastrous event of some kind, then is the time to kick them in the shins and bring a bit of reality back to the occasion. It didn't happen then and it isn't happening with the co2 scare. Charlie Chuckles talks to his plants and breathes co2 all over them and then gets to speak to a journalist and claims co2 is bad for the planet – even though plants could not survive without it. Where would the vegans be without plant food?
Charlie Chuckles of course makes a pot of gold from offshore wind farms in the Duchy of Cornwall and as Prince of Wales would no doubt like them to cover all the hills and grazing land in that wet corner of the planet. However, he is prince by name and Wales is not a duchy – and the Welsh have been saved his close attention. There are still a lot of sheep and cattle on the hills and the rain makes the grass grow abundantly, a productive twosome. Getting back to the ozone hole it is a consistent feature of the polar regions and it can be no accident that this is where we see aurorae and where the solar wind inter-acts most prominently with the Earth – like the field of a huge magnet arching from one pole to the other. It will be our children and grandchildren that will acknowledge the Montreal Protocol was a pointless piece of legislation – when the great and the good are safely tucked up in their graves.