The discovery of a hole in the ozone layer high above Antarctica in the 1980s turned into one of the first great climate and environmental scares. Blame was placed on the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) which were used extensively at the time in refrigerators and aerosols, and their use was banned by the Montreal Protocol from 1989. Climate activists learnt the lesson from this example and have been whipping up global fear ever since. Over the years, constant war has been waged on numerous industrial and agricultural products and processes with calls to ban some of the food we eat to demands we restrict our movements. But at least we saved the ozone layer. Actually, we didn’t. Since 2002 there has been a significant ozone reduction amounting to a 26% loss in the core of the ozone hole.
A recently published science paper by three New Zealand-based physicists notes that the three years 2020-22 have witnessed the re-emergence of large, long-lived holes over Antarctica. The scientists note that in the eight years to 2022, five of the years showed similarly large temporary holes occurring in the spring months. In 2023, the European Space Agency said the hole over Antarctica was one of the biggest ever recorded, measuring 26 million sq kms. This was noted to be roughly three times the size of Brazil. All this is despite the fact that CFCs have been slowly declining in the atmosphere for nearly 30 years.
It is beyond the scope of this article to investigate whether the banning of CFCs has had any positive effect on ozone, although the data we now have might suggest an over-egging of the climate pudding. What we do know is that the CFC ban was totemic for climate activists. It gave a green light for launching multiple scare campaigns. The claimed global success in stopping CFC emissions and repairing the ozone hole was the template for promoting all the changes that will be required to complete the Net Zero collectivist project. Speaking in 2020, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the ozone treaties were “inspiring examples” of political will. “Let us take encouragement from how we have worked together to preserve the ozone layer and apply the same will to healing the planet and forging a brighter and more equitable future for all humanity,” he added.
Needless to say, the continued presence of the ozone hole, in reality a thinning of the layer, is not much discussed these days in the mainstream media. In fact the lessons from the ozone scare were well learnt in these quarters as well, and an almost daily diet of climate catastrophisation is fed to readers. So perish the thought that banning CFCs didn’t actually work – perish the thought that the same outcome might await impoverished global populations once industrialisation is dismantled by banning all hydrocarbons.
It would seem that more valuable lessons can be learnt about the effect of natural variation. The discovery of ozone layer thinning in the late 1970s was a dramatic event, and the ‘hole’ was almost immediately attributed to the use of CFCs. Little work has been done to discover whether this was a one-off problem specifically caused by the effect of CFCs, or if ozone thinning is a largely natural and regular event. Using data, admittedly sparse, from a number of weather sources, the independent researcher Michael Jonas has plotted the following graph.
According to Jonas, the South Pole data for the peak time around October shows there were ozone holes before 1979. The figures on the left are Dobson units, used to measure ozone concentrations. The average around the planet is about 300 Dobsons, while anything less than 220 is considered a hole. The thinning episodes before 1979 may have been less pronounced than in recent years, concludes Jonas, but they occurred in 1964, 1966, 1969, 1974 and 1977.
It is reasonable speculation to suggest that ozone thinning has long been a feature in this part of the southern hemisphere. The thinning is a temporary event in the Antarctic spring, and normal levels resume by December. The New Zealand scientists identify numerous natural forces that seem to affect ozone depletion. Springtime temperatures and wind patterns are said to “greatly impact” ozone hole development, along with aerosol loading from wildfires and volcanic eruptions as well as changes in the solar cycle. Dynamic changes from the higher reaches of the atmosphere within the polar vortex are also noted.
CFCs can remain in the atmosphere for a number of years, but steadily reducing levels seem to have had little or no effect on the recent regular appearance around October of massive holes, some of the largest in almost 50 years of recording. Scientists have been pushing back the ‘recovery’ of the hole until 2065, but the New Zealand researchers suggest that in the light of their work there may be further delays.
In other words, it is anyone’s guess.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Written it many times here.
I asked my annoying geography teacher, in 1995, when I was 14 years old, if he (or anyone) knew when The Hole appeared. Obviously he didn’t. No one did. Still no one knows.
The power of simple questions.
Mr Wilson hated me.
Cue BTL commenter MTF…
From the Nature article linked above (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-42637-0)
“Recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole in response to declining EESC is of particular interest, as the hole’s dramatic development in the late 20th century has been directly linked to anthropogenic Ozone Depleting Substance emissions.”
I’d dearly love to ask the author, face to face, the same question I asked Mr Wilson.
I’d give him a very “Dramatic development” by a “direct link” with his nose.
Obviously, I am neither condoning nor inciting violence.
Yeah yr obviously correct. Why would a hole occur at the north pole anyway? Gases don’t all float up to the top of earth that’s not how gravity works. I whole heartedly bought in this scam as a kid, shame on me.
No, no. CFCs are heavier than air so would go South to the Antarctic. That’s science.
Of course….. follow the science south!
Gases don’t all float up to the top of earth that’s not how gravity works
Well the CFCs are definitely there. Planes have been sent up and measured them.
This explains why:
https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/research/ozone-uv/moreinfo?view=cfc-stratosphere#:~:text=CFC%20molecules%20are%20indeed%20several,actually%20present%20in%20the%20stratosphere.
I will not dispute that the 14 year old Marcus Aurelius incisively demolished the accepted science of the time with a single comment to his geography teacher
MTF I have bridge I can sell you, interested?
“accepted science”
I rest my case.
[Note to self: stop provoking MTF, it doesn’t go anywhere, because it goes backwards]
You are almost exactly the same age as me and I remember the ozone hole, as well as acid rain (scary pictures of a world stripped bare of vegetation) quite well.
However I don’t remember the same level of hysteria as we have now. It didn’t really bother me or my friends and certainly no one suffered from anxiety or depression over it as young people claim to now over the climate crisis. We certainly didn’t change our lives or go on strike because of it.
Conventional wisdom is that we solved the problem of the holes; if you say to people in reference to the current climate panic “Remember all the panic over the ozone layer? And that turned out alright” they tend to come back with “Yes but that’s because we did something about it”. It’s a very strong belief and I have to say I thought the problem had more or less gone away too. So why haven’t we all fried to a crisp or evaporated off the surface of the earth, isn’t that what was going to happen?
Just to be clear there is no “hole” as such. There never was.—– The “hole” as is pointed out in this article is an area defined as less than 220 Dobson Units. But I am just reading right now on “Watts Up With That” website about the politics of this and why that number was chosen. The article explains that the 220 number was plucked out of thin air pretty much like today where it is claimed we need to restrict global warming to 1.5 C. —-The WUWT article explains that the Montreal Protocol seems to have been all about requiring the need for very expensive refrigerants and how a company (DuPont) would hugely benefit from this. It also points out in the article that CFC data does not correlate well with the so called Ozone Hole. We see similarities today with the global warming issue where there really is no correlation between temperature and levels of CO2 ———shenanigans? Well people need to decide all of that for themselves. To read the article rather than my version anyone interested can go to The Ozone Hole and Lower Stratospheric Temperature – Watts Up With That?
Grifters, you say?
I don’t doubt the involvement of grifters but I think the main threat to freedom and civilization is from those who insist on seizing control in order to reshape the world according to their vision of perfection. These people are evil and dangerous and they appear to be winning.
Thanks for the link. Although the use of CFC as a refrigerant was common in the past, as a “safe and effective” compound for that purpose, it was often used for other purposes in manufacturing as part of a cleaning/degreasing agent. I can remember doing a summer job where we did a lot of cleaning/painting of various parts of the plant when it was on it’s “summer holiday”, e.g.
Then again, I can remember doing a training exercise in a university lab using it. It was possible to use it inside glassware to examine heat transfer properties etc, which would have been rather hazardous with boiling water and steam in kit like that. It’s boiling point was low enough to handle in a way that was useful educationally. In simple terms, in a device that is intended to transfer heat (energy) across a heat exchanger, it is not a good idea to allow the liquid to boil at the surface, as the bubbles of gas act as insulators, in effect.
Also an excellent fire extinguishing agent.
At the labs where I worked we did a fire training course and were then invited to extinguish trays of burning paraffin in an otherwise empty car park.
1) Water foam: carefully layer the foam over the entire surface and leave it to cool.
2) Water: Don’t even think about it.
3) CO2: Carefully sweep the surface away from you with the CO2. Do NOT make it splash
4) Halon: Point. Squirt. Done.
Halon (1211, BCF and 1301, BTM) were superb extinguishants, effective at low concentrations and low toxicities, particularly in enclosed spaces. Their banning of use in fire extinguishers has cost hundreds of millions in losses and thousands of lives lost. I was involved in an LNG ( liquid natural gas) ship project in 2005. Originally fitted with a halon 1301 release system for the engine room, compliance with UN IMO mandate that year had it retrofitted with a much bigger equivalent CO2 flooding installation. During a minor fire in the engine room under ship trials these 5 technicians failed to escape and were asphyxiated.
There has always been an exemption for what should be obvious reasons on civilian aircraft; but in mid 90s the scientically illiterate zealots in EU tried hard to have this overturned for EU registered ‘planes.
Same script as the CO2 – Same UN evildoers
The one I have learned having looked into “environmental” issues over the last 20 years is that the “issue” is often not the “issue”. Or that old eco socialist phrase comes to mind—-“never let a good crisis go to waste”
The Montreal Protocol was created once the patent on older refrigerants was due to lapse. Also there was a push to buy new fridges with the new patent refrigerant. The ozone scare was a cover story. I vividly recall at the time a temporary storage area near me was assigned for the purpose of temporarily receiving hundreds of old fridges during the scare, which were eventually removed presumably for dismantling.
wink
Just past its anniversary….still top stuff:
Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth) (2023)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A24fWmNA6lM
No scientist with deep knowledge of the matter will dispute that CFCs were a major cause of the ozone hole in the Antarctic. This was pretty much settled by the AAOE flights in 1887 (contrary to what Chris writes the cause of the hole was not firmly settled until then – although the hole first started to appear in 1977). The extraordinary and dramatic inverse correlation between ClO and O3 proportions was described by Silver and de Fries (1990, National Academy of Sciences) as not so much a smoking gun as seeing the guy pull the trigger.
The New Zealand physicists do not dispute this. They just, very reasonably, explore what other factors may also affect the size of the hole especially given the anomalous large measurements in the last three years.
The Jonas paper is odd. First – he writes that figure 1 shows ozone depletion episodes in 1964, 1966, 1969, 1974 and 1977. But look at the figure – all it shows for those years is very minor dips. Also why does he use the American South Pole data for measuring ozone depletion which was known to have problems with its ozone measuring instruments and only runs from 1963 when the British Antarctic Survey at Halley Bay had been collecting higher quality data since 1957 (which was confirmed by NASA satellite data later when they got round to analysing it).
Point 1 there isn’t a hole, point 2 you don’t have causality for the non existent hole. Other than there not being a problem and CFCs not having a mechanism to create such a problem in the real world yr theory is spot on!
Point 1 there isn’t a hole,
There isn’t a hole in the sense of zero O3. However, there is very dramatic drop in ozone levels. Don’t take my word for it – read Chris Morrison’s article and the papers he refers to which argue that not only is there a hole but it has got bigger the last three years.
point 2 you don’t have causality for the non existent hole.
The chemistry for how CFCs breakdown ozone is quite complicated but accepted by scientists throughout the world. The principle is fairly simple. CFCs in the stratosphere are broken down by the UV light up there creating Chlorine. Chlorine reacts with O3 thus:
Cl + O3 -> ClO +O2
This reaction can be created quite easily in the lab so it is not open to dispute. The complicated bit is how the Chlorine atom gets recycled so one Chlorine atom can breakdown thousands of O3 molecules.
But I fear I am wasting my time as I am not convinced you are interested in the science.
We aren’t talked in a lab we are talking in the ozone layer itself at the poles. There is no experimental or observational evidence for that. You seem to be the most gullible person on earth. You’ve accepted a non existent hole exists then somehow believe CFC have accumulated at both poles miraculously and created said non existent holes.
You’ve accepted a non existent hole exists
I just pointed out that even Chris Morrison agrees the hole exists. Ozone levels are nowadays regularly measured in several different ways and clearly show the hole. What argument have you got for ignoring this data?
somehow believe CFC have accumulated at both poles miraculously and created said non existent holes.
CFCs are distributed throughout the atmosphere. It is only in the Antarctic at certain times of the year that the conditions exist for them to make a big difference to ozone levels. However, the scope was increasing – hence the need to act. There was no Artic hole. I really think you should spend more time understanding the details.
You’ve accepted a non existent hole exists
I just pointed out that even Chris Morrison agrees the hole exists. Ozone levels are nowadays regularly measured in several different ways and clearly show the hole. What argument have you got for ignoring this data?
—
There’s an argument for ignoring this statement: Earth has an atmosphere because its gravity is large enough to trap a cloud of gases around it and due to the nature of gases, there can be no holes in such a gas layer. That’s a loaded term supposed to make people think of death by asphyxation for want of air to breathe.
At the very best, the data clearly shows something people want to call a hole because they believe this is helpful for their political agenda.
I notice you use the words “science” and “settled” quite a lot. Often in conjunction with each other. —-Not the best idea, unless it is really politics that motivates you rather than science.
I think “settled” is justifiable in this context. Up until the AAOE measurements there were three competing theories as to the cause of the ozone hole. The measurements settled the dispute in favour of CFCs and the proponents of the other theories, like good scientists faced with contrary data, conceded they were wrong. I didn’t mean the science can never be challenged (indeed the papers in Morrison’s article do just that). I only meant that the dispute was settled.
No doubt you and I are both motivated by our politics. However, what matters is the whether the science we propose is correct.
You can say you are motivated by politics if you like. ——On matters of science I am not. ——eg I do not choose to question so called climate science because my world view is to the right in politics. I question it because I have come to the conclusion that climate science has been hijacked for political purposes. If you want to think it is all simply about science then that is up to you.
Something you might want to look up: No true scotsman fallacy.
I didn’t mean to imply that any scientist who disagreed that CFCs cause the ozone hole was not a true or knowledgeable scientist because they disagreed.
That would indeed be a fallacy.
I was just reporting as a matter of fact virtually all scientists (maybe you know an exception?) who have detailed knowledge of the field accept that CFCs are a major cause of ozone depletion. I then went on to describe the crucial experiment that persuaded the scientific community (up to that point there were at least two other competing theories). This is not a fallacy.
Translation all scientists funded to find cfc as the cause of non existent holes agreed with their paymaster that CFC caused the holes. Doubtless if we were discussing continental drift in 1940 you’d be dismissing my support for it as a “conspiracy theory, similarly if I was supporting the theory of relativity in 1906 you’d be calling me a tin foil hat job whilst spouting nonsense about aether theory, or if in 2000 I pointed out stomach ulcers could be cured with anti biotics you’d be taking your big pharma anti acid medication and thinking me a fool. You’ll notice in all these arguments you’d be on the side of authority/establishment dutifully doing yr bien pensant duty as opposed to making your mind up based on the evidence.
The scientific revolutions you point to were achieved by deeply knowledgeably people in their respective fields backed up by solid theory and data who had a radical new perspective. This is quite different from some blog post claiming it was all down to scientists being paid to find evidence.
Actually it was the CFC causes ozone depletion that was the rather radical idea. There were three groups of explanations for the measured ozone depletion – chlorine chemistry – almost certainly through breakdown of CFCs; circulation models; and accumulation of oxides of nitrogen. The CFC theory was probably the least popular of these in the scientific community until the evidence became overwhelming.
Wrong those theories were always twaddle and it was obvious the scientific establishment had totally embraced falsehoods as mainstream thinking in the face of overwhelming evidence. Continental drift was well proven by about 1920 but not widely accepted until around 1950, so there is 30 years of cognitive dissonance right there.
On the topic of ozone scientists have no idea what the historic variation of ozone is or what factors effect it. Yet here you accepting a banal theory that 1 variable is entirely responsible, which happens to be something humans emit. That’s the antithesis of science. You don’t seem to understand what time series data is and the problem of drawing such radical conclusions when you have data over such a pitifully tiny period which is left censored. I’m entirely confident that the variation we have seen is nothing as compared to a history over millions of years just as with climate. Even there you accept the climate emergency twaddle and single variable nonsense despite the geological temp record showing we live in a very cold ice age.
“reporting as a matter of fact virtually all scientists (maybe you know an exception?”
There you go again MTF – resorting to the ‘scientific concensus’ argument. summed up by “10,000 flies can’t be wrong” or “Hundert Autoren Gegen Einstein”
.
Please criticise me for what I wrote – not what you think I meant.
I am not saying that because there are so many of them they can’t be wrong. I am just reporting as a matter of fact that is what they believe. Separately I refer to the evidence as to why believe it. Given this, should you not concentrate on why they are wrong given that evidence? Where is the fallacy in their reasoning?
We’ve pointed out the fallacy in their reasoning. There is no hole and no mechanism in the real world by which CFC would come to exist in the areas where the supposed non holes exist. A vanishingly small period of ozone data relative to earth’s history and little to no understanding of what variables effect the ozone layer merely show the single variable CFC hypothesis to be poorly supported. To believe something as complex as the ozone layer can be reduced to a single variable is the worst example of corrupted science.
You are not just reporting as a matter of fact that is what virtually all scientists ( and you cannot think of an exception) believe – you are justifying a position by concensus. I for one do not believe it. The DEFRA reference you is devoid of argument – simply asserting without data that the atmosphere from top to bottom is so turbulent that mixing is homogenous, irrespective of gas density. If that were true then it could be argued that ozone would be far more widely distibuted despite its reactivity. Wokeman’s reply is helpful.
Very good point on the distribution of ozone.
If you don’t mean to imply that, how about not doing it?
This is the point the single variable ozone/CFC hypothesis based on no significant historical evidence is entirely true even though we can easily demolish said theory. The science clergy has said so and no amount of evidence, as with co2/agw theory, can unseat the theory.
This revelation can only have one result – a ban on something. Now let’s have a think….
Petrol cars and or diesel off the roads by 2028.
All air travel banned by 2030 unless you have a massive carbon credit bank balance – got to allow Billy, John, Klaus, Tony et al to conduct their important ‘work.’
Toothpaste because it contains fluoride.
I’m sure other banning options are available.
They conned us that banning CFCs did any good and they are conning us about CO2.
So, there’s a hole. Holes even. So what? How can we humans do anything about it?
I remember the ozone hole story at the time and the general media shock tactics that were employed to scare the livin’ bejaysus out of us – we were all going to fry. Nothing to protect us from the Sun’s rays. Scientists pointed at the dreaded Brut (awlright, ‘enry?) and Right Guard anti-perspirants as the enemy…we were all perspiring too much obviously (not helped by the ‘we’re gonna fry like bacon!’ stories), it was time to change our ways throw out the old fridges (where I believe the gas was sealed in) and get new fridges (eh? where I have heard this sort of ruse before?).
Clearly, we survived but it can’t stop me thinking that the greatest dread we humans have is of the precariousness of our existence on this little ball, with its relatively thin atmosphere, suspended in the great vacuum of space, and constantly roasted by that gigantic ball of pulsing energy, the Sun. It’s the basis of so many stories designed to cause us to lose our cool and run towards the clueless governments. One thing that nature teaches me, us, is to get on with living. We’re all going to die anyway but thinking that our puny and laughable attempts to stop the Sun’s rays (evidence of Gates’ absolutely mind-blowingly stupid and insane idea of vast space blockers to dim the sun) and alter the history of our planet is ever going to work shows how utterly deluded those people who purport to be our leaders actually are.
We’re still here, but in the long run, even the Sun won’t be. After all, it is not “renewable”, and will end up as a little red star, long after we’ve gone. So go out and have fun, and keep things in their slot so far as is reasonably practicable.
Yes except there is no “hole” in the atmosphere. But as you say why be accurate about things when not being accurate serves your purpose better?
I’ve just been rewatching The Hunger Games movies, which I thought was a distopian scifi. Now I’m not sure some of it wasn’t a documentary!
As someone already mentioned: The first large-scale environmental scare wasn’t the ozone hole but so-called acid rain caused by SO₂ emissions of cars leading to wood dying (translation of the German term Waldsterben as I don’t know the English one). This was supposed addressed by mandating catalytic converters. But das Waldsterben is still with us. It was recently resurrected and rebased on climate change aka CO₂. Which leads to the conclusion that there must be a scientic consensus that CO₂ kills plants on some different and much more important plane of existence than the one where greenhouses exist. CO₂ is also white, just invisibly so.
I’m very surprised that no-one has mentioned the undoubted deleterious effect on the ozone layer of the employment of space lasers by the Rothmans family, once famous for their ‘gaspers’.
They have apparently been lasing away, causing all manner of disturbing events: missing homework, late arrivals for important meetings, various dysphorias, delphiniums, a shortage of peanut butter and much else, for decades.
There can be no question that all of this frenetic lasing activity will have affected the ozone.
For example, as scientific proof, no longer can one inhale the stuff at the seaside in invigorating measure.
Indeed it may very well be that Rothmans space invaders were the fundamental cause of SARS CoV 2.
Whatever the rights and wrongs, it seems certain to be only a matter of time before J. Farrar (quite possibly a space invader himself) makes that claim.
And here the science seems certain to be considered settled.
‘Ozone has remitted Ebola, COVID-19, and bacterial infections.’
‘Ozone therapy, Ultraviolet Blood Irradiation Therapy, intravenous ascorbate, H2O2, as well as Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy are interesting therapies to be explored and exploited both as alternatives to, or in association with antimicrobials, providing that very uncommon side effects are kept in mind.’
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8575407/
You heard it here first.
Rothmans space invaders destroyed the ozone that we required to protect us from covid (but, to our good fortune, spared us from the very uncommon side effects we might not have kept in mind unless someone had, by some happy chance, been on hand to remind us).
Hallett….are you listening?
Du Pont – the World’s largest CFC producer – did much to delay the Montreal Protocol, then suddenly became very cooperative in helping its progress and hurrying it along – just coincidentally as patents on CFCs ran out, and Du Pont was geared up with replacement gasses HCFCs and HFCs.
Just coincidence, of course.
I remember well McDonalds ditching their cfc packaging in the 1980’s that kept food hot in favour of ozone friendly greasy cardboard that didn’t. All pointless? What a surprise.