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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It’s going to be a rerun of COVID.
Make up a global catastrophe. Force people to do all manner of insane things to avoid the “catastrophe”.
When catastrophe is averted, claim it was all the action taken that saved us.
Everybody will have been so comoletely indoctrinated and so invested in the supposed solutions that it will be impossible to convince them they’ve been duped.
That btw is pretty much the story of most government action.
This is a linear forecast of events. Reality is far more chaotic though.
I think it was Basil Fawlty who said “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth”.
May have been someone else.
Judging by the smug visage of the accompanying photo, she looks like she needed more hugs as a child.
Usually attributed to Goebbels, and cited as such over half a million times on the Internet. But in fact there’s no evidence he ever said it, which kind of proves the point.
Goebbels, in fact, accused the English of stupidity in “telling a big lie and sticking to it.” “Vaccines are safe and effective.” “Russia has run out of ammunition.” “Britain is getting hotter year by year.” “Diversity is a traditional British value.” It seems he was right, doesn’t it?
I’d more or less heard the same, though it is April 1st!
And more bugs. Yum.
The ‘big lie’ quote is usually attributed to Joseph Goebbels!
Co2? Causes weather, seasons and climate?
There is 0 correlation between Co2 and climate. It is plant food. Necessary to make oxygen. I would like more of it please.
After sitting through 5 months of a shitty UK winter I would like some warmtarding too please.
Doesn’t Gaia emit 95% of the 0.04% Co2 trace chemical? Isn’t THE SCIENCE ™ suggesting we kill her to save her?
I don’t believe in the man-made catastrophic climate change narrative, but I think we should acknowledge that man does have some impact on the climate, mainly through the greenhouse effect. My understanding is that any contribution man has made through the greenhouse effect is pretty much at saturation point i.e. increases in atmospheric CO2 above the current level of around 410 parts per million will have negligible impact (see the attached diagram, which indicates a rise in CO2 from 400 ppm to 800 ppm increases temp by 0.4C and 400 to 1600 ppm results in 1C).
I also think it is disingenuous of us to talk of man’s share of CO2 emissions, since Gaia both emits (land, volcanoes, oceans) and absorbs (vegetation, oceans) CO2. So, while man’s share of emissions may be less than 5%, it will be a much higher % of net emissions (see attached diagram).
What bullshit.
98% of Co2 is reused.
Are you telling me that man’s Co2 ‘forces’ only a positive feedback loop and Gaia’s does not.
Greenhouse is horseshit.
There is no glass ceiling.
No need to be discourteous since MichaelM didn’t actually say that.
I think the big hitters on our side of the argument (ie those not buying the climate catastrophe narrative), such as Richard Lindzen and William Happer, do acknowledge the greenhouse effect and that the burning of fossil fuels has had a significant impact on the increase in atmospheric CO2 from 280 ppm to 410 ppm over the last 150-200 years.
I do agree with you that there is no glass ceiling round the Earth.
If you want to generate a halting problem in someone claiming that a large percentage of species have gone extinct due to climate change, ask them to name one.
The BBC are CLIMATE ACTIVISTS. They claim to be reporting on science. But in science you question everything, otherwise it is isn’t science you are dealing in. So by questioning NOTHING all the BBC reveal is that they are not reporting on science at all, they are reporting on “Official Science”. You can switch on TV News almost every day and hear of extreme weather, more floods, more droughts, more storms etc etc and most people busy with work and family life will just accept that as truth because they assume they are listening to investigative journalism. But in the real world there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event. ———— How can it be that our National Broadcaster is reporting the opposite of what is true and getting away with it? SKY NEWS with their “Climate Show” do something similar but we are not all forced to pay for SKY. ————-The mainstream media talk of the “Climate Emergency” and the “Climate Crisis”, but this is not the language of science, it is the language of politics. For many of the unsuspecting public it is difficult to grasp why misinformation on this industrial scale would be taking place. They think the issue is all about science, but don’t realise the issue is highly politicised and that there is a political agenda behind it all. That political agenda is the United Nations Sustainable Development, and if there is no increase in the frequency or intensity of any type of weather event then that whole political agenda collapses. So the idea that extreme weather is getting worse MUST be kept in the public’s eye. They must at all times be under the impression that floods and storms will kill millions and sea level rise will drown coastal cities. This is the biggest pseudo scientific fraud ever perpetrated and I am thoroughly embarrassed that the British Broadcasting Company is part of it.
We’re all doomed
But this time! It’s real, honest!
We can trace the decision to the infamous Jan-2006 seminar organised by Harrabin himself – the actual Harrabin, not an ancestor – entitled ‘Climate Change: The Challenge to Broadcasting.’
For several years the BBC stonewalled all enquiry on who the seminar’s attendees had been, though it was known that the Heads TV and Radio News and many senior executives were there. An internet archive search revealed in 2009 that only 3 scientists, none of them ‘climate’, were there, the rest of the attendees being emissaries of WWF, Greenpeace, Friends of the earth, etc.
The only journalist, Richard D North, described the BBC people present as ignorant, having done no background reading or research, and bent on whipping up the most hysterically alarmist picture possible.
The keynote speaker was the Australian ecologist Lord May. He was president of the Royal Society 2000-05 and had transformed it into a relentless evangeliser for global warming. The gist of his speech was that dissenters were so few and marginal they could be safely classed with flat-earthers and perpetual-motionists, and the BBC Charter obligation of impartiality could therefore be set aside.
No criterion has ever been set or even debated for restoring it, despite the fact that many eminent atmospheric physicists – profs Lindzen, Christy, Spencer – have denied that there is any climate crisis.
Wasn’t Lord May played by Christopher Lee in The Wicker Man? Hotspots in the Summer Isles.
Might I suggest some family connection to Dame June?
Don’t the Big Black Cock corporation realise how out of touch they are with the licence payers? Or, maybe they aren’t?
” I’d gladly pay twice the price for my television licence ”
happily stupid from Milton Keynes.
“Brainwashing, corrupt, biased” are some of the more moderate adjectives applied to the BBC by readers of Andrew Montford’s excellent 57 page pamphlet ‘The Propaganda Bureau.’
It should be compulsory reading for all, with lefties compelled to learn it by rote.
I’ve just been offered 450 quid and an apology by the BBC for harassment over the TV licence and subsequently lying to me.
It was beautiful, they thought they were being cute, but every email or letter they sent contained lies.
For example, they said I had no visits from am enforcement officer in 2020….I said I never said 2020. They then realised I’d had 3 visits but said it was “the other department’s fault” for withholding the information…and so on.
They could not put pen to paper or finger to keyboard without lying and it was the carelessness of their lies which was as galling as the harassment. Could have been written by Kirtsy Wark.
Result! But I suspect very few get a modest jackpot but are continually harassed in a Kafka-esque manner.
Maybe 1 in 800? Where have I heard that stat before?
What shocks me is the number of people that genuinely believe all this catastrophising nonsense. Extreme gullibility and an inability to question the validity of outlandish claims make the general population vulnerable to manipulation. When will they turn bbc off?
The people outside of Islington don’t even watch the British Bias Corporation, never mind paying the laughable licence fee. The access to objectivity and the truth from the Internet broadcasting news network has killed it.
Is it true or did you hear it on the BBC?
The BBC is now the Globalist and Government slut, used to control the official narrative with Ofcom, and the Trusted News Initiative (what a joke). Taxpayers are not just funding via the licenses but also through Government spending on advertising. Billy Boy has kindly given them over £12million. Other channels like Sky are similar.
The once proud bastion of truth and integrity across the globe is one of our worst enemies, working with Government and corporations to cause tremendous harm to our society.
Humanity-caused climate change advocates remind me of this –
In the past, in some civilizations, sacrifices were offered so that the sun would rise the next day.
Sacrifices were offered.
Sure enough the sun rose the next day.
Therefore proof that the sacrifices worked to cause the sun to rise.
The media increases readership and viewership by giving constant attention to a ‘crisis’.
It’s in their interest to hype every conspiracy theory about catastrophe and crisis.
Gets people attention and they want to read or view the news stories.
Why has this paper now been retracted?