ne time my boss was giving a presentation to a group of bigshots on
some protein that I had discovered. After a half hour of unscientific
exaggerations about my work, each of which had me sinking lower in my
seat, someone in the audience asked, “Aren't you concerned that
this protein is . . . maybe . . . doing too much?”
That is now happening with global warming. CO2 is doing too much, and it's about to get tossed out on its ear. Every scientist knows that when one biomolecule, one drug, or one gas does everything and its opposite, it means you've hit a scientific dead end. Without experimental verification, models are only theories—anthropogenic computer programs—and the more complicated the theory, the easier it can be tweaked to predict whatever you want. So they tweaked them, but the CO2 paradigms they are a-shifting.
You might not know this if you only read the popular press, but the Antarctic ozone hole is now bigger than ever, while global warming has slowed to a crawl. No matter how you spin it, it means the 1987 Montreal Protocol has failed: instead of curing the ozone hole, it seems to have cured global warming. It makes sense: warming only started when air conditioning came into common use. They'll have to start talking about “ozone footprint” and “carbon hole.” But like all activists, they'll never in a million years admit that the data proved them wrong.
Low-resolution infrared spectrum of ozone in air. This spectrum was taken in 1963 in a Beckman IR-9. Concentration = 40 ppm, path length 1 meter. Resolution was only 2 cm−1. It shows strong absorption at 9.7 μm (1028 cm−1). The small peaks around 4 μm are caused by contamination from other gases. Ozone also shows a very strong absorption in the ultraviolet (below 0.3 μm, not shown).
This graph shows that ozone is a greenhouse gas. According to the greenhouse theory, depletion of ozone would reduce global warming. Data source: NIST Chemistry WebBook, redrawn and converted to absorbance units
The new results are here. The authors note that five of the past eight years have seen record ozone holes. They have absolutely no clue what's causing them, so they speculate that nitrogen dioxide (NO2), which is produced mainly by volcanoes, is somehow changing mixing ratios in the middle stratosphere. They say NO2 can deplete ozone. It also curbs chlorine-driven loss of ozone indirectly by something called the Energetic Particle Precipitation Effect when the NO2 reaches the lower stratosphere, which means it also protects ozone.
In layman's terms, NO2 both decreases and increases ozone. Ozone is going down and NO2 is going up (in altitude), and the polar vortex has gone all wonky. The authors claim they can measure the mixing ratios, which is to say the vortex, by following carbon monoxide (CO, not to be confused with carbon dioxide or CO2).
That might sound like one of those great theories that can explain everything and its opposite. It might even be true. But whatever is going on, the unasked question is: why was it CFCs before and something else now? There seems to be no escaping the fact that the humans did a big experiment and the results showed that the CFC theory and the models based on it were wildly wrong about how the different factors should be weighted.
No problem, you might say: the ozone scientists and the IPCC can just swap Nobel prizes. It should be easy: they go for about a buck and a half these days. A cynic might even say we should also ban volcanoes just in case. Not that I am a cynic, no not a bit of it.
Ozone (O3) is created from atmospheric oxygen (O2) by UV light from the Sun, and it's gradually depleted in the long Antarctic winter. The hole only exists while there's little or no UV, so it is unlikely that any ‘hole’ would pose a danger, especially at temperate or tropical latitudes, where there is ample UV irradiation. Fig. 4 in the paper confirms that O3 is actually increasing at lower latitudes. Still, abolishing CFCs was the model that activists used for banning CO2, so it would be nice to get it right.
The news media will be hardest hit. Their first order of business will have to be to retroactively swap “CO2 emissions” with “CFC production” in all those scare stories about killer mosquitoes, drowning polar bears, and dying Thanksgiving dinners. Then they'll have to write new ones about how UV light will kill all the penguins.
The problem wasn't the science. While CO2 may be feeling left out in the cold these days, it really does absorb thermal infrared, and the amount of energy from the Sun is less in thermal infrared than at shorter wavelengths, so in principle it made sense that CO2 might make things warmer. But the question that always gets you in science is: What other thing that we don't know about could be what's really causing this?
That possibility is supposed to make scientists humble. The one thing you are never supposed to do is to use force to coerce people into believing your theory. The other thing you're not supposed to do is release scare stories to the press, poor jumpy things that they are.
But the real problem was the academic model, where evil university bureaucrats—and every academic knows who I mean—demand more and more grant money to support their lifestyles. Despite claims to the contrary, almost no basic research is done in industry these days, so if you want to do research you have to take the whip. When I was stuck in academia, we had no time for thinking or doing experiments; writing grants was pretty much the only thing anybody ever did.
So, don't blame the climate modelers. They are just trying to survive. The problem is the corrupt system of academia. It must be fixed. If it's not, this sort of thing will keep happening again and again.
nov 24 2023, 7:24 am
