The Hole In The Ozone Layer (Oops, a sidebar!)

Nobody knew about it. It wasn’t on the cover of Time magazine, it didn’t involve oil tankers, spotted owls, Polar bears, pseudo hippies protesting in Oregon, or California fruit flies. All it took was the right people in the right place at the right time to figure out that something wasn’t as it should be. This is an example of real science discovering a serious issue along with finding both the cause and the remedy.

British scientists Joseph Farman, Brian Gardiner, and Jonathan Shanklin of the British Antarctic Survey discovered the Ozone hole over the Antarctic in 1985. It was NASA who discovered the cause* – CFCs (Chlorofluorocarbons). Once the word got out and all the real honest-to-goodness proof was laid out for everyone to see the world acted swiftly. In 1987 twenty-five nations signed the Montreal Protocol (which set limits on the production of CFCs) and eventually 168 nations followed suit and signed on. The result of this action has reduced the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere that has led to a slow but effective reversal in the ozone hole.

This is what happens when a problem is found by trained and qualified professionals whose findings are backed up by real tangible proof in the form of actual factual evidence – the right people make the right decisions and action is taken. It only took 2 years from the discovery of the hole in the Ozone Layer to have global action taken to begin the ‘recovery’ process. The fact that there is so much hemming & hawing, debating and lack of committal or consensus surrounding 'anthropogenic global warming' that's been going on for so long should tell you something about both the quality of the facts that support it and those who are proselytizing it.

Editor’s Note: No documentaries, Academy Awards, Oscars, Grammy’s or Nobel prizes were harmed during the writing of this article.

* - In 1930 English physicist Sidney Chapman formulated the first photochemical theory for the formation and decomposition of ozone in the atmosphere. In the mid 1970’s scientists Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina and Sherwood Rowland expanded on Chapman’s research which allowed NASA to fully grasp the nature of the problem.

All This 'Green' Has Me Seeing Red

Over the past year and a half I have neglected to write anything for this blog. Times have been difficult, to say the least, and I just haven’t been able to put myself in the right frame of mind to concentrate on writing – or much of anything for that matter. Recently though that little itch in the back of my brain has been slowly growing back the more I keep hearing about “environmental” issues lately. It’s everywhere you look these days and is taking over the social collective as we know it. Everywhere I turn I keep seeing the same thing: Go Green, Earth Friendly, Good for the Environment, Environmentally Responsible, Renewable Energy, Bio-(insert your own BS term here), Clean Coal Technology (?) – the list could go on for pages. What does it all mean? Well, that’s the exact question I am going to set out to answer. I am going to re-launch this blog and spend the next year attempting to navigate the vast ocean of Eco-Bullshit in an attempt to weed out the fact from the fiction, the truth from all the lies, misinformation and blatant ‘the sky is falling’ hysteria.

Don’t get me wrong though. There is plenty of good coming from the last 40 years of attention being paid to issues that concern us all. As a result we have cleaner rivers & lakes (a less contaminated water table over-all), better air quality in some major cities and urban areas, stricter regulations on hazardous waste disposal and better quality building materials that contain fewer contaminants (like lead-free paint and a ban on asbestos as examples). But this trend has also spawned another movement that is not based on science as much as hype, scare tactics and outright hysteria – all in the name of ‘saving the planet’ or ‘protecting mother earth’ without the slightest idea of what those concepts actually mean.

Examples? You want examples? Okay, here are a few: First, “Global warming is killing Polar bears.” This one just kills me! Talk about an issue that is based on nothing more than pure hype and hysteria! There isn’t a single legitimate study by any scientific agency or group that is willing to stand by this supposed ‘fact’ – not one! In 2000 the US Geological Survey commissioned nine administrative reports to satisfy the request of the Secretary of the Interior and the Fish and Wildlife Service to conduct analyses with the goal of adding the bears to the endangered/protected species list. When these studies were reviewed by the scientific community they were found to have used an unproven ‘forecast model’ in an effort to forecast the Polar bear population at 50, 75 and 100 years into the future. Scientist and biologist, who found that the reports contained no factual information and were inaccurate to a fault, dismissed the reports. Despite the fact that actual scientists debunked the conclusions of the 9 studies, in May of 2008 Polar bears were listed as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act citing global warming as the main threat. One of the biologists that rejected these reports was Dr. Mitchell Taylor who has been studying Polar bears in the Davis Strait area of Canada's eastern Arctic for over 20 years. When Dr. Taylor first began his study in the mid 1980’s there were around 850 bears in the region. Today he says the count is in excess of 2,100 bears – that’s a 150% increase! There are 20 separate Polar bear populations known to exist and in all but two of them the counts have either maintained or increased. The two populations that experienced a decrease were in areas where the average yearly temperature has actually gotten colder. Two separate recent Canadian and British studies concluded the same thing! In fact many of the scientists and biologists that study the region and the bears have openly questioned how a species that is considered by science to be both healthy and sustaining could be added to the list of threatened species. Hmmm…

Secondly, “Plastic grocery bags are responsible for over 100,000 marine animal and 1 million seabird deaths every year.” Once again, this claim is not based on any scientific study and is nothing more than a completely fabricated story. A Canadian study conducted in 1997 into the main causes of marine animal deaths concluded that of the approximately 1,000 animal deaths in Nova Scotia and Greenland (a far cry from the 1,001,000 body count decried by all the ‘Eco-Warriors out there) the majority were caused by “waste produce” – that’s fishing gear, ropes and strapping bands to you and me. Well, needless to say, the ‘save the environment’ crowd took this study and altered much of the facts, added a picture of a turtle with a plastic bag sticking out of its mouth, (which looks totally photoshopped upon close examination – and is the only photo presented to illustrate the issue on hundreds of websites devoted to demonizing the plastic grocery bag) and created an entire movement pretty much out of thin air. Now, all across the country municipalities are beginning to roll out bans, restrictions and, in some cases, taxes on the humble plastic grocery bag – yet another instance of laws and legislation being created and forced on the unsuspecting citizen based on nothing more than pure hysteria and the furthering of a completely misguided agenda.

The two examples I stated above are part of the reason why I don’t buy into the whole manmade global warming fervor. Too much of the environmental agenda relies on false information, over-blown and exaggerated claims, poorly conducted studies by people and agencies that are either under qualified or completely unqualified for the task, and scientists & professionals who are on the payroll of entities that have something to gain by supporting anthropogenic global warming. We keep hearing that the “debate is over – we must act now!” when it comes to the issue of global warming. Well, there are a lot of people out there who don’t think the debate ever really began. Al Gore (hold on a second, give me a moment to rinse my mouth out) used flawed theory, misinformation and proven-false science & data to make the call to action in his film An Inconvenient Truth. Most notably, he used the now-debunked “Hockey Stick Chart” (which supposedly links atmospheric carbon levels and temperature), and despite the fact that the scientific community has abandoned it, Gore continues to this day to refer to it. There are several groups of scientists that believe that cooling and warming trends are cyclical and part of the normal ebb and flow sequence of the Earth’s climate. Still others believe that solar activity (which is also cyclical) has a direct impact on global temperatures – and we are just coming out of a 13-year cycle of increased solar activity. Then there is the argument that yet another scientific community is proposing – they are saying that the temperature trend over the last 20 years has shown a cooling in the Earth’s average temperature. So, is the debate over? Big Al and his followers say that there is a “consensus within the scientific community” that anthropogenic global warming is real, its here now and we had better start doing something about it or we’re all doomed (Al’s term for this is “the climate crisis”). Well, with so many theories, studies and contradicting scientific conclusions out there, I’d say that not only is there no “consensus among the scientific community”, but apparently there is still plenty of room for debate Mr. Gore. I think that we are doing the world a grave disservice by prematurely passing both national and international legislation to combat something we still don’t fully understand – especially when those with the most to gain financially from said legislation are the ones who are sounding all the alarms.

So, with that said, I’m going to spend the next year doing my best to separate the fact from the fiction, the heroes from the crooks and the science from the misguided passions of the unaccredited masses desperately seeking a religion that they can call their own.

Wish me luck…