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UNITE! Info #166en: 2/8 The "ozone hole" terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] [Continued from part 1/8] 04. THE RULING WAR CRIMINALS' EXTREME HURRY TO ENFORCE CFC BANS IN 1987-1995 Against that hurry, above all by the main forces of US impe- rialism at that time but also by others, rather many scien- tists protested. The fact that obviously, some political rea- sons or other lay behind it was publicly pointed out by some of them too, for instance by S. Fred Singer. He wrote, con- cerning one conference, the political activity in connection with it and the enormously harmful effects of the bans de- cided on (see www.sepp.org): "My Adventures in the Ozone Layer by S. Fred Singer National Review, June 1989 The 123-nation Conference to Save the Ozone Layer, held in London in March 1989, ended with a whimper. The developing nations, principally China and India, were quite unconvinced by the evidence and unwilling to go along with the European Community and the United States in rushing to phase out completely the chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other widely used che- micals. It seems they know better. It is rumored that Mrs. Thatcher was converted into a global ozone fan by Sir Crispin Tickell, the diplomat turned eco-freak. Lord knows who the President Bush has been listening to, but he deserves better advice. Now it's on to a European conference in the Hague to which Maggie and George have not been invited --tsk, tsk-- and then a follow-up to London in Helsinki in May. All this after the 1985 Vienna Convention, the Montreal Protocol (Sept 1987), Geneva, Toronto, and who knows how many other international gabfests in between. Who can keep track of them? Norway's Prime Minister Mrs. Gro Harlem Brundtland hardly spends time in Oslo anymore. My word! When do these people ever govern? The hyperactivity this creates in the agencies, main- ly in the State Department and EPA, has to be seen to be believed. The congressional Government Accounting Office would have done an investigation and totaled up the thousands of hours and the huge resources spent on this issue -- except for the fact that Con- gress and its staffs are just as involved. As the Hill folks try to outdo the Administration and the feds dream up new initiatives, things are building up to a fever pitch -- spurred on by lurid stories in the media about the imminent danger. "Arctic Ozone is Poised for a Fall" scream the headlines. "Skin Cancer is on the Rise!" Is it all hype? Or is it a hoax? And is the hysteria for real? As we'll see later, the scientific basis for the much-touted ozone crisis may be evaporating-- leaving the new breed of geo-eco-politicians high and dry. ... I am not against CFC control at all; but look at the poor state of the scientific evidence. The case against CFCs is based on a theory of ozone depletion, plausible but quite incomplete-- and certainly not reliable in its quantitative predictions. ... And substituting for CFCs is no simple matter. A New York Times report of March 7, 1989 talks about the disadvantages of the CFC substitutes. They may be toxic, flammable, and corrosive; and they certainly won't work as well. They'll reduce the energy effici- ency of appliances such as refrigerators, and they'll deteriorate, requiring frequent replacement. Nor is this all; about $135 billion of equipment use CFCs in the U.S. alone, and much of this equipment will have to be replaced or modified to work well with the CFC substitutes. Eventually that will in- volve 100 million home refrigerators, the air-condi- tioners in 90 million cars, and the central air-con- ditioning plants in 100,000 large buildings. Good luck! The total costs haven't really been added up yet. These are some of the costs we are now trying to im- pose on the developing countries who can ill afford them. Sanctions through a new U.N. agency seem to be out -- at least for the time being. But trade bar- riers can accomplish the same results and won't make us beloved. One can hear already the charge of en- vironmental imperialism from third-world countries accusing the West of protecting its pocket books as well as its fair skins. Keep in mind that olive- skinned and dark-skinned people are not very suscep- tible to skin tumors caused by solar ultraviolet rays. Of course, if we in the West should be inclined to pay the bill for this major industrial perestroika, then the Asians might just go along. So it's environ- mental blackmail vs. environmental imperialism. Choosing up sides could prove difficult for some. I'll sit this one out and wait for better and more complete science." 05. HAS THE AMOUNT OF ULTRAVIOULET RADIATION WHICH REACHES THE SURFACE PERHAPS INCREASED OR PERHAPS DECREASED IN THE LAST 20-30 YEARS? The ruling reactionaries today are practically *not telling people anything* at all about that - another tell-tale fact in this connection. The only studies on this which I've been able to find a men- tion of are a few from the 1980s and early 1990s. (A graph at the homepage of the Swedish SMHI does go as far as to the year 2000, though - see below.) One of these studies showed that the amount of ultraviolet B radiation (the most rele- vant type) reaching ground levels in the USA had by no means increased but, on the contrary, had decreased significantly, between 1974 and 1985. This result, presumed too to be due mainly to an increase in cloud cover, in itself did not disprove a possibility that there might have been some slight ozone depletion in the same period. This investigation's methods were criticized - I cannot tell how justly or unjustly - by Parson in his 1997 "advanced" swindle "FAQ", which also says that "small increases, of or- der 1% per year, have been measured in the Swiss Alps", re- ports some short-time quite large UV radiation increases in some different locations elsewhere and at the same time ad- mits that "measurements over a period of a few years cannot establish long-term trends". No other long-term study than the one he criticizes is mentioned by Parson. But of course, if a genuine fear of long-term ozone depletion *had* been the reason behind the actions in this field by the ruling war criminals, then they would not least have ordered a *comprehensive and detailed monitoring of UV radiation le- vels* (in particular UV-B ones), from back in the mid-1980s on and continuing today, and would have been most eager too to continually *publish its results*. Precisely the opposite is the case. Maduro and Schauerhammer wrote (in "The Holes...", 1992, pp. 155-159) on the abovementioned US study, on how it was "re- ceived", and on other 1980s UV level studies: "According to Robert Watson's [head of a so-called 'Ozone Trend Panel'] claims and F. Sherwood Rowland's [Nobel prize recipient in 1995, together with Mario Molina, as 'discoverer' of the swindle 'CFC ozone de- pletion'] official CFC depletion theory, a 1 percent decrease in stratospheric ozone will cause a 2 per- cent increase in the amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface of the Earth. If the CFC depletion theory were correct, that means that ultraviolet radiation should have increased by 6 percent in the same period of time. [Referring to a claim then of '3% ozone level decrease in a decade'.] Such an enormous rise in ultraviolet radiation should be easily detectable, and should have, by now, pro- duced visible effects on plant and animal life. In reality, the data show exactly the opposite of what the Ozone Trends Panel's findings indicate. In a study published in *Science* magazine Feb. 12, 1988, Joseph Scotto, of the Biostatistics Branch of the Na- tional Cancer Institute, presents hard scientific evidence that the amount of ultraviolet B radiation reaching ground levels across the United States had *not increased* but, in fact, had significantly *de- creased* between 1974 and 1985. The study, which has been ignored by the internatio- nal news media, was based on readings from a network of ground level monitoring stations that has been tracking measurements of ultraviolet radiation since 1974. ... In a subsequent issue of *Science*, Nov. 25, 1988, Scotto rejects the possibility that urban air pollu- tion was scattering incoming ultraviolet B and thus causing the decrease in ultraviolet B reaching the Earth. Scotto points to data from the air station at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, 'which is relatively free of urban air pollution'; yet, he says, 'preliminary analysis of data from this site shows no increase in ultravio- let B radiation from 1974 to 1985'. ... How did the U.S. government and the environmentalists react to the publication of Scotto's National Cancer Institute data? According to insiders, Scotto has been the victim of an 'inquisition'. He was unable to extend his study beyond 1985, because funding for most of the ultraviolet recording stations was cut and the stations were shut down. And, although he is a world-renowned cancer expert, Scotto no longer re- ceives fundings to travel to international conferen- ces to present his findings. Is ultraviolet light at the Earth's surface increa- sing with the depletion of ozone as the environmenta- lists assert? The data that could answer the question are being suppressed. Environmentalist pressure groups have gone from one agency to another in Wash- ington, attacking the scientists who support the maintenance of the ultraviolet measuring stations. And, although the U.S. government is now spending more than $3.5 billion a year researching 'climate change', 'ozone depletion' and 'global warming', it has been decided that Washington cannot spare a few thousand dollars to keep these monitoring stations operating. ... There is other evidence that the level of ultraviolet light reaching the Earth has not increased...the Ho- henpreissberg Observatory in Bavaria, Germany, has recorded decreases in ultraviolet radiation reaching the Earth's surface of 0.9 percent at noon and 0.5 percent throughout the day. The measurements were taken between 1968 and 1982. ... The ozone hole propagandists also ignore more exten- sive records of ultraviolet readings taken over the past 20 years. A case in point is data collected for 15 years by the Fraunhofer Institute of Atmospheric Sciences in Germany... Unfortunately, the institute's founder, Reinholt Reiter, retired in 1985, and his replacement, Wolfgang Seidler, is an enthusiastic proponent of the ozone-depletion and global-warming theories. Seidler has adamantly refused to publish the institute's data, and has gone so far as to stop the researchers who collected it from returning to the institute to use it! Furthermore, in 1990, Seid- ler began to shut down the monitoring instruments, with the apparent reason that the institute will henceforth rely on computer models instead of obser- vational data." In the news media in recent years, both local and interna- tional, I've seen no reports whatsoever about long-term UV radiation trends (ground UV levels today as compared to 10, 20 or 30 years ago, say). But concerning Sweden at least, some information can be found, on the period 1983-2000. Today, in 2002, various meteorological institutes, the SMHI here in Sweden and its counterpart in Argentina, for instan- ce, are publishing (e.g. at their respective homepages) day- to-day "indexes" of local UV radiation, "so as to warn the public against too much sun exposure" - it's no news anyway that in this country too, staying outdoors in the sunny sea- son for most people requires some getting acclimatized to it, degree by degree. And the SMHI homepage, at least, has some longer-term UV level data. UV measurements started, at a station in Norrköping in mid- Sweden, in 1983, and semi-annual mean results from then up to 2000 are shown, spring and summer values at a "Jm^-2 per day CIE-weighted WMO-STUK 1995 Scale". Both graphs show an approximately constant UV radiation level, the spring one perhaps rising a little and the summer one perhaps sinking a little. It's explained that not only variations in the ozone layer but variations in cloudiness too account for differences in how much UV radiation reaches the ground. In 1998, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) pub- lished a "Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion", its last so far, containing a "Report No. 44 by the WMO Global Ozone Research and Monitoring Project". It can be found on the Net. As will be seen below, this was something of a "last fling" (so far) of "ozone depletion" scare propagan- da - its supposedly "science-based" part, that is. On UV radiation, the "Executive Summary" of this 1998 "WMO Report No. 44" firstly said that "...newly developed satel- lite methods show promise for establishing global trends in UV radiation" - indicating that so far, such global trends had *not yet* been established, and secondly, clearly contra- dicting this, and quite briefly, without mentioning what ba- sis there was for it, saying that "current increases" of UV radiation "in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respec- tively", were "5% and 8%" "since 1980". The first of these "informations", both obviously more or less guessworks, as the WMO indirectly admits, is contradic- ted by the (of course just local) Norrköping UV data, which show nothing close to a "5%" increase; perhaps a 1-1.5% one over that station from 1983 to 1998. The year-to-year varia- tions are quite big. There's reason to believe, I hold, that a scrutiny of those "increases since 1980", for both hemi- spheres, purported in 1998 by that since long quite infamous swindle institute the WMO (see #165en, for instance) will show them to be utter fakes. The amount of ultraviolet radiation reaching the surface ob- viously at least has not increased significantly, on a glo- bal scale, in the last 20-30 years. It may have been approxi- mately constant or it may have been rising or sinking at some very small rate; the ruling reactionaries at least are not very interested at all in telling people what are the actual facts on this. 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