CFCs to blame?
It’s all one way traffic for the carbon dioxide mongers at the moment. Not only is the climate refusing to play ball, and the pesky media is starting to ask awkward questions of the alarmists, but a new paper hints at CO2 being less of a factor in climate change than CFCs.
From The Science is Settled department:
BANNED aerosols that caused the ozone hole – not carbon dioxide – were responsible for global warming since the 1970s, according to published research from one of Canada’s leading universities.
The research predicts global temperatures will continue to fall for the next 50 to 70 years and sea levels will rise for two decades before starting to retreat.
The peer-reviewed research by Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry at Waterloo University, was published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B.
The findings of Professor Lu’s paper – Cosmic-Ray-Driven Reaction and Greenhouse Effect of Halogenated Molecules: Culprits for Atmospheric Ozone Depletion and Global Climate Change – are at odds with the consensus view that climate change is driven by increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. Waterloo University said Professor Lu’s research provided “new fundamental understanding of the ozone hole and global climate change”. Critics said it might be “nothing more than coincidental correlation”, but it warranted further study.
Chlorofluorocarbons are known to deplete ozone, but conventional thinking is the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide had mainly contributed to global warming.
“But we have observed data going back to the industrial revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong,” Professor Lu said. “In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays (solar activity) caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming.”
By proving the link between CFCs, ozone depletion and temperature changes in the Antarctic, Professor Lu said he was able to draw almost perfect correlation between rising global surface temperatures and CFCs in the atmosphere. “The change in global surface temperature after the removal of the solar effect has shown zero correlation with CO2 but a nearly perfect linear correlation with CFCs,” he said.
If correct, the theory would have dramatic implications for forecasting global climate change.
“Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO2 levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850,” Professor Lu said. “My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 degrees C from 1950 to 2002, but the Earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline.” (source – $)
Next step will be for the UN to tax underarm deodorants, I guess.
Australian Climate Madness 
That makes sense. Of course if they proved CFC’s were depleting the ozone, there has to be a time factor in repairing it. 🙂
The climate will only ever be fully understood when science rejects the preconceived idea that changes in climate are the result of human activity.
Kerry. I have no doubt that human interference can change climate. Over zealous clearing of the land can cause desert like conditions and severe erosion problems. Changing river systems for irrigation has been proven to cause countless problems in some areas. But, I am totally against the idea that global warming has anything to do with co2
Given sea level will only rise for a decade or two, then surely scaremonger Flannery should be writing to those coastal councils who are wanting to prohibit further development of coastal land that are based upon his outrageous inundation predictions.
See what Matt Ridley says about CFCs and the hole in the ozone layer here – about 1/2 way through. Seems to be at odds with the good Professor……
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/apocalypse-not.aspx
The problem with this report is that it is still an unproven theory that CFC’s can affect the ozone layer. Much like the still unproven theory that man-made CO2 emissions can cause global warming/climate change. The science is far from settled!
Just another attempt to blame it all on “Evil Man” now the wheels have well and truly fallen off the CO2 meme.
Climate goes in 25 to 30 year (roughly) cycles of warming and cooling, overlaid on a larger cycle of around 150 years (roughly) warming and cooling. Here are the periods (roughly) since we came out of the LIA:
1850 – 1880 warming
1880 – 1910 cooling
1910 – 1940 warming
1940 – 1975 cooling
1975 – 2000 warming
2000 – 2030 cooling
The period 1850 to 2000 was a 150 year overall warming cycle, so it will now get progressively cooler over the next 150 years, interspersed with 30 year (roughly) warming and cooling periods. That’s how I learned it in Junior High School in 1966, and so far nothing has happened to falsify the hypothesis.
This latest “ozone depletion theory” goes nowhere to explain the warming periods 1850 to 1880 and 1910 to 1940, which predate the use of CFC’s
The entire “ozone hole” business is a furphy. For a start, there is no ozone “layer” to get a “hole” in it. The principal source of atmospheric ozone is sunlight striking oxygen (O2) molecules, resulting in the formation of the oxygen allotrope, “ozone” (O3). Simply put, no O2, no ozone. No sunlight, no ozone.
The so-called “ozone hole” that “mysteriously appears” over Antarctica is a purely natural, cyclical phenomenon, the result of the lack of sunlight over the previous three months.
Ozone concentration is measured in “Dobson Units”, which in turn are measured with a “Dobson Spectrophotometer”. Both are named after their inventor, Professor Gordon Dobson. In 1957 Professor Dobson won the “International Geophysical Man of the Year” award for his work using the entirely natural and cyclical depletion of ozone at Antarctica, to prove the existence of, and map, the upper air currents we now refer to as the “slipstream currents”, which are responsible for much of our weather patterns.
All this was explained in Dobson’s book, “Exploring the Atmosphere”, originall published in 1962, which was one of my physics textbooks in Senior High School.
Unfortunately Dobson’s work did not fit the requirements of post-modern science, so, like Tesla and others, he has been quietly “disappeared” from the science and history books, including the internet.
Very interesting post. Sounds similar to work done by the Japanese scientist Dr Syun Akasofu.
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/04/global-warming-a-classic-case-of-alarmism/
Yeah, sometimes it gets a bit depressing reading about “new and exciting discoveries” that were basic high school science 50 years ago.
memoryvault1, time to move with the times. The computer you typed your post with surely isn’t 50 years old? The car you drive? Almost everything science has given us today? It may be wiser to have a good look at both sides of the coin and make a balanced judgement based on the science of the day?
Just purchased a second hand ex-library copy of “Exploring the Atmosphere” on Amazon.
1. I thought Denialist’s all said that nothing humanity did could change the climate, that the climate was just too big for our puny efforts to alter? But the moment someone suggests *another* pollutant might also play a role, they cheer. As long as it’s not their darlings coal, oil, or gas, they’re happy.
2. The physics of Co2’s heat retaining properties REMAIN demonstrably provable in any decent lab on the planet. Watch from 90 seconds in to SEE a lab demonstrate how Co2 traps heat. The heat trapping properties are NOT controversial: they are basic established physics, like the boiling point of water. It’s something you look up in an OLD science textbook.
[video removed]
Any theory that seeks to REPLACE Co2 as THE climate driver would need to also disprove the basic Radiative Forcing Equation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiative_forcing
3. But any new theory that demonstrates ANOTHER forcing could quite happily sit alongside CO2’s role, the Milankovitch cycles, continental drift, and all the other things that affect the climate. Climate science does NOT say that CO2 is the ONLY driver of climate change, as many Denialist’s assert.
4. As SkepticalScience shows, Lu confuses ‘Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc’ or Correlation with Causation. He CHERRYPICKS DATA! His argument that as EESC’s rise, so did the temperature, and as they dropped SO DID THE TEMPERATURE fails to include data that shows the temperature DID NOT DROP! If you just pick up to 1998….2000 or so, and then indicate a BIT of a drop, it all looks good. But if you include 2005 and 2010, both as hot or even hotter than 1998’s super-El Nino year, then it all goes horribly wrong for Lu.
[link to Skeptical Science removed]
His ‘research’ must have co-incided with this politics for him to write in such strong terms!
In support of your point 4, there is a good paper by Grooß and Müller examing this lack of a link between correlation and causation which is worth reading.
http://www.ace.uwaterloo.ca/publications/2011/Grooss-ElectronReactions.pdf#%FE%FF%00b%00i%00b%002%005