Singer on Ozone Depletion and Rowland: Much ado about nothing

Fred Singer makes a few points about the ozone depletion alarm sounded by Sherwood Rowland, who passed away last week.

Singer writes in an e-mail:

Rowland’s seminal paper in Nature 1974 cannot explain the Antarctic ozone hole (AOH), yet the serendipitous discovery of the AOH led to the panic (i.e., remember the dying Southern oceans, the blind sheep in Patagonia, etc.), the 1987 Montreal Protocol (when scientific evidence was lacking), and the Nobel Prize (for prodding “for the salvation of mankind.” according to the citation).

So what has been the cumulative effect of the CFCs? According to the official report of the World Meteorological Organization: a 5% depletion of stratospheric ozone (about the same as the solar-cycle variation), which stopped around 1992; no detectable increase in solar UV-B at the Earth’s surface; industry profits from CFC replacements; and international corruption — providing a “blueprint” for the Kyoto Protocol.

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