THIS POST IS A CRITICAL REVIEW OF AN AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE ON FIXING THE HOLE IN THE SKY: LINK: https://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/science-environment/2020/01/fixing-the-hole-in-our-sky/

OVERVIEW:

WHAT WE SEE IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT IS A PATTERN OF REPEATEDLY CITING THE SUCCESS OF THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL AS THE REASON THAT THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT SHOULD ALSO SUCCEED. AN INTERPRETATION OF THIS LOGIC IS THAT THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL IS THE EVIDENCE THAT ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS WITHOUT SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE DO SUCCEED GIVEN A SUFFICIENT FEAR LEVEL AND THAT THEREFORE IT PROVIDES REASON TO CONTINUE THE CLIMATE BATTLE IN THE HOPE OF THE SAME KIND OF SUCCESS.

PART-1: WHAT THE AUSTRALIAN GEOGRAPHIC ARTICLE SAYS

Lessons from the Montreal Protocol, or how the people of the world can successfully respond as one to avert a global environmental catastrophe.

Balloons carrying sensors, have been launched every week since 2003 at Davis research station by the Australian Antarctic Division to track ozone levels in the atmosphere. Just as it seems that humans have done irreversible damage to the planet’s atmosphere and set Earth on an inexorable path to a climate-based Armageddon, there’s a sign high in the sky over Antarctica that offers hope. Kids during the last quarter of the 20th century grew up with the ozone hole looming large and ominously over their lives. When this potentially catastrophic ‘tear’ in the planet’s stratosphere, more than 10km above Antarctica, was discovered by scientists in 1985, it quickly set global alarm bells ringing.

Ozone is a gas that forms a kind of atmospheric blanket around the Earth to keep out much of the Sun’s UV radiation. Without it, life as we know it would never have evolved on this planet. The Antarctic hole quickly became recognised as the most extreme sign of a phenomenon scientists began finding evidence for worldwide during the 1980s: stratospheric ozone was being destroyed across the planet by human-produced gaseous chemicals, notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), which were being used as propellants in aerosols and as highly effective refrigerants in refrigerators and air conditioners. It was feared that destruction of Earth’s ozone layer would mean we’d be bombarded during the 21st century by such high levels of cancer-causing UV radiation that life outdoors would be almost impossible for our species as well, of course, for most other species on the planet.

The US space agency NASA has been keeping a close watch on stratospheric ozone since the 1970s, producing these images, based on satellite data of the hole over Antarctica when it forms each year. They are finally showing a trend towards the hole closing. Dr Paul Fraser, now a CSIRO honorary fellow, has been involved with the ozone crisis since it began. He was just embarking on his career in the 1970s as an atmospheric chemist when he was drawn to what was then still a scientific theory that CFCs could damage Earth’s stratosphere. He became pivotal in setting up Australia’s atmospheric CFC monitoring station at Cape Grim in Tasmania in 1976 and it was samples he collected there, at the Mawson research station in Antarctica, and elsewhere that helped, in the 1980s, to confirm global ozone depletion was occurring due to CFCs.

The governments of the world reacted swiftly and almost universally. In 1987 the first of an eventual 197 signed an agreement – the Montreal Protocol – to stop producing and using ozone-depleting substances (ODS), such as CFCs. There were some voices of dissent who questioned the science. But even for governments not convinced by what the research was showing, the outcome of doing nothing was so potentially diabolical it was seen as better to err on the side of caution and heed the most widespread expert advice. Notably, two of the world’s long-term conservative governments of the day who wielded much influence worldwide – those of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA – were both outspoken supporters of the Montreal Protocol and continued to be through various amendments that gradually extended its reach and led to faster phasing out of ODS.

In the very early days the first significant step to reducing CFCs was banning their use in aerosols, and that industry quickly transferred to using non–ozone depleting propellants. the decision made by everyday people around the world to not use aerosols powered by CFCs rapidly helped reduce emissions. Overall, however, the actions of the Montreal Protocol took time to kick in. Through the 1990s ODS continued to increase in the atmosphere, and the Antarctic hole – which appears over the continent in early spring each year due to extreme winter stratospheric conditions there that accelerate the chemical reactions that destroy ozone – kept growing.

But the rise in stratospheric ODS eventually peaked in the late 1990s and has since been falling. Every four years, a report is issued by the UN about the status of the ozone hole and ozone depletion science. The recovery began around 2000, says Australian scientist Dr Matt Tully, who’s been working on the planet’s ozone issue for 15 years and has contributed to worldwide scientific assessments of ozone depletion since 2009. He’s responsible for the ongoing ozone program at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) and is a member of the International Ozone Commission.

The healing of the ozone hole has been a slow trend, he says, and there is a lot of variation in its status from year to year, depending on conditions over Antarctica. But in the most recent assessment, released last year, scientists finally confirmed that long-term recovery of the hole is underway. “The assessments before weren’t prepared to call it,” Matt says. “There was too much variation from year to year, but in 2018 for the first time the assessment declared there were signs of recovery in the Antarctic ozone hole.” And last year had the smallest ozone hole in more than 20 years, although due to its fluctuating nature it may open wider again while still continuing on its overall downward trajectory. Measurements taken by scientists with the BOM, CSIRO and Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) are crucial in compiling these four-yearly assessments and also in keeping watch that all countries maintain their obligations, under the Montreal Protocol, not to use CFCs.

Australia’s Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station has been critical to studies of the Earth’s atmosphere since the 1970s. These days Cape Grim is one of only three premier baseline air pollution stations in the world – the others are in Hawaii and the Canadian Arctic. In 2018–19 monitoring by this network documented and located a rogue producer of CFCs in China, flouting the terms of the Montreal Protocol. They were dealt with swiftly and shut down.

While the Montreal Protocol is widely regarded as the most successful environmental treaty ever, Paul warns that the world still has a way to go in reducing global levels of ODS. “We’ve only just gone through the worst part of it,” he says. It’s expected that it won’t be until the 2060s that levels of ODS in the stratosphere will be brought back to pre-1970s levels.

In the meantime, there are still impacts caused by the problem that are only just beginning to emerge. The AAD has been collecting ozone data in Antarctica on a weekly basis now for two decades. “The measurements themselves are very important in helping to give information on the amount of ozone in the stratosphere,” says AAD atmospheric scientist Dr Andrew Klekociuk. “But AAD researchers are also tracking the impact on Antarctic ecosystems of the ozone hole, and the higher levels of UV radiation that it allows in. We know from AAD research, for example, that krill are influenced by elevated UV, and go down deeper to cope in the water column.” While there is still much work to be done on evaluating the impact of this, these tiny crustaceans drive food webs in Antarctica and beyond so the impacts are potentially enormous.

Although there are significant differences between how and what causes rising emissions of ODS and greenhouse gases, it’s widely thought that the success of the Protocol offers hope for global warming and provides lessons in how that can also be brought under control. Leader of CSIRO’s Earth Systems and Climate Change Hub Professor David Karoly, has worked across research into the consequences of both elevated emissions of greenhouse gases and ODS. He says three key things made the Montreal Protocol work. First, it took a top-down approach, with the governments of all countries agreeing unilaterally to restrict their emissions. Second the companies that were making and selling ODS realised they could also make and sell the replacement chemicals,” David continues. “So they were potentially going to make more money because they had new patents for the replacements. “And third, the industry-led ‘merchants of doubt’ about the links between stratospheric ozone depletion and the ODS weren’t as successful [as they are being in regard to climate change] because the companies didn’t support them when they realised they could make money with replacement chemicals.”

PART-2: CRITICAL COMMENTARY

(1) THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT: Since 1969, alarmed by the space program and the development of high elevation supersonic aircraft, environmentalism had clutched on to a failed obsession with ozone depletion activism. It was almost comical in many respects – a case of the 1960s environmental movement gone berserk. Below is a brief history of this tragi-comical chapter in environmentalism that serves as the backdrop to the ozone depletion environmentalism described by the Australian Geographic. This history is summarized below.

1. 1969: A plan to develop high altitude supersonic airliners with the Boeing 2707 as a concept vehicle. The very high cruising altitude of the SST raised environmental alarms that included both climate change and ozone depletion. First an alarm is raised that chemicals and aerosols in the exhaust of the SST jet engines will cause climate change.
2. 1970 the climate change theory is quietly shelved after critical reviews by skeptics and deniers and a new alarm is raised. Water vapor in the SST jet exhaust will cause a 4% depletion of ozone in the ozone layer causing 40,000 additional cases of skin cancer every year in the USA alone. The water vapor theory is quietly forgotten after critical reviews by skeptics and deniers with data showing that higher levels of water in the stratosphere is coincident with higher levels of ozone.
3. 1970: A new ozone depletion theory emerges. Nitric oxide (NOx) in the SST jet exhaust will cause ozone depletion because NOx acts as a catalyst to destroy ozone without being consumed in the process.
4. 1971: A computer model is developed to assess the impact of NOx in SST exhaust on the ozone layer. The model predicts that there will be a 50% ozone depletion and a worldwide epidemic of skin cancer. Animals that venture out during daylight will become blinded by UV radiation. It was an apocalyptic scenario.
5. 1971: NOx in the fireball of open air nuclear tests provide a ready laboratory to test the ozone depletion properties of NOx. The computer model predicted 10% ozone depletion by NOx from nuclear testing. Measurements showed no ozone depletion; but the model won and the ozone depletion scare endured.
6. 1972: Death of the SST: We were so frightened by the ozone depletion scare that the SST program was canceled although America’s skies soon became filled with supersonic fighters and bombers spewing NOx without any evidence of ozone depletion or of skin cancer or of blindness in animals.
7. 1973: Space Shuttle: Unperturbed by the skeptics and emboldened by their SST success, fear mongering ozone depletion scientists turned their attention to the proposed Space Shuttle program. The shuttle design included two solid fuel rockets that emit hydrogen chloride (HCl). The scientists calculated that 50 flights per year would deposit 5000 tons of HCl per year in the stratosphere that could cause a 10% ozone depletion over Florida and 1% to 2% elsewhere. Although the scare was hyped it never got to the SST levels and the space shuttle miraculously survived the ozone scare.

(2) THE ROWLAND MOLINA THEORY OF OZONE DEPLETION AND THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL

1. 1973: James Lovelock discovered that air samples taken from the Middle of the Atlantic Ocean contained CFCs. He then published his now famous paper in which he said that these man made chemicals did not otherwise occur in nature and that they were were inert meaning that they could therefore accumulate in the atmosphere indefinitely.
2. 1974: The Rowland Molina Theory of Ozone Depletion (RMTOD). Based on the work of Lovelock, Rowland and Molina propose the theory that the long life in the atmosphere of CFCs means that given enough time they could end up in the stratosphere. Once up there, the CFC molecule could be disintegrated by UV radiation to release highly reactive radicals that could destroy ozone. This theory forms the basis of the Montreal Protocol with the assumption and without the evidence that any of the long lived CFCs found by Lovelock did in fact make it all the way up to the stratosphere.
3. 1985: Farman et al 1985: This research paper published by the British Antarctic Survey serves as the empirical evidence for RMTOD. What Farman found was that over a 5-year period ozone levels above the South Pole had dropped precipitously during the months of November and December and then recovered. This data was taken as empirical verification of RMTOD and to this day serves as the only empirical evidence in support of RMTOD although what RMTOD implies is a long term decline in global mean total column ozone.
4. FARMAN ETAL 1985: The only empirical evidence presented in support of RMTOD is Farman etal 1985. The Farman study showed only that there was a brief and localized 5-year period of low ozone in the months of October and November above the South Pole that had recovered to normal levels after that 5-year period and this was taken as evidence of RMTOD. Yet, this episodal and localized low ozone event does not serve as evidence of the RMTOD theory of ozone depletion. RMTOD implies a long term declining trend in global mean total column ozone. No evidence for this trend has ever been presented and we show in a related post that none exists. LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/03/12/ozone1966-2015/ .
5. THE OZONE HOLE: The South Polar periodic low ozone event that quickly recovers back to normal levels was sold to the general public as an “ozone hole” and claimed as evidence of RMTOD human caused global ozone depletion that could cause skin cancer in humans and blindness in animals all over the world from its perch above the South Pole. This is an outrageous lie. There is no “hole” in the ozone layer. There is no hole in the sky. What NASA has dubbed as a “hole” is only a brief episodal blip in ozone concentration that comes and goes without a trend of any kind in a tiny corner of the world constituting less than 3% of the world in terms of surface area. This event has been sold as a dangerous hole in the sky that lets in dangerous UV radiation that causes skin cancer in humans and blindness in animals around the world.
6. THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL: Yet, this is all they had to go on to pass the Montreal Protocol and thereby to usher in new world order where the UN is installed as global environmental authority of some kind without legal authority and without constraints or oversight. Then at some point, it was declared with great fanfare that the UN brokered Montreal Protocol had solved the ozone depletion problem and that the ozone had recovered. No explanation is offered for the continuation of the South Polar ozone events that had been named ozone holes and that had served as the only empirical evidence of ozone depletion.
7. OZONE DISTRIBUTION TO THE POLAR REGIONS: In a related post LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/11/30/the-unep-healed-the-ozone-hole/ we show that these South Polar events should be understood as ozone distribution events and not as ozone depletion. Ozone is both created and destroyed by UV radiation but ozone is created only above the tropics where sunlight is direct. It is distributed to the greater latitudes by the Brewer Dobson circulation and episodic changes in ozone levels at the higher latitudes can be understood in terms of the dynamics of this distribution but not in terms of long term ozone depletion due to the presence of ozone depleting substances in the stratosphere. The role of the Montreal Protocol is illusory. The only significant impact of what is claimed to be finally a proven case of ozone depletion and its apparent resolution by the UN is that it served to expand the role of the UN into global environmentalism. The Montreal Protocol story as told is best understood in this context.
8. FEAR BASED ACTIVISM: This seemingly impossible task was made possible with fear based activism. Here is an example of the kind of that fear that was constantly in the media in those days: 1974: NY Times, September 26, a big day for Doomsday journalism. The Sept 26 1974: ozone depletion of 18% by 1990 and 50% by 2030 by CFCs will cause an epidemic of skin cancer, mutation of frogs, and blindness in animals and humans. March 10 1987: Skin cancer is increasing in the United States at a near epidemic rate, outstripping predictions made as recently as five years ago, a research physician testified Monday before a House panel examining threats to the Earth’s protective ozone layer. Malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer, has increased 83 percent in the last seven years alone. Melanoma is increasing faster than any other cancer except lung cancer in women. March 12 1987: Consensus among scientists: If harmful UV radiation reached the Earth, it would cause monumental problems, including rampant skin cancer and eye cataracts, retarded crop growth, impairment of the human immune system and damaging radiation doses to all forms of life. Although many Americans and the people of other nations are still not listening or taking the ozone threat seriously, the Earth’s protective shield is getting thinner and developing mysterious holes. October 1, 1987: Ozone levels above Antarctica reached an all-time low since measurements began and scientists said that man-made Freon-type gases are to blame. Ozone filters out harmful amounts of ultraviolet radiation. For every one percent of ozone decrease there could be 20,000 more skin cancer cases annually in the United States alone. The whole world is frightened. The scare was very successful and it appeared in various forms almost every day in newspapers and on television. :

OZONE DEPLETION CHEMISTRY AND GLOBAL TOTAL COLUMN OZONE DATA

RELATED POST#1: OZONE CHEMISTRY: https://tambonthongchai.com/2018/04/01/ozone-depletion-and-ozone-holes/ :

The Montreal Protocol subsumes that without human intervention the amount of ozone in the stratosphere is invariant and that a decline in ozone over time is a trend and not part of long run cyclical phenomena. All observed depletions, even localized and time constrained events, are therefore assumed to be man-made and the causative agent is identified as CFC. Observed changes are thus interpreted as anomalies that require an explanation in terms of human cause, but the data are more complicated that this simplistic model

The ultraviolet spectrum in incident solar radiation comes in three frequency bands. The high energy band (200-240 nanometers) and the medium energy band (240-300 nanometers) are harmful to living matter and are absorbed in the ozone layer while the low energy band (300-480 nanometers) reaches the earth’s surface and causes tanning. With respect to the absorption of harmful UV radiation in the ozone layer, ozone is both created and destroyed in the absorption process. The high-energy band UV is absorbed by oxygen molecules causing them to break apart into extremely reactive oxygen atoms. A subsequent chance collision of these atomic particles with other oxygen molecules forms ozone which then absorbs the medium-energy UV band and disintegrates back into oxygen. The UV absorption process is cyclical. It begins and ends with oxygen. Ozone is a transient intermediate product of this process. 

The reason that there is any ozone accumulation at all in the stratosphere is that, of the three reactions, the second is the slowest. Sunset finds the stratosphere with an excess of single oxygen atoms still looking for a date with an oxygen molecule. Overnight, with no radiation to destroy their product, these particles build up an inventory of ozone whose destruction will begin anew at sunrise. There is therefore, a diurnal cycle in the ozone content of the stratosphere whose amplitude is of the same order of magnitude as in the “ozone hole”, the reported ozone depletion over the South Pole that confirmed taken to confirm RMTOD and that caused Montreal Protocol to be invoked.

A longer but irregular cyclical pattern in stratospheric ozone coincides with the sunspot cycle. The period is 8 to 17 years with an average of 11 years. High-energy band UV increases by 6% to 10% during periods of high sunspot activity but the medium-energy UV emission is largely unaffected. High sunspot activity favors ozone accumulation and low sunspot activity is coincident with ozone depletion. A somewhat similar pattern exists in the case of polar ozone holes. The UV induced reactions described above occur only over the tropics where sunlight is direct. Ozone is formed over the equator and not over the poles. Equatorial ozone is distributed to the higher latitudes by the Brewer-Dobson Circulation (BDC) shown below.

BREWER DOBSON CIRCULATION (BDC):

The shape and position of the BDC changes seasonally and also shifts over a longer time cycle. Therefore, the efficiency of the BDC in transporting ozone to the greater latitudes changes seasonally and also over longer time cycles. These changes do not have an ozone depletion interpretation but they can create the polar ozone hole phenomenon. When the distribution of ozone is not efficient, localized “ozone depletion” appears to occur in the extreme latitudes in the form of what has come to be called an ozone hole. These holes come and go in natural cyclical changes and are not the creation of chemical ozone depletion and they do not serve as empirical evidence of the Roland Molina theory of ozone depletion by CFCs.

THE CASE AGAINST CFCs.

The case against CFCs is that when they get to the stratosphere by diffusion, they absorb high-energy band UV and form unstable and reactive chlorine atoms. The chlorine atom particles then participate as catalytic agents to convert ozone back to oxygen. In other words they mediate the reaction between atomic oxygen particles and ozone. It is alleged that the destruction of ozone by this mechanism exposes the surface of the earth to dangerous levels of medium-band UV because there is not enough ozone left in the stratosphere to absorb them.

Although these reactions can be carried out in the chemistry lab , there are certain rate constraints that make them irrelevant in the stratosphere. The air up there in the stratosphere is rather thin, containing less than one percent (1%) of the molecular density of air at sea level. It is not easy for a molecular particle in random thermal motion to find another particle to react with. Photochemical reactions occur instantaneously but those that require a collision of two particles take much much much longer. This difference in the reaction rate is the reason that ozone accumulates overnight and why there is an inventory of ozone in the ozone layer. 

The atomic oxygen particles that react with oxygen molecules to form ozone could in theory react with an ozone molecule instead and cause its destruction or it could react with another atomic oxygen particle and form oxygen instead of ever forming any ozone. Some of the oxygen atoms do behave in this manner but these reactions proceed too slowly to be important to the chemistry of the stratosphere. The reason is that the stratospheric chemicals in question exist in minute quantities. One in a million particles is an ozone molecule or an atomic oxygen particle and one in a billion is CFC or chlorine generated from CFC. The accidental collision between chlorine atoms and ozone molecules or between chlorine atoms and oxygen atoms are rarer than those between two oxygen atoms or that between an oxygen atom and an ozone molecule. Therefore the latter collisions involving oxygen atoms are more important to ozone depletion than those mediated by chlorine. Considering that more than 200,000 out of a million molecular particles in the stratosphere are oxygen, it is far more likely that charged oxygen atoms will collide with oxygen molecules rather than with each other or with ozone. Therefore ozone rather than oxygen is formed. Ozone formation is a rate phenomenon.

Chlorine atoms are a thousand times rarer in the stratosphere than atomic oxygen particles. It is not likely that chlorine’s mediation in short circuiting ozone generation will occur sufficiently fast to be important. Nature already contains an ozone destruction mechanism that is more efficient than the CFC mechanism but ozone forms anyway. 

However, the argument can be made that overnight after sunset, as charged oxygen atoms are used up, the charged chlorine atoms take on a greater role in ozone destruction and also when these chemicals are distributed to the greater latitudes where sunlight is less direct and too weak to be ionizers of oxygen, the only ozone destruction chemistry left is that of charged chlorine atoms colliding with ozone. The  relative importance of these overnight and greater latitude reactions in making changes to latitudinally weighted mean global ozone can be checked only by examining its overall long term trends as well as its trend profiles. These data are shown in the data analysis summary of related posts on ozone depletion (LINKS provided at the end of this post).

The essential data are displayed graphically below: What we find in the data for total column ozone across the whole world from Pole to Pole is that data for global mean total column ozone over a long multidecadal time span do not show a long term declining trend. Moreover, the patterns in the data suggest that the occasional low levels of ozone seen over the South Pole that have been interpreted as evidence of ozone depletion and evidence of a hole in the ozone layer, is a figment of a pattern in the data that is likely the creation of natural variability in ozone distribution by the Brewer Dobson circulation.

We also find in the data that the range of observed ozone levels is a strong function of latitude. It reaches a minimum of about 20DU in the tropics and increases asymmetrically toward the two poles. The hemispheric asymmetry has two dimensions. The northward increase in range is gradual and the southward increase in range is steep. Also, the northward increase in range is achieved mostly with rising maximum values while southward increase in range is achieved mostly with falling minimum values. The midpoint between the HIGH and LOW values is symmetrical within ±45 from the equator but diverges sharply beyond 45 with the northern leg continuing a steady rise while the southern leg changes to a steep decline.

Hemispheric asymmetry in atmospheric circulation patterns is well known (Butchart, 2014) (Smith, 2014) and the corresponding asymmetry in ozone levels is also recognized (Crook, 2008) (Tegtmeier, 2008) (Pan, 1997). These asymmetries are also evident when comparing seasonal cycles among the ground stations (Figure 29). The observed asymmetries are attributed to differences in land-water patterns in the two hemispheres with specific reference to the existence of a large ice covered land mass in the South Pole (Oppenheimer, 1998) (Kang, 2010) (Turner, 2009). The climactic uniqueness of Antarctica is widely recognized (Munshi, Mass Loss in the Greenland and Antarctica Ice Sheets, 2015) (NASA, 2016) (NASA, 2015).

The only empirical evidence for anthropogenic ozone depletion is the finding by Farman et al in 1985 that ozone levels at HLB (above the South Pole) fell more than 100DU from the average value for October in 1957-1973 to the average value for October in 1980-1984.

In comparison, changes of ±5DU from Lustrum to Lustrum seem inconsequential. In that light. On this basis, if we describe ±5DU per Lustrum as representative of random natural variability, what we see in the data is that, except for the two Antarctica stations (AMS and HLB), no average change in monthly mean ozone from Lustrum to Lustrum falls outside this range. It is therefore not likely that the HLB data reported by Farman et al can be generalized globally. We conclude from this analysis that the Farman etal study, the only empirical evidence thought to validate the Rowland Molina theory of ozone depletion, is flawed and therefore does not serve as evidence of anthropogenic ozone depletion. And yet, Farman etal 1985 served and still serves to this day as the sole empirical support for the ozone crisis that created the role for the UN in global environmentalism.

These relationships imply that there is no empirical evidence to support the Rowland Molina Theory of Ozone Depletion and that therefore there is no evidence of human caused ozone depletion by way of CFC emissions. The occasional low ozone level over the South Pole described as an “ozone hole” and presented as evidence of ozone depletion is neither a hole in the ozone layer nor evidence of ozone depletion but natural variability understood in terms of the data presented above.

YET WHAT WE SEE IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT IS A PATTERN OF REPEATEDLY CITING THE SUCCESS OF THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL AS THE REASON THAT THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT SHOULD ALSO SUCCEED. AN INTERPRETATION OF THIS LOGIC IS THAT THE MONTREAL PROTOCOL IS THE EVIDENCE THAT ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS WITHOUT SUFFICIENT EVIDENCE DO SUCCEED GIVEN A SUFFICIENT FEAR LEVEL AND THAT THEREFORE IT PROVIDES REASON TO CONTINUE THE CLIMATE BATTLE IN THE HOPE OF THE SAME KIND OF SUCCESS.

EMPRICIAL TEST OF OZONE DEPLETION: GROUND STATION OZONE DATA: LIST OF GROUND STATIONS: AND TOTAL COLUMN OZONE DATA FROM AMS, HLB, LDR, PTH

TOTAL COLUMN OZONE DATA FROM SMO, MLO, WAI, BDR

TOTAL COLUMN OZONE DATA FROM CAR, BIR, FBK, BRW