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This didn't reach the list on 20.03; I'm trying again now, 26.03.02. - RM UNITE! Info #166en: 1/8 The "ozone hole" terror hoax [Posted: 20.03.02] Note / Anmerkung / Note / Nota / Anmärkning: On the UNITE! / VEREINIGT EUCH! / UNISSEZ-VOUS! / ¡UNIOS! / FÖRENA ER! Info en/de/fr/es/se series: See information on the last page / Siehe Information auf der letzten Seite / Verrez information à la dernière page / Ver información en la última página / Se information på sista sidan INTRO NOTE: In #136en of this series, 'A mail to Thomas Gold, Cc others', of 16.09.2000, 12 scientific megahoaxes of today were listed as being quite serious attacks on the people in all countries by the main reactionaries in the world, intended at all costs to preserve the international capitalist and imperialist system of oppression and exploitation a little longer. I in that Info announced as a programme of mine to investi- gate further, as well as I could, in the respective cases: A: What are the main actual facts of the matter B: Who are perpetrating the hoax, and since when C: Why is the hoax being perpetrated D: What damage does the hoax, as propagandized and acted on, cause to the vast majority of people on earth E: How can and must the hoax be combated. The rather recent #165en, 'The big "greenhouse" hoax (1)' (in 4 parts, 22.02.02), was a result of one part of this program- me, and so is the present Info. One immediate reason for its being written and sent now is the "spilling-over" of part of a debate on some newsgroups concerning the questions touched on in Info #165en into the questions pertaining to a supposed "manmade ozone hole". On a discussion under "Re: Ozone hole?", which the writer "hanson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> had showed me was going on, I commented briefly, and on 08.03 got some replies from Paul F. Dietz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> and David Bell <wraith7@mb. sympatico.ca>, arguing i.a.: [Paul F. Dietz:] >I used to be skeptical of CFCs affecting the ozone layer. >But the theory that anthropogenic halocarbons are respon- >sible for the ozone hole has been proved beyond a reasonable >doubt. To believe otherwise these days is on par with be- >lieving the earth is flat..., and later in reply to my question, what was the "evidence" for this, a reference, by both writers, to the website: >http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ozone-depletion/. This is a "FAQ" in 4 parts on this matter by Robert Parson, University of Colorado, USA, last updated in 1997, which ap- parently has been quoted quite often in debates. I've now studied this site, which turns out to be another of the swindle kind (by whose fault more precisely, I cannot tell), a relatively "advanced" and also in part informative such. I've gained some more knowledge on the purported "ozone depletion" also by looking up the sites: "The Science and Environmental Policy Project" (S. Fred Singer and others, USA): www.sepp.org (with articles on the subject from 1989 to 1998), a 1994 article by Robert J. Bidinotto, "Ozone Depletion": http://www.vix.com/objectivism/Writing/RobertBidinotto/ OzoneDepletion.html, and the homepages of, among others, The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the TOMS satellite and the Swedish meteo- rological institute, SMHI - the last-mentioned has some data, both from as far back as the 1950s and, not least, some quite recent ones, which in my judgement contribute importantly to- wards refuting the "ozone hole" hoax. Like all other "offi- cial" organs (of the "richer" states at least), the SMHI too (of course) propagandistically supports that same hoax. Also, the 1992 book by Maduro and Schauerhammer, USA: "The Holes in the Ozone Scare", from which most of my earlier knowledge or supposed knowledge on the subject has stemmed (though I - of course - didn't and don't agree with the poli- tical line advocated in it), still very much is to be recom- mended, in my opinion, and I shall quote extensively from it. (One proposition advanced by that book as one of several ma- jor arguments against the scare, later criticized both by Parson and by Bidinotto [see above], in fact obviously is false - its saying that natural amounts of chlorine in the stratosphere must always be much bigger than any resulting from breakdown of CFCs, supposedly a manmade factor adding to the always occuring natural processes which destroy ozone. But this question, as will be seen, has very little relevance anyway.) The scientific questions concerning the ozone layer in the atmosphere, possible changes in it and possible effects of such changes on human life make up a whole which is more com- plicated than the one concerning possible climate change, for instance. And the covering-up and confusion-mongering, by the main reactionaries, in connection with this big "ozone hole" hoax, is even more massive than that connected with their pa- rallel (and in part also overlapping) one, the "manmade glo- bal warming" hoax. But, like that other, it can be seen through anyway. Contents in the below are: In part 1/8: 01. The intentions behind the "ozone hole" hoax 02. What's the importance of the ozone layer and of variations in it? 03. "Ozone depletion" "predictions" versus reality In part 2/8: 04. The ruling war criminals' extreme hurry to enforce CFC bans in 1987-1995 05. Has the amount of ultraviolet radiation which reaches the surface perhaps increased or perhaps decreased in the last 20-30 years? In part 3/8: 06. A brief look at some recent Swedish ozone level data, and at some older ones too - layer now thicker than in many years before 07. Was there a global ozone depletion trend in (or around) the 1980s? And if so, were its causes manmade or natural? 08. The ozone layer and how it's continously being refilled and depleted In part 4/8: 09. Ultraviolet (UV) radiation and its interaction with ozone 10. The biological importance of ultraviolet radiation, in particular the UV-B type 11. Year-to-year periodic ozone level variations In part 5/8: 12. Now how did the global ozone layer fare in 1980s? 13. A "1980s ozone depletion" "due to CFCs etc"? 14. What was the ozone situation in the 1990s? - facts versus "depletion" hoax up to 1998 - In part 6/8: 15. Why have all "depletion trend" "data" after 1998 vanished into a big black hole? 16. Could CFC (etc) releases possibly cause ozone depletion, or could they not? In part 7/8: 17. The Antarctic "ozone hole", a fake "threat" 18. The Antarctic ozone "hole's" forgotten past, and does it have a future? In part 8/8: 18. (ctd.) 19. The vital substances which must as far as possible be saved from the mass murderers' bans End of intro note 01. THE INTENTIONS BEHIND THE "OZONE HOLE" HOAX In the bourgeois mass media, in the school textbooks etc, there since 15-20 years back is a propaganda saying that the ozone layer in the atmosphere, which prevents that too much ultraviolet radiation from the sun reaches the earth surface, is "continually being depleted", and that there is "an ozone hole", "at least over the Antarctic", "due to human activi- ty", - "caused by" the release of certain chemicals, the CFCs (freons) and some other, similar, substances. This propaganda is false. It's a part of the "green" sneak warfare waged by the main reactionaries in the world, in par- ticular the US imperialists, against the people everywhere. It's a part of a raging cultural reaction in today's world, not least in a large number of scientific fields. This particular propaganda campaign is intended to "justify" and cover up some further measures by the main reactionary governments in the world, which since long are being under- taken, for the destruction of vital branches of industry and for killing millions of people in the poorer, international- ly-oppressed and -exploited countries. Today this propaganda has abated somewhat in the media. It largely has been refuted factually already, in particular those wildly absurd scare propositions with which it started out, by those critics of it which there are too, despite all the Inquisition-type pressure on them. And it's obvious that it in later years, after 1998 in particular, has come even more clearly into conflict with reality, which it after all is difficult for the arch-reactionaries to hide away from everybody completely. But that war-like attack on the people which the "ozone de- pletion" propaganda is intended to "justify" continues. This in the form of measures of *massive international bans* against *industrially vital*, and *environmentally completely innocent*, chemicals which were decided on by the main impe- rialist governments at a conference in Montreal in 1987 and at some later conferences, and which remain in force - in fact, they today are being pushed further and further. One main effect of these bans is the large-scale knocking-out of refrigeration industry in the poorer countries - since there are no good substitutes for those excellent chemicals the CFCs, so vital to all such industry - and the resulting, enormous and genocidal, difficulties in those countries to store and provide certain vital foodstuffs and medicines. This no doubt precisely is a main intention behind this "ozone hole" campaign too, and has been from its very begin- ning. It's the same intention that can be clearly seen to lie behind also the far-reaching international ban since several decades back against that quite other chemical, DDT, vital for combating malaria: That of a further mass killing of people in the poorer countries, for fear of international proletarian and anti-imperialist revolution. Today, from 11 September 2001 on, there is also rather open warfare by the biggest reactionaries in the world against the people everywhere, under the pretext of "combating terro- rism". And this of course means a considerable sharpening of the whole enormous struggle between bourgeoisie and proleta- riat in the world. But the "green" sneak warfare continues too, and those attacks which the "ozone depletion" hoax is intended to "justify" and cover up probably already have killed even more people so far than have such bombings as the recent ones of New York City, Afghanistan and Iraq, and are threatening to kill many more still. The largest possible pressure, thus, must be brought to bear on the ruling reactionaries for the *repeal* of all their bans against these chemicals, whose use is *vital* to the people everywhere and which do *not* have those "negative ef- fects on the environment" which these reactionaries and their various stooges purport. And these bans of theirs are one further reason too why the rule of the bourgeoisie in the world must be overthrown. Those completly unjustified bans are hitting the masses of people in the more highly-developed countries quite hard, economically, too. And in connection with the "ozone depletion" propaganda there is even a scare, factually quite ridiculous and indeed harmful, against normal sunbathing by white-skinned people at such higher latitudes on earth as those here in middle/north Europe, for instance. Those people too need ultraviolet ra- diation, in suitable amounts, just as much as earlier. The particular lack of (constant) skin pigmentation which has evolved in that part of the earth's population, over some hundreds of thousands of years, precisely makes it possible for their bodies to make use of the benefits of ultraviolet radiation at such higher latitudes, where its levels are only around one-fourth or so of the level of that radiation at the equator. 02. WHAT'S THE IMPORTANCE OF THE OZONE LAYER AND OF VARIATIONS IN IT? The ozone layer of course prevents a certain proportion of the sun's ultraviolet (UV) radiation from reaching the sur- face of the earth. In this lies its importance. Humans, and also animals and plants, are adapted to certain levels of UV radiation. Too high such would be harmful, and too low ones too. Within what limits are variations in the UV radiation level OK? Concerning this, there's reason to note first of all that much more UV radiation always reaches the earth's surface in the tropics, near the equator, than at higher latitudes. This is because all radiation from the sun of course comes in more or less vertically there, while it comes in more ob- liquely towards the higher latitudes and thus has a longer way there through the various layers of the atmosphere, in- cluding the ozone layer. At the equator, 50 times as much UV radiation reaches the earth's surface as at the poles. For every 10 km you ap- proach the equator, from higher latitudes, the UV radiation increases by 1 percent. Moving from Oslo (at 60 degrees North) to Panama (at 30 degr. N) for instance represents an increase in UV exposure of 300 percent. All this according to the 1992 book mentioned above, "The Holes in the Ozone Scare", which none of the scare propagandists have contradic- ted on that point. The equator passes through Brazil, the DR Congo, Kenya and Indonesia, for instance. Do people, animals or plants fare badly in these countries on account of the high levels of UV radiation there? Of course not. For agriculture, for in- stance, these countries quite on the contrary have the very best conditions. White-skinned residents and visitors of course should take care not to expose themselves to too much sunlight. And there in such countries is as great a need for air-conditioning of houses and workplaces as there is for heating for instance here in Sweden. Such installations on a large scale require cheap and plentiful energy, and CFCs too. The abovementioned 1992 book by Maduro and Schauerhammer fur- ther points out (pp. 161-2): "In a 1989 paper, Norwegian scientists Arne Dahlbæck, Thormond Hansen, Søren H. H. Larsen and Knut Stamnes conclude that 'depletions of the ozone layer up to about 15 to 20 percent would have a rather small ef- fect on the life on Earth' (p. 624). This level of ozone depletion would be equivalent to increases in ultraviolet radiation of between 30 and 40 percent. ... The Norwegian scientists conclude by analyzing the most catastrophic of ozone depletion. 'It appears that a depletion of the ozone layer over Scandinavia of 50 percent (which is far more than all prognoses from atmospheric models) would give these countries an effective ultraviolet-dose similar to that nor- mally obtained in California or the Mediterranean countries", they write (p. 624). In the same paper, the Norwegian scientists also re- fute the scare story that an ozone hole like the one in Antarctica will appear in the Arctic and gobble up all the ozone in northern latitudes. They write: 'The so-called ozone hole in Antarctica is a tran- sient springtime depletion of the [Antarctic] ozone layer which is connected to the polar vortex... If we assume a similar depletion over Scandinavia (for example, if we moved the [Antarctic] ozone hole [to the Arctic]), the annual effective ultraviolet-dose would increase by approximately 22 percent... It is of interest to note that one would attain a similar increase in the annual ultraviolet-dose by moving approximately 5º to 6º towards lower latitudes, for example from Oslo to Northern Germany' (p. 624)." Thus, even a quite considerable decrease in the global ozone level by no means would be harmful. Quite on the contrary, it seems that a suitably big such de- pletion, increasing the mean level of that ultraviolet radia- tion which reaches the ground at higher latitudes a little, would rather be a good thing. More on this under point 10 be- low. 03. "OZONE DEPLETION" "PREDICTIONS" VERSUS REALITY Some early "depletion" scare stories "based on" CFCs as a "danger", around 1974, did in fact "predict" a depletion of 50%, for the year 2050. This would correspond to an ozone le- vel decrease, from 1980 on, of 9 percent per decade. Such claims soon had to be abandoned by the ultra-reactionaries. There were some "depletion predictions" before that too, starting in the late 1960s. These cited as the purported danger quite other substances, such as nitrogen oxides (NOx), from supersonic passenger aircraft. It seems that this scare was refuted rather soon. At least it's seldom seen today. The intentions behind it clearly were rather different from those behind the (main) present-day one. I shall pass the question of nitrogen oxides over, in this Info. The propaganda in the media about an "ozone depletion" "caused by CFCs" increased dramatically around 1985, when a so-called "ozone hole" in the Antarctic was "detected", as a purportedly "new" phenomenon, said to have existed from around 1975 on. As pointed out in the quote above, this was (and is) not really a hole but a seasonal depletion, an ozone level dip, in September-October each year (Antarctic spring- time). This Antarctic dip did in fact deepen, during a decade or more, from the late 1970s on. But ozone levels as low as that in 1991, for instance, which Parson in his 1997 FAQ (see above) says was "far below" seasonal variations, had been no- ted, by French scientists, back in 1958, when they could not possibly have ben due to CFCs. More on this under points 17- -18 below. Now how do things look so far? *Is* there a long-term trend for the global ozone level to decrease significantly? Or would there be one, if the present reactionary anti-CFC (etc) were revoked? Clearly, no, in both cases. Because of those very large natural variations over time which there are in the ozone levels over most of the globe, and because it's difficult to measure them precisely, smaller long-term trends, of the order of plus or minus 3 percent over a decade, say, are quite difficult to ascertain with any certainty. A constant depletion of 3 percent per decade which would have started in 1980, for instance, that's one which would have produced a depletion of 20 percent in 2050 - a harmless but then clearly detectable one, which, if actually caused by CFCs, could then have been prevented from later reaching a likewise obviously still harmless one of 50 percent, by a move away from these excellent and cheap substances which in that theoretical case would actually have been justified and necessary. A "3 percent decrease per decade" starting in the 1980s and "being approximately the same in the 1990s", such as was one typical claim by the "CFC-caused depletion" propagandists some five years ago (Parson's 1997 "FAQ", for instance) might not be that easy to ascertain clearly even today, I guess. At any rate, those propagandists today seem to be very quiet in- deed about any "recent confirmation" whatsoever of (even) such a supposed "trend". And of course, back in 1987, at the time of the infamous Montreal anti-CFC "Protocol", there were no reliable data whatsoever showing any trend of even this order of magnitude. The great hurry by the arch-reactionary political forces to enforce those anti-industrial and genocidal bans anyway at that time, and to extend them even more in the following few years, is one thing which clearly shows up the actual, ex- tremely malevolent intentions behind these measures. [Continued in part 2/8] --------------------------- ANTI-NATO INFORMATION LIST ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9617B Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================