Nutty as a fruit cake

No, the ozone problem is NOT getting worse.

An old conspiracy theorist is at it again. And he’s getting whackier and whackier. He claims that world’s science community is in cahoots for some reason. It has become ever so slightly personal for me. It’s not often your work gets mentioned in a missive to the Pope! A modicum of fame 😊.

The title and abstract of his latest offering is below.

In case, you have time to kill, here’s a link to it, not that I’d recommend wading through his wide-ranging 40-page rant. Herndon (again) misrepresents work that I was peripherally involved with, to support his claim that the current explanation of ozone depletion is flawed. He’s angry because nobody will listen to his pet theory. He’s a well-known conspiracy theorist who thinks the science world (including me !#%&) must have somehow been corrupted by forces of evil.

He doesn’t seem to have caught on that his new theory is not required because what’s happening with ozone in the real world is exactly as predicted by current theory, contrary to his claim that the ozone problem is getting worse and worse.

The reality is shown in the graph below, which is taken directly from the just-published Executive Summary of the Ozone Science Assessment. It shows that ozone declined in the last two decades of the 20th century (when CFCs were increasing), and has been slowly recovering ever since (as the concentrations of CFCs began to slowly diminish). Changes were much larger in the Antarctic spring than for the rest of the world. The observed long-term changes agree well with those calculated, as shown by the black lines.

The future recovery path for ozone depends on how the concentrations of greenhouse gases evolve. The coloured lines are projections of how it should change for three climate-change scenarios. Recovery is most rapid under the ‘business as usual’ scenario (red line), and slowest under the most stringent climate change measures (blue line). The first would be a disaster for climate change, and the second is unlikely to be achieved. A more probable path is shown by the brown line.

Good news for the world. Bad news for Herndon’s half-baked theories.

Of course, Herndon won’t be convinced because to him I’m part of the conspiracy. But hopefully you will be.

PS. To my knowledge, the Pope still hasn’t replied. Perhaps he’s with me on this one … 😊