Denier weirdness: Paranoid conspiracy blog WUWT branches out into ozone hole denial

WUWT has earned a reputation as the go-to blog for climate science denial. Now it's branching out into ozone hole denial. It wasn't always so.

Here are some facts from NASA about the Ozone hole.

What is the Ozone Hole?
The ozone hole is not technically a “hole” where no ozone is present, but is actually a region of exceptionally depleted ozone in the stratosphere over the Antarctic that happens at the beginning of Southern Hemisphere spring (August–October).

Satellite instruments provide us with daily images of ozone over the Antarctic region. The ozone hole image below shows the very low values (blue and purple colored area) centered over Antarctica on 4 October 2004.

From the historical record we know that total column ozone values of less than 220 Dobson Units were not observed prior to 1979. From an aircraft field mission over Antarctica we also know that a total column ozone level of less than 220 Dobson Units is a result of catalyzed ozone loss from chlorine and bromine compounds. For these reasons, we use 220 Dobson Units as the boundary of the region representing ozone loss. Using the daily snapshots of total column ozone, we can calculate the area on the Earth that is enclosed by a line with values of 220 Dobson Units (the white line in the figure below).

WUWT rejects ozone science

Today Anthony Watts put up an article by his sleazebag buddy Tim Ball, an ozone hole denier, who wrote:

...It only appears the Montreal Protocol worked because there was no problem in the first place. Variations in ozone were perfectly natural. 

No, Tim is wrong. Human-made substances have depleted stratospheric ozone. Tim has more:

There are no holes in the ozone. There were none when it became a political issue in the 1990s and none today. 

Tim Ball is a science denier. He rejects climate science and now rejects ozone science. He also fantasises paranoid conspiracy theories. His mind is a phantasmagorical cesspool, mixing greenhouse effect denial (he's a "slayer" author) and larger than life scientists who in his mind rule the world.

So today Anthony Watts is promoting Tim's fantasies about ozone.

Apparently Dr Susan Solomon is now the leader of the secret cult planning to take over the world and put all science deniers in FEMA camps, or some such nonsense. Or so Tim Ball seems to think.

After Anthony Watts' recent debacle over 97 hours, his dummy spit at the tweet by President Obama, and his retreat from his "satirical spoof" (does Anthony know the difference between satire and parody?), one could be forgiven for thinking that he is in meltdown mode. Climate science has got the better of him and he's given up.

Casual readers may conclude that Anthony Watts' blog is no longer the go-to blog for science denial. Now it's the go-to blog for wacky conspiracy theories.

WUWT watchers know better. That's pretty well where Anthony Watts decided to target his blog, after a shaky start in the early days, full of good intentions but lacking in substance. Science (and PlayStations) didn't attract the readership he sought because he couldn't compete with quality. So he decided to go for anti-science, pseudo-science and wacky conspiracy theories. There's a niche market for that. It won't get him respect but it helps pay the bills.

Is the ozone hole recovering yet?

The CSIRO has some charts showing the depletion of CFCs since the Montreal Protocol came into effect. Needless to say, WUWT is wrong when it claims that it's all a conspiracy by the One World Government / UN / Agenda 21 / FEMA / HAARP / or whatever.

In the last couple of days there was a press release saying that the ozone hole has stopped growing. By the mid-2020s we might start to see signs of an actual recovery.

There are some videos and graphics at NASA, showing changes in ozone over time. (H/t Michael Brown).

From the WUWT comments

Anthony has far more than his share of barely literate conspiracy nutters. That's his target audience these days. He courts them deliberately.

paullitely wrote:

September 12, 2014 at 10:13 pm
Ah – Ha! Clearly this is a cheap shot to convince everyone that humans can control the climate at the Ozone Hole, and by extension the. Human controlled CO2 Global Warming theory has legs. However, humans are arrogant to think they control Nature on that scale. It is not happening. Now I see the Ozone story was an early attempt to use climate “science” to manipulate humans politically and economically for power and profit.

john robertson rivals Tim Ball in paranoid delusions:

September 12, 2014 at 11:36 pm
Actually it is kind of fitting, appropriate even, that the WMO orchestrates the last stand of the CAGW crusade.
They orchestrated this CAGW meme deliberately.
The WMO caused the creation of the IPCC, as planned.
Our bureaucrats working in unison, through an unelected unaccountable organization, created, promoted and are still desperately trying to protect from investigation, this fraud.
To claim unprecedented global warming from a brief span of time, during the warm half of a natural cycle, is at best incompetence.
But to deliberately attempt to gain power through mass hysteria, whipped up over such a nonevent can only be fraud.As seen in the ever changing historical temperature records.
Now as the cycle continues, the schemers are exposed.
Just like common serial liars, these institutional BS artists are reduced to telling larger and more elaborate tales to cover the decline of their absolute certainty.
Well I guess we were rich when this all started, so we could afford an infestation of fools and bandits upon the public troughs, now we ain’t so rich and maybe soon we will get a little wiser.
Poverty sharpens the mind, so it is said, as when you are scratching to get by you stop feeding bloated parasites such as the UN , WMO and IPCC.

Greg has to venture as far as the wacky Lyndon Larouche before finding "evidence" for his paranoid fantasies:

September 13, 2014 at 1:23 am
Warning: there seems to be a lot conspiracy type logic buzzing around this topic however, this article seems to give some information about the dubious validity of some early measurements by Solomon and other in Antarctica and original Rowland and Molina hypothesis on which the whole anti-CFC crusade was built.

[Redacted link to Lyndon Larouche's website. Sou.] 

Until today I too had always believed it was well founded. It all starts to sound as doubtful as the CO2 scam.

jorgekafkazar is a One World Government conspiracy nutter, and writes:

September 13, 2014 at 12:17 am
Obviously, since the UN is no longer focused on world peace but on world domination, it’s time to write our congressmen and senators requesting that we stop funding the UN.