Seriously deluded: wacky conspiracy theories at WUWT with more ozone hole denial

Denier blogs are in the doldrums and have been for quite some time. I wrote about Judith Curry, who actively agitates for no mitigation of global warming, complaining about scientists warning US Congress about the dangers of climate change. Seriously! Is that all she's got?

Jo Nova has been focused on politics. She likes One Nation's climate conspiracy theories and in one article she urged her readers to vote for a Senate candidate from an ultra-conservative populist party that stands on climate science denial, homophobia, islamophobia, and against almost all the values that decent Australians cherish. That is the Christian Democrat Party, which is the creature of Fred Nile. Joanne is a proud deluded conservative (DelCon) who regards centrist conservatives as socialist. She paints everyone to the left of Ghengis Kahn as subversive commies.

Anthony Watts has been posting a lot of political articles too. He hasn't been around much except to put up some very silly articles from his band of freeby contributors. His latest contribution is another wacky article by one of his favourite uber-conspiracy theorists Timothy Ball (archived here).

The ozone hole grew bigger this year

If you were a first-time visitor to WUWT, you'd never believe that Anthony Watts had been posting articles about climate and ozone for going on eight years. You'd think he was completely ignorant of all things science. And you'd be correct.

This false-color image shows ozone concentrations above Antarctica on Oct. 2, 2015. Credits: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Today he's got an article about the ozone hole (cached here). It's a mite disturbing, especially for those of us who live in southern Australia. The ozone hole over Antarctica grew to be the fourth largest ever. That's because of the colder stratosphere. Stratosphere cooling arises from greenhouse warming, so as I understand it, this is partly because of our CO2 emissions.

WUWT goes from denying the ozone hole to blaming it for global warming!

You'd hardly credit it. There are umpteen articles in which Anthony Watts and his crew denied the ozone hole (it's existence and that human activity caused it - yep! Probably both at the same time.). Now he's now posted an article where it's real and blamed for global warming (archived here, latest here). Some new bloke called Steven Capozzola has written an article in which he says: "The evidence is compelling, and the subject deserves further scrutiny."

The evidence for what exactly? Well, that's not so easy to figure out. I'll see if I can step past the waffly bits to the nuts and bolts of his hypothesis. It goes something like this:

Anthony Watts and his ozone hole deniers are out in force (again)

In yet another "claim" headline, Anthony Watts shows yet again how he denies science. Not just climate science but atmospheric chemistry as well. This, mind you, is the same week as he sent his fans to spam Wikipedia denying his denial of science.

This time his headline is about a press release that he copied and pasted, about the ozone layer (archived here). Anthony's denial only comes via his headline: Claim: ‘Severe ozone depletion avoided'. It's not the first time he's denied that ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) react with ozone in the stratosphere, destroying it (see further reading below).

The paper, by Professor Martyn Chipperfield and colleagues, is in Nature Communications. The authors discuss how the ozone hole would have been much worse had the world not agreed (through the Montreal Protocol) to stop releasing ozone-depleting substances. The researchers developed a model to investigate what would have happened if action had not been taken. They describe this as (from the abstract, my dot points and emphasis):

• A deep Arctic ozone hole, with column values <120 DU, would have occurred given meteorological conditions in 2011.
• The Antarctic ozone hole would have grown in size by 40% by 2013, with enhanced loss at subpolar latitudes.
• The decline over northern hemisphere middle latitudes would have continued, more than doubling to ~15% by 2013.

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.

Denier weirdness: The WUWT recycle cycle is ridiculously short. Must be the ozone.

I wasn't wrong when I said that Anthony Watts is having trouble finding stuff to fill his daily quota.  Either that or he's suffering denier fatigue or he's really rattled or his memory is getting much, much worse.

Less than a week ago he wrote about a report that summertime ozone levels in the USA will worsen as global warming kicks in.

The ink is barely dry on the webpage and he's already recycling it. The only difference being that he got it from another website this time and he changed the headline. But the press release is word for word the same. It can't have made much of an impression on Anthony!

May 6 headline: Claim: Climate change threatens to worsen U.S. ozone pollution (archived here)

May 12 headline: Claim: Climate change may worsen summertime ozone pollution (archived here)

What do you reckon? What with recycling stuff from five years ago, now recycling a press release from only six days ago. Must be a WUWT record! (Anthony must be really rattled. I mean who forgets something they posted on their blog only six days ago?)

Here's a link to the paper, which Anthony neglected to provide - both times! And here's an excerpt from the press release as reported on ScienceDaily.com. (Needless to say, Anthony didn't link to a press release either time.)

Ozone pollution across the continental United States will become far more difficult to keep in check as temperatures rise, according to new research led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The detailed study shows that Americans face the risk of a 70 percent increase in unhealthy summertime ozone levels by 2050.
This is because warmer temperatures and other changes in the atmosphere related to a changing climate, including higher atmospheric levels of methane, spur chemical reactions that lead to ozone.

Unless emissions of specific pollutants that are associated with the formation of ozone are sharply cut, almost all of the continental United States will experience at least a few days with unhealthy air during the summers, the research shows. Heavily polluted locations in parts of the East, Midwest, and West Coast in which ozone already frequently exceeds recommended levels could face unhealthy air during most of the summer.

It's a long article, which you can read in full here if you want to.

From the WUWT comments

So far no-one else has commented about the rapid recycle cycle. The WUWT-ers are exhibiting climate change fatigue though.

Eustace Cranch says:

May 12, 2014 at 9:03 am
It’s just broadside after broadside now. Rationality abandoned, panic button pushed.

Rhoda is getting on in years and says:

May 12, 2014 at 9:08 am
Damn, 2050 is going to be such a remarkable year. Shame I won’t be around to see it. 

Shawn in High River says lots of dots and a few words:

May 12, 2014 at 9:15 am
notice how every projection these days goes into 2050? Wonder why that is……..

 Col Mosby says they should be using a Commodore 64, or something:

May 12, 2014 at 9:16 am
Once again comes the bogus claim that superior computing power provides superior modelling.

Update: I just did a refresh and, although the article has now been up for an hour and a half and got more than 30 comments, not one of Anthony's readers has noticed that it's a repeat article. Maybe he's not getting any repeat readers at WUWT these days :)

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G. G. Pfister, S. Walters, J.-F. Lamarque, J. Fast, M. C. Barth, J. Wong, J. Done, G. Holland, C. L. Bruyère. Projections of Future Summertime Ozone over the U.S.. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 2014; DOI: 10.1002/2013JD020932