History of the Anxiety of the Ozone Hole

The new observation that the Arctic ozone hole is bigger than ever, strongly suggests a correlation with temperature.  We can do a little history of the big flap.

Reference

Before we had the carbon hypothesis, we had the ozone hypothesis.  They both could have been examined with a bit of physics, but they weren't.  Both things can be called 'Fun With New Observations'.  We had that with earthquakes for a long time.  You put in a bunch of new seismometers and you suddenly get a lot of earthquakes.  Does it mean anything?

The 70's and 80's were known for extreme cold.  We've had these decadal cycles throughout history.  Had Hitler and Napoleon chosen warmer decades they could have rolled over Russia.  We've had huge cycles like the Medieval Warming Period (mwp).

The mwp had warm-weather crops way up North, not duplicated during our current warming period.

At the same time we had tons of new data.

The aircraft observations produced the “smoking gun” linking CFC-derived chlorine to the ozone hole. The flight data showed a negative correlation between chlorine monoxide (ClO) and ozone: the higher the concentration of ClO, the lower the concentration of ozone. In 1988, the husband and wife team Mario and Luisa Molina described the chemical reactions through which ClO catalyzes the extremely rapid destruction of ozone.

This started the ozone frenzy.  In reality it was a 'spurious correlation' which we got all the time in the earthquakes biz, like weather and earthquakes.  In the normal course of the 'Scientific Method', this would be called a hypothesis, and then it would be tested in a laboratory.  But nasa was at a low cycle and needed a big boost.

In fact, a rogue faction in nasa did test the hypothesis in an atmosphere chamber.  They published a nice paper on how that chlorine reaction couldn't take place in the real world.  At the same time, nasa declared the whole Venus operation surplus, the Venus people had seniority, and wiped out the Earth atmosphere physics people.  Their papers were burned electronically.  Try to find one.

That began the great 'Earth is Venus' era, and the concept of 'greenhouse gases' which cannot happen in highly convective air.  Only on Venus.

Having had such a success with a spurious correlation, they went on to the carbon hypothesis, immediately made into a theory.