Dr. Peter Ward

New Ozone Theory Sparks Controversy on Capitol Hill

Dr. Peter Ward’s Recent Opinion Piece in “The Hill”, Unleashed a Firestorm of Controversy, Reigniting the Climate Change Debate

Dr. Ward worked 27 years with the United States Geological Survey as research geophysicist, branch chief, and program manager. He helped develop and manage a major national research program, chaired a committee at the White House, testified before Congress, worked on a committee for Vice President Gore, published more than 50 scientific papers, and won two national awards for explaining science to the general public. He retired in 1998, working intensely for the past decade trying to resolve several enigmatic observations related to climate change.

Dr. Ward’s analysis and theory are explained in detail on his website and in his new book “What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion?”

Show highlights:

-Why the change in term from global warming to climate change?  What you focus on depends on the argument you want to make.

-Most scientists believe global warming is due to greenhouse gases.  A 150 year old theory and the accepted consensus currently.

-IPCC was created by people convinced that greenhouse gases cause warming and wanting to effect policy change.  But it’s yet to be proved experimentally that greenhouse gases can cause the warming we’ve seen.

-Ice core research from 11 years ago showed greatest evidence of volcanic eruption in years when warming volcanos occurred.

-2 kinds of volcanoes.  Explosive volcanoes such as Mt. Pinatubo in 1992 create a mist and that causes cooling.  Effusive volcanoes release basalt and causes warming.  250 million years ago, a basaltic lava was released over Siberia.  Period of greatest warming and greatest mass extinctions.

-Global warming is associated with ozone depletion from effusive volcanoes.

-1 atom of CFC destroys 100,000 molecules of ozone.  From 1945-1970, we had very little warming.  Warming started in 1970 and we had major warming from 1970-1998.  1998-2013 no real warming.  in 2014 the Bardarbunga volcano erupted and spewed 33 sq mile of basaltic lava.  Dr. Ward theorizes that is what caused major global warming in 2014 and 2015.  Rate of warming since 2014 is 5 times the rate of warming from 1970-1998.  Whereas greenhouse gases have been rising gradually and smoothly, and changes in temperatures don’t correlate with changes in greenhouse gases.

-CFSs are very stable.  Found in spray cans, refrigerators, air conditioners.  They carry chlorine to the upper atmosphere.  In the vicinity of UV light, they break down, releasing the chlorine, and that’s what does the damage.   Temps on earth are determined by the thickness of the ozone layer, and it gets impacted by a very small amount of chlorine.  Ozone itself is very unstable and is continually created and destroyed, releasing heat each time, which amplifies the effect of CFC on ozone.

-In 1974, 3 scientists discovered the effect of CFC on the ozone layer and won a Nobel Prize for it.  In 1975, the Antartica ozone hole was discovered, which led to the Montreal Protocol.  This was written and adopted in 1985 and said we have to cut back on the production of CFCs.  This stopped the warming.

-Scientists have made a fundamental mistake in the way we calculate energy in the atmosphere.  When this mistake is corrected, the effect of greenhouse gas can be shown to be minimal at best.

-How do so many scientists say greenhouse gases are the explanation?  Scientists are genuine and concerned, but we need a whole new understanding of physics and radiation.  Man is causing some global warming, which has been partly corrected, but nature is also responsible for causing the problem.  Is a major upset in science.

-How much will it really cost to lower greenhouse gases?  Even trillions of dollars won’t have enough impact.  Information says we can burn fossil fuel, and we do need to worry about pollution, but we shouldn’t be spending money lowering greenhouse gases.  Instead spend the money where it will have the best effect.

-If we exit from the Paris Accord, we would be giving up our leadership in correcting the problem and lose our voice.  We need to instead change the focus from reducing greenhouse gases to reducing CFCs.

-Consensus has squashed debate.  Old theories are not correct.  Dr. Ward says the data is quite clear.

-Jim asks how you know it’s the chlorine in the CFC disrupting ozone rather than the fluorine?  Fingering chlorine is based on research from volcanic eruptions, which erupt chlorine, fluorine, bromine.  Fluorine doesn’t seem to get up into the lower stratosphere, but bromine and chlorine do rise up.   In any case, we are sure it’s the halogens doing the damage.

-Depletion of ozone layer spreads worldwide.  Which means the amount of energy involved is huge.  After a cooling volcano, ocean temperatures cool 100 years later.

-23 times in geologic history we warmed suddenly (over a decade) out of an ice age, and then cooled back into an ice age over centuries to millenia.  Only volcanic eruptions can explain the timing of those cycles.  The warming period can last as long as the eruption of basalt.

-A lot of the puzzle pieces of global warming don’t make sense when looking from a greenhouse gas perspective.  It is quite clear that it is physically impossible for greenhouse gases to explain the changes in temperatures, but the changes do fit extremely well when looking at them from an ozone depletion perspective.

-The best way of looking at the climate is looking at ice cores.  Looking back further in time, ocean and land sediments are also a good way.  Even further back are fossil changes seen in the sediments which we can explain by looking at volcanism.

-We now have rapid access to information on the internet.  Everybody gets to express their opinion whether they’ve thought about it or not.  So there’s a lot of raw information out there.  And we can tune in just to the people that express what we think.  We used to have 4 TV broadcasters that strove to provide fair and even news coverage.  Now have multiple TV channels created for the promotion of specific points of view.

Dr. Ward’s website whyclimatechanges.com  has papers and videos of his talks.  Twitter is @yclimatechanges.  His book is “What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion?”

Visit Website

Dr. Ward’s TEDX Talk

Dr. Peter Ward says Greenhouse gasses from Fossil Fuels are not warming Mother Earth, September 5, 2017