This is an interesting argument around the sources for global warming. We do know the ozone layer has improved. Seldom, of late, do we hear reference to the depleted ozone. Could it be we've taken our eye off the ball?
Restoration of the ozone is a good example of the world responding quickly to a crises and remediating with changes to the marketplace (changes to aerosol cans). There's huge environmental benefits to restoring the gap in the ozone. We believe, with the right investments and a better balance between the economy and ecological system, we can do the same in reducing carbon levels and pulling back from potential severe weather conditions and threats to human health.
Skeptic: Thin ozone is warming the planet
Peter Ward, Ph.D., in the home office of his Jackson residence in 2014, surrounded by thousands of documents he has used as reference for his theory that global warming was caused not by greenhouse gases, but by the depletion of the Earth’s ozone layer.
Retiree continues quest to overturn conventional climate change thinking.
One early respondent to Jackson Hole resident Peter Ward’s $10,000 challenge to prove that greenhouse gases are driving climate change more than ozone depletion was a wishful thinker.
The offer was emailed to 2,000 scientists, and it still stands before the general public.
The IPCC, or Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is a clearinghouse for climate change science, and the writer of the email was being a wise guy.
Other emails trickled in thanking Ward for his iconoclastic theories, while others bashed his grasp of climate science.
By this point — after years of trumpeting an alternative theory for why the world has warmed Ward is plenty inured to the criticism.
“I don’t expect to convince anybody immediately,” he said. “The people that I can convince readily, their opinions are up in the air. Those whose opinions are entrenched, it’s going to take a while. I’ve got to get them to step back and consider the fact that maybe there’s something to think about here.”
A longtime U.S. Geological Survey employee, Ward adamantly believes that the still-mending ozone hole and volcanic eruptions are the primary contributors to global warming. Climate change scientists have erred, he says, by fundamentally misunderstanding how radiation travels through the atmosphere.
The physicist contends that light does not travel as waves, and that radiation isn’t what we think it is. He’s convinced that ultraviolet energy let in through ozone holes led to the planet’s steady rise in temperature from the 1970s until the turn of the century.
Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, in Ward’s view, have a negligible effect.
“Decreasing greenhouse gas emissions will not decrease global warming significantly,” Ward said. “We do not need to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent the world from overheating.
“No matter what’s decided in Paris, it’s a waste of money,” he said, “because it’s not going to solve the problem.”
“No matter what’s decided in Paris, it’s a waste of money,” he said, “because it’s not going to solve the problem.”
Ward has gone all in to get the word out about his theories, which he admits are an obsession.
The $10,000 offer is just one investment Ward’s made in hopes of increasing his exposure. He put up the money, the email challenge said, “because the cost of getting global warming wrong is too high a price to pay for future generations.”
Additionally, Ward has forked over funds to publish a book, “What Really Causes Global Warming?” And he’s in the process of registering a new nonprofit organization, which will be called Science is Never Settled.
The $10,000 offer is just one investment Ward’s made in hopes of increasing his exposure. He put up the money, the email challenge said, “because the cost of getting global warming wrong is too high a price to pay for future generations.”
Additionally, Ward has forked over funds to publish a book, “What Really Causes Global Warming?” And he’s in the process of registering a new nonprofit organization, which will be called Science is Never Settled.
Ward has done a TedX talk and has a website (WhyClimateChanges.com), sets up booths at all kinds of conferences and has been a guest on radio shows. In an effort to reach younger generations, social media will be another target.
In all Ward estimates he’s invested $150,000 to help spread the word of his ozone depletion theory.
“The question now, is it going to take me longer to get it out than it took me to build up the science?” Ward said. “It’s nine years of my life I’ve spent on the science. What’s it going to take for this to catch on?”
Asked if he thought the theory will ever catch on, the retiree was confident it would.
“It’s just a matter of time,” Ward said. “I hope it’s before I die. I think it should be faster than that.”
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