Tag: ozone layer

Treasure Climate Comedian Jim Dale While You Can: We May Never See His Like Again

Climate comedy turn Jim Dale continues to tour the Gaiety Halls of broadcast media, delighting audiences with his own word-salad English and his knack for getting most facts wrong. Fans were not disappointed by an extended performance, here, start around 2hr 38 mins, last week on Mark Dolan’s TalkTV show when he falsely claimed Costa Rica had reached Net Zero and the polar ozone hole had closed.

A graphic depicting contrasting climate events, with lightning, ice, and fire on one side and a tornado on the other, featuring the bold text 'FAKE CLIMATE CRISIS' in the center.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Three men participating in a live video discussion, with one man speaking on the left, a moderator in the center, and another man listening on the right.

Climate comedy turn Jim Dale continues to tour the Gaiety Halls of broadcast media, delighting audiences with his own word-salad English and his knack for getting most facts wrong. Fans were not disappointed by an extended performance, here, start around 2hr 38 mins, last week on Mark Dolan’s TalkTV show when he falsely claimed Costa Rica had reached Net Zero and the polar ozone hole had closed. Readers might be advised not to organise drinking parties around Jim’s much-cherished appearances. If a shot is taken every time the great entertainer gets a climate or Net Zero fact wrong, you’d be Brahms and Liszt quicker than you could say Julia Hartley-Brewer.

A number of countries are already at Net Zero carbon emissions, claimed Dale, and he gave Costa Rica as an example. Sorry Jim, treble Guaro Sours all round: Costa Rica is nowhere near Net Zero. In fact, the Carbon Action Tracker notes that the current government is sending “worrying signals that the full implementation of the climate policies and measures necessary to meet Costa Rica’s own targets could be deferred”. Key electric public transport projects have been paused or downscaled, while the current President has announced his opposition to an oil moratorium, along with an intention to explore Costa Rica’s hydrocarbon reserves. For some time, Costa Rica has presented itself as a poster country for eco-tourism and sustainability, but it was never near Net Zero. There comes a time when all the virtue signalling has to stop. Hard reality seems to have bitten the territory, as it has every other country taking a serious look at the stupidity of the Net Zero fantasy.

Put down the liquor bottle (just for a very short while): our climate clot got it partly right when he said two or three countries had hit Net Zero. One country often mentioned is Bhutan, a landlocked territory the size of Belgium in the eastern Himalayas. Mountains give Bhutan huge hydroelectric power, while 93% of the land is covered in carbon-dioxide-absorbing forest. Meanwhile, about half the population of 800,000 is involved in subsistence farming. As a future model for Net Zero, it leaves a lot to be desired.

Perhaps Jim could explain on his next much-awaited guest slot why Bhutan, a Net Zero country seemingly perfect in every respect, requires foreign aid of $13.7 billion over the next decade for “mitigation” costs to keep it on the straight and narrow Net Zero path. Sustaining its contribution and ambitions are said in its third Nationally Determined Contribution report to the UN to require “continued and predictable” international financial support.

Of course it does. Not a bad little earner for a country with an annual GNP of just over $3 billion. The cynical might be forgiven for reading into its words a threat along the lines of: cough up or the trees get it.

Time to refresh our glasses again, as our comedic clown then told Mark Dolan that the South Pole ozone hole had closed or, to put it in Jim’s word-salad English: “The ozone layer was a perfectly tenable thing that occurred and the hole closed because we got out of aerosols that managed that actually.” Alas, the hole has not closed, despite a 35-year ban on aerosol-using chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) gases. The thinning, rather than a hole, appears to be a largely natural event that changes thickness on an annual, seasonal basis.

A recently published science paper by three New Zealand-based scientists noted that the three years 2020–2023 witnessed the re-emergence of large, long-lived holes over Antarctica. The scientists observed that in the eight years to 2022, five showed similarly large temporary holes occurring in the spring months. In 2023, the European Space Agency said the hole was one of the biggest ever recorded, measuring 26 million sq kms. Perish the thought that banning CFCs didn’t make much difference – surely all those Nobel science prizes were not handed out in vain for a totemic environmental scare that proved such an inspiration for all the subsequent attempts to induce mass climate panic? Except when Jim unwisely brings it up, you don’t hear much about the ozone hole these days, with activists quietly extending its supposed disappearance to around 2060.

Your correspondent has a few tips to offer if readers ever need to handle Jim in a public debate. The first task is to stop him constantly interrupting and shouting over you. This is best done by first listening to what he has to say and, at the first sign of trouble, demanding the same courtesy be extended when it is your turn to speak. Last May, I found myself with him on TalkTV with the excellent ringmaster Ian Collins – here, the entertainment starts at around 35m 30s. It worked reasonably well, despite the overwhelming temptation at one point to burst out laughing when Jim claimed the source of his climate information was NASA, “who send people to the Moon and Mars”. Extra fun can be inserted into the proceedings by noting that Dale is on record as wanting to jail climate ‘deniers’. At my prompting, Ian Collins asked him if this was true and the ensuing word-salad explanation was a pure delight. Only Jim can explain in his special language that it is not quite like that, while at the same time suggesting that it is precisely like that.

The market for data-free climate scares is starting to dry up across mainstream media. Gone are the days when the BBC’s Esme Stallard could give us her “climate change could make beer taste worse”. No more shall we see Georgina Rannard make the obvious mistake of putting a date on impending doom as she did in 2023 with a ‘scientists say’ article warning that the Gulf Stream warm currents “could collapse as early as 2025”. Perish the thought, but soon only Jim Dale might be left to keep the nation amused with his carry-on climate catastrophising routine.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

Antarctica Sea Ice Has “Slowly Increased” Since 1979, Science Paper Finds

Sea ice around Antarctica has “slowly increased” since the start of continuous satellite recordings in 1979 with any changes caused by natural climate variation. In a paper published earlier this year, four environmental scientists further state that any sign that humans are responsible for any change is “inconclusive”. Not of course for mainstream media that have been crying wolf about the sea ice in Antarctica for decades to promote the Net Zero fantasy. Last year there was a reduced level of winter sea ice and this caused the Financial Times Science Editor Clive Cookson to exclaim that the entire area “faces a catastrophic cascade of extreme environmental events… that will affect climate around the world”.

From The Daily Sceptic

By Chris Morrison

Sea ice around Antarctica has “slowly increased” since the start of continuous satellite recordings in 1979 with any changes caused by natural climate variation. In a paper published earlier this year, four environmental scientists further state that any sign that humans are responsible for any change is “inconclusive”. Not of course for mainstream media that have been crying wolf about the sea ice in Antarctica for decades to promote the Net Zero fantasy. Last year there was a reduced level of winter sea ice and this caused the Financial Times Science Editor Clive Cookson to exclaim that the entire area “faces a catastrophic cascade of extreme environmental events… that will affect climate around the world”.

Over the satellite record, the scientists note there was a “prolonged and gradual” expansion of sea ice to around 2014 followed by a short period of sudden decline from 2014-19. Growth was then resumed, although there was a temporary downturn around 2022. These variations, which can also be observed before 1979, were caused by a number of natural atmospheric and oceanic factors. All of this is known of course, with the EU weather service Copernicus admitting recently that sea ice extent as a whole “shows large year-to-year variability and no clear long-term trend since 1979”. At the other end of the Earth, Copernicus correctly states that the cyclical decline in Arctic sea ice “has levelled off since 2007”.

It must all be very bewildering for narrative-following journalists. Confusion no doubt reigned supreme in their unquestioning ranks when they chanced upon the comments last year of Dr. Walter Meier of the U.S.-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre. He was in full activist mode when he claimed the 2023 winter sea ice dip was “so far outside anything we’ve seen, it’s almost mind blowing”. But not perhaps as confused as Dr. Meier himself who 10 years earlier was part of a scientific team that cracked open the secrets of early Nimbus photographic data. These revealed significant Antarctica sea ice variability in the 1960s, including a high in 1964, not seen again until 2014, and a low in 1966, similar to the recent dip. At the time, Dr. Meier commented that extreme ice highs and lows “are not that unusual”.

During the Great 2023 Antarctica Ice Scare, the BBC said that it showed a worrying new benchmark for the region “that once seemed resistant to global warming”. Still does, those striving for accuracy might note. Antarctica has hardly warmed in the last 70 years.

One by one the appalling scares that have been used by Net Zero fanatics to promote mass climate psychosis in human populations are being exposed as wishful junk thinking. Over the last few decades, alarmists have taken their cue from the ozone hole scare that started in 1974. At this time, two scientists claimed that the widespread industrial use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was destroying the protective ozone layer in the atmosphere. Subsequently, an annual appearance of an ozone hole was discovered over Antarctica and CFCs were banned by international agreement in 1995. The two scientists received the Nobel prize for their work, and activists claimed it was all a great triumph showing what could be achieved when humans acted in concert to protect the planet. The Nobels were accepted and the activists moved onto other scares and proposed bans. What happened to the ozone hole, you ask? Well that kept on expanding and contracting as it has always done, and this year the hole is as large as it has been for the last 30 years. Whisper it quietly – natural variation seems to be at work here.

As readers will no doubt be aware, there is gathering excitement about the prospect of another ‘hottest year evah’ for 2024. There has been a little extra warmth recently following a near nine-year temperature pause with scientists looking at a number of natural variations seen often in the past.

Hottest year claims are produced from woefully incomplete temperature records that are barely 100 years old. In the case of sea temperatures, accurate and complete global records stretch back less than 20 years. The temperature data itself, as we have seen in many Daily Sceptic articles, have been homogenised/reanalysed/invented/adjusted on an almost constant basis. Most individual temperature recordings around the world have been corrupted by urban heat, while in the U.K. the Met Office seems inordinately proud of a national high set in 2022 as three Typhoon jets were landing at a RAF airbase. If we consider the proxy record, it seems likely that temperatures were as high in Roman and medieval times, while 8,000 years ago the great northern ice sheets started to melt helped by temperatures at least 3°C higher than those experienced today. Again it is difficult not to conclude that natural variation plays the dominant role in controlling the climate thermostat.

Thoughts and prayers are also the order of the day for those who set great store in all the coral disappearing. Three years of record growth on the huge Great Barrier Reef put an end to that headliner. Polar bears are just as bad and keep breeding to top up new Arctic highs. Satellites keep discovering vast colonies of penguins in Antarctica, and mainstream media seem shocked into complete silence to report that the eyes in the sky have detected a vast recent plant greening of the Earth.  There is a growing trend to debunk any ‘extreme’ weather claim – the great citizen journalist Paul Homewood even writes a book about the BBC’s more egregious climate howlers, every year no less, such is the volume to process.

The Net Zero project is starting to crumble around the world as citizens make their feelings known with votes, and sometimes with rocks. Nobody can or wants to live in a world without hydrocarbons. Crucial to this trend is an emerging understanding that the scientific process when it comes to climate has been trashed for decades and replaced with an increasingly laughable junk ‘settled’ science narrative.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

What Ozone Crisis? NASA, NOAA Rank 2024 Ozone Hole as 7th-Smallest Since Recovery Began

Healing continues in the atmosphere over the Antarctic: a hole that opens annually in the ozone layer over Earth’s southern pole was relatively small in 2024 compared to other years. Scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) project the ozone layer could fully recover by 2066.

From Watts Up With That?

From Anthony Watts

Healing continues in the atmosphere over the Antarctic: a hole that opens annually in the ozone layer over Earth’s southern pole was relatively small in 2024 compared to other years. Scientists with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) project the ozone layer could fully recover by 2066.

This map shows the size and shape of the ozone hole over the South Pole on Sept. 28, 2024, the day of its annual maximum extent, as calculated by the NASA Ozone Watch team. Scientists describe the ozone “hole” as the area in which ozone concentrations drop below the historical threshold of 220 Dobson units.
NASA Earth Observatory/Lauren Dauphin

During the peak of ozone depletion season from Sept. 7 through Oct. 13, the 2024 area of the ozone hole ranked the seventh smallest since recovery began in 1992, when the Montreal Protocol, a landmark international agreement to phase out ozone-depleting chemicals, began to take effect.

At almost 8 million square miles (20 million square kilometers), the monthly average ozone-depleted region in the Antarctic this year was nearly three times the size of the contiguous U.S. The hole reached its greatest one-day extent for the year on Sept. 28 at 8.5 million square miles (22.4 million square kilometers).

The improvement is due to a combination of continuing declines in harmful chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) chemicals, along with an unexpected infusion of ozone carried by air currents from north of the Antarctic, scientists said.

The ozone hole over Antarctica averaged nearly 8 million square miles (20 million square kilometers) between Sept. 7 and Oct. 13, 2024, the 20th smallest extent in 45 years.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ Kathleen Gaeta

In previous years, NASA and NOAA have reported the ozone hole ranking using a time frame dating back to 1979, when scientists began tracking Antarctic ozone levels with satellite data. Using that longer record, this year’s hole ranked 20th smallest in area across the 45 years of observations.

“The 2024 Antarctic hole is smaller than ozone holes seen in the early 2000s,” said Paul Newman, leader of NASA’s ozone research team and chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The gradual improvement we’ve seen in the past two decades shows that international efforts that curbed ozone-destroying chemicals are working.”

The ozone-rich layer high in the atmosphere acts as a planetary sunscreen that helps shield us from harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the Sun. Areas with depleted ozone allow more UV radiation, resulting in increased cases of skin cancer and cataracts. Excessive exposure to UV light can also reduce agricultural yields as well as damage aquatic plants and animals in vital ecosystems.

Scientists were alarmed in the 1970s at the prospect that CFCs could eat away at atmospheric ozone. By the mid-1980s, the ozone layer had been depleted so much that a broad swath of the Antarctic stratosphere was essentially devoid of ozone by early October each year. Sources of damaging CFCs included coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners, as well as aerosols in hairspray, antiperspirant, and spray paint. Harmful chemicals were also released in the manufacture of insulating foams and as components of industrial fire suppression systems.

The Montreal Protocol was signed in 1987 to phase out CFC-based products and processes. Countries worldwide agreed to replace the chemicals with more environmentally friendly alternatives by 2010. The release of CFC compounds has dramatically decreased following the Montreal Protocol. But CFCs already in the air will take many decades to break down. As existing CFC levels gradually decline, ozone in the upper atmosphere will rebound globally, and ozone holes will shrink.

Ozone 101 is the first in a series of explainer videos outlining the fundamentals of popular Earth science topics. Let’s back up to the basics and understand what caused the Ozone Hole, its effects on the planet, and what scientists predict will happen in future decades.
Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/ Kathleen Gaeta

“For 2024, we can see that the ozone hole’s severity is below average compared to other years in the past three decades, but the ozone layer is still far from being fully healed,” said Stephen Montzka, senior scientist of the NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory.

Researchers rely on a combination of systems to monitor the ozone layer. They include instruments on NASA’s Aura satellite, the NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 satellites, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite, jointly operated by NASA and NOAA. 

NOAA scientists also release instrumented weather balloons from the South Pole Baseline Atmospheric Observatory to observe ozone concentrations directly overhead in a measurement called Dobson Units. The 2024 concentration reached its lowest value of 109 Dobson Units on October 5. The lowest value ever recorded over the South Pole was 92 Dobson Units in October 2006.

NASA and NOAA satellite observations of ozone concentrations cover the entire ozone hole, which can produce a slightly smaller value for the lowest Dobson Unit measurement.

“That is well below the 225 Dobson Units that was typical of the ozone cover above the Antarctic in 1979,” said NOAA research chemist Bryan Johnson. “So, there’s still a long way to go before atmospheric ozone is back to the levels before the advent of widespread CFC pollution.”

View the latest status of the ozone layer over the Antarctic with NASA’s ozone watch.

Record Ozone ‘Holes’ Discovered Despite 35-Year Ban on CFCs. Not the Cause, Then!

The discovery of a hole in the ozone layer high above Antarctica in the 1980s turned into one of the first great climate and environmental scares. Blame was placed on the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) which were used extensively at the time in refrigerators and aerosols, and their use was banned by the Montreal Protocol from 1989.

From The Daily Sceptic

BY CHRIS MORRISON

The discovery of a hole in the ozone layer high above Antarctica in the 1980s turned into one of the first great climate and environmental scares. Blame was placed on the effect of chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) which were used extensively at the time in refrigerators and aerosols, and their use was banned by the Montreal Protocol from 1989. Climate activists learnt the lesson from this example and have been whipping up global fear ever since. Over the years, constant war has been waged on numerous industrial and agricultural products and processes with calls to ban some of the food we eat to demands we restrict our movements. But at least we saved the ozone layer. Actually, we didn’t. Since 2002 there has been a significant ozone reduction amounting to a 26% loss in the core of the ozone hole.

A recently published science paper by three New Zealand-based physicists notes that the three years 2020-22 have witnessed the re-emergence of large, long-lived holes over Antarctica. The scientists note that in the eight years to 2022, five of the years showed similarly large temporary holes occurring in the spring months. In 2023, the European Space Agency said the hole over Antarctica was one of the biggest ever recorded, measuring 26 million sq kms. This was noted to be roughly three times the size of Brazil. All this is despite the fact that CFCs have been slowly declining in the atmosphere for nearly 30 years.

It is beyond the scope of this article to investigate whether the banning of CFCs has had any positive effect on ozone, although the data we now have might suggest an over-egging of the climate pudding. What we do know is that the CFC ban was totemic for climate activists. It gave a green light for launching multiple scare campaigns. The claimed global success in stopping CFC emissions and repairing the ozone hole was the template for promoting all the changes that will be required to complete the Net Zero collectivist project. Speaking in 2020, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the ozone treaties were “inspiring examples” of political will. “Let us take encouragement from how we have worked together to preserve the ozone layer and apply the same will to healing the planet and forging a brighter and more equitable future for all humanity,” he added.

Needless to say, the continued presence of the ozone hole, in reality a thinning of the layer,  is not much discussed these days in the mainstream media. In fact the lessons from the ozone scare were well learnt in these quarters as well, and an almost daily diet of climate catastrophisation is fed to readers. So perish the thought that banning CFCs didn’t actually work – perish the thought that the same outcome might await impoverished global populations once industrialisation is dismantled by banning all hydrocarbons.

It would seem that more valuable lessons can be learnt about the effect of natural variation. The discovery of ozone layer thinning in the late 1970s was a dramatic event, and the ‘hole’ was almost immediately attributed to the use of CFCs. Little work has been done to discover whether this was a one-off problem specifically caused by the effect of CFCs, or if ozone thinning is a largely natural and regular event. Using data, admittedly sparse, from a number of weather sources, the independent researcher Michael Jonas has plotted the following graph.

According to Jonas, the South Pole data for the peak time around October shows there were ozone holes before 1979. The figures on the left are Dobson units, used to measure ozone concentrations. The average around the planet is about 300 Dobsons, while anything less than 220 is considered a hole. The thinning episodes before 1979 may have been less pronounced than in recent years, concludes Jonas, but they occurred in 1964, 1966, 1969, 1974 and 1977.

It is reasonable speculation to suggest that ozone thinning has long been a feature in this part of the southern hemisphere. The thinning is a temporary event in the Antarctic spring, and normal levels resume by December. The New Zealand scientists identify numerous natural forces that seem to affect ozone depletion. Springtime temperatures and wind patterns are said to “greatly impact” ozone hole development, along with aerosol loading from wildfires and volcanic eruptions as well as changes in the solar cycle. Dynamic changes from the higher reaches of the atmosphere within the polar vortex are also noted.

CFCs can remain in the atmosphere for a number of years, but steadily reducing levels seem to have had little or no effect on the recent regular appearance around October of massive holes, some of the largest in almost 50 years of recording. Scientists have been pushing back the ‘recovery’ of the hole until 2065, but the New Zealand researchers suggest that in the light of their work there may be further delays.

In other words, it is anyone’s guess.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.

What About Whataboutism?

The closer to a “tragedy of the commons” situation we get, the more valid the whataboutism. At the other extreme, if we bear all the costs and reap all the benefits of a policy, whataboutism is not at all valid.

From Climate Scepticism

BY JIT

In comments under his article How to destroy the claim that the west must cut CO2 emissions, Robin draws our attention to an article in The Conversation, claiming:

Climate change: multi-country media analysis shows scepticism of the basic science is dying out

Well, maybe it is dying out, or maybe it is being wiped out. For there is a difference between changing your mind and not being willing/allowed to speak your mind, I think you’ll agree.

The article gets off on the wrong foot as far as I am concerned with its reckless use of the pejorative “denialism”. It even has “climate change denial” as one of its tags. The author, James Painter, describes how he and his team watched TV, scouring news coverage for any sign of climate scepticism.

Well, they found some, although the spin they are putting on it is that the deniers have given up arguing that climate change is not real, happening now, and human-caused (note to Painter: this denier has never denied that). Instead they/we have switched to denying that the proposed actions to “tackle” climate change have any merit. The deniers argue that such actions will have marginal benefit and eye-watering costs.

With good reason in my estimation. And in particular they engage in “whataboutism” by pointing to China and making the claim that, since China is refusing to join the decadent West on its self-destructive path, we ought to pull on the reins a little. In the realm of the climate enthusiasts, this rejoinder is considered a logical fallacy, which can therefore be summarily dismissed.

We found a wide variety of claims, but the most common concerned the high cost of taking action and “whataboutism” (typically questioning the need to take action when other countries such as China were not doing enough).

In the source article that Painter is promoting, this is said (quotes below are also from this paper or its SI):

The two main discourses on right-wing channels were economic cost (6 out of 11 programs—55%) and questioning the need to take action when other countries such as China were not doing enough (6 out of 11 programs—55%), often described colloquially as “whataboutism”

Don’t get me started on “right-wing” channels. OK, do. In the UK, four channels were surveyed. Three in the “mainstream” – BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 – and one “right-wing” – GB News. There is apparently no such thing as a “left-wing” broadcaster. In the article’s SI, of the mainstream channels, it is said:

The three stations are regulated by Ofcom for impartiality.

No such disclaimer is applied to GB News, a potentially misleading omission. This “right-wing” channel employed some guy called Farage and had some denialist organisation called the GWPF on one day:

In March 2022 Farage called for a referendum on the UK’s Net Zero Policy. In its first week, the channel gave space to groups exhibiting climate skepticism including representatives of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, who stressed the costs rather than the benefits of taking climate action.

Wow. On one rainy Tuesday, someone stressed the costs of climate action. How very farouche of them. How about every channel regularly discussing the costs AND benefits of climate action rather than ignoring the former and exaggerating the latter?

I could go on, but I won’t. I will close this part of my diatribe by clipping out a frankly hilarious development in denialism – the denialism of silence:

It is also worth highlighting that Fox News unexpectedly displayed a relative absence of coverage [of IPCC AR6 WG1]. This finding is supported by other research, which suggests that other right-wing media outlets in the USA were unusually quiet on the report. Qualitative (interview) work would be needed to corroborate whether this “denialism by silence” was an intentional editorial policy.

LOL, as the young folk have it.

Anyway, back to whataboutism. Enthusiasts do like to accuse sceptics of this, often puffing out their chests, having scored a telling rhetorical point. Unfortunately for them, “whataboutism” is not always a logical fallacy. Take the climate sceptics’ favourite proposal/whatabout pair:

“We should be doing more on climate change.”

“What about China?”

Is the rejoinder valid? This is an important question, since the sceptics’ reference to China is typically labelled as whataboutism as an attempt to invalidate their argument without having to actually discuss it. The result sceptics fear is irrational policies crashing through with all opposition silenced.

Here’s another, similar couplet, proposal and whataboutism response:

“We should be doing more on workers’ rights.”

“What about the slavery of the Uyghurs in China?”

Valid retort, or not valid?

Well, since we can do nothing about the Uyghurs, it sounds like the sceptic here is arguing that it is right that we should do nothing for our workers’ rights either. That is clearly nonsense, because we (as a nation) can only benefit from improved workers’ rights as they apply to our workers. In other words, our actions benefit us in this example if they are good. Our workers’ rights can be discussed in isolation of the workers’ rights of any other country.

Now back to the climate whataboutism. Here, the sceptic’s rejoinder is valid – obviously so. This is because our action on climate does not only benefit ourselves, but the cost is all ours. Whatever (I think hardly measurable) climate benefit our individual action achieves, it will be spread across the surface of the globe. Thus China will benefit from our actions, and we will benefit from China’s. (In fact, it’s obvious that China will benefit more from our actions than we will!)

It is therefore valid to demand either that similar actions to ours are taken globally, or that we reduce our own ambition to match that of the international community. If we take radical action to reduce a small part of humanity’s carbon dioxide emissions, this will result in a tiny and probably too-small-to-measure climate benefit, which will nevertheless be distributed among all peoples, whether they are the subset suffering the concomitant pain of these actions or not. It is obviously only fair if we all move together to the same target at a similar pace.

Taking a third example, whatabout local pollution, like phosphorus? Phosphorus is mined and used in fertilisers and then for one reason or another ends up polluting watercourses.

“We should take action on phosphorus pollution in our rivers.”

“What about China?”

In this case the criticism is not valid, because we benefit from our own actions to reduce pollution locally. We both bear the cost, and reap the rewards, of our policy. Therefore, if the policy offers a net benefit, we should adopt it. The retort makes no sense.

Perhaps you are wondering, why didn’t Jit use the example of CFCs? They spread generally, like CO2, and yet they were banned under the terms of the Montreal Protocol, so would our sceptic have been right in 1986 to respond to the proposal:

“We should take action on the ozone layer.”

With the whatabout:

“What about China?”

Well, yes: if China was planning on greatly increasing its use of CFCs while the UK was planning on adopting the ban unilaterally. But even if that had been the case, the sceptic’s whataboutism would still have been weak here, because there are adequate replacements for refrigerants like freon, so that unilateral adoption by the UK would not have mortally wounded us. But China, like all countries, signed the Protocol, and CFCs were banned, and the ozone hole disappeared, and Greenpeace members hung up their placards and took up gardening, or something.

In other words, it will always be legitimate to point out the slackers in a communal effort, no matter the scale. The closer to a “tragedy of the commons” situation we get, the more valid the whataboutism. At the other extreme, if we bear all the costs and reap all the benefits of a policy, whataboutism is not at all valid.

So, whataboutism is a valid criticism of policy under some conditions. To fail to see that takes some effort by the climate enthusiasts. Wielding the term as a pejorative feels to me to be an attempt to dismiss an argument with an arm-wave, to declare it not valid, and move on as if the criticism had never been made. I have the sense that for some folk, there is no possibility that a criticism of climate policy can ever be a valid one. That does not make for good policy.

An entire branch of science seems to have sprung up, devoted to rubbishing the arguments of climate denialists by hook or by crook. One only has to skim through Painter et al’s references to see that. One does wonder whether perhaps the denialologists could be doing something more useful.

Do let me know in comments if my reasoning is faulty.

Featured Image

The featured image is what Dall.e came up with for “tragedy of the commons.” One might also see it as a portent about what life might be like in the UK in 2050 if we stay on the Net Zero course.