NOTES FROM THE EDITOR'S CUFF
By Reed Irvine

I HAVE BEEN ASKING FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES IF THEY HAD HEARD ANYTHING about the ozone hole over Antarctica lately. Very few of them have. I then ask if they think that it has decreased, remained about the same or increased in size since freon and other chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, that were supposed to be causing it were phased out and then banned in 1995. So far, I have found only two people, a reporter for the Associated Press, and my ophthalmologist, who knew that it had greatly increased in size. The others could only guess, and nearly all guessed wrong. They thought that it had decreased in size or remained about the same. Before the ban on CFCs was imposed in 1995, increases in the size of the Antarctic ozone hole were regularly treated as important news. But last September when its area set a new record of 17.6 million square miles, nearly twice the area of North America, it was not treated as an important story. It got relatively little coverage. A Nexis search covering the period from Sept. 1, 2000 to mid June, found only some100 stories about it.

YOU MAY RECALL THAT IN FEBRUARY 1992, THERE WAS A REPORT THAT GOT A LOT OF media attention. It was about an ozone hole that might be opening up over the Arctic for the first time. It was suggested that it might extend as far south as Kennebunkport, Maine, where the Bush family has a summer home. This report is given credit for persuading President George H.W. Bush to support making the ban on CFCs effective in 1995 instead of 1999. There was no hole over the Arctic, and Kennebunkport was never in danger of getting hit with heavy ultra-violet radiation. That and other scare stories were an essential part of the drive to get freon and other CFCs banned on the ground that they were causing the depletion of the ozone in the stratosphere.

THE NEWS MEDIA COOPERATED BEAUTIFULLY, JUST AS THEY HAVE DONE WITH RESPECT to scare stories about global warming. Reporters and editors seem to derive great satisfaction from their ability to get our use of things like freon and fossil fuels banned or curtailed on the ground that they endanger our health or the environment. So far, the banning of CFCs has failed to halt the growth of the Antarctic ozone hole, much less shrink it. This has taken those who promoted the ban by surprise. In reporting the record size of the hole in 1998, the National Aeronautic and Space Agency, NASA, had an explanation that allayed any concerns that the ban had not had any effect. It said, "Scientists are not concerned that the hole might be growing because they know it is the direct result of unusually cold stratospheric temperatures." It predicted that ozone losses resulting from CFCs and other sources of chlorine would be reduced as we moved into the twenty-first century.

BUT WHEN THE SIZE OF THE ANTARCTIC OZONE HOLE SET A NEW RECORD LAST YEAR, scientists at NASA and the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva who had promoted the CFC ban as the solution to the ozone hole problem expressed disappointment. Dr. Michael H. Proffitt, senior scientist at the WMO, said, "I've been very much expecting a turnaround, a leveling off." A source at NASA says there were many disappointed people at NASA when they learned that the hole had set a new record. A NASA program called the Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment, SAGE, has concluded that "aerosols such as those produced by major volcanic eruptions" are a factor in causing the ozone losses. NASA says this is "a finding contrary to predictions of classical atmospheric chemistry models." Those are the models on which the ban on CFCs was based.

DURING THE GREAT DEBATE OVER BANNING CFCS TO COMBAT THE DESTRUCTION OF THE stratospheric ozone, the point was often made that volcanic eruptions were responsible for a far greater quantity of ozone-destroying chemicals than were man-made CFCs. At that time the role played by volcanoes was brush-ed aside. There is nothing man can do about them. The discovery that the ban on CFCs is not achieving the desired results may be viewed as the failure of a very costly experiment that the media did a lot to promote. What is needed now is some honest reporting about the failure of that experiment. The Washington Post used a 200-word AP story to report the record-breaking ozone hole. It said that CFCs in the stratosphere were "leveling off" but it could take twenty years for the ozone to recover, but it didn't explain why. Nor did it mention Dr. Proffitt's disappointment that the turnaround had not been seen already.

THAT STATEMENT WAS FOUND IN A 956-WORD STORY BURIED DEEP INSIDE THE NEW York Times. But the Times was not ready to declare the CFC ban a failure. It said the hole is the legacy of decades of emissions of CFCs, and it suggested that now global warming might explain its expansion despite the CFC ban. The idea is that greenhouse gases that are supposed to be trapping heat and warming the lower atmosphere are causing a cooling of the stratosphere which might be contributing to the growth of the Antarctic ozone hole. However, its source, Dr. Proffitt, cautioned that it is too early to definitively draw this conclusion.

ONE BIG OBSTACLE TO DRAWING THAT CONCLUSION IS THAT THE SATELLITE TEMPERATURE data, which measure trends in the lower atmosphere very accurately, show no significant cooling trend over the past 22 years, while the surface data were showing a warming trend. We pointed out in our last AIM Report that in September 1999, a conference of leading global warming modelers from many countries, including the United States, was held at the Max-Planck Meteorological Institute in Hamburg, Germany. According to the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the conferees finally faced up to the discrepancy between the surface-temperature trend and the trend in the lower atmosphere, knowing that the global warming theory does not allow for such a discrepancy. According to the newspaper, they realized that their models were unable to resolve this problem. A similar conclusion was reached by a National Research Council panel in this country. News stories about its report, which was released in January 2000, did not focus on this problem as the German newspaper did.

THE SCIENTISTS WHO HAVE BEEN PUSHING THE GLOBAL WARMING THEORY HATE TO ADMIT that the satellite temperature data prove that all the time, effort and money poured into developing computer models that "prove" that the Earth is heating up has been an enormous waste. Admitting that the evidence does not support their theory is more than painful; it means the loss of the huge government grants that have funded their research and public relations campaigns. It is harder to understand why the journalists who have helped them frighten the public and the politicians into supporting their costly research and their even more costly remedies for the alleged problem refuse to report that the satellite data are admittedly a serious problem for the climate modelers. When empirical evidence does not support a hypothesis, the hypothesis is rejected, but in this case, many scientists and nearly all journalists are rejecting the empirical evidence. We were stampeded into banning CFCs, because the public and the politicians were sold on the hypothesis that CFCs were causing the Antarctic ozone hole and posing a serious threat to life on Earth. Skeptics argued that there was insufficient evidence to support this hypothesis, but we went ahead with a costly experiment. Five years after the CFC ban, the Antarctic ozone hole was bigger than ever. The experiment appears to have failed. Its backers are grasping for explanations. Their disappointment is palpable. The news media are not crying disaster as the ozone hole expands, perhaps fearing that publicizing this failure will reduce support for the equally dubious global-warming experiment.

WE HAVE HAD AN EXCHANGE OF LETTERS WITH KATHERINE HATTON, VICE PRESIDENT and General Counsel of the Philadelpia Inquirer, concerning a demand by Jeffrey Fleishman that we retract and apologize for having made statements about his reporting on fighting between the Serbs and the KLA in the village of Racak, Kosovo. I acknowledged in the AIM Report last September that I had been mistaken in saying that there had been no fighting on Sunday, January 17, 1999 and was wrong in charging that Mr. Fleishman had fabricated an account of the fighting that took place that day. Mr. Fleishman and the Inquirer requested a formal retraction and apology and asked that we remove from our Web site the inaccurate statements I had made about Mr. Fleishman's reporting of the events of that day. I am happy to do so with the following statement, which Ms. Hatton assures us will resolve this matter to the satisfaction of Mr. Fleishman and the Inquirer.

ACCURACY IN MEDIA (AIM) RETRACTS ALL OF ITS ASSERTIONS CHALLENGING THE authenticity and credibility of Jeffrey Fleishman's reporting in the Philadelphia Inquirer about fighting at Racak, Kosovo on January 17, 1999. Fleishman was in Racak. He did report on the fighting at the time, as did other reporters. AIM's characterization of Mr. Fleishman's reporting as "pure fiction" and "imaginative writing" was unfounded. Nor should AIM have compared Mr. Fleishman to Janet Cooke. It was also unfair for AIM to publish assertions about Mr. Fleishman's reporting without first making an attempt to contact him. Accuracy in Media regrets our errors and apologizes to Mr. Fleishman and the Inquirer.