Fun_People Archive
15 Sep
Re: Uh-oh, not another serious one...

Date: Wed, 15 Sep 93 18:39:49 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Re: Uh-oh, not another serious one...

[Another viewpoint heard from; this one is certainly cheerier... -psl]

 From: Doug Rudoff <rudoff@mdd.comm.mot.com>
 From the Ozone Depletion FAQ (found on sci.environment):

 2.11) Do Space Shuttle launches damage the ozone layer?

 No. In the early 1970's, when very little was known about the role
 of chlorine radicals in ozone depletion, it was suggested that HCl
from solid rocket motors might have a significant effect upon the  
ozone layer -  if not globally, perhaps in the immediate vicinity  
of the launch. It was quickly shown that the effect was negligible,
and this has been repeatedly demonstrated since. Each shuttle
launch produces about 68 metric tons of chlorine as HCl; a full   
year's worth of shuttle and solid-  rocket launches produces about
725 tons. This is negligible compared to chlorine emissions in
 the form of CFC's and related compounds (1.2 million  tons/yr in
the 1980's, of which ~0.3 Mt reach the stratosphere each year).  
[Prather et al.] [WMO 1991] [Johnston 1992]

[Prather et al. ] M. J. Prather, M.M. Garcia, A.R. Douglass, C.H.
Jackman, M.K.W. Ko, and N.D. Sze, "The Space Shuttle's impact on
the stratosphere", J. Geophys. Res. _95_, 18583, 1990.

----

If you're interested in seeing the entire Ozone Depletion FAQ, I can send      
it to you. I think it's pretty well done.

There is quite a lot of evidence that there is a ozone hole problem and
CFCs are the major cause of it despite anti-enviromentalist nay-sayers
such as Dixie Lee Ray and Rush Limbaugh (who apparently got their "no ozone
hole" information from those wacky Lyndon LaRouchites).

© 1993 Peter Langston