mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (09/17/86)
Tim Sevener writes: >So I think we can pretty well establish the importance of >the ozone layer. Well, for the moment anyway, we'll accept this assertion. But the next step is, I think, somewhat dubious: > Next point, its destruction in nuclear war: >The 1975 National Academy of Sciences Report, "Longterm Worldwide >Effects of Multiple Nuclear-Weapons Detonations" found that >the explosion of 10,000 megatons of nuclear weapons would increase >the amount of nitric oxide in the stratosphere to something >between 5 and 20 times the normal amount., that it would reduce >the ozone layer in the Northern Hemisphere, where the report >assumes that the explosions would occur, by anything from 30 >to 70%, and that it would reduce it in the Southern Hemisphere by >anything from 20 to 40%. The whole problem with this is that our understanding of ozone chemistry in the atmosphere is not all that reliable. Some of you will remember a few years back when we had strict regulations on ozone as a pollutant-- until someone bothered to check reality, and found that typical forest levels were twice what the standards allowed. It would seem obvious that there would be *some* damage to the ozone content of the atmosphere, but I for one do not have enough confidence in present day atmospheric modelling to have confidence in the NAS report. Besides, the whole point of these arguments is extremely political; their utility as findings has been entirely directed at the dubious notion that every last scrap of human life on earth will be wiped out by any nuclear exchange. I have severe doubts that any man-made catastrophe can ever be as severe as those generated by nature, and the fossil record simply does not support the notion that we can disturb things so badly that we do not survive-- because natural processes themselves don't generate mass extinctions except at great intervals, and this tends to set an energy floor on what it takes to produce one. Both sides in this debate seem to have adopted the rather chilling position that the immediate effects of nuclear war are not bad enough. Frankly, I am appalled that killing millions of people, strewing fallout all over the continent, and destroying the infrastructure of civilization doesn't seem to be good enough for them. C. Wingate