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From: orb@whuts.UUCP (SEVENER)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Heinlein and the Effects of Nuclear War
Message-ID: <996@whuts.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 22-Sep-86 10:53:31 EDT
Article-I.D.: whuts.996
Posted: Mon Sep 22 10:53:31 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 25-Sep-86 05:24:15 EDT
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Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
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>    S. Luke Jones replies to my citation: 
> > Next point, its [ the ozone layer's]  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 ... 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%.
> 
> Here, on the other hand, I'm surprised you didn't supply five
> sources.  Eleven years is quite an age for such politically-charged
> research, wouldn't you think?  Imagine:  these guys did such
> impeccable research that nobody in the entire world thinks it would
> be worthwhile to replicate it, not in 11 years, even as presidents,
> general secretaries, and SALT treaties came and went.
> 

I don't think you understand the nature of either the NAS report
cited nor the TTAPS study.  Neither the NAS report nor the TTAPS
study and later NAS assessment of the "Nuclear Winter" hypothesis
of the TTAPS study were the products of *one* piece of research
or one scientist.  The 1975 NAS report was a compendium of research
done on the effects of nuclear weapons.  For your information
there *has* been new research done on the effects of manmade
products on the ozone layer and actual NASA measurements of the
ozone layer.
The major impact on the ozone layer from nuclear war is from
nitric oxides which would be released into the stratosphere.
Similar nitric oxides are currently being released into the atmosphere
more indirectly from agricultural use of these substances.
Dr. McElroy is a physicist at Harvard's Center for Earth and
Planetary Physics interviewed by Jonathan Schell for
"Fate of the Earth" for the latest assessments of damage to the
ozone layer from the release of nitric oxides in a nuclear war:
"In the years after the NAS report of 1975, the estimates of harm
were lowered, but since about 1977 they have risen again.  At present,
it is estimated that a doubling of nitrous oxide in the troposphere,
which becomes nitric oxide - one of the substances that deplete ozone-
after it reaches the stratosphere, would bring about a 15% reduction
in the ozone.  That is a higher estimate for the nitrous-oxide effect
than the one made in 1975.  However, a nuclear holocaust would
inject nitric oxide directly into the stratosphere, and in amounts
much greater than would be produced, indirectly, by the twofold
increase in nitrous oxide, and no one has done any study of the 
consequences for the ozone of these larger amounts in the light of
the knowledge acquired since 1975.  But my guess is that the
figures would not have changed radically, and that the estimates for
ozone reduction given in 1975 would not be far off."

In 1981, NASA reported that ozone in the higher part of the ozone
layer had decreased at the rate of 1/2 % a year over the past decade.
Which indicates that the ozone layer *is* affected by human
interjection of substances into the atmosphere and would probably
be affected by the release of nitric oxides in a nuclear war.

If you are skeptical I suggest you read the original report by the
National Academy of Sciences, or Jonathan Schell's book,
"The Fate of the Earth".
                         tim sevener  whuxn!orb