Fifty years ago, on this day, September 10, 1973
During the early 1970s, the space shuttle was being developed by NASA in the United States. The first significant elaboration of the chlorine-ozone layer hypothesis was offered at a scientific gathering in Kyoto, Japan on 10,11 and 12 September 1973, when Richard Stolarski and Ralph Cicerone, both from the University of Michigan, presented the findings from their research.
(Rowlands,1995: 48 [Cicerone in 2001 was head of NAS, when Dubya Bush asked for review of IPCC]
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 329.4ppm. As of 2023 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that while the question of Ozone depletion caused by SSTs (supersonic transports) such as Concorde had already been a “hot” scientific and political issue it was going to be less of one with the shuttle because by definition they were not going to be many of them. But it was part of the general upsurge of awareness about global atmospheric consequences of human activity and Kyoto, well… 26 years later Kyoto would be by the first test of the climate treaty.
What I think we can learn from this stuff has a long history. I don’t particularly rate this blog post though so rough cicerone pops up elsewhere you could make something about that.
What happened next
The shuttle programme finally got underway officially in 1981 but two shuttles were lost which is about in line with what you’d expect given how is all put together and designed. Was it worth the Enormous cost to put some clowns in on the moon as it were is there really a good case for humans in space it’s not at all clear to me that it’s worth it.
Rowland and Molina were doing their thing –
By December [1973], Rowland and Molina had completed their calculations, and in June 1974 their paper was published in Nature. The results of their research were startling, but as Rowland recalled afterward, “There was no moment when I yelled ‘Eureka!’ I just came home one night and told my wife, ‘The work is going every well, but it looks like the end of the world.’”
(Oppenheimer & Boyle, 1990: 44)
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.