No nasa space launches now- partisan fighting and controversies prevent all funding Handberg 7-25
Download 398.94 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Ozone Brink
Ozone FrontlinePhytoplankton key to ocean life, breathable air, and ozone formation Westenskow 8 (Rosalie, “Analysis: Acidic oceans may snarl food web,” Jun 6, 2008, http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Analysis_Acidic_oceans_may_snarl_food_web_999.html) As carbon dioxide increases in oceans, the acidity of the water also rises, and this change could affect a wide variety of organisms, said Scott Doney, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a non-profit research institute based in Woods Hole, Mass. "Greater acidity slows the growth or even dissolves ocean plant and animal shells built from calcium carbonate," Doney told representatives in the House Committee on Energy and the Environment. "Acidification thus threatens a wide range of marine organisms, from microscopic plankton and shellfish to massive coral reefs." If small organisms, like phytoplankton, are knocked out by acidity, the ripples would be far-reaching, said David Adamec, head of ocean sciences at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. "If the amount of phytoplankton is reduced, you reduce the amount of photosynthesis going on in the ocean," Adamec told United Press International. "Those little guys are responsible for half of the oxygen you're breathing right now." A hit to microscopic organisms can also bring down a whole food chain. For instance, several years ago, an El Nino event wiped out the phytoplankton near the Galapagos Islands. That year, juvenile bird and seal populations almost disappeared. If ocean acidity stunted phytoplankton populations like the El Nino did that year, a similar result would occur -- but it would last for much longer than one year, potentially leading to extinction for some species, Adamec said. While it's clear increased acidity makes it difficult for phytoplankton to thrive, scientists don't know what level of acidity will result in catastrophic damages, said Wayne Esaias, a NASA oceanographer. "There's no hard and fast number we can use," he told UPI. In fact, although scientists can guess at the impacts of acidity, no one's sure what will happen in reality. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., pointed to this uncertainty at Thursday's hearing. "The ocean will be very different with increased levels of carbon dioxide, but I don't know if it will be better or worse," Bartlett said. However, even though it's not clear what the changes will be, the risk of doing nothing could be disastrous for ecosystems, said Ken Caldeira, a scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, a non-profit research organization. "The systems that are adapted to very precise chemical or climatological conditions will disappear and be replaced by species which, on land, we call weeds," Caldeira said. "What is the level of irreversible environmental risk that you're willing to take?" It's precisely this uncertainty that the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act attempts to address. The bill creates a federal committee within the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to monitor carbon dioxide levels in ocean waters and research the impacts of acidification. like Bishop. "We would lose everything," he told UP Loss of ocean life causes extinction Craig, 2003 (Robin Kundis, Associate professor of law, Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis, "Taking Steps Toward Marine Wilderness Protection?") The world's oceans contain many resources and provide many services that humans consider valuable. "Occupy[ing] more than [seventy percent] of the earth's surface and [ninety-five percent] of the biosphere," n17 oceans provide food; marketable goods such as shells, aquarium fish, and pharmaceuticals; life support processes, including carbon sequestration, nutrient cycling, and weather mechanics; and quality of life, both aesthetic and economic, for millions of people worldwide. n18 Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the importance of the ocean to humanity's well-being: "The ocean is the cradle of life on our planet, and it remains the axis of existence, the locus of planetary biodiversity, and the engine of the chemical and hydrological cycles that create and maintain our atmosphere and climate." n19 Ocean and coastal ecosystem services have been calculated to be worth over twenty billion dollars per year, worldwide. n20 In addition, many people assign heritage and existence value to the ocean and its creatures, viewing the world's seas as a common legacy to be passed on relatively intact to future generations. n21 Traditionally, land-bound humans have regarded the ocean as an inexhaustible resource and have pursued consumptive and extractive uses of the seas, such as fishing, with little thought of conservation. n22 In the last two or three centuries, however, humanity has overstressed the world's oceans, proving that the ocean's productivity is limited. n23 Degradation of the marine environment is becoming increasingly obvious: Scientists have mounting evidence of rapidly accelerating declines in once-abundant populations of cod, haddock, flounder, and scores of other [*162] fish species, as well as mollusks, crustaceans, birds, and plants. Ozone BrinkStatus Quo ozone layer is rebounding- Increases in launces would destroy the ozone layer by 2035 Foust 09 (PhD in planetary sciences from MIT, Bachelors in geophysics from Cal Institute of Technology, Editor and Publisher of the Space Review) Jeff Foust The Space Review June 15, 2009 “Space and (or versus) the Environment” http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1395/1 However, another environmental concern might loom large in the years to come: the effect of suborbital spaceflight on the ozone layer. A generation ago the depletion of the ozone layer by chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) was a major concern, leading to international agreements to ban the use of such chemicals. As a result, the ozone layer is starting to rebound, and current models project a complete recovery by 2040. Launch vehicles don’t emit CFCs, but they do release other combustion byproducts that can affect the ozone layer. Moreover, these materials are injected directly into the ozone layer as rockets ascend into space, a far more efficient delivery mechanism than the atmospheric processes that slowly waft ground emissions into the stratosphere. Right now, such emissions are insignificant. In a paper published earlier this year in the journal Astropolitics, researchers at the Aerospace Corporation, University of Colorado, and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University noted that rocket launches worldwide deplete the ozone layer currently at a rate of 0.03%, a rate they described as “insignificant”. Different rockets, and different combinations of propellants, have varying contributions: solid-fuel rockets have a greater impact than liquid-propellant engines, and systems that use liquid oxygen (LOX) as an oxidizer (in combination with liquid hydrogen or kerosene) have a greater effect than hypergolics. The paper notes that the Ariane 5, which has solid-rocket boosters and a LOX/liquid hydrogen main engine, likely causes about 25 times the ozone loss as one of its biggest competitors on the commercial launch market, the Proton, which uses unsymmetrical dimethyl hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide—a combination that, ironically, is usually considered environmentally unfriendly given the propellants’ toxic nature. While the current rate of ozone loss is considered insignificant, the paper examined what would happen if there was a sharp increase in launch rates. If launch rates doubled every decade, they found, rising emissions from rockets would offset the decline in other ozone-depleting substances by around 2035, causing ozone depletion rates to rise again. The effect would be sooner and sharper if launch rates tripled every decade. The authors conclude that, in such a scenario, there would be a move to regulate rocket emissions that could, in the worst case, sharply restrict launch activity. With today’s launch systems, though, such an outcome seems unlikely: most forecasts for the next decade project relatively flat levels of launch activity—about 60–70 orbital launches a year—that is far short of a doubling or tripling. However, a wild card here is space tourism and other suborbital launch activity, which is projected to grow from effectively zero today to hundreds or even thousands of launches a year by the end of the next decade, if systems enter service as planned and demand for such flights matches existing projections. The Astropolitics paper doesn’t take such missions, or interest in point-to-point suborbital or hypersonic travel, into account. Martin Ross, lead author of the paper at the Aerospace Corporation, said in an email last week that this is an area they will be looking at. They will also be studying the effect on ozone by emissions from hybrid rocket motors like the one being developed for SS2, something that he said there currently isn’t any information about. In an op-ed in last week’s issue of Space News, Ross urged the space industry to address this issue head-on rather than avoid it in the hopes it might go away on its own. “It is clear that the risk of regulation that would cap or even tax space systems according to the amount of ozone depletion they cause is small, but it is real,” he wrote. He added: “Historically, technical activities with high visibility—such as space operations—often excite unpredictable public and regulatory attention. Combined with a lack of scientifically reliable environmental effects data, the risk of idiosyncratic and overly restrictive regulation is high.” Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 398.94 Kb. Share with your friends:
|