Antarctic ozone hole healing. Memo to Al Gore: Grab the Digitalis.

(Christian Science Monitor): "Just when it looks as though people could breathe a sigh of relief over the hole in stratospheric ozone over Antarctica —

• it’s expected to heal by 2050 —

scientists are raising a new ozone-related concern: rocket launches.

That’s right. Rocket launches.

• The idea is not as wiggy as it may sound. As early as 1974, some scientists had noted that the space shuttle — still a gleam in NASA’s eye at the time — would be a source of chlorine emissions as it climbed through the atmosphere and passed through the stratosphere.

Chlorine-based compounds called chlorflorocarbons have been the main driver behind the loss of ozone in a high-altitude layer of the atmosphere called the stratosphere. They’ve been banned via the 1987 Montreal Protocol, along with other ozone-trashing compounds.

Indeed, some people have argued — wrongly — that the space shuttles have been responsible for the ozone hole....

• Down the road, however, the picture could change, especially if aerospace-industry launch projections pan out.

The team’s pitch: Don’t wait until then to figure out if this will be an issue. That could lead to a mishmash of regulations that could choke off the launch business. Instead, gather the data now in a rigorous, transparent way so that if emissions regulations are required in the future, they won’t be cobbled together at the last minute with little scientific basis for designing them....

• The US once ponied up millions of dollars to study the environmental effects if hundreds of high-flying supersonic-transport airliners took to the skies.
  

• The number of SST airliners never topped 20.
  

Here, the team argues, the rocket fleet is real, clearly growing, and yet few are taking as serious a look at the environmental effects from rocket emissions — a task that could be accomplished far less cost." (ie "climate" hysteria for profit)