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PoliSat Rhymes about...
Space.
(To go to our main page about Space, click here.)  (Go to Index to PoliSat Rhymes)
Asteroids.01.02.  NASA.01.

Does Man play a role that widens the hole
in ozone above the south pole? (a limerick 20000910-01)
    In space NASA's mission is science.
    On ozone, it's P-C compliance !
    It's blame for the hole
    above the South Pole
    is politics posing as science.
    It says that the south-polar hole
    is bigger than "ever" before,
    but there's no debating
    they mean since the eighties,
    and what went before is unknown !
    On Freon-use one thing is clear:  
    'twas in the north half of our sphere
    where most was released,
    so how it could feast
    on south-polar ozone ain't clear !
    And why should this make us so dreary?
    Because on this tenuous theory
    they've made us spend billions
    on costly refrigerants,
    and still the hole increases yearly.
    Too many don't know or don't care
    that C-F-C's weigh more than air
    and 'though in a lab,
    it's ozone they grab,
    they don't rise to Earth's upper air.
    And while countless billions we waste
    to fight bogus threats to our fate,
    we blithely ignore
    a risk that's in store
    that could end the whole human race.
    'Twas less than a cent'ry ago
    an asteroid dealt quite a blow.
    That cosmic rebuke
    like thousands of nukes
    laid waste to much land in one blow.
    We're lucky it hit in Siberia
    'cause if it was 12 hours earlier
    it had enough force
    to flatten New York
    and make it a desolate area.
    And now most astronomers know
    the risks of another big blow
    are not as remote
    as thought long ago,
    but yet our reaction is slow.
    Since ozone became folderol
    we've had several cosmic close-calls: 
    Two several years ago,
    one several weeks ago,
    that measured one-third mile across !
    We need a Manhattan-style project
    to make high-tech weapons and rockets
    to find and destroy
    the next asteroid
    or else we'll have no way to stop it.
© 2000  --Inspired by a 09-09-00 news report about a recent statement by NASA implying that recent increases in the size of the ozone-hole over the south pole is the result of man-made CFC's, which were most widely used in the northern hemisphere until the late-eighties/early-nineties.  However, with token deference to science, that same report casually mentions that "The monster hole may have been caused by a change in high-level air currents over Antarctica, which swirl around the Pole like a whirlpool, trapping air and allowing the hole to form."   In the meantime, while we waste billions on highly-expensive (and highly corrosive) replacements for Freon, we blithely ignore a very real risk of planetary catastrophe that cannot be prevented unless we allocate massive resources to develop reliable methods for early-detection of large objects headed toward earth and for reliable means to alter their paths and/or destroy them. 
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