Page 238 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

7.6 (top) Harry Wexler’s handwritten note on ozone depletion, January 1962.
(wexler papers)

7.7 (bottom) Harry Wexler’s handwritten note on bromine reactions, January 1962.
(wexler papers)

Wexler’s rough note of December 20, 1961, jotted down during a telephone
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conversation with Wulf, constitutes an ozone-depletion Rosetta Stone. It links
Chapman’s 1934 speech, Wulf, rocket fuel emissions, ozone-destroying reactions
triggered by chlorine and bromine as catalysts, particulates, methane destruc-
tion, and an estimate that a minuscule amount of atomic bromine could cause
immense harm (figure 7.8).
In the summer of 1962, Wexler accepted an invitation from the University of
Maryland Space Research and Technology Institute to present a lecture titled
“The Climate of Earth and Its Modifications” and might, under normal circum-
stances, have prepared his ideas on geoengineering and ozone destruction for
publication. However, he was cut down in his prime by a sudden heart attack
on August 11, 1962, during a working vacation at Woods Hole. The documents

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