JOSEPH N. BELL
UC Irvine chemistry professor F. Sherwood Rowland has just added a
footnote to the list of achievements that won him a share of the
Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1995 for his research on the depletion
of the Earth's ozone layer. Last week, he kept an overflow lay
audience at the Newport Beach Public Library auditorium deeply
engaged for more than two hours with a highly technical explanation
of global warming -- and I was there being educated.
Drawing from the beginning in the mid-1970s of charting the
increase of carbon dioxide being discharged into the atmosphere to
the sophisticated studies of today, Rowland built a case for us
against the steady encroachment of man-made global warming. He did it
with graphs, scribbled pages of formulae, quotes from scientists and
politicians, photographs and numbers piled on numbers, all delivered
with the kind of affection that accompanies the introduction of old
friends to a group of strangers.
I'm not going to attempt to replicate the technical evidence here
except to say it would be hard to find a more authoritative source,
and Rowland's conclusions are shared firmly by -- among many others
-- the National Academy of Science and the members of the Kyoto
Protocol, an international agreement to mitigate global climate
change. At the core of their convictions is research telling us the
10 warmest years on record have all been since 1990, when we have
experienced the most drastic global temperature rise in more than
1,000 years. We have increased levels of man-made carbon dioxide --
the primary global-warming gas -- in our atmosphere by 30% in the
past 100 years, a greater increase than occurred over the previous
10,000 years. We have created -- and continue to create -- this
lethal pollution, and only we can turn it around.
By the time Rowland finished, I was ready for my marching orders.
But since I had an opportunity to question him after his lecture, I
wanted to know a little more specifically what depredations we might
expect if global warming continues unchecked.
With appropriate scientific caution, Rowland said: "All science
has to be faith-based to some degree. None of us can look into
absolutely everything. So we can't say absolutely what will happen if
global warming continues to grow, but we strongly expect that without
corrective measures very soon, the growth will continue, and the
results will be drastic."
What kind of results?
"There are two major possibilities -- possibilities, not
