"There was this long stage of denial about the temperature rising"
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-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Father and Son's Measurements Point to Global Warming
Date: 6 Jul 2004 12:19:48 -0500
From: m...@economicdemocracy.org
Father and Son's Measurements Point to Global Warming
Source: LA Daily News
[Jul 06, 2004]
The prospect of unpredictable, abrupt climate change worries father
and son science team.
SAN DIEGO -- When father-son scientists Dave and Ralph Keeling sit
down at the piano and violin, they merge their minds in the flowing
warmth of a Brahms sonata or the energy of Beethoven.
When they go their separate ways to their labs, it's the rhythm of the
planet they feel.
"The Earth is doing a beautiful, simple dance for us," says Ralph,
fingers tracing waves in the air. "And we're watching."
What they've watched and sampled, and measured out in undulating
graphs of enduring scientific importance, is nothing less than how the
Earth breathes, a key to understanding the global climate that has
nurtured civilization but that may now be changing.
Charles David Keeling, 76, pioneered the measurement of carbon dioxide
in the atmosphere almost a half-century ago on a Hawaiian mountaintop.
Decades later, his son devised a way to gauge atmospheric oxygen, the
other half of the global respiratory cycle.
Together, with two lifetimes of work, mostly at the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, this innovative duet has
given science a bedrock for studying climate change, a foundation
whose importance increases as concern grows over rising temperatures,
melting glaciers and other apparent effects of the buildup of
"greenhouse gases," particularly carbon dioxide.
The elder Keeling's progress, in the face of skeptical government
bureaucrats, wasn't always smooth. "It took some plain old cussedness
on the part of Dave Keeling for him to accomplish what he did,"
observed Harvard University earth scientist Michael B. McElroy.
But Dave Keeling's achievement was finally recognized with a National
Science Medal in 2002, when Scripps director Charles Kennel described
his findings as "pertinent to every human being on the globe."
Keeling himself says that "if you want to know anything about what the
future holds," his findings are even more pertinent when combined with
his son's work on oxygen.
In 1955, young geochemist Dave Keeling was camped out at California's
Big Sur State Park, taking air samples in flasks and precisely
measuring the carbon dioxide with a device, a manometer, of his own
making.
"Nobody had done it before, but advances in technology made it
possible," Keeling, a frequently smiling man with a thatch of gray
hair and jeans-and-sneakers casualness, said in a recent Associated
Press interview.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as methane, trap heat.
Such gases occur naturally, but industrial processes also add enormous
amounts to the atmosphere. The buildup tends to raise the Earth's
temperature, and that could shift climate zones, raise ocean levels
via heat expansion and glacial melting, and cause other disruptive
changes.
Keeling's consistent early finding was that carbon dioxide comprised
315 parts per million in the atmosphere, 12 percent more than the 280
that ice-core samples show was the level before the Industrial
Revolution -- before man's extensive burning of coal, oil and other
fossil fuels that spew out carbon dioxide.
In 1958, he moved his main sampling operation to a two-mile-high U.S.
Weather Service station atop Hawaii's dormant Mauna Loa volcano, a
spot practically free of contaminated air. Using a more precise
infrared analyzer to measure the gas, he found that the atmosphere's
carbon dioxide was growing by about 1 part per million each year.
Analyzing the data in his Scripps lab in San Diego, he was the first
to detect the Earth's annual "breathing" cycle -- the dip in carbon
dioxide when Northern Hemisphere plant life absorbs the gas in the
spring-summer growing season, and the spike when decaying vegetation
releases carbon dioxide in the fall.
In the 1970s and 1980s, as the charts of the "Keeling curve" tracked
carbon dioxide's accumulation in the skies, the scientist's fortunes
declined among Washington agencies funding the research. First,
National Science Foundation officials argued that his work was too
routine and unworthy of support. Then the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration said it planned to supplant him with its
own carbon dioxide measurement program.
Keeling countered that his program's long-term continuity was vital to
consistent tracking of carbon dioxide. Today he views the repeated
showdowns in plain terms: "You set up a dry-cleaning establishment,
and somebody comes along and decides he wants a dry-cleaning
establishment, and the best way is to get rid of yours."
With the help of the Scripps leadership and Washington allies,
Keeling's program survived. Today his original gas analyzer operates
next door to an NOAA device atop Mauna Loa, and both show that carbon
dioxide rose to a record 379 parts per million this winter -- more
than a third higher than the pre-industrial level. Meanwhile, global
temperatures also are rising.
"I've watched for 45 years to see this thing unfold," Keeling said.
It was 45 years ago, too, that he remembers being with Ralph, the
second-born of Dave and Louise Keeling's five children, at Mount
Rainier in Washington, when the little boy looked up at the ice and
asked, "How do you make glaciers?"
"He got a start in natural science at the age of 2," the father said
with a laugh.
Ralph Keeling, now 47, with a shock of brown hair and eyeglasses like
Harry Potter's, said he grew to appreciate his father's work while he
was studying science at Yale and Harvard. Then, as a doctoral
candidate, he devised the first technique -- using a light-gauging
instrument called an interferometer -- to measure atmospheric oxygen
accurately.
"The prevailing opinion was that it was impossible to measure," Dave
Keeling recalled.
Oxygen can provide critical clues about the atmosphere. It's consumed
in fossil-fuel burning; it's produced as forests and other plants
consume carbon dioxide. Precise tracking of this oxygen-carbon dioxide
balance can help scientists distinguish between carbon dioxide
absorbed on land and that absorbed by the oceans. That, in turn, can
help in forecasting trends and planning possible remedies.
Ralph and colleagues now have nine sampling stations worldwide, and
their findings are used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, the U.N.-organized network of scientists that is warning of
impending climate change.
The prospect of unpredictable, abrupt change worries the younger
Keeling. "We are moving into a warmer world," he said.
For years his father took no public stand on global warming. But the
accumulating evidence has become irrefutable, Dave Keeling now says.
"There was this long stage of denial about the temperature rising," he
said.
He faults the U.S. government, in particular, for not dealing with
warming by reining in fuel consumption or taking other decisive
action.
Dave's long deliberation over the controversial subject is typical of
both father and son, said one knowledgeable observer. "They both show
great diligence in what they do, and perseverance," said Louise
Keeling.
Their occasional musical collaborations on weekends give them another
chance to practice that care for detail, and a rare pairing of talents
-- father and son, keyboard and strings, science and art.
In a memoir, Dave Keeling wrote that he persevered in large part
because "the data gathered in my program became more and more
fascinating as the records lengthened."
His son sounds a similar note: "You can see it in the charts. The data
have a rhythm."
Thanks to his father's example, Ralph said, "it's very clear there's a
tremendous value in these long records. You build up something that
continues to increase in value -- like an art collection."
http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=communique&newsid=6006
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