Global-warming issue lost amid fears about terrorism, Nobel Laureate says

The Columbus Dispatch

By David Lore

June 13, 2002

Terrorism has placed global warming on the back burner, with consequences nobody can predict, Nobel Prize winner Sherwood Rowland said yesterday.

Rowland, who spoke to reporters before a lecture at Ohio State University, compared President Bush to a motorist stepping on the gas, despite warnings of a possible bridge collapse ahead.

"Everybody there (in Washington) is so concerned with homeland security so that these things, you don't want to touch them or you put them aside," said the Ohio-born scientist best known for his work on the so-called ozone hole. A Senate committe this month is expected to take up a carbon-dioxide-control bill and world leaders are to meet in South Africa in August to discuss global warming.

"Terrorism is clearly the dominant focus in Washington," said Frank O'Donnell, director of the Clean Air Trust, a Washington-based environmental group. "Not that that's the wrong thing, but it does have the impact of puting other things on a slower track."

Bush, who is scheduled to speak at Ohio State's graduation ceremonies on Friday, has proposed voluntary emission-reduction targets and increased spending on research and technology. He has opposed, however, U. S. endorsement of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce air pollution, which is thought to be behind the warming trend.

When scientists from the Environmental Protection Agency and five other agencies issued new warnings about global warming on May 31, the White House dismissed the report, and said the administration's policy remained unchanged.

Rowland acknowledged that there are uncertainties about both the causes and consequences of global warming. But he's a critic of what he call's Bush's "business as usual" approach.

"The agreement within the science community as to the reality of global warming has been pretty solid since 1995," he said. "Over the last 25 years, it's quite clear the globe as a whole has warmed up appreciably."

He said the overall temperature has risen by seven-tenths of one degree.

The EPA report forecasts a rise of 3 to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century.

Rowland said the only plausible explanation for this is a buildup of waste gases, principally carbon dioxide and methane, in the atmosphere. This causes a greenhouse effect that traps solar heat near the Earth's surface, keeping it from dispersing out into space.

Rowland shared the 1995 Nobel Prize for chemistry for his work with Mario Molina in identifying chlorofluorocarbons as the culprit for the thinning of the protective ozone layer over the poles.

Chlorofluorocarbons are volatile organic compounds once heavily used in cooling equipment and aerosol spray cans.

Although progress on global warming has stalled for the time being, Rowland said the U.S. has made significant progress in controlling urban smog and ozone depletion.

Rowland, a Delaware native, graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University where his father, Sidney, was a math professor as well as mayor of Delaware during the 1930s.

At age 74, he continues his research at the University of California, Irvine, heading up a group working on methane and Third World smog.

Scientists have calculated that at the present rate of warming, average sea levels worldwide will rise about 3 feet by 2100. This would result in "huge difficulties" for coastal regions such as southern Florida, he said.

But there also is evidence from the end of the last Ice Age that such drastic warming can occur over only a decade or two.

"We're in a position where we're moving towards climate change without knowing what it means," he said.