Source: Wikipedia
Roger Randall Dougan Revelle
(March 7, 1909 – July 15, 1991)
was a scientist at the University
of California San Diego and among
the early scientists to study
man made global warming.
UC San Diego's first college
is named Revelle College,
in his honor.
Awards:
Alexander Agassiz Medal (1963)
Tyler Prize for
Environmental Achievement (1984)
Vannevar Bush Award (1984)
William Bowie Medal (1968)
National Medal of Science (1990)
Scientific career
-- Scripps Institution of Oceanography
-- University of California San Diego
Roger Revelle graduated
from Pomona College
in 1929 with early studies
in geology.
He earned a Ph.D. in oceanography
from the University of California,
Berkeley in 1936.
Much of his early work in oceanography
took place at the Scripps Institution
of Oceanography (SIO) in San Diego.
He was director of SIO
from 1950 to 1964.
He was President of the
American Association
for the Advancement
of Science (1974).
Revelle was instrumental in creating
the International Geophysical Year (IGY)
in 1958, and was founding chairman
of the first Committee on Climate Change
and the Ocean (CCCO) under the
International Oceanic Commission (IOC).
Under Revelle's directorship, SIO (Scripps)
participated in, and later became the principal
center for the Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Program.
In July 1956, Charles David Keeling
joined the SIO staff to head the program,
and began measurements of atmospheric
carbon dioxide at the Mauna Loa
Observatory on Mauna Loa, Hawaii,
still being done today.
Hans Suess was recruited by Revelle,
and they co-authored a 1957 paper
using Carbon-14 isotope levels
to assess the rate at which
carbon dioxide added by fossil fuel
combustion, since the start
of the industrial revolution,
had accumulated in the atmosphere.
They concluded that most of it
had been absorbed by the
Earth's oceans, contrary to older
assumptions that it would simply
accumulate in the upper atmosphere
and increase the average temperature
near the earth's surface.
There had been no greenhouse effect
caused warming yet, but the Suess-Revelle
paper suggested that increasing human
gas emissions might change this.
A November 1957 report in
The Hammond Times
described Revelle's research
as suggesting that:
"a large scale global warming,
with radical climate
changes may result" –
the first use of the term
"global warming".
Other articles in the same journal
discussed carbon dioxide levels,
but the Suess-Revelle paper was
"the only one, of three, to stress
rising CO2 levels that might cause
global warming over time."
In the November 1982 Scientific American
letters to the editors, Revelle stated:
"We must conclude that until a
warming trend that exceeds
the noise level of natural climatic
fluctuations becomes clearly evident,
there will be considerable uncertainty
and a diversity of opinions about
the amplitude of the climatic effects
of increased atmospheric CO2.
If the modelers are correct,
such a signal should be detectable
within the next 10 or 15 years."
Roger's daughter, Carolyn Revelle,
wrote:
" ... our father and the "father"
of the greenhouse effect
—remained deeply concerned
about global warming
until his death in July 1991.
But in that same year he wrote:
"The scientific base for a
greenhouse warming is too uncertain
to justify drastic action at this time.""
At his death in 1991, Revelle
was still waiting for proof
that global warming
was a serious problem.
Many other scientists had
already jumped to that conclusion
without scientific proof.
Today there is scientific proof,
through CO2 and global temperature
measurements, that past global warming
has been mild, and beneficial, for our planet.
Whether the cause of global warming
is natural, or man made, is still unknown,
although many scientists have jumped
to a conclusion on the cause too !