http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2...cal/news02.txt

Global warming expert shares 50 years of research
By SHERRY DEVLIN of the Missoulian

Dave Keeling talks about the increase in atmospheric
carbon dioxide at the University Center Theater at the University of
Montana on Wednesday. The graph behind him is the Keeling curve, which
shows the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.
Photo by LOUIS MONTCLAIR/Missoulian
http://www.missoulian.com/content/ar...cal/news02.jpg

Homo sapiens - the self-proclaimed "wise ones" - have the ability to
do something about global warming, but they are not yet convinced it
is necessary, the nation's pre-eminent biophysicist said Wednesday.

And that makes it difficult for Dave Keeling to express much hope for
humankind.

"The only kind of optimism possible is at the same level as religion,"
Keeling said during a talk at the University of Montana. "I have to
have faith that we can pull this off."

Keeling, a professor of oceanography at Scripps Institution in La
Jolla, Calif., is not a religious man, though, so his presentation
focused primarily on what he knows after nearly 50 years of monitoring
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

It was Keeling who pioneered the measurement of atmospheric carbon
dioxide from atop Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano in 1955.

First, he established the baseline level of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere - what would be there if humans were not burning fossil
fuels.

Then he showed the increase in CO2 levels since the Industrial
Revolution. As of this past winter, the amount of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere was more than one-third higher than the pre-industrial
level.

And it increases every year, Keeling told participants in a three-day
conference of scientists who are monitoring climate change via
satellite-based software developed at UM.

Keeling's work was the foundation, said Steve Running, the UM
professor whose research team designed software for NASA's $1.3
billion Terra satellite, part of the $7 billion Earth Observing
System.

"We didn't really even see the entire globe until about 1982," Running
said. "Dave Keeling's Mauna Loa record gave us 20 years' warning that
humans could - and do - have a global impact.

"His work was the first real evidence we had."

The "Keeling curve" shows the jagged, but ever-higher concentration of
carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere, testimony to the
ever-increasing use of fossil fuels and the gradual warming of the
earth.

Now, scientists using the Terra satellite's earth science monitoring
equipment are beginning to document the ways in which life on earth
are changing.

"The carbon that's gone into coal, oil and natural gas took hundreds
of millions of years to accumulate," Running said. "But we will
release it all back into the atmosphere in just 200 years. That is the
big experiment.

"What happens when we release carbon dioxide a million times faster
than it was laid down on the earth?"

There are now 372 parts per million (by volume) of carbon dioxide in
the atmosphere; the pre-industrial level was 277 ppm.

"And we could easily get to 1,000 ppm or 1,500 ppm in the years
ahead," Running said.

Of course, carbon dioxide is not the issue, he added. "It's the impact
of carbon dioxide on climate."

And while the global average temperature has increased by one degree,
"that's the least of it," Running said. Every day, the data collected
by Terra provides new evidence of global climate change.

"We are starting to see very tangible ecological examples, not just
computer models and projections," Running said. Glaciers are receding,
winter snowpacks are melting more quickly, summers are drier in the
northern Rocky Mountains, wildfires are larger and hotter.

"People actually find some of the changes pleasant," he said. "We have
wineries in this part of the world, where that just wasn't possible 20
years ago. Our gardens yield produce earlier and longer.

"I try to stay value-neutral when looking at these trends, because the
trends are what's important - because they are real."

Among scientists, global warming is no longer a question, said
Keeling.

"I've even come to accept it in the last five or six years," he said.
"The change has been greater than what would naturally occur."

"A large part of the educated world is pretty concerned," said
Keeling, who has a home in Hamilton. "The European community and Japan
are very concerned."

Only the United States is out of touch with the reality, he said.
Politicians, the media and the general public simply haven't decided
that global warming is real, or that it's dangerous.

But what to do? "I don't know," Keeling said. "Somehow or another, we
still have a chance to do something. But we need the public's support,
and the politicians.' "

At 76, Keeling is steering clear of politics. "I've been successful
because I stayed off just about every committee there is," he told
scientists at the UM conference, "and I'm not inclined to change."