Roger Randall Dougan Revelle (March 7, 1909
– July 15, 1991) was a scientist and scholar
who was instrumental in the formative years
of the University of California San Diego
and was among the early scientists to study
anthropogenic global warming, as well as the
movement of Earth's tectonic plates.
UC San Diego's first college is named Revelle
College in his honor.
== Career ==
Roger Revelle was born in Seattle to William
Roger Revelle and Ella Dougan, and grew up
in southern California, graduating from Pomona
College in 1929 with early studies in geology
and then earning a Ph.D. in oceanography from
the University of California, Berkeley in
1936.
While at Cal, he studied under George Louderback
and was initiated into Theta Tau Professional
Engineering Fraternity which started as a
mining engineering fraternity and maintained
a strong affinity for geology and geological
engineering students.
Much of his early work in oceanography took
place at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography
(SIO) in San Diego.
He was also Oceanographer for the Navy during
WWII.
He became director of SIO from 1950 to 1964.
He stood against the UC faculty being required
to take an anti-communist oath during the
Joseph McCarthy period.
He served as Science Advisor to Interior Secretary
Stewart Udall during the Kennedy Administration
in the early 1960s, and was President of the
American Association for the Advancement of
Science (1974).
=== Growth of Oceanography ===
Revelle was deeply involved in the growth
of oceanography in the United States and internationally
after World War II.
Working for the Navy in the late 1940s, he
helped to determine which projects gained
funding, and he promoted the idea that the
Navy ought to support "basic research" instead
of only trying to build new technology.
At Scripps he launched several major long-range
expeditions in the 1950s, including the MIDPAC,
TRANSPAC (with Canada and Japan), EQUAPAC,
and NORPAC, each traversing a different part
of the Pacific Ocean.
He and other scientists at Scripps Institution
of Oceanography helped the U.S. government
to plan nuclear weapons tests, in the hope
that oceanographers might make use of the
data.
Revelle was one of the committee chairmen
in the influential National Academy of Sciences
studies of the biological effects of atomic
radiation (BEAR), the results of which were
published in 1956.
In 1952, along with Dr. Seibert Q. Duntley,
he successfully moved the MIT Visibility Lab
to SIO with financial support of the U.S.
Navy.
Along with oceanographers at the Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution, Revelle planned
the American contributions to the oceanographic
program of the International Geophysical Year
(IGY).
He became the first president of the Scientific
Committee on Oceanic Research, an international
group of scientists devoted to advising on
international projects, and he was a frequent
advisor to the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission, created in 1960.
=== Global warming ===
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 Scientific
Committee on Ocean Research (SCOR) and the
International Oceanic Commission (IOC).
During planning for the IGY, under Revelle's
directorship, SIO 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, and in Antarctica.
In 1957, Revelle co-authored a paper with
Hans Suess that suggested that the Earth's
oceans would absorb excess carbon dioxide
generated by humanity at a much slower rate
than previously predicted by geoscientists,
thereby suggesting that human gas emissions
might create a "greenhouse effect" that would
cause global warming over time.
Although other articles in the same journal
discussed carbon dioxide levels, the Suess-Revelle
paper was "the only one of the three to stress
the growing quantity of CO2 contributed by
our burning of fossil fuel, and to call attention
to the fact that it might cause global warming
over time."Revelle and Suess described the
"buffer factor", now known as the "Revelle
factor", which is a resistance to atmospheric
carbon dioxide being absorbed by the ocean
surface layer posed by bicarbonate chemistry.
Essentially, in order to enter the ocean,
carbon dioxide gas has to partition into one
of the components of carbonic acid: carbonate
ion, bicarbonate ion, or protonated carbonic
acid, and the product of these many chemical
dissociation constants factors into a kind
of back-pressure that limits how fast the
carbon dioxide can enter the surface ocean.
Geology, geochemistry, atmospheric chemistry,
ocean chemistry ... this amounted to one of
the earliest examples of "integrated assessment",
which 50 years later became an entire branch
of global warming science.
At his death, Revelle may well have still
been waiting for a signal that would prove
global warming as a serious problem correct.
In the Nov. 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."
=== UC San Diego ===
During the late 1950s, Revelle fought for
the establishment of a University of California
campus in San Diego.
He had to contend with the UC University Board
of Regents who would have preferred merely
to expand the University of California, Los
Angeles campus rather than create an entirely
new campus in San Diego.
He also conflicted with San Diego politicians
and businessmen who believed the campus should
be established in San Diego proper, such as
near San Diego State University or in Balboa
Park.
The decision was made in 1959, with the first
graduate students enrolled in 1960, and the
first undergraduates in 1964.
Revelle's struggle to acquire land for the
new campus put him in competition with Jonas
Salk, and Revelle lost some of what he called
the "best piece of land we had" on UCSD's
eventual Torrey Pines site to the fledgling
Salk Institute.
In later years Revelle continued to show some
animosity toward Salk, once saying, "He is
a folk hero, even though he is... not very
bright."When at Scripps and while building
UCSD, Revelle also had to deal with a La Jolla
community that refused to rent or sell property
to Jews.
In addition to battling the anti-semitic restrictive
covenant of La Jolla real estate, Revelle
helped found a new housing subdivision for
Scripps professors, partially because some
of them would not have been allowed to live
in La Jolla.
Revelle left Scripps in 1963 and founded the
(now defunct) Center for Population Studies
at Harvard University.
In his over ten years there as its Director,
he focused upon the application of science
and technology to the problem of world hunger.
In 1976 he returned to UC San Diego as Professor
of Science, Technology and Public Affairs
(STPA) in the school's political science department.
=== Views on climate change distorted ===
In 1991, Revelle's name appeared as co-author
on an article written by physicist S. Fred
Singer and electrical engineer Chauncey Starr
for the publication Cosmos: A Journal of Emerging
Issues, titled "What to do about greenhouse
warming: Look before you leap," which was
published in the summer of 1992.
The Cosmos article included the statement
that "Drastic, precipitous—and, especially,
unilateral—steps to delay the putative greenhouse
impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and increase
the human costs of global poverty, without
being effective.
Stringent economic controls now would be economically
devastating particularly for developing countries...".
The article concluded: "The scientific base
for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain
to justify drastic action at this time.
There is little risk in delaying policy responses."These
particular statements and the bulk of the
article, including the title, had been written
and published a year earlier by S. Fred Singer,
as sole author.
Singer's article stated that "there is every
expectation that scientific understanding
will be substantially improved within the
next decade," and advocated against drastic
and "hastily-conceived" action at the time
without further scientific evidence.
It does not, however, deny climate change
or global warming.
Justin Lancaster, Revelle's graduate student
and teaching assistant at the Scripps Institution
of Oceanography from 1981 until Revelle's
death, says that Revelle was "hoodwinked"
by Singer into adding his name to the article
and that Revelle was "intensely embarrassed
that his name was associated" with it.
In 1992, Lancaster charged that Singer's actions
were "unethical" and specifically designed
to undercut then–Senator Al Gore's global
warming policy stance; however, to end a lawsuit
brought by Singer against Lancaster with support
of the Center for Public Interest in Washington,
D.C., Lancaster gave Singer a statement of
apology, but refused to admit that anything
he said was false.
In 2006, prompted by Robert Balling and others
continuing to state that Revelle actually
wrote the article, Lancaster formally withdrew
his retraction and reiterated his charges.When
Gore was running for the vice-presidential
nomination in 1992, The New Republic picked
up on the contrast between the references
to Revelle in Gore's book, Earth in the Balance,
and the views in the Cosmos article that could
now be attributed to Revelle.
This was followed up by Newsweek and elsewhere
in the media.
Patrick Michaels boasted that the Cosmos article
had been read into the Congressional Record.
The issue was even raised by Admiral James
Stockdale in the televised vice-presidential
debate.
Gore's response was to protest that Revelle's
views in the article had been taken out of
context.
Roger's daughter, Carolyn Revelle, wrote:
Contrary to George Will's "Al Gore's Green
Guilt" Roger Revelle—our father and the
"father" of the greenhouse effect—remained
deeply concerned about global warming until
his death in July 1991.
That same year he wrote: "The scientific base
for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain
to justify drastic action at this time."
Will and other critics of Sen. Al Gore have
seized these words to suggest that Revelle,
who was also Gore's professor and mentor,
renounced his belief in global warming.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
When Revelle inveighed against "drastic" action,
he was using that adjective in its literal
sense—measures that would cost trillions
of dollars.
Up until his death, he thought that extreme
measures were premature.
But he continued to recommend immediate prudent
steps to mitigate and delay climatic warming.
Some of those steps go well beyond anything
Gore or other national politicians have yet
to advocate.
[...] Revelle proposed a range of approaches
to address global warming.
Inaction was not one of them.
He agreed with the adage "look before you
leap," but he never said "sit on your hands."
=== Legacy ===
During his last decade at UCSD and SIO, Revelle
continued to work and teach.
In the early 1980s, he taught undergraduate
STPA seminars twice a year, in Energy and
Development (mainly on problems in Africa),
the Carbon Dioxide Problem (known now as the
Global Warming problem), and Marine Policy.
In 1986 he won the Balzan Prize for Oceanography/Climatology.
A 1990 heart attack forced him to move his
course to the Scripps Institution from the
Revelle College provost's office, where he
continued to teach the Marine Policy program
until his death the following year.
In 1991, he was awarded the National Medal
of Science by President George H.W. Bush (one
of about 500 recipients in the 20th Century).
He remarked to a reporter: "I got it for being
the grandfather of the greenhouse effect."Revelle
died in San Diego on July 15, 1991 of complications
of cardiac arrest.
He was survived by his wife, Ellen Clark Revelle
(1910-2009), three daughters, and one son,
William, as well as numerous grandchildren.
In his honor, a new research vessel at the
Scripps Institution was christened R/V Roger
Revelle.
Also, the Ocean Studies Board of the National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
created the Roger Revelle Commemorative Lecture
series in memory of Revelle in 1999, featuring
distinguished speakers on the themes of ocean
science and public policy.
Since 1992, the American Geophysical Union
has annually awarded a prize in his honor,
the Roger Revelle Medal, for outstanding contributions
in atmospheric sciences.
== References ==
== External links ==
NASA Roger Revelle Biography
San Diego Biography: Roger Revelle
Revelle College 40th Anniversary
Research Vessel Roger Revelle at Scripps Institution
of Oceanography
Roger Revelle, a profile Judith & Neil Morgan
Spencer Weart.
"Roger Revelle's Discovery".
aip.org.
American Institute of Physics.
Retrieved September 13, 2016.
July 2007
Scripps Institution of Oceanography
