Global warming expert says change starts with public, not government

Susan Solomon, a leader of the team that won last year's Nobel Peace Prize for its work on climate change, says in the end it will be up to public opinion as well as governments to decide whether and how to take action to combat global warming.

Susan Solomon says new environmental issues are opening whole avenues of investigation.
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BOULDER, COLORADO // Susan Solomon, a leader of the team that won last year's Nobel Peace Prize for its work on climate change, says in the end it will be up to public opinion as well as governments to decide whether and how to take action to combat global warming.

Since winding up her cochairmanship of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Ms Solomon has had a chance to reflect away from the flurry of worldwide attention sparked by the group's findings. Ms Solomon combined the skills of a diplomat and her scientific training to alert governments that global warming was "unequivocal" and largely caused by human activities, mainly the burning of fossil fuels. Her views are still carefully worded.

"The IPCC's findings haven't yet been translated into political action that is as substantive as some people would like. But there have been some movements that personally I'm very encouraged by. When I go to Washington, I'm amazed by the number of Congress people, many of whom are far-right conservatives, who now understand the problem far better than they used to," she said. "What it will take governments to actually do something substantive is the other question. I think you have to be realistic and governments can never get ahead of public opinion on a question like this one, which affects everyone so much."

The IPCC and Al Gore, former US vice-president, were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. The IPCC built on Ms Solomon's earlier and notable achievement - providing the first explanation of how chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) caused a hole in the ozone layer. Her findings led to an eventual ban on the chemical. Ms Solomon is back at her base at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder, Colorado, where she is continuing her research into the interactions between the stratosphere and the earth's surface climate.

Security is high at the complex of scientific laboratories and offices where she works, not least because it houses the atomic clock that is one of the world's timekeepers. She agrees to a meeting at a nearby coffee shop, just metres away from Baseline Road, the major east-west street in Boulder that runs along the 40th parallel. This line is an important indicator on global warming maps, which show regions south of it getting drier and warmer, such as the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Sahara.

"One of the real improvements of the last several years of research has been the understanding that some regions are very likely to get drier in a warmer world," she said. "Here is 40 degrees baseline, and if you go a little bit south, everything becomes more clear. Here in Colorado, we might be lucky and dodge the bullet. "Most projections suggest that much of the Gulf will get drier too, it's already in that dry region of the subtropics. I wouldn't gamble on more rainfall becoming available. But it's probably a bit like here, it's on the edge and global warming's effect on rainfall there is not as clear as in the Mediterranean."

Ms Solomon wanted to be a scientist since she was nine years old. She grew up in Chicago and was at first fascinated by the adventures of Jacques Cousteau, the underwater explorer. She studied chemistry at the Illinois Institute of Technology and did postgraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. There is a refreshing lack of stridency about her even though the climate change debate arouses fierce opinions on both the left and right. She does her bit for the environment, such as riding a bicycle to work, but said her retired geologist husband used to analyse oil wells. "So actually he took a lot of carbon out of the ground in his time. Our carbon footprint as a couple is pretty high."

She has ventured far out of the safety of the laboratory. On an emergency expedition to the Antarctic in 1986 to study the newly discovered ozone hole, her right eyelid froze but she suffered no lasting damage. Her current research centres on how the changes in ozone are influencing the climate of Antarctica. "There's also evidence now that changes seem to be happening in the stratosphere in the tropics that we hadn't quite expected," she said. "After 30 years of being a scientist, I'm like a kid in a candy store because I think there are some things happening now that open whole new avenues of investigation."

Ms Solomon was "pleased" the United States asked her to help lead the next round of IPCC reporting but turned it down because another seven-year commitment would have eaten up valuable research time. "Even a cheetah can only run so long, and I'm not a cheetah," she said. She shuns the limelight and turns down many invitations. Nonetheless, she is likely to face questions for some time about the IPCC. Its report last year specifically pointed out how even moderate warming of one to three degrees could lead to more droughts, heat waves and higher sea levels.

"You cannot say that the IPCC report mandates that we have to start decreasing [carbon emissions] in 10 years as some people have said. The IPCC report tells you that if you want to keep global warming below an eventual level of a couple of degrees, then you would need to do that," she said. "The judgement whether that's acceptable is a tough one because there will be winners, and there will be losers in climate change. You could argue Russia will be a winner, Canada might be a winner. We never had that problem with ozone because everyone's a loser when you have more UV hitting the planet."

She considered climate change sceptics to be on the retreat although it would take more time to convince everyone amid further fierce politicking. "I don't think that the attempts by some people who are sceptical for various reasons are going to be successful in the long run." She was also heartened by US presidential hopefuls' views on climate as they were "both different from this current administration".

Ultimately, society and not science will have to decide future policies on global warming and its effects on poverty, health and sustainable development, she said. "That warming is unequivocal, I think, is clear. That most of it is due to greenhouse gases is also quite clear," she said. "I do worry about the degree of pressure being put on science to find answers to questions that are not scientific. People look to scientists and say 'please give us the answer'. But my viewpoint about social equity between developed and developing countries is not better informed because I'm a scientist."

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