THE FACES OF CHANGE
David Victor , professor of international relations at UC San Diego ’ s School of Global Policy and Strategy ( GPS ), specializes in energy research and climate change policy .
From Then to Now Scientists first began to grasp the greenhouse effect of natural atmospheric gases in the early 1800s . Around the turn of the 20th century , select researchers speculated that industrial emissions contributing to higher CO 2 concentrations could cause warming of the planet , but their findings were regarded as a curiosity , not yet a crisis . By the 1950s the theory was accepted , yet many researchers assumed that oceans would take the brunt of the emissions associated with burning fossil fuels .
At Scripps Institution of Oceanography , renowned oceanographer Roger Revelle wasn ’ t so optimistic . His research on the complex chemistry of oceans suggested that the buffering mechanism that stabilizes the acidity of sea water would also prevent it from absorbing much excess gas — at best , it could take in a scant 10 percent of what was predicted . In a landmark paper published in 1957 , Revelle concluded that global warming could become a serious issue if industrial fuel combustion continued to grow . “ Human beings are now carrying out a largescale geophysical experiment of a kind that could not have happened in the past nor be reproduced in the future ,” he wrote .
One year later , Revelle ’ s pioneering Scripps colleague , Charles David Keeling , took his first measurements of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations at the South Pole and in Hawaii . Prior to his groundbreaking research , changes in CO 2 concentrations were considered natural fluctuations . But as he perfected his measurement techniques year after year , Keeling revealed something more ominous about the annual uptick . “ At the South Pole the observed rate of increase is nearly that to be expected from the combustion of fossil fuel ,” he wrote in a now-iconic 1960 paper in the journal Tellus .
It ’ s been nearly six decades since Revelle published his eyebrow-raising paper , and the Keeling Curve is still headed upward . Climate change has come to affect nearly every facet of human life — from economics to public health and safety — and as such , its study has become an interdisciplinary focus among UC San Diego researchers .
David Victor , professor of international relations at UC San Diego ’ s School of Global Policy and Strategy ( GPS ), is an expert on energy research and climate change policy , as well as a lead author in the IPCC reports .
38 TRITON | FALL 2015