Who in her right mind would want to detour from doing world-class
atmospheric research at a laboratory tucked under the Rockies to be a
co-leader of a years-long, largely administrative review by hundreds of
experts from dozens of countries of existing studies on the atmosphere?
Dr. Solomon, who won a National Medal of Science in 1999 for linking
synthetic chemicals to the seasonal ozone hole over Antarctica,
nonetheless chose that course in 2002.
“Thomas Jefferson once said something like, ‘Science is my passion,
politics my duty,’ ” Dr. Solomon, 51, said Sunday in a telephone
interview. “That’s probably how I think about it, too. Science does have
a duty, when called upon, to provide information that’s important to
society the best way it can.”
In place of making expeditions to the South Pole and Greenland, her old
stomping grounds, she spent chunks of the last five years hunkered in
gray buildings in Beijing, New Delhi, Marrakech and Paris running
meeting after meeting of experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.
The panel was convened by the United Nations in 1988 — a year of record
heat, burning forests and the first big headlines about greenhouse gases
and global warming — to provide regular reviews of climate science to
governments to inform policy choices.
Dr. Solomon, a senior scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, and Qin Dahe, head of the Chinese meteorological agency,
were charged with generating the fourth report and summary since 1990 of
advances in climate science. The final editing of the 20-page summary
through four days and nights last week involved approval by 113
governments. Several participants credited Dr. Solomon with ensuring
that last-minute demands, particularly from China and the United States,
did not derail the process or distort the science.
Dr. Solomon and many colleagues defend this procedure, melding science
and diplomacy, as a way to give nations some ownership of the results
and, thus, responsibility for reflecting the findings in policies. But
others see it as an opportunity for political meddling.
The summary, released on Friday in Paris, was the first from the group
to pinpoint with greater than 90 percent certainty that humans had
become the main force driving warming and that centuries of increasing
temperatures and seas could be blunted only if emissions of
heat-trapping gases were promptly reduced. At a news conference in Paris
on Friday, United Nations officials quickly called for action to cut
emissions and limit catastrophic effects, particularly on the poorest
countries.
When a reporter asked Dr. Solomon “to sum up what kind of urgency this
sort of report should convey to policy makers,” she gave the furthest
thing from a convenient sound bite.
“I can only give you something that’s going to disappoint you, sir, and
that is that it’s my personal scientific approach to say it’s not my
role to try to communicate what should be done,” Dr. Solomon said. “I
believe that is a societal choice. I believe science is one input to
that choice, and I also believe that science can best serve society by
refraining from going beyond its expertise.
“In my view, that’s what the I.P.C.C. also is all about, namely not
trying to make policy-prescriptive statements, but policy-relevant
statements.”
Almost immediately, and predictably, the findings were criticized by
both sides in the debate over what to do, or not do, about human effects
on the climate. Politicians and groups with links to industries that
oppose restrictions on greenhouse gases said the report played down
uncertainties and relied too much on murky computer models.
Some scientists and groups pushing for aggressive cuts in the gases said
the panel was much too conservative in some projections, particularly in
assessing how much melting of ice sheets might raise sea levels in the
next 100 years. Some scientists expressed frustration with Dr. Solomon
for not making a stronger statement on the conclusions.
“As we all know, Susan is an outstanding scientist, and everybody has to
make their own decision how to react to more political questions,”
Robert T. Watson, the chief scientist of the World Bank and a former
chairman of the panel, wrote in an e-mail message. “Ducking the question
of what is needed did weaken the impact of the report to many observers.
However, Susan could argue that her neutrality on the policy question
provides her greater credibility as an unbiased scientist and chair.”
In the interview, Dr. Solomon was steadfast. She said: “I take the view
that I’ll talk about science, but that policy is a collective decision.
There are a lot of different ways different people view this. This is
reflective of the fact that scientists are human beings like everyone else.”
Dr. Solomon, who fell in love with science at age 9 after watching
Jacques Cousteau’s films about the sea, said she was unfazed by the
pressures of working on the panel.
She faces months of additional work on reports related to the summary.
After that, she said, she plans to take a little time off and, for the
first time, really, enjoy the Rocky Mountains around her base in
Boulder, Colo.
“I’m going to learn how to fish,” she said.
(Por Andrew C. Revkin,
The N.Y. Times, 06/02/2007)