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This is significant to me because this pioneering scientist is living no more than a mile from me and Baring Head is close to us as well.
Dave
Lowe found
measurable proof of climate
change 50 years ago - he's
watched in horror ever since
Stuff.co,nz,
21 September, 2019
Dave Lowe established the Baring Head air monitoring station, helped prove human-driven climate change and contributed to the winning of a Nobel Peace Prize. Along the way were countless arguments with climate change deniers, a lost marriage, and one significant regret. Joel MacManus met him.
There's a certificate on the wall of Dave Lowe's small cottage in Petone, Wellington.
It's tucked away in the back office, an A3 piece of paper in an ordinary wooden frame.
It
could easily be missed by a passing guest. But if they cared to take
a second glance, three words would immediately jump out: Nobel Peace
Prize.
21 September, 2019
Dave Lowe established the Baring Head air monitoring station, helped prove human-driven climate change and contributed to the winning of a Nobel Peace Prize. Along the way were countless arguments with climate change deniers, a lost marriage, and one significant regret. Joel MacManus met him.
There's a certificate on the wall of Dave Lowe's small cottage in Petone, Wellington.
It's tucked away in the back office, an A3 piece of paper in an ordinary wooden frame.
It's
the 2007 Prize, awarded to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change. Lowe was a lead author on their largest-ever report.
It
was by far the greatest honour of his career. He resigned almost
immediately afterward, walking away on top of the scientific world.
The
Prize is a testament to all that he has achieved in his career, but
at the same time, to him, it's a haunting reminder of all the things
he didn't, or couldn't, change.
Sitting
at his kitchen table, reflecting on the prize, he goes a little
glassy-eyed. He stares intently at nothing in particular. His voice
drops an octave.
"I've
lived this horror for 50 years," he says. "There's so
little time left and we've just been so bloody stupid."
Dave
Lowe was one of the first people on earth to find measurable proof
that human activities were changing the atmosphere and warming the
planet.
For
the past 50 years, he has watched on, helpless and frustrated, as the
situation around him has got worse, and worse, and worse.
A
VOLCANO ABOVE THE CLOUDS
The
long, sloping sides of Mauna Loa, seen from the summit of its sister
mountain, Mauna Kea.
The
world's largest volcano dominates the skyline of Hawaii's Big Island.
The huge, sloping sides and gigantic crater of Mauna Loa cast an
imposing shadow and send a constant warning across the Pacific
paradise.
The
Ancient Hawaiians believed Mauna Loa was created by the volcano
goddess Pele, who formed it at such an immense height so she could
escape the wrath of her sister Nāmaka, the sea goddess.
According
to one legend, Pele is accompanied by a phantom white dog. When an
eruption was soon to occur, she would send her dog down the mountain
to warn the people of the impending disaster.
In
1958, an American scientist named Charles David Keeling climbed Mauna
Loa, and changed the world's understanding of our climate forever.
Keeling
had spent the better part of the 1950s perfecting a system of
measuring exactly how much of which gases make up the Earth's
atmosphere.
By
adapting gas analysers used in coal mines, he was able to take the
first ever reliable reading of the amount of carbon dioxide in the
air.
The
barren mountainside on the edge of the Mauna Loa crater, high above
the cloud layer and away from any interference, proved the perfect
location to capture the swirling air currents.
It
was here, in two simple grey buildings set against a desolate,
otherworldly landscape, that Keeling established the world's first
permanent station to measure CO2 levels.
The
gas analyser splits a sample of air into one million parts, and
counts how many of those are CO2.
The
first measurement Keeling took read 313 parts per million.
Then,
as he continued to take regular readings, he saw something no-one had
ever seen before. The planet was breathing.
In
autumn, as the leaves died off the trees, the amount of CO2 in the
air would rise. Then in spring, as the plants grew again,the number
would fall again. In and out, like lungs exhaling.
Then,
when a full year had gone by and the cycle was complete, he checked
the number again. It never returned to 313.
.
Now,
it sat at 314 ppm. He had just uncovered the first piece of evidence
that the total amount of CO2 in the air was increasing.
That
matters because CO2 has an insulating effect in the atmosphere. It
traps heat, which is why it's called a greenhouse gas. More CO2 means
more heat.
Every
year without fail, for the last 61 years, the number has continued to
climb at an ever-increasing rate.
The
chart which tracks the rising CO2, that drumbeat on the march to
climate breakdown, is called the Keeling Curve.
Some
would say that the legends of Mauna Loa are true. Pele's white dog
has become Keeling's gas analyzer, high in the mountains among the
ancient volcanic rock, sending out a warning signal to tell the
people of the coming disaster.
Charles
David Keeling received the National Medal of Science from then-US
President George W Bush in 2002.
A
WORLDWIDE SEARCH
While
Keeling was tracking the first evidence of climate change on a
Hawaiian volcano, Dave Lowe was a teenage high school dropout in
Taranaki, with only one thing on this mind: surfing.
The
sport was in its infancy in New Zealand, primitive wooden longboards
were the only equipment available. But Lowe was hooked.
"There
was just a small bunch of us, really weird characters, and I was just
fascinated with it," he says.
"You
go out there and man, do you get a feeling for the environment. I saw
the atmosphere directly, going down into the ocean, mixing the
sounds, the smells."
Sitting
on his board, staring out at the mist and the ocean spray dancing
against the pink hues of the setting sun, he decided he needed to
understand more about the world around him. He went back to school
and earned a Physics honours degree from Victoria University of
Wellington.
Lowe
and Keeling's paths would cross for the first time in 1970.
By
this time, Keeling was a giant in his field. But he wasn't satisfied
with his research station at Mauna Loa. One measurement at one
specific location wasn't enough evidence. He wanted a global record,
in both hemispheres, so he could confirm what he was seeing, and
track it for future decades.
Lowe
was a 23-year-old graduate at the former Department of Scientific and
Industrial Research, recruited to join Keeling's team as they set up
the world's second continuous record of atmospheric CO2.
They
found a spot about 30 minutes out of Wellington city, near Makara
Beach, at the World War II-era gun emplacements of Fort Opau.
After
six months training in California, Lowe returned to join the small
American team of one scientist and two technicians.
But
pretty soon he found himself with far more responsibility than he
expected.
"The
scientist would constantly just bugger off back to San Diego for six
months at a time. And the technicians, well ... They were being paid
to have the holiday of their lives, they were always off hunting and
fishing, not to speak of the marijuana.
"I
was thrown in the deep end trying to run hundreds of thousands of
dollars worth of gear on a really important project which is being
funded millions by the National Science Foundation."
But
that work was for nothing. The readings at Makara were erratic,
showing wild swings and no discernable pattern. They were useless.
There
was about a kilometre of paddocks between the sea and the analyzer,
which was sucking up too much CO2 and throwing off the readings.
Keeling
told him he needed to develop a new portable gas analyzer and find a
new location, undisturbed by vegetation or outside sources.
After
some searching, Lowe found the spot he was looking for at Baring
Head, a peninsula an hour out of Wellington in the opposite
direction, at the base of the Remutaka Forest Park.
The
Baring Head lighthouse and research station in 1972. Air samples were
taken at the top of the flagpole and atmospheric CO2 concentration
was measured by an infra red analyser in the building.
DAVE
LOWE
It
was perfect. At the right time, Baring Head gets air currents
directly from Antarctica, an incredible undisturbed run through
hundreds of kilometres of the Southern Ocean.
"What
we got was incredible. Right from the outset you could see that we
had struck gold."
The
first they learned was that Baring Head always measured a few ppm
behind Mauna Loa. The majority of emissions are produced in the
northern hemisphere, this showed that it took time for those gases to
spread to the south.
They
also found that Baring Head didn't show the same huge seasonal swings
as the Mauna Loa readings. The huge continents of vegetation in the
northern hemisphere were impacting the Hawaiian readings, but the
measurements in the South Pacific, surrounded by ocean, were far more
stable.
But
the most important thing was that the measurements at Baring Head
proved that Mauna Loa wasn't an anomaly. In both the south and the
north, the carbon in the atmosphere was slowly rising.
Dave
Lowe taking an air flask sample at the edge of the Baring Head cliff
in 1972.
James
Renwick is a professor of geology at Victoria University, who was
also a contributor to the 2007 Nobel Prize and received last year's
Prime Minister's Science Prize.
He
says Lowe is "a bit of a legend in NZ atmospheric science",
and his contributions to the global record of climate change were
invaluable.
"At
the time I suspect it wasn't appreciated just how important the
Baring Head Station was, but now the climate science community really
values the long time series from Baring Head.
"That's
very significant," he says. "They are a part of a global
network of observing sites that have taught us many things. Dave Lowe
has been a real pioneer in atmospheric science in NZ, especially
around measurement of greenhouse gases and in understanding the
chemistry of the atmosphere and how that's changing."
THE
GRIND
Finding
himself in charge of a groundbreaking research with barely any
experience, Lowe put everything on his own shoulders.
Together
with his friend and colleague Peter Gunther, they were basically
running the entire southern arm of the operation alone, and they were
fully aware of how important their work was.
Dave
Lowe in 1973 at the DSIR Institute of Nuclear Sciences laboratories
in Gracefield, Lower Hutt.
That
meant constant flights between Wellington and California, reading
every background paper that had ever been written on the subject,
developing all the computer programs to drive the calculations.
The
DSIR lab, where he was working, had one computer, an IBM 650 with
paper tape inputs and magnetic tape.
"We
worked our butts off," he says. "I knew that I just had to
do this. I threw everything I had into it"
But
that intensity had its consequences. Eventually, something had to
give.
American
scientist Peter Gunther, who worked with Lowe at Baring Head
throughout the 70s.
"I
just kept on going as my marriage crashed. I was a real mess. A hell
of a mess. I was working too hard, and completely blown apart
emotionally.
"The
guy I was working for took a look at me and said 'Dave, you're no
good to me at all in your condition'."
PROOF
OR PERSUASION
In
1975, Lowe took a sabbatical to recover from his professional and
personal blowout. He attended the first ever scientific conference of
greenhouse gas experts. He reckons he's probably the only person at
the meeting who is still alive.
The
small group knew what was coming before anyone else in the world.
They
had proven that mankind was changing the chemical makeup of the air,
and they knew the inevitable outcome of that.
The
terms 'Global Warming' and 'Climate Change' hadn't been invented yet,
but that's exactly what they were seeing.
In
the following years, Lowe moved to Germany to study further, and met
his now-wife Irena. They've been married for 40 years.
He
specialised in isotopic techniques, which he describes as like DNA
tracing for gas particles.
Not
all the CO2 in the atmosphere is from the burning of fossil fuels.
For most of human history, the CO2 level has naturally fluctuated
between 200 and 300ppm, which we know thanks to air samples trapped
in glacier ice cores.
Those
natural fluctuations are often cited by climate deniers to suggest
that climate change is not man-made.
Naturally
occurring carbon is made up of different isotopes. The most common
types are called Carbon-12 and Carbon-13.
Carbon-12
is by far the most common type found in nature. Carbon-13 makes up
about 1 per cent of the total.
But
the exact amount can differ. There is slightly less Carbon-13 in
fossil fuels like coal and oil compared to in atmospheric carbon.
NICHOLAS
BOYACK/STUFF
The
sun setting behind the Baring Head. Atmospheric carbon measurements
are still taken there to this day
Lowe
and other international researchers found that while total CO2 in the
air was increasing, the percentage of Carbon-13 isotopes compared to
Carbon-12 was decreasing.
That
proved that the additional CO2 in the atmosphere was coming from the
burning of fossil fuels by humans, not anything else.
"That's
the smoking gun. You can get every sceptic blue in the face but
that's just open and shut evidence that this extra CO2 came from
humans," he says.
"Unequivocal,
no doubt."
That
was proof, settled science. But the battle to convince the public of
his findings was only just beginning.
Why
exactly are "rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes"
needed to combat climate change? Here are the facts.
Part
of the problem was that the predicted temperature rise didn't show up
for several years.
While
CO2 was rising, the mercury was jumping up and down, with no
consistency. But eventually, the signal separated from the noise and
the heat started to climb. Once it did, it basically never stopped.
In
hindsight, the conservative approach of the scientific community
probably held progress back for a number of years, he says.
"As
a scientists, we thought, 'No, you don't jump up and down and scream,
we're not activists.' Losing our credibility was the big issue.
"It
was a totally different time. If only I knew then what I know now ...
Now it's different, many of us are out there doing stuff. We have to,
this is an emergency."
Full-blown
arguments with climate change deniers have been a common occurrence
in Lowe's life. His voice bristles with frustration when the topic
comes up.
"It's
better now, but it was hard yards. I'd be yelled at by people. It
used to be constant shouting matches with sceptics.
"[Scientists]
deal in data and facts and graphs and numbers, it's really hard to
get through with that. In my lifetime I've given hundreds of climate
change talks and you're always up against it with this distrust."
Nothing
grinds his gears more than scientists in the 1980s and 1990s who
deliberately spread mistruths about climate change while on the
payrolls of oil companies, like Fred Singer and others profiled in
the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt.
"I
just think … the bastard, how dare he not look at the facts. That
makes me angry, people who deliberately go out and falsify what's
going on."
Dave
Lowe has retired and now lives in Petone. He's still active in the
climate science community and lives a low-emissions lifestyle.
After
resigning, Lowe started his own small family business, consulting and
doing climate change education.
After
his children left home, he and Irena moved into their small cottage,
which they meticulously designed to have the smallest possible carbon
footprint.
He's
still actively involved in climate science, making submissions on
bills and helping with various research work. He's working on a book
about his life work.
Every
day as he sits down to write, that Nobel Peace Prize certificate
hangs behind him.
"I
just wish ... all of us wish, that we could have changed minds,"
he says.
"But
how do you fight an oil company?"
The
first ever CO2 reading at Baring Head was 326 Parts Per Million. The
most recent reading was 409 Parts Per Million.
