A Scientist With Many Visions : White House honors famed San Diegan and oceanographer Revelle

Tuesday’s award of a National Science Medal to Roger Revelle, ironically bestowed by an Administration reluctant to combat the global warming that the San Diego scientist first identified in the 1950s, provides an opportunity to consider Revelle’s amazing contributions.

The 81-year-old director emeritus of Scripps Institution of Oceanography conducted the research that led to the first general awareness of the greenhouse effect--the impact that trapped carbon dioxide given off by burning fossil fuels would have on the Earth’s climate.

Revelle, who has bucked powerful opponents to accomplish his goals in the past, came to the award ceremony hoping to “work on” President Bush’s chief of staff, John Sununu, who opposes measures that would reduce global warming. But Sununu was a no-show.

During the White House ceremony, Revelle also was cited for his pioneering research in population control. He founded the Harvard University Center for Population Studies in 1964, directing it until 1975.

It was nearly 40 years ago that Revelle began to take on powerful UC Regent Edwin W. Pauley’s and La Jolla’s anti-Semitic, anti-minority real estate covenants to found UC San Diego. The university that Revelle and a handful of others created will be 30 years old Sunday.

In that brief time, UCSD has become San Diego’s third-largest employer, a 2,000-acre campus housing more than 17,000 students. Eight Nobel laureates have taught at the school, which regularly ranks among the nation’s top universities in federal research grants and awards. Fifty-two members of the National Academy of Sciences currently teach there.

The university that dominates San Diego’s intellectual landscape is a fitting tribute to the power of Revelle’s local vision. A major effort to lessen our reliance on fossil fuels and address the consequences of global warming would be an even more lasting acknowledgement of the research for which he was honored.