THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, March 14, 1995 TAG: 9503140332
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WILLIAMSBURG LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines
Every time you fire up a pan full of charcoal for a back-yard barbecue, think of billions of your fellow humans doing exactly the same thing at the same time. That will give you some idea of why many small actions, taken together, literally have a global effect.
Such was the message delivered Monday night by a panel of experts convened for a public seminar on so-called biomass burning: the worldwide torching of rain forests, grasslands, woodlands and vegetation for farming and fuel.
``Simple human activities sum up to make a large impact on the atmosphere,'' said Paul J. Crutzen, director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany. ``(Human) burning puts as much pollution in the air as industrial processes.''
More than 200 scientists from two dozen countries have gathered in Williamsburg for a weeklong conference to pore over the latest findings in biomass burning. The event, co-sponsored by NASA Langley Research Center and the American Geophysical Union, is attracting the field's leading researchers.
WHRO-TV, Hampton Roads' public television station, was also in attendance Monday. It filmed the seminar for inclusion in a late-April broadcast to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Earth Day.
Panelists painted a complex climatic picture. Burning isn't all bad all the time, said Robert C. Harriss, a senior NASA scientist, citing practices on certain Philippine islands. There, careful harvesting and burning of fast-growing trees for fuel has had something of a positive economic and environmental effect.
But burning also injects several billion tons of carbon dioxide annually into Earth's atmosphere, leading to concerns about abrupt and catastrophic planetary climate change. Alterations in local rain patterns could turn fertile areas to dust, lowlands to mud flats.
Mitigating planet-warming ``greenhouse'' gases such as carbon dioxide are small fire-produced particles, said Joyce E. Penner, leader of the Lawrence Livermore Global Climate Research Division. When wafted into the atmosphere, these particles provide the seeds around which clouds form.
In turn, such clouds reflect large amounts of solar radiation, cooling surface temperatures.
Ozone depletion continues to be a concern. Ozone shields human, animals and crops from otherwise harmful solar radiation. Although a landmark international agreement has been signed to reduce the manufacture of the manmade chemicals thought to be ozone's primary destroyer, levels in some parts of the world remain dangerously low.
The effect is felt even in Virginia. F. Sherwood Rowland, professor of chemistry at the University of California at Irvine, reported that instrumentation at Wallops Island, on Virginia's Eastern Shore, recorded a 6 percent drop in ozone levels there over a 21-year period, from 1970 through 1991.
The study of biomass burning has passed from infancy to adolescence, the speakers said. As more is learned, more will be passed to the general public and to political leaders who, together, can change private practices and public policies.
``Once scientists understand things and communicate their understanding to the public, action can be taken,'' said Ronald G. Prinn, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Global Change Science. ``We shouldn't despair. We can, in fact, reverse things - hopefully, in time.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
NASA
Plumes of smoke from grassland fires blow toward the coast of
Mozambique and the Indian Ocean in this photo taken during a space
shuttle flight. Scientists fear ``biomass burning'' worldwide.
by CNB