Rice’s Sass honored for his role in Nobel Prize-winning research on global warming

Rice’s Sass honored for his role in Nobel Prize-winning research on global warming

BY MIKE WILLIAMS
Special to the Rice News

When Ron Sass received a package last month from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he was surprised to find a certificate acknowledging his contributions to research on global warming that helped the IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

“We are providing a copy of this award only to those who have contributed substantially to the work of the IPCC over the years since the inception of the organization,” wrote IPCC Chairman R.K. Pachauri in a letter accompanying the certificate.

The award prompted Sass to think back on how he became involved with the IPCC several decades ago.

	RON SASS

”My career is rather strange in that I never stuck with the same thing for more than about 10 years,” said Sass, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Rice. ”Some people redo their Ph.D. theses for the rest of their lives, and I thought that was deadly.”

In the ’80s, Sass decided he needed a change, and in 1986 he began to look at Earth systems. He soon became involved with the IPCC, set up in 1988 by the United Nations to investigate global warming.

Sass led the committee that studied methane emissions from rice paddies, natural wetlands and landfills, primarily from the bacterial decomposition of organic matter, the largest natural source of methane in the atmosphere. (Man-made sources of methane, such as the burning of fossil fuels and cattle ranching, release far more of the gas.)

A physical chemist by training, Sass coordinated the efforts of scientists in Thailand, Indonesia, Germany, the Philippines, Japan, China and Australia to measure and halt natural methane emissions.

”You can stop it completely, actually,” he said of the process by which methane escapes rice paddies when they are flooded. ”The bacteria go dormant when you remove the water. When you reflood it, you’ve got about a three-week period before (the bacteria) really start cranking up again.” So timing is critical, he said. ”You can cut (emissions) down significantly — 50 to 60 percent would be fairly simple.”

His research led to the IPCC’s method for estimating greenhouse gas emissions without fieldwork. ”Poor countries don’t have enough scientists to go around,” said Sass, who has spent significant time wading through rice paddies in China.

A member of the Rice faculty since 1958, Sass retired two years ago. But he continues to teach Earth sciences at Rice’s Suzanne M. Glasscock School of Continuing Studies, where he preaches the need to cut carbon emissions. Fossil fuel use is so widespread, he said, that natural greenhouse gas emissions pale by comparison in terms of global warming. Sass sees the growth of nuclear power and renewable energy sources as being inevitable and necessary. As for biofuels, he said, ”We’re biting our own foot here because we’re using corn and sugar cane, and we should eat those things!”

A change in the political climate is just as necessary, he said, anticipating that no matter who moves into the White House next year, a carbon tax will be painful but essential to control emissions.

He described his outlook on solving global warming as ”dismal.”

”I don’t think we can do it as a world,” Sass said, citing the challenge of getting members of the United Nations to agree on anything. “The technology, more or less, is all there — it needs to be tweaked a bit to make it economically feasible. … I think what we’re going to have to do is act independently and do some technology transfer.

”My basic problem with the human race is that it requires a crisis in order to react, individually or collectively,” he said, concluding that when rising sea levels start eating away at real estate in Manhattan and Nantucket, there’ll be a strong reaction, however belated.

Still, Sass is satisfied with his role. ”I really am pleased with the last 20 years of research that I’ve done. I thought it was good. We picked a problem, and we effectively solved it.”

The 2007 Nobel Prize honored 2,500 IPCC scientists from more than 130 nations who continue to research the link between human activities and climate change. Sass framed his certificate, which is displayed in his study at home alongside the gold medal he received in 2006 from the Association of Rice Alumni.

Rice’s Neal Lane, who served as science adviser to President Bill Clinton, said Sass is a “perfect model” for the civic scientist. ”He is a scientist who has used his knowledge, skills, fame and accomplishment to reach out to the public and policymakers in a effort to make the world a better place for all of us, particularly through his work on climate change,” said Lane, the Malcolm Gillis University Professor and a senior fellow at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.