Our Life in a Technology-Driven World

Summary. Our lives in the early 21^st century benefit from remarkable changes wrought by science and technology in the last 200 years.  As a human endeavor, science consists of a method of inquiry into the natural world based on open-minded investigation, rather than one biased in one direction or another that develops support for a desired point of view.

Certain science-based phenomena have come to light in recent decades that adversely affect human health or damage the environment.  Rigorous study showed that, in each case, products or practices of large corporations turned out to be responsible.  Those commercial interests sought to raise questions about the scientific results in the minds of the public, rather than continue further research to develop sound solutions to the problems.

We humans have benefited from the advances provided by science and technology.  We cannot justifiably select the science we like and dismiss the science that we don’t.

 

Benedict (Benny to his friends) is waking slowly, after having stayed late at a party last night.  He’s already enveloped in the soothing sounds of his favorite music, Sounds from Space, that invariably puts him in a mellow mood.  His radio came on with the music using an alarm setting.   He also plays music on his CD player; over the years he’s accumulated an extensive library of CDs.  His tastes run quite eclectic.

At last Benny swings himself out of bed and hops on to his Stair Stepper for a workout.  It’s equipped with a TV monitor so he can watch the latest news as he exercises.

After a leisurely breakfast, he gets ready to head out for his weekly frisbee match.

After the vigorous physical exertion of the game, he comes home and turns on his air conditioner to make his apartment more comfortable.  Air conditioners are effective because they lower the air temperature, but equally importantly, they remove some humidity from the air.  Lower humidity makes the body feel cooler because its perspiration evaporates more easily, cooling the skin.

Later, that afternoon, Benny has decided to attend a lecture at the local library on the shoreline habitats for all manner of wildlife. Lately he’s become even more interested in the natural world, and how different species interact in their habitats.  The lecturer is using a computer-driven digital projector, and he emphasizes his discussion as he goes along using a laser pointer.

In the evening, Benny and Valerie, his girlfriend, went out for dinner and came back to relax with a movie streamed over the internet.

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Benny’s day, a rather routine one in today’s world, benefited from many products that rely on developments in science and technology.  Here we’ll discuss two classes of appliance, and a third that because of careful scientific investigation, became quite controversial.

Telegraph, and radio and television.  For all of history before the industrial revolution, news, books and artwork traveled only as fast as humans could carry them.  Walking and travel by horseback could transmit physical objects, whereas drumbeats, smoke signals and semaphore signaling could communicate more terse messages. 

In the 1830’s and 1840’s clusters of inventors in the U.S. and England separately developed the telegraph.  In the U. S., one of those was Samuel Morse.  The previous post mentioned that nineteenth century physicists developed an understanding of the reciprocal interactions between electricity and magnetism.  With the telegraph, a key pressed by a sender completed an electric circuit so that current could instantaneously flow as far as a conducting wire could be strung.  At the destination, the current activated an electromagnet to sound a click.  In addition to developing the technology Morse invented Morse code, by which the spacing between clicks permitted coding every letter of the alphabet.  The technology developed into the Western Union Company (cofounded by Ezra Cornell, for whom the university is named) which strung wires across the U. S.  This revolutionary technology liberated the transmission of information from the historical limits of personal or visual/auditory messaging.

The telephone built on the electromagnetic transmission of coded messages to the direct, immediate transmission of sound, especially the human voice.

The laws of physics relating to electromagnetism also led to radio and television transmission.  Perhaps, if you live in an older home, you’ve noticed that a window sash will buzz or vibrate in its track as an airplane or a truck passes by.  The window sash has its own characteristic vibration.  The sound from the passing plane or truck can set the window vibrating, but only if the vibrations of the sound waves have the same pitch as the natural vibration of the window sash.  This is variously called forced vibration or sympathetic vibration. 

Radio and TV transmission and reception work the same way.  A radio transmitter is designed to emit radio waves at a specific vibration frequency.  If a specific receiver circuit in a radio or TV is adjusted to vibrate at the same frequency, the broadcast signal is picked up by the receiver, amplified, and delivers sound and picture images.  If the tuner is not adjusted to the appropriate frequency it will not receive the broadcast signal.

Benny’s air conditioner is filled with a refrigerant gas, a chlorofluorocarbon.  The technological principles underlying operation of refrigerators and air conditioners were explained in the preceding post. 

Use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) is an example where a useful technology turns out to have harmful consequences.  When they were developed and entered the market, the use of CFCs as refrigerants and in other applications became widespread. During the 1980’s, however, researchers discovered that the amount of ozone in the stratosphere (a zone centered around 15 mi. above Earth’s surface) was diminishing compared to earlier years. Stratospheric ozone is beneficial because it filters out ultraviolet light from incident sunlight.  (This should not be confused with ground level ozone, a health hazard, which is produced by smog on hot days.) If ozone becomes depleted, more ultraviolet (UV) light can reach the surface of the earth.  The additional UV could increase the incidence of skin cancer the world over if the ozone depletion were to continue.

After some years atmospheric scientists showed clearly that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) caused the ozone depletion.  These compounds enter the atmosphere when refrigeration equipment leaks its refrigerant or is improperly disposed of; when we use spray cans, such as hair spray; and when CFCs are used as industrial foaming agents.  Even a small amount of CFCs has a powerful destructive effect because the active component derived from CFCs is re-used in the chemistry of ozone destruction many times over.    For this discovery, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina, and Frank Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995. 

In light of this new understanding almost 50 of the world’s nations, the main producers and users of CFCs, agreed to the Montreal Protocol of 1987 to phase out use of these compounds.

Corporate Interests generated doubt and delay.  Early on the manufacture of CFCs, and of the spray cans that use them, became a lucrative business.  Rigorous scientific  research, pursued as a quest for understanding of basic properties of the natural world, led to evidence showing that CFCs were responsible for destroying stratospheric ozone.  As this evidence was accumulating, however, the companies  sought to neutralize the impact of the scientific results (Wikipedia; N. Oreskes and E. M. Conway, “Merchants of Doubt”, 2010, Bloomsbury Press, New York), without offering scientific evidence to support their position. 

In one paper, prepared by Greenpeace for the 9^th meeting of participants in the Montreal Protocol in 1997, a threefold corporate strategy of disinformation used by a major corporation was summarized:

Deny that CFCs are responsible.  The corporation wrote in 1979: "No ozone depletion has ever been detected...all ozone depletion figures to date are based on a series of uncertain projections." 

Delay.  In the years surrounding the signing of the Montreal Protocol, this corporation sought to delay implementation of its terms by lobbying activities.  In 1986 it testified before Congress: "we believe that there is no immediate crisis that demands unilateral regulation."

Dominate.  The industry had already developed alternatives to CFCs, closely related in chemical structure to the banned compounds, by which they intended to dominate the world market for refrigerants and propellants.

Discussion

This post and the preceding one, and perhaps a few more to come, strive to point out that humanity benefits from scientific endeavor, in all its varied subject matter.  Scientists work by pursuing characterization of our natural world in an open, unbiased fashion.  The results of scientific investigations and the technologies that result from those studies benefit our lives in innumerable ways.  The progress we humans have made began largely with the industrial revolution in the nineteenth century; it represents a revolutionary departure from the way of life humans had known throughout history.

Telegraph and radio communication point out how scientific development permitted humans to communicate instantaneously across great distances.  Prior to this time human communication traveled primarily only as fast as we could move across land and sea.

The example of CFCs used as refrigerants and propellants likewise shows how research creates new materials intended to have beneficial properties.  The detrimental aspect of their use, promoting the destruction of stratospheric ozone, was unforeseen.  It is thanks to further atmospheric research that the mechanism of ozone destruction was unequivocally identified, and still newer substances that avoid this downside were created.  (Unfortunately, both CFCs and the newer refrigerants are extremely potent greenhouse gases.  It will require still further efforts to overcome this detriment.)

When the drawback of CFCs was identified the powerful corporations that manufactured them sought to diminish the significance in the mind of the public of the scientific research underlying the problem.  But science proceeds in the same way regardless of whether we consider the results to be favorable or harmful.  As shown above, the same scientific process led to potential solutions that overcame the disadvantages. 

The public at large, and corporate entities impacted by research results, cannot cherry pick the results they like and dismiss the ones they don’t.  Rigorous pursuit of the scientific method is the only way forward.

 

© 2017 Henry Auer

Science and Technology in Modern Life

Summary. Our daily routines, as we go about our lives in the early 21^st century, benefit from revolutionary changes wrought by science and technology in the last 200 years.  As a human endeavor, science consists of a framework of inquiry into the natural world based on open-minded investigation, rather than one in which scientists seek evidence or arguments that support preconceived biases and reject evidence that refutes those preconceptions. 

Certain phenomena came to light in recent decades that adversely affected human health or damaged the environment.  Rigorous scientific study showed that, in each case, human activity involving products or practices of large corporations turned out to be responsible.  Those commercial interests sought to invalidate the scientific results in the minds of the public, rather than continue further research to develop sound solutions to the problems.

We humans have welcomed the advances provided by science and technology.  We cannot justifiably select the science we like and dismiss the science that we don’t.

 
The Daily Routine

Janice gets up in the morning and gets ready to go to work.  She switches on the light and the TV to get the latest news and weather.  For breakfast, she takes a quick snack from the frig and heats it up in the microwave oven.  She gets into her battery-powered electric car, which she bought just a few weeks ago; she’s really impressed with its ease of use and responsiveness on the road.

Once in the office, Janice turns on a networked computer which contains more computing power than the massive main-frame computers of a generation ago.  Her coworkers include many colleagues scattered around the U. S., with whom she effortlessly teleconferences directly from her workspace.  This saves many hours that would be lost in travel time flying to another location for a face-to-face meeting, as well as travel expenses.  Her day is turning out to be highly productive as a result, and saves her company money in the process. 

Back home in the evening, Janice has a dinner composed of foods grown using advances in agriculture that promote higher crop yields; farmers benefit greatly from weather and climate research that helps them plan effectively for the best sowing and harvesting operations. 

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The Science and Technology That Janice Likely Takes for Granted

Science.  As a human endeavor, science is a framework of thought and experiment carried out in an open-ended, fact-based fashion.  Scientists seek to make sense of our physical world, both animate and inanimate.  By not having preconceived notions of how they want an investigation to turn out, they probe physical reality in ways that add to our body of knowledge, and that suggest further investigation of questions that may have arisen in earlier work.  New information obtained from these efforts may have direct practical significance having the potential to lead to products that improve our lives.

Technology, or applied science, seeks to optimize characteristics of a system to solve a specific practical problem or to make a specific article with an intended practical use. 

Modern life.  Like Janice, we all benefit from the progress of science and technology in our daily lives, and relish the conveniences and capabilities of new devices or processes as they reach the market.  We, the public at large, accept these with open arms, whether we “understand” the scientific principles that govern their operation or not.  We do not question the truth or validity of the science that undergirds these objects that ease our daily life; indeed, we welcome it with open arms because of the benefits that it brings to our lives.

The scientific basis underlying some of the items and phenomena that Janice encounters in her daily routine are set forth at the end of this post in the Details section.

But some scientific questions, or technological accomplishments, have turned out to provide adverse consequences.  Smoking tobacco became associated with lung disease, including cancer.  Pristine forests and fish in lakes downwind of coal-fired electric generating plants began to die inexplicably, which was ultimately attributed to acid rain from burning coal.  The ozone in the stratosphere, which absorbs harmful ultraviolet radiation in sunlight, became depleted relatively suddenly.  Research showed that certain chemicals developed to serve as propellants in spray cans were responsible. 

Each of these cases is associated with a powerful and lucrative industry.  Careful scientific investigation, using the same conceptual approaches as outlined above, in these cases succeeded in providing a sound scientific basis for the harm that each phenomenon produced.  Yet the industries involved mounted strong public relations campaigns (not based on science) to discredit the science in order to sow doubts about the scientific explanations. 

But we cannot cherry pick which science we like and which science we disavow.  Open-ended, unbiased investigation leads us universally to the scientific progress we welcome and depend on.  In the examples above, scientific study not only explained the origin of the respective adverse effects but also suggested how to remedy the problems.  Thus, here too the scientific method has led to benefits that promote our wellbeing and the integrity of the physical world we inhabit.

Details

Electricity.  The laws of physics governing the interactions between electrically conducting materials (such as metal wires) and magnetic fields were identified during the nineteenth century.  The phenomena are reciprocal: wires moving through a magnetic field generate electrical current, and electrical current flowing through wires generate strong magnetic fields when wound around a core.  In other words, the opposite of generating electricity is the use of wire-wound motors to provide rotational mechanical motion by passing electrical current through them. 

Thomas Edison on the one hand, and Nikola Tesla and Charles Steinmetz on the other, developed differing ways of generating electricity.  Tesla joined the Westinghouse company; their technology won out. Steinmetz joined the General Electric Research Laboratories.

Refrigerators.  The intrinsic physical properties of most gases are such that when the gas is compressed it releases heat to its environment, and when the pressurized gas expands it cools down, absorbing heat from the environment.  Refrigerators work by expanding the gas in the chamber that needs cooling, absorbing heat from the food in the chamber so that the food is cooled.  The refrigerator then compresses the gas outside the chamber, releasing the heat to the environment.  (In recent decades, the reciprocal process has been applied in heat pumps: a gas is expanded in an external environment, absorbing heat, and compressed inside a home, releasing heat to warm the interior space.) 

Microwave ovens.  Physicists whose understanding led to generation of electricity pursued their studies leading to suitable instruments that emit microwaves.  A second group of physicists who developed quantum theory over several decades in the early twentieth century understood that materials could specifically absorb microwaves (among other forms of energy) according to the laws of quantum physics.  Water is one such substance, which is warmed in the process.  A microwave oven generates the specific type of microwave radiation that water absorbs.  Specifically, the oven works by efficiently warming the water contained in various foods using microwave energy.

Electric cars.  Electric cars depend critically on high capacity batteries.  To date these are based on lithium.  The basis for this technology originates in fundamental investigations by chemists, mostly in the nineteenth century.  One contribution was developing the systematics of the chemical periodic table.  Lithium is a very light material, atom for atom, a first physical property favorable for use in batteries.  Second, chemists found that the intrinsic ability of lithium to provide electrical energy is among the highest of all among the chemical elements.  These two inherent physical attributes of lithium make it an optimal choice for use in electric car batteries.  Current research and development is directed to making the batteries as efficient and long-lasting as possible.

Agricultural production.  The Austrian friar Gregor Mendel was the first to discover the laws that govern inheritance of traits in organisms.  Working with pea plants he showed by conventional breeding experiments that intrinsic factors (now called genes) govern how physical traits are passed from generation to generation.  (His work was clearly painstakingly slow, since only one generation of pea plants can grow per year.) 

Agricultural breeders utilize Mendelian genetics to enhance the properties of commercially significant plants and animals.  These properties may include nutritional value, hardiness, and drought and/or heat tolerance, for example.  The results of these projects benefit us, the consumers, as we make our grocery purchases.

The Agricultural Research Service (ARS), a division of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, conducts ongoing characterization and forecasting of near-term weather as well as the longer-term seasonal climate.  Farmers use the information provided by these projects advantageously to plan their activities: planting, fertilizing, and harvesting.  The work of the ARS is summarized in the pamphlet “Science in Your Shopping Cart” .

© 2017 Henry Auer

Rejecting the Science We Don’t Like

Summary.  The scientific method dictates that research be carried out in an open, unbiased way.  Desired results may not be determined ahead of time.  Peer review by anonymous reviewers ensures that published reports are objectively presented and that their conclusions are supported by the data. 

This post presents six examples of important scientific and technological advances that have improved human life over the past 150 years, and two examples in which useful technologies carried with them unintended, harmful side effects.  Scientific research helped identify the causes of the harms, and provided ways to overcome them.

Recognition of global warming did not occur by predetermining this result and seeking data to support the concept.  Rather it was characterized by open scientific inquiry conducted by myriad scientists around the globe for the last several decades.  Global warming and its harms to human life and to the ecology of the earth are unintended consequences of our use of fossil fuels.  Those who disparage the notion of man-made global warming must be consistent in their acceptance or rejection of the results of scientific inquiry.  They cannot pick and choose which science to accept and which to reject.  Consistency would require them not to accept the benefits that modern science and technology confers on them.

Introduction – the process of scientific inquiry.  All scientists carry out their research according to well-established principles of scientific investigation. Science is undertaken as an objective, unbiased inquiry.  Scientists engage in their investigations with an open mind, avoiding any prior direction of what the result of the investigation should reveal.  Valid science is not conducted by adopting a conclusion at the outset and seeking out those particular findings that bear out the preordained conclusion stated at the outset, or by casting the framework of a study in such a way as to provide those results.

 

In order to publish their results, scientists submit their manuscripts for scrutiny by their peers.  In this process, the editor of a journal, upon receiving a manuscript, sends it to two or three scientists who are expert in the field for critical evaluation.  Importantly, these reviewers remain anonymous to the authors of the manuscript.  A reviewer may accept the work as is, reject it outright, or require responses to certain criticisms he/she may develop prior to acceptance.

Peer review ensures that no biased or unsubstantiated points of view, or inaccurate scientific conclusions, are published.  In addition, in contemporary scientific practice, the publishers of most journals require authors expressly to identify any interests they have that may be construed as being in conflict.

This post discusses selected examples of beneficial scientific and technological breakthroughs, as well as some cases in which technology produced harmful unexpected consequences.  The role of science in these examples is emphasized.

Communication

Telegraph and telephone. The invention of the telegraph represents the very first time that humans had the ability to transmit information faster than they could personally move it.  The electrical telegraph signals were transmitted along wires essentially instantaneously. 

The invention of the telephone was equally as revolutionary, as it enabled the human voice for the first time to be transmitted instantaneously across vast distances.

Each of these developments was strongly based on existing scientific and technical knowledge.  Samuel Morse developed the telegraph in 1837.  It built on the understanding and development of electricity, especially the use of electrical wires wound around an iron core to generate a magnetic field.  Alexander Graham Bell received a U. S. Patent for the first telephone in 1876.  Here too, knowledge of electromagnetism was applied in building the ear speaker and a separate, more complex assembly used for the microphone, such that sound waves are converted into an electric current whose variations accurately represent the original voice.  Clearly humanity has benefited tremendously from these examples of applied science and technology, vastly expanding our ability to communicate.

Vacuum tubes, transistors and radio/television.  The early electronics industry (early 20^th century) relied not simply on electricity, but on discovering that the passage of electrons emitted from, say, a hot filament placed in a high vacuum, can be controlled by additional electrical elements placed along the path of the electrons.  The flow of electrons ultimately reaches a receiving wire, all within the vacuum tube.  In this way electrical current can be instantaneously modulated by the control element(s).  Many electronic devices using vacuum tubes were developed, but perhaps the most significant was the radio.  Radio communication, and later television transmission, took the instantaneous transmission of information of the telegraph and telephone one step further, relieving it from its reliance on wires for transmission from the source to the destination.  Development of vacuum tubes required groundbreaking research into electron physics.  In addition radio and television capitalized on theoretical and experimental physics developed during the last half of the nineteenth century.

Transistors were developed after World War II.  These are solid state devices based on the properties of semiconductors that perform similar functions as a vacuum tube – the controlled passage of electric current.  Since transistors are easily produced in quantity, are easily incorporated into larger circuits known as integrated circuits, and require much less power to operate than vacuum tubes, they have completely replaced vacuum tubes in electronic appliances and instruments produced today.  Development of transistors relied strongly on basic research in solid state physics and the properties of materials.

Drugs

The pharmacological benefits of aspirin were first recognized in the late 19^th century.  Chemists in the German company Bayer AG were the first to synthesize and name the compound we know as aspirin.  But the question of understanding how aspirin works at the molecular, or physiological, level remained unanswered for about seven decades. 

During the 1960’s and 1970’s, as a result of expanding research in biochemistry and molecular pharmacology, the cellular enzymatic pathways leading to formation of the group of thromboxanes and prostaglandins were clarified.  Various members of this group of biochemical compounds were shown either to promote or to suppress inflammatory processes in cells and tissues.  It was found that aspirin interferes with an important enzymatic reaction leading to pro-inflammatory responses.  For this work, the British pharmacologist John Robert Vane was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1982.  Other drugs in this class, the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and naproxen, also interfere with this biosynthetic pathway.  We, as welcoming consumers of NSAIDs, should recognize the important role that basic research plays in this and other important scientific advances.

Antibiotics are drugs that interfere with the growth of bacteria and other microorganisms.  We humans benefit from antibiotics because they kill disease-causing bacteria when we become infected with them.  This cures an infected patient, thus prolonging her life and wellbeing.  Before the advent of antibiotics, humans survived or succumbed to bacterially-caused infections according to the severity of the infection and the strength of the patient’s immune response.

Originally, antibiotics were compounds secreted from growing microorganisms as a defense mechanism against a different microorganism that might attack the secreting species. Penicillin was the first antibiotic to be discovered, by Alexander Fleming in 1928, but it remained for others, Ernst Chain and Howard Florey, to isolate the active compound and determine its chemical structure.  They were awarded the Nobel Prize for this achievement in 1945.  Humans have benefited vastly by the use of NSAIDs and antibiotics, among many classes of drugs, that have been developed in recent decades through scientific research.

Biotechnology.  In recent decades the biotechnology industry has developed and commercialized several new drugs to treat diseases in new ways.  This work has relied critically on the results of basic research in biochemistry and molecular biology.  Examples of fundamental discoveries laying the groundwork for further developments in biochemistry, molecular biology and biotechnology include restriction enzymes used in genetic engineering (Nobel Prize to Daniel Nathans, Werner Arber, and Hamilton O. Smith in 1978), the polymerase chain reaction (PCR; extremely useful in isolating genes and gene fragments; Nobel Prize to Kary Mullis and Michael Smith in 1993), and monoclonal antibodies, unique antibody molecules that target an antigen of interest (Nobel Prize to Georges Köhler, César Milstein, and Niels Kaj Jerne in 1984).

These advances, and others, have been critical in developing new biotechnology drugs approved for use against certain human diseases.  These include recombinant human growth hormone for treatment of pituitary dwarfism; Herceptin ® (trastuzumab), a monoclonal antibody used to treat breast cancer cases in which the protein HER2 (the antibody target) is abnormally high; and Procrit ® or Epogen ®, recombinant forms of the human growth factor erythropoietin that stimulates synthesis of red blood cells, used to counteract anemia, for example in cancer patients.  Clearly the long trajectory of scientific research has led to important new treatments benefiting large numbers of patients in the last one to two decades.

Unintended Consequences

Other technological improvements in our lives have led to unintended harmful consequences to the environment.  Two examples are provided here.  In each case technology produced a harmful result as a side effect.  Basic scientific research characterized the problem and identified its cause.  This new information led to implementation of suitable policies to overcome the harms.

Acid rain.  Pure rain water has an acidity level is that is neutral, having a value on the pH scale of acidity or alkalinity of 7.  Solutions of strong acids in water, such as sulfuric acid, can have pH values of say, 2, 1 or 0, with the lower numbers designating stronger acidity.  Biological organisms including fish and higher plants grow readily when exposed to water whose pH is near 7.  If the acidity gets stronger (lower pH) fish eggs fail to hatch and adult fish are killed.  Also, vegetation on land cannot survive and dies as well. 

In the northeastern U. S. dying wilderness lakes and forests were noticed beginning around the 1970’s.  Research sanctioned by an act of the U. S. Congress established that acidity in lakes due to excess sulfates was characterized.  This most likely arises from sulfur impurities in coal burned to generate electricity in the American Midwest, upwind from the damaged areas, which produces the chemical predecessors of sulfurous and sulfuric acids (sulfur oxides).  These then drift eastward in the air and fall to earth as both dry particulates and dissolved in raindrops which are made acidic by the sulfur oxides.  A forest killed by acid rain is shown below.

Source: Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Waldschaeden_Erzgebirge_3.jpg; (accessed Sept. 28, 2011). Permission for copying granted under the GNU Free Documentation License.

In response the Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 1990, setting up a cap and trade market for progressively reducing emissions of sulfur on site at coal-burning plants.  Technology for achieving this required power plants to install sulfur oxide scrubbers in the waste gas stream from the plants.  They could also switch to low-sulfur coal from the American West. Since these solutions involved new and unanticipated capital investment or other expenses, electric power companies opposed this law, unsuccessfully.  By 2007 acid rain levels had fallen by 65%, at a cost estimated at US$1-2 billion.  International treaties governing cross-border flow of acidic waste products have also been implemented.

Ozone depletion (see Wikipedia; accessed Sept. 28, 2011).  Ozone is a molecule made of 3 oxygen atoms.  It forms in the stratosphere (10-50 km; 6-31 mi above the earth) by the action of sunlight on molecular dioxygen (dioxygen (popularly called simply “oxygen”); 2 oxygen atoms).  Ozone is important for life on earth because, contrary to dioxygen, ozone absorbs the ultraviolet wavelengths of sunlight that can promote skin cancer and ocular cataracts.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are entirely manmade compounds that did not exist prior to modern industrial chemistry.  They have been used as the coolant in refrigerators and air conditioners, in aerosol spray cans, and in industrial cleaning and dusting processes.  When released into earth’s atmosphere, they can make their way as high as the stratosphere.

Depletion of ozone from the stratosphere has been observed using weather balloons and satellite observations starting in the 1980’s, especially in the spring of the southern hemisphere over Antarctica.  The largest Antarctic hole observed, from Sept. 21-30, 2006, is shown in the graphic below.

Antarctic ozone hole from September 21-30, 2006 covering10.6 million square miles (27.5 million square kilometers).  The blue and purple colors show areas with the least ozone, and the greens, yellows, and reds are where there is more ozone.

Source: National Aeronautics and Space Agency (accessed Sept. 28, 2011) http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/ozone_record.html .

Atmospheric scientists were able to model the destruction of ozone in the stratosphere using specialized instruments and reproduce the process in laboratory experiments on earth.  They showed that ozone depletion is catalyzed by CFCs that wind up in the stratosphere. (In catalysis, a molecule participates in promoting a chemical reaction such as the transformation of ozone to dioxygen, but is itself regenerated and can be recycled to participate in many such transformations, not just one.  For this reason a small amount of a CFC can contribute to significant extents of ozone depletion.)  In this way basic scientific research conducted by academic and government scientists contributed directly to understanding the basis for ozone depletion.  For successfully working out the details of the role of chlorofluorocarbons in ozone depletion, Paul Crutzen, Mario Molina, and Frank Rowland were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1995.  As the evidence of involvement of CFCs was accumulating, the manufacturers of these compounds and of aerosol spray cans were vilifying the theory (Wikipedia), without offering any scientific evidence to support their position.

In the face of this new understanding that CFCs were responsible for a major part of ozone depletion, nations producing these compounds agreed, in the Montreal Protocol of 1987 as strengthened in subsequent years, to phase these compounds out essentially completely by 1996.  Recovery of stratospheric ozone concentrations to original levels will take many decades.

Conclusion. 

The examples presented here are but a minimal selection of the ways in which science, encompassing both basic research and applied research, and technology, including developing ways to implement basic scientific knowledge in practical ways, benefit humans as we live in the 21^st century.  Scientific research and development of technology cannot be pre-ordained by the preferences and desires of the researchers and entrepreneurs creating the products.  Rather, the facts resulting from these research projects are the only determinants of the paths of progress.  When unanticipated harms to the environment arose from using products, as in the cases of acid rain and ozone depletion, unbiased scientific research was critical in establishing the basis of the phenomena, and in suggesting ways to overcome the damages.

The same processes of scientific inquiry that led to the results summarized in the preceding sections have been applied for the past several decades to characterize the warming of the globe.  Climate science has ascribed the cause of warming to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide that arise from burning fossil fuels.  This outcome was not obtained by predetermining the result and seeking data to support it, but rather as the result of thousands of independent, open inquiries conducted by scientists all around the globe. Clearly, global warming is an unanticipated harmful consequence of our use of fossil fuels as our energy source. 

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007.  The draft of its Synthesis Report (IPCC, 2007: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, Pachauri, R.K. and Reisinger, A. (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland; accessed Sept. 28, 2011), was sent for formal review to over 2,400 individual experts as well as to the 193 member governments of the IPCC, attesting to its validity and acceptance by the broad climate science community. 

The Synthesis Report states “Eleven of the last twelve years (1995-2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperature (since 1850)…. It is very likely that over the past 50 years cold days, cold nights and frosts have become less frequent over most land areas, and hot days and hot nights have become more frequent.” (emphasis in original). The Report finds that observed rises in sea level and decreases in snow and ice extent are consistent with this warming trend.

There are those who dismiss, disparage or deny the scientific validity of man-made global warming and its consequences.  Nevertheless, these same individuals continue to live their lives in the present 21^st century, enjoying all the benefits from science and technology that make our lives convenient, pleasurable and healthy.  In order to be consistent, however, one cannot enjoy the advantages of our present lifestyle, on the one hand, yet on the other hand selectively choose to disregard the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the phenomenon of global warming.  If those who choose to denigrate global warming are to be consistent with their views on the results of scientific inquiry, they should likewise renege on their lifestyle and give up the comforts and benefits that contemporary life brings them.  Their integrity should lead them to accept nothing less.

© 2011 Henry Auer