Franklin & Marshall College

"Beyond an Inconvenient Truth: How Can We Control Rising Atmospheric CO2 and Climate Change," will be the topic of a Tuesday, Feb. 5 talk by Bert Drake, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. Drake's talk, a Bonchek Lecture, is sponsored by the Center for Liberal Arts and Society, and the Department of Biology. It will take place a 7:30 p.m. in the Bonchek Lecture Hall in the Barshinger Life Sciences and Philosophy Building. It is free and open to the public.

Drake's talk will focus on the approaches to replacing carbon-based energy with alternative energy sources. The presentation will illustrate how much CO2 we are currently injecting into the atmosphere and attempt to show how a variety of methods, including conservation, nuclear energy, and various methods of harvesting solar power, can be used to wean us from fossil fuels.

The Bonchek Institute for Reason and Science in a Liberal Democracy seeks to foster an appreciation of the importance of reason, skepticism, and the scientific method in maintaining a liberal democracy--which means, briefly, one in which the individual's liberties are protected from a tyranny of the majority.

Drake has been a plant physiologist at the Smithsonian Institution since 1970. He is a graduate of the University of Maine, Colorado State University and Utah State University. His graduate studies in heat transfer between plants and their environment was supported by NASA in research aimed at understanding how life on Mars might have adapted to that extreme environment. Prior to joining the Smithsonian's Radiation Biology Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, he worked at the Atomic Energy Commission's Plant Research Laboratory at Michigan State University on responses of plants to environmental stress.

During his 35 years at the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Drake has been involved with many different research projects, but most notable would be his 20 year study of the effects of elevated CO2 on a Chesapeake Bay wetland now the longest running experiment of its type ever undertaken. In collaboration with NASA, the CO2 study was expanded in 1996 to include similar studies of a nutrient and water limited dwarf oak forest on Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge at the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Dr. Drake began his work on the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 on native plants with support from a grant from the Department of Energy and this support has continued unbroken until now. These studies have resulted in more than 100 publications and involved more than 70 collaborators, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students from many foreign countries and the US.

An interesting aspect of this work is that it has utilized methods for measuring the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere that can be traced to experiments at the Smithsonian's Laboratory of Radiation and Organisms, a laboratory created in 1929 by Secretary Charles Greeley Abbott.

In addition to his research at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, Dr. Drake has also served as Guest Professor at the Institute for Plant Physiology at the University of Vienna and Guest scientist at the University of Paris, Gif Sur Yvette, France. He was Adjunct Professor in the College of Marine Studies at the University of Delaware in Newark, and Adjunct Professor of Botany at American University and George Washington University.

Dr. Drake has given testimony on the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 before the Senate Committee on the Environment. He was as a member of site review teams for NASA, DOE, USDA, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Dr. Drake has served on the editorial boards for Plant Cell and Environment, Vegetatio, Crop Science and Global Change Biology. He authored or co-authored more than 90 papers on the effects of rising atmospheric CO2 and climate change on plants and ecosystems. His 1997 review, "More Efficient Plants: A Consequence of Rising Atmospheric CO2," is one of the most frequently cited papers on the topic.

A popular lecturer at national and international conferences, he has been invited to speak to a wide range of professional organizations including the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna, the World Resources Institute and the Cato Institute in Washington, and the Baker Institute at Rice University in Houston. He was a lecturer for the Smithsonian's150th anniversary traveling exhibition at Portland, Oregon where he spoke to a wide range of audiences. In 2005, he was honored for his long record of research and public outreach by being designated the Distinguished Science Lecturer by the Smithsonian Institution. He is committed to public education about how environmental science at the Smithsonian Institution is helping to understand human impacts on the natural ecosystems on which our way of life depends. He is especially committed to making the public aware of the profound changes in terrestrial ecosystems occurring as a consequence of our consumption of fossil fuels and he often speaks on this topic at schools and civic organizations.

Dr. Drake grew up in rural northern Maine where he developed a lifelong passion for the outdoors. Before he came to the Smithsonian Institution he pursued many avocations: he was a Maine guide, jazz musician, radio and TV announcer, ski instructor, and a teacher of mathematics and biology at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School. He loves to ski, canoe the rivers of Maine and Canada, and pursue his hobbies in history, photography, and the restoration of wooden boats.

The talk he will give, "'Beyond ‘An Inconvenient Truth': How can we control rising atmospheric CO2 and climate change?" will focus on the approaches to replacing carbon based energy with alternative energy sources. The presentation will illustrate how much CO2 we are currently injecting into the atmosphere and attempt to show how a variety of methods, including conservation, nuclear energy, and various methods of harvesting solar power, can be used to wean us from fossil fuels.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: MARCY DUBROFF (717) 291-3837
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