Word: scientistic
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even so, climate modelers admit, building a completely realistic mock earth is an impossibly tall order. "You divide the world into a bunch of little boxes," explains Michael MacCracken, an atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The size of the geographic box -- the degree of detail called for -- limits the model. Smaller grids dramatically increase the number-crunching power required. "The state of the art would be to get down to small areas so we can say what's going to happen in Omaha," says Livermore's Stanley Grotch. "The models just aren't that good...
...while most scientists agree that atmospheric chemistry and dynamics are major causes, the increased scrutiny of the Antarctic atmosphere following the discovery of the hole has seriously undercut the sunspot theory. Data from Punta Arenas, says Robert Watson, a NASA scientist involved in that study, made the verdict all but final. Nitrogen and ozone levels were down, but concentrations of chlorine monoxide were 100 times as great as equivalent levels at temperate latitudes. Says Watson: "We can forget the solar theories. We can no longer debate that chlorine monoxide exists and that its abundance is high enough to destroy ozone...
Conditions aboard the DC-8 were considerably better. The plane, which carried up to 41 scientists, flew no higher than 42,000 ft. on its 13 missions, and those on board were free to move about. But heavy clouds obscured views of Antarctica most of the time, and the flights were a tedious eleven hours long. Observes Atmospheric Scientist Ed Browell, of NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia: "I sort of likened what we were doing to taking off from the East Coast, flying to the West Coast to do our work, then flying back East to land...
...departures of its chairman, Dr. W. Eugene Mayberry, chief executive of the Mayo Clinic, and its vice chairman, Dr. Woodrow Myers Jr., Indiana's health commissioner. Said Myers: "We did not receive the full degree of support from the Administration." The new chairman is not a medical scientist but retired Admiral James Watkins...
...California the Rand/UCLA Center for the Study of Soviet International Behavior was bombarded by ten applicants for each of its five openings. At Vermont's Middlebury College, almost 10% of the 1,900 undergraduates now major in Soviet studies, a program only in its third year. Says Berkeley Political Scientist Gail Lapidus: "Suddenly, it's an exciting time to be in Soviet studies...