William Aaron Nierenberg (February 13, 1919 – September 10, 2000) was an American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1965 through 1986. He was a co-founder of the George C. Marshall Institute in 1984.

Background

Nierenberg was born on February 13, 1919, at 213 E. 13th Street, on the Lower East Side of New York, the son of very poor Jewish immigrants from Austro-Hungary. He went to Townsend Harris High School and then the City College of New York (CCNY), where he won a scholarship to spend his junior year abroad in France at the University of Paris. Also in 1939, he participated in research at Columbia University, where he took a course in statistical mechanics from his future mentor, I. I. Rabi. He went on to graduate work at Columbia. Still, from 1941, he spent the war years seconded to the Manhattan Project, working on isotope separation, the American Philosophical Society in 1975, and the National Academy of Engineering in 1983. In 1981, Nierenberg became a founding member of the World Cultural Council. In 1987, he was awarded the Delmer S. Fahrney Medal from the Franklin Institute for outstanding leadership in science.

Advisory boards

Nierenberg served on many panels and advisory committees after returning from NATO. In 1971, he was appointed chairman of the National Academy of Sciences National Advisory Committee on Oceans and Atmosphere and served on this committee until 1977. He served on various panels of the President's Science Advisory Committee. He was a member of the National Science Board from 1972 to 1978 and was appointed for another term from November 1982 to May 1988.

Nierenberg was a consultant to the National Security Agency and served on many military-related panels. In 1976, he was appointed one of two senior consultants to the newly formed White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). He was a member of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Advisory Council from 1978 to 1982 and was its first chairman.

The scientific facts of the resulting Changing Climate report, which was released in October 1983, were largely in line with the previous reports. Its key points were:

  • The most probable date of "doubling" (to 600 ppm) was 2065 (page 21)
  • Global warming due to doubling is likely between , as suggested by the Charney report. Careful review of dissenting inferences suggesting negligible -induced climate change shows these to be based on misleading analysis (page 28)
  • Warming at equilibrium would be 2-3 times as great over the polar regions as over the tropics, and probably greater over the arctic (page 30)
  • The sea level might rise by 70 cm over a century due to thermal expansion and the melting of alpine glaciers. There was great uncertainty about the fate of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; disintegration could lead to a sea-level rise of 5 to 6 m over several hundred years (page 42)

The report also contained policy recommendations:

  • is a cause for concern, but not panic; a program of action without a program for learning would be costly and ineffective (page 61)
  • A careful, well-designed program of monitoring and analysis is needed to detect the signal on climate (page 76)

The policy recommendations have proved controversial, and they have decelerated calls for quick action on climate change in the media and Washington. Historians Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway, and Matthew Shindell have argued that Nierenberg's report marked the genesis of climate change debates that would ensue over the subsequent decades. Reagan administration science advisor George A. Keyworth II cited the report in arguing against “unwarranted and unnecessarily alarmist” conclusions of the Environmental Protection Agency. Exxon similarly cited the report in reversing previous commitments to renewable energy research.

thumb|The William Nierenberg Rose Garden at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, outside the Director's office, March 2024. The plaque reads: "Physicist. Rose lover. Director".

Marshall Institute

Nierenberg subsequently became a co-founder of the George C. Marshall Institute.

Legacy

A building and a rose garden on the Scripps Institution of Oceanography campus are named for him, and the Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest has been started. Some recipients have been E. O. Wilson, Walter Cronkite, Jane Lubchenco, David Attenborough, Jane Goodall, Craig Venter, Gordon Moore, James E. Hansen and Richard Dawkins.

See also

  • Merchants of Doubt
  • Nierenberg Prize

Notes

References

  • (The full text is also available at the Internet Archive.)
  • Obituary, Daily Telegraph, August 23, 2001
  • New York Times Obituary
  • Changing Climate: Report of the Carbon Dioxide Assessment Committee, October 1983
  • Charles F. Kennel, Richard S. Lindzen, and Walter Munk, "William Aaron Nierenberg", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2004)