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Scientist Veerabhadran Ramanathan yearned for the American dream while growing up in southern India in the 1960s: specifically, a Chevrolet Impala, a muscle car he learned about from his father, a tire salesman. Ramanathan made it to the United States in his 20s, but he never bought his gas guzzler, largely because his scientific knowledge of global warming quickly eclipsed his income.
Fast-forward to the 1970s and Ramanathan, now a newly minted postdoctoral fellow in planetary sciences, was spending his days working as a visiting researcher at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and his evenings on a side project he hid from his supervisors. His solitary nighttime research would end up changing how scientists viewed global warming.
The young scientist had discovered that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, then widely used in the manufacture of refrigerators, air-conditioning units and spray cans, had a significant greenhouse effect. Ramanathan had briefly encountered these industrial chemicals in his first job at a refrigeration company. Like carbon dioxide, CFCs trapped heat in the atmosphere. In fact, Ramanathan's calculations suggested, they were more potent: One molecule of a CFC could have the same warming effect as up to 10,000 molecules of carbon dioxide. For three months, he repeated the calculations looking for an alternative explanation. He found none.
"I was just a postdoc immigrant from India. I didn't know if I should tell NASA about this or not. I just sent the paper off," Ramanathan recalled.
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📸: V. Ramanathan
