Every day we are assaulted with news stories about the dangers of the Greenhouse Effect, Global Warming, and the potential destruction of Earth's vital Ozone Layer. Squabbling scientists and disputed scientific reports cloud our understanding of such things as so-called ozone holes and rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Senators and congressmen puzzle over conflicting testimony from world-class atmospheric scientists who can't seem to agree on anything. And all the while, millions of tons of damaging gases continue to spew into the sky with little regard to the world-wide consequences that may lie just ahead.

  In WHAT GOES UP, internationally known science and technology writer and critic John J. Nance cuts through all the confusion with the most comprehensive and human story yet written about both the Ozone and Global Warming issues, taking you behind the scenes and into the lives of the scientists who struggle (sometimes at great personal cost) to understand how drastically we're changing our planet's atmosphere.

  In 1974, two scientists, chemists from Southern California, announced that a class of manmade gases called chlorofluorocarbons (CFC's) could significantly harm Earth's life-sustaining Ozone Layer. Their reward was instant vilification by the powerful chemical companies whose products and profits they were threatening, companies that began fighting tooth and nail to suppress and discredit both the researchers and their research. Yet ten years later the sudden discovery of a gigantic "hole" in the Ozone Layer over Antarctica validated the theory that CFC's can be hazardous to the health of Earth and helped force a critical treaty to limit worldwide chlorofluorocarbon production. But the treaty may already be too little too late. WHAT GOES UP is an urgent, compelling call to action that sounds the alarm, and personalizes the crisis, as never before.

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