FURY OF MOTHER NATURE  Man's contribution to environmental "pollution" are paltry compared to those  of nature. In her exceptional book TRASHING THE PLANET, former Atomic Energy  Commision Chairman Dr. Dixie Lee Ray notes based on the available data, "all  of the air polluting materials produced by man since the beginning of the  industrial revolution do not begin to equal  the quantities of toxic  materials, aerosols, and particulates spewed into the air from just three  volcanoes: Krakatoa in Indonesia in 1883, Mount Katmai in Alaska in 1912, and  Hekla in Iceland in 1947." To which could be added Mount St. Helens in  Washington State in 1980 (which pumped out 910,000 metric tons of carbon  dioxide alone). El Chicon in Mexico in 1982 (which sent more than 100 million  tons of sulfur gases into the stratosphere), and Mount Pinatubo in the  Philippines (which in 1991 hurled upwards of 30 million tons of material into  the stratosphere). LOS NINOS Many environmentalists attributed the 1988 drought in the U.S. to global  warming, but researchers with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in  Boulder Colorado reported that the freakish weather was actually due to a  natural phenomenon, the interaction of El Nino and El Nina, two massive  currents in the tropical Pacific. El Nino is a huge strip of warm water that  periodically appears off the coast of South America and disrupts the world's  weather patterns. Now and then, it alternates with El Nina, a mass of cold  water that comes from the ocean depths along the equator and drifts for  thousands of miles. CHICAGO TRIBUNE'S  Peter Gorner summarized the phenomenon: "Cold water along  the equator clashed with warmer than normal water southeast of Hawaii. The  result was both the U.S. drought and the devastating floods that swamped  Bangladesh...... Nina's cooler water disrupted tropical weather patterns and  distorted the path of the Jet Stream across North America. Then the Jet  Stream shoved rain-producing weather systems away from the interior of the  U.S. resulting in drought." TERMITE TERROR  Sundry animals and insects also contribute their share to environmental  "degradation. TIME for April 20,1992 noted that in "the Netherlands... manure  from pigs poses a major ecological threat, defiling water supplies with  excessive nitrites and acidifying local soils. Sheep have permanently scarred  the landscape in Spain and Portugal, while in India ... bovines [cows] are  ravenous wraiths whose constant quest  for food drives them to ravage  standing forrests." The February 1983 issue  of SCIENCE DIGEST reported that "an international  team of researchers has discovered that termites generate more than twice the  Carbon Dioxide  that fuel burning does." According to a study reported in  SCIENCE for November 5, 1982, the "estimated gross amount of Carbon Dioxide  produced [by termites] was more than twice the net global input from fossil  fuel combustion." In addition, "Termites are a potentially important source  of atmospheric methane: they could account for a large fraction of global  emmisions." The wood-eating pests have a bacteria that enables them too  digest carbon so efficiently that some 90 pe is converted too Carbon Dioxide,  methane, and other gases they belch into the atmosphere. Ants are another natural source of "pollution." In 1987, an atmospheric  chemist with Bell Laboratories, and zoologists from Cornell University,  reported that ants of the subfamily FORMICINAE make and store huge quantities  of the formic acid that contributes most of the acidity of rain that falls in  remote areas and is found in atmosphere gas and precepitation around the  globe. It is abundant, for instance, in the fog and mists that hang over the  rain forests of Central Africa. According to the July 6, 1987 INSIGHT  magazine, the "ants release the acid when defending themselves and  communicating with each other and upon dying. Since  30 percent of the world  ant population belongs to this subfamily, there is significant concern about   the acid the ants release," an amount estimated at "600,000 metric tons  annually." which is equal to the combined formic acid contributions of  automobiles, refuse combustion and vegetation." Clearly, man has a long way to go to match nature as a "despoiler" of the  environment. By Robert W. Lee.