National Issues, Local Implications

This week has been eye opening about a lot of things. The first of which: don’t try biking with a dog unless both you and the dog are specifically trained for this feat.  A couple of good facial abrasions and sprained wrist later, I’ll certainly think through my actions a lot more carefully in the future.

That minor stupidity aside, there were two major events that happened this week that made me realize some struggles I will likely encounter for the rest of my career.

The first occurrence was an all hands meeting for my division. There were bagels/cream cheese, coffee and orange juice in Styrofoam cups. I find it odd that the top investigators of anthropogenic waste generation didn’t order recyclable cups.  The topics covered ranged from safety, recruitment and retention to budgeting. TLoTH is a national laboratory, paid for by American tax dollars. Unlike public state schools, like the one I graduated from, employees of TLoTH actually acknowledge their publicly funded salaries. Even further, there is to some extent accountability to the American public regarding our output. The other side of this reality is that the people who decide how to spend America’s tax money is Congress. I realize that Congress members are elected to represent their constituents but by extension their constituents (by majority, ish) probably agree with their stance on a variety of political issues. Usually this doesn’t affect me in the least. However.

The administrative person who presented the slides on budget showed an interesting discrepancy. While President Obama proposed a significant budget for renewable energy and climate change research, the House of Representatives proposed smaller budgets. On at least one topic, the difference in the budgets was close to a billion dollars. Billion with a B. The reality of the funding for a quarter of my division is that so many American citizens do not believe climate change exists that they elect representatives who also hold this view and vote against funding research. This could mean tens of people lose funding for their work or lose their jobs entirely. I wholeheartedly believe that humans are wondrous creatures who can invent their way out of almost any situation. But there is no way we can invent ourselves out of a burned out planet if the people who dedicate their lives to researching which ways it’ll burn up are out of jobs.

One of the solutions presented was to continue hiring a cheaper workforce. I am keenly aware that I was hired because I am cheap labor. But what kind of incentive is there in the long run if I get my PhD (still cheap) and somehow actually found a career for myself. Mid-career scientists are the lab’s current biggest recruitment issue because so many people are retiring. But if you’re not raising the mid-career folk in house, you’re also not able to afford poaching them. Unpredictable funding shifts that likely reset every 8 years certainly presents a daunting career prospective. In publicly funded places like national labs, there aren’t many privatization options as buffers for when these shifts occur. You gotta go with the flow, and if the flow happens to go in a different direction than you know anything about, too bad. If it happens to return to an area that was researched a lot in the 60’s, chances are most if not all the experts are retired or dead. Discontinuities and inconsistencies like this are one factor as to why our renewable energy sources haven’t accelerated at the same rate as other technologies.

The other incident that genuinely shocked me was that I finally had a conversation with a peer who flat-out does not believe in climate change. Now I understand that climate change is a very complicated subject with a lot of misconceptions. I am a fan of putting into short sentences big implications of anthropogenic impact. For example: The drought in California is so big that the loss of water has actually lead to crustal uplift, like when a heavy weight gets lifted off your shoulders and you can finally straighten up. (source)

I live in a town of scientists. I think the thing that most surprised me about this heated 45 minute discussion was how inadequate I felt the responses were. His argument basically boiled down to this: “Climate change doesn’t exist because the world is ruled by money. People like Al Gore have created compelling propaganda in a similar way to Hitler for the sole purpose of capital gains.” He demanded that unbiased third parties review publications. I responded that no such thing as unbiased exists but peer review is in place for exactly that purpose. He posed that absolutely no evidence exists for pretty much any geology or climate science construct. I was pretty impressed that someone who I know uses the internet has never investigated the legitimacy of a magazine like Science, Nature or Geology. Even when I brought up the APA (American Psychological Association, there was a nurse at the table, I wanted to make sure she was represented but I couldn’t remember the name of a physician or nursing org), he seemed to not acknowledge its existence.

To some extent, I understand staying ignorant over certain issues. I am certainly at fault for not reading enough about any of the police violence and response that goes on in our country. The rock under which I live is very pretty. But I am unaccustomed to someone so determined to ignore literally ALL scientific evidence and pose a “reason” which is orthogonal to what I am trying to talk about. I invite anyone reading this to please comment on how they regularly interact with people like this. I want to particularly ask that commentary remain compassionate towards the person who is disagreeing with you/me/anyone. Just because someone disagrees with you, they don’t suddenly become a different person than they were ten minutes ago. They are still your friends. But how do you educate or have a compassionate disagreement with someone?

Anyway, I’ll leave you with this recording of this song. I really love this song on the radio but I think watching the artists perform it added another layer of depth to the raw emotion already present.