Top climate scientist Kate Marvel just resigned from NASA. Here’s why
On Tuesday, renowned climate scientist Kate Marvel joined more than 10,000 people with doctorates in science, engineering and mathematics who, according to Sciencehave reportedly left the U.S. federal public service since President Donald Trump took office in January.
Marvel resigned from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences (GISS), where she was studying climate change and its effects on Earth systems. In her resignation letter, she wrote that “the decision to leave was not easy.”
“I thought I would spend my entire career working in this wonderful place,” his letter said. But she “didn’t expect that science itself would be attacked, simply because it – like journalism, history and even the best art form – is a way of seeking the truth. I’m leaving because I want to tell the truth.
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Marvel has done extensive work understanding Earth’s changing climate and is a frequent science speaker and writer. (She has previously written for Scientific American.) When asked for comment, a NASA spokesperson said it would be inappropriate for the agency to comment on personnel matters.
Marvel spoke with Scientific American on his decision to leave NASA and the state of American science.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
Tell us a little about your work at NASA.
I was a research scientist at NASA. It was my job to learn about Earth, and it’s the best job description I can think of, because it’s the best planet and there are so many interesting things happening there.
I focused largely on two areas of Earth science. One of them is the detection and attribution of climate change. So what does climate change look like? That means temperatures are rising, but it also manifests itself in other strange ways: changes in precipitation, changes in extremes, changes in drought risk.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the question: “How does climate change – not just greenhouse gases but also aerosols and naturally forced climate changes like volcanic eruptions – affect weather, the things we care about?”
The other part of my job was reviewing the comments. So, as the Earth warms, how does it change, and how do these changes impact warming?
Recently I’ve become interested in what we call the carbon cycle feedback: when you disrupt the Earth system, how much of the carbon dioxide that humans put into the atmosphere stays there? It’s a story about how living things on the planet are evolving, because, at present, about half of the CO2 what human beings put into the atmosphere is removed by things that grow, by things that photosynthesize. And we don’t know if this will continue.
What did working at NASA mean to you?
What a dream, right? These four letters are magical. They represent exploration and discovery and doing great things. But I think, for me, they also sort of represented this promise that America could be better than it was, that we could not only provide a good life for everyone, but also say to people, “You deserve wonder; you deserve admiration and discovery. And space is not a playground for billionaires. Space is something that belongs to everyone who lives on this planet.” I really believed in that mission, and I believe always truly in this mission.
Why did you decide it was time to leave the space agency?
There was no real push overboard. It was the accumulation of thing after thing after thing after thing. It’s hard to be a scientist in general these days, and it’s hard to work for the federal government as a scientist.
There was uncertainty in terms of: Are we going to get fired? Will DOGE come after us? What will happen to our program?
[GISS] had a lease on a building above Tom’s Restaurant at 112th and Broadway in New York, and that lease ended. We were expelled. We were scattered. We sort of couch surfed at various universities and libraries around New York City. It was very disturbing.
And then when we ask for grants, we don’t hear about it or we hear, “That’s a good proposal. Under other circumstances we would want to fund it, but we don’t know anything about the money.” So it’s just waking up every day not knowing, “Is this the day I get laid off? Is this the day someone I work with and respect gets laid off? Could I get this money and plan ahead to do this science or not?” Personally, I found this increasingly difficult to do.
I had a project that was “selectable”, but was not selected. I think that’s why it was peer-reviewed. They said we should fund it, and then it didn’t go any further. This project aimed to future-proof the U.S. power grid by studying the impacts of climate change on things like solar availability, as climate change can lead to changes in cloud patterns.
We also wanted to work on a project focusing on the hypothetical impact of solar radiation management. [a form of geoengineering intended to lower Earth’s temperature] on plant growth. I’m not saying it’s a good idea or that we should do it. But as a trusted scientific organization, [NASA] He’s the one who should be researching this as part of a model to try to get this information to the people who should be the decision makers. And that was submitted and, as far as I know, fell into a black hole.
What are your concerns about the state of science in the federal government?
There are still so many people at NASA who are doing extremely good work against the odds because they believe in this mission, because they believe in the science, they believe in NASA. So it gives me hope that there are still so many dedicated people looking for ways to continue doing science with integrity.
I think these are not the only extraordinary scientists this country has produced. We really punch above our weight in science. We have always funded science. Historically, we have led the world in discoveries by any metric: published papers, Nobel Prizes, technology, etc.
And for a long time there has been a bipartisan consensus that this is a good thing. And I was naive. I thought the benefits of doing science would be obvious. And I anticipated that our science – as people who look at the planet and see it changing – would be scrutinized and even attacked because the implications are politically inconvenient. We’ve seen this before, and it’s what I expected. What I didn’t expect was that [the Trump administration] would first tackle pediatric cancer research. That they would tackle Parkinson’s research first. And they would attack vaccines, humanity’s greatest invention. And it shocked me to know that science is under attack, not because its conclusions are necessarily politically inconvenient, but because it is a way of telling the truth. This is the most disorienting and frightening aspect of it all.
What do you plan to do now?
I don’t think I can do anything other than be a scientist. I’m too old-fashioned. I’m so excited. I can’t talk about it yet because it hasn’t been announced. But I’m really excited to think I’ve found a way to continue to do science in a way that allows me to answer the questions that interest me but also to talk about it (say, “Here’s what we know; here’s what we don’t know”), to be honest about it, and to start thinking about it. [how]when we project these futures where the climate is three degrees, four degrees, five degrees [Celsius] hotter, I’m perfectly comfortable saying, “Hey, as a scientist, I don’t agree with that.” »
I know this is a violation of what some might consider scientific neutrality. But I have a conflict of interest: I live on Earth and so I don’t want to see that particular future. And so, without getting into politics, which is really putting my skis back on, I think doing applied science that helps inform these important decisions is something that I’m really passionate about.
