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Opinion | I’m a Scientist Who Spoke Up About Climate Change. My Employer Fired Me. [1]

['Rose Abramoff']

Date: 2023-01-10

When Dr. Kalmus and I decided to make our statement during the lunch plenary session, I knew that we risked being asked to leave the stage or the conference. But I did not expect that our research would be removed from the program or that I would lose my job. When I began participating in climate actions with other scientists in 2022, senior managers at Oak Ridge asked that I make it clear to the public and the media that I spoke and acted on my own behalf. I followed these guidelines to the best of my ability, including at the A.G.U., where Dr. Kalmus, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and I did not mention our institutions in our statements.

The retaliation I faced from the A.G.U. and Oak Ridge ultimately highlights a disappointing reality: that established scientific institutions will not even support scientists interrupting a meeting for the climate. I’m all for decorum, but not when it will cost us the earth.

I used to be a well-behaved scientist. I stood quietly on melting permafrost in Utqiagvik, Alaska, and measured how much greenhouse gas was released into the atmosphere. I filled spreadsheets and ran simulations about how warming temperatures would increase the carbon emissions from soil.

To do my job, I dissociated the data I was working with from the terrifying future it represented. But in the field, smelling the dense rot of New England hemlock trees that were being eaten by a pest that now survives the warming winters, I felt loss and dread. Only my peers read my articles, which didn’t seem to have any tangible effects. Though I saw firsthand the oncoming catastrophe of climate change, I felt powerless to help.

I did, however, believe that if scientists told the truth about the climate emergency, our scientific institutions would get out the message to policymakers, government officials, the media and the public. But they didn’t — at least not sufficiently — even as carbon emissions continued to rise and the climate continued to warm.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/10/opinion/scientist-fired-climate-change-activism.html

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