Women In Science Expose Their Climate Grief

Women In Science Expose Their Climate Grief

I stupidly sent out two posts yesterday. Those who received the second won’t get it again today. Apologies.

Egalitarians: There ought to be more women in science.

Women in science: I’m a climate scientist. Here’s how I’m handling climate grief.

This is the direct and full title from an article in the political magazine Nature. Written by lady scientist Kimberley R. Miner. Who says, “Researchers must find personal ways to cope with impending losses”. What losses?

Those who were anxious to have women in science were warned that boosting the numbers of women in science, by putting women in science just because they were women, would be bound to turn science into feelings.

Not so, said egalitarians. That was a stereotyped and sexist view. Adding women in science would make it so that there were more women in science, which was the goal of wanting to have more women in science.

Last September, before the rains came, my field team learnt that it was probably too late for half the blue oaks affected by California’s drought in the region in which we were working. Because of years of ongoing drought, many of the trees would not recover from the long-term water loss and would die. The next morning, I sat outside our science team meeting and cried.

Did you indeed, Kimmy. And because you cried—and sat down for it, the episode draining the strength from your limbs—should we then turn science into a tear-drying enterprise?

Yes, say Kimmy.

A friend sat with me and explained that she had just recovered from an episode of extreme climate grief brought about by studying rapidly changing terrestrial ecosystems. She had started taking weekends off (many of us work seven days a week) and encouraged me to do so, as well. After we talked, I walked around the parking area for a while, listening to the birds and watching the midday light filter through the diverse trees in downtown Santa Barbara. I breathed the ocean air and grounded myself in the present, where the air was cool and the birds were singing.

Well isn’t that nice. I used to do the same thing on the F train when I lived in Manhattan. Though instead of birds it was people playing loud rap “music” on their phones. Taking a whiff of the air was a terrific way of grounding yourself in Reality. That’s what science is all about.

But, seriously, Kimmy, how are you feeling? Tell us, do.

I am in my mid-thirties, working at NASA as a scientist, and I already have five scientist friends with severe, emergent health challenges. They are all affected by overwork, exhaustion and extreme stress. The only other thing they all have in common is that they study climate change.

Studying “climate change” is bad for your health? Being awarded many lucrative grants by an interested Regime causes “emergent health challenges”? Does the CDC know about this new and curious disease vector?

Some climate scientists have left the field, some have died and some have retired, but even more are just starting their careers. Early-career climate scientists across a range of fields are faced with comprehensive, esoteric challenges as ecosystems begin to cross tipping points…

Even for the most experienced and well-trained field scientists, changing dynamics can introduce sudden risks to health and safety.

Esoteric challenges! You see, effeminate scientists might be strolling along, contemplating how they will shoulder the world’s burdens on their narrow shoulders, when, suddenly!, they “might find themselves confronted with a new atmospheric or hydrologic circulation pattern, an unseasonal storm or freeze, or literally shaky ground.”

Literally.

What did Kimmy do about her immense grief? She talked to a man. Honestly, who better?

She asked this man “about how we can address climate grief…The best treatment for climate grief, he says, is knowing you’ve made a contribution to reducing emissions or building resilience.”

As for Kimmy, she turned inward and there met her feelings. She is now “enjoying the world around” her, and telling herself that “Although small actions might not solve the climate crisis, they remind us that we are intrinsic parts of the world and its ecosystems.”

Who knew? Not you, dear reader. That is why we have science.

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19 Comments

  1. Anon

    Has anyone told her yet what will happen when the Sun runs out of hydrogen? Should put things into perspective.

  2. john b()

    RE: I am in my mid-thirties, working at NASA as a scientist, and I already have five scientist friends with severe, emergent health challenges. They are all affected by overwork, exhaustion and extreme stress. The only other thing they all have in common is that they study climate change.

    Are they all women? Or just effeminate scientists?

  3. PaulH

    Not merely climate grief, but Extreme climate grief! What’s next on the grief scale, and how many floods of tears will assuage this grief?

  4. William Wallace

    I can guess why we can’t repeat that trip to the moon.

  5. Hagfish Bagpipe

    Funny stuff, Briggs.

    Take women out of the home, nix the kids, run ’em on a corporate hamster wheel –> they go nuts.

    Equality is hammers driving screws and screwdrivers pounding nails.

  6. Johnno

    Just wait until the women in science get more trans-y.

    The temperature will soon be up by a perceived 100 degrees, and anyone who insists on reading the thermometer differently through their outdated patriarchial eyes will be liable for environmental aggression.

  7. Forbes

    Filed at the website nature.com, nonetheless it’s like their own Facebook page where the contributors share their feelings…as stated at the bottom of the article.

    –>”This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice.”

  8. Joy

    Johnby,
    Both?

  9. Uncle Mike

    I can relate to Kimmy’s feelings. I also am experiencing extreme climate grief — not about the climate exactly but over the Insanity of the Eliteocrats over a Gigantic Nothing Burger.

    Warmer Is Better, you cretins. Warmer means more rain, not less. That’s because rain comes from the oceans, and the oceans cover 5/6ths of the globe, and when the globe was warmer there was more evaporation, more clouds reaching land, and more precip thereby and thereon. Which is something you dimwits should have learned in the 3rd Grade!

    If you were real scientists, then you would have examined the fossil Miocene flora from Callaphony, when the Earth was 5°C warmer, and noted the plants were similar to those of a wetter climate, and concluded (as do palaeontologists who have studied said fossil flora) that Callaphony got twice the rainfall it does today. Warmer means more rain not drought, you bean brains.

    And your handwringing whining, Kimmy, is not just your indulgence in pain porn, the soap opera you wallow in, but is accompanied by extreme measures leading to runaway inflation and real suffering that you inflict on ME as well as the rest of humanity. And I am sick of it and have had enough of your misery whip, you narcissistic psychopath.

    PS – Hi, Joy. Missed you.

  10. Joy

    Hi Uncle Mike, always, entertaining,
    Missed you too, never forgotten, often quoted.

  11. Gunther Heinz

    Dr. Fauci HIT THE NAIL RIGHT ON THE NOSE! If wearing a mask is good ON AN INDIVIDUAL LEVEL, so too it MUST be equally BAD on the same individual level. For instance, the mask caused you to trip and fall and break a leg. That individual level can be called … the RANDOM OUTCOMES LEVEL, yes? Let’s ASK BRIGGS!

  12. Gunther Heinz

    … so it necessarily follows, that if on a purely INDIVIDUAL level (random outcomes level) a mask can prevent you from swallowing a toxic bug, then for that purpose alone its use should be made obligatory! On the other hand, if wearing a mask after swallowing a toxic bug prevents you from spitting it out in time, for that reason alone it CANNOT be made obligatory!

  13. Milton Hathaway

    Great Steaming Piles, Batman!

    To be fair, I think “Climate Science” would have to be considered one of the soft sciences (by any definition that includes the word “accountability”), and soft sciences often attract the touchy-feely save-the-world types. Is Ms Miner’s problem that she is over-emotional, or is she just not very smart? Other possibilities exist, I suppose.

    Although women are still scarce in my field (a branch of engineering) despite decades of society-wide recruitment efforts, the women who are here are no less intelligent and professional as the men. The difference is clearly accountability; it’s extremely difficult to fake it in engineering.

    I can’t imagine living a life with little accountability, personal or professional. Accountability is the source of self-esteem, and the lack of accountability is an acid that eats away at you until there is nothing left, a sad empty vessel like Ms Miner.

    Did I mention the importance of accountability?

  14. Joy

    Climate science is absolutely a soft science.
    It takes thirty or so components of distinct (some) hard science fields and attempts an unrealistic merger.
    It’s an exercise in generalisation from the beginning.

    Milton’s comment,:

    Re Accountability, why are weather men never held to account? Meteorologists are their source, they have s lot to answer for. Climatology is like meteorology on steroids.

  15. goat rodeo

    if a climate scientist cries in the forest, do the blue oaks asphyxiate?

  16. The True Nolan

    If she were a REAL climate scientist, she would have looked at the raw data, and discovered that raw data is being fraudulently “adjusted” to keep published temperatures in step with CO2.

    Whoa! I was planning on adding a link here to show how the warming “adjustments” added to the raw data are a direct linear function of the change in CO2. Tony Heller did the graphs years ago. But when I go there, the page has been removed. Why removed? I’ll let Heller explain:

    https://realclimatescience.com/
    (begin quote)
    You probably have noticed that the blog has been broken for weeks. The previous hosting service ran out of disk space and deleted tens of thousands of image files without my permission. They also failed to keep a backup of the site before deleting the images. Then they shut the blog down completely and sent me this message :

    “(you are) very illustrative of why the country so hates right-wing influencers who can’t see beyond their own grift and selfish hypocrisy”

    I am now working with a respectable hosting service, but it will take some time to restore the tens of thousands of damaged blog posts. Thanks for your patience.
    (end quote)

  17. John W. Garrett

    I knew things were bad. I didn’t realize just how bad things were ’til I read this.

    This is a “scientist?”

    God help us.

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