The whole professional discipline is either so doomer or so blasé about it that it made me actually leave academia and go teach high school instead. It’s absolutely awful. My background is in foundation of climate models, and I ended up at one of the better climate modeling labs in the US after my PhD. I left after two years because it was so soul crushing. Half of them think nothing can be done, and the other half don’t want to think about the implications of their models at all. There are rare exceptions (Jim Hansen, for instance), but they are rare.
Eww, do they just have engineer brain disease where it’s like “oh, social problem, can’t do anything about that because it’s not a hard science”?
Glad you got out and get to teach people before they get their imaginations sucked out of their head. You’re contributing to the solution, unironicly thank you for your service to society.
It’s partially that, and partially a fear that if they’re seen as doing political advocacy, they won’t be taken seriously as scientists anymore. Capitalist culture has done such a good job convincing us–even people who should know better–that physical science and public policy are totally separate magisteria that most scientists are really afraid to step slightly out of their lane.
Thanks for your words. I feel like I do more good in this role too, and I’m a million times happier. My administration lets me get away with a lot because of my credentials too: the student body calls my climatology class CCCC, for communist climate change class.
The whole professional discipline is either so doomer or so blasé about it that it made me actually leave academia and go teach high school instead. It’s absolutely awful. My background is in foundation of climate models, and I ended up at one of the better climate modeling labs in the US after my PhD. I left after two years because it was so soul crushing. Half of them think nothing can be done, and the other half don’t want to think about the implications of their models at all. There are rare exceptions (Jim Hansen, for instance), but they are rare.
Eww, do they just have engineer brain disease where it’s like “oh, social problem, can’t do anything about that because it’s not a hard science”? Glad you got out and get to teach people before they get their imaginations sucked out of their head. You’re contributing to the solution, unironicly thank you for your service to society.
It’s partially that, and partially a fear that if they’re seen as doing political advocacy, they won’t be taken seriously as scientists anymore. Capitalist culture has done such a good job convincing us–even people who should know better–that physical science and public policy are totally separate magisteria that most scientists are really afraid to step slightly out of their lane.
Thanks for your words. I feel like I do more good in this role too, and I’m a million times happier. My administration lets me get away with a lot because of my credentials too: the student body calls my climatology class CCCC, for communist climate change class.