Writers more eloquent than I have written about the great injustices, violence, and anger we are in line to experience over the next few years. Right now, I'll speak briefly about what I see in my own narrow world.
I'm finishing a PhD in climate science at an institution where the majority of the scientists are "soft money" researchers. "Soft money" means that while they have an affiliation with the institution, they are responsible for raising most (or all) their own salary each year. Most often, a researcher includes salary support in the grants they write to federal agencies or private organizations, and cobbles together a full salary from a series of different funded projects. It takes some serious hustle to make sure that you cover your salary each year, especially when science funding rates are as low as they are.
The short story: researchers applying for funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), which is the major funding agency for earth scientists (along with NASA, NOAA, and a few other organizations) are facing stiffer and stiffer competition. In the early 2000's, overall funding rates at the NSF were in roughly 30%. Now, the overall rate is in the low 20% range. Two main factors contribute to the rate drop: an increase in the total number of researchers applying for grants (with more grants, on average, being written and submitted by those researchers than there were before, so a researcher might submit three grants a year rather than the two she would have submitted in the past), and only slight increases in the total amount of (inflation-adjusted) research dollars available.
Researchers who identify as "underrepresented minorities" are consistently awarded grants less often than their white peers, by several percentage points. In 2014, 12% of the grants black researchers submitted to the NSF were funded, compared to 18% for Hispanic researchers and 23% for white researchers. In my subfield--Geosciences--the numbers are slightly higher: 19 and 20% success rates for black and Latino researchers, compared to 25% success for white researchers (addendum: the Geoscience budget is ~20% of the total NSF budget) . These proportions haven't budged much since 2000. I'll discuss the leaky pipeline phenomena, the challenges minority and non-male scientists face, and the barriers to increasing diversity in the sciences in another post, and for now I'll focus on the challenges facing all scientists.
In theory, the NSF, NASA, and NOAA funding streams are relatively stable, and it's fairly difficult for governmental dictates to limit funding for any specific branch of research (for example, geosciences and climate research). However, all funding agencies currently work on a single-year appropriations schedule, so long-term budget stability is definitely, absolutely not guaranteed. House In the past, Republicans have specifically targeted earth science research that happens at NASA for funding cuts, and there are plenty of reasons to think that this kind of funding blockade may happen again in the very near future. Basically, all it takes is an appropriations rider, and in a Republican-controlled House, Senate, and White House, funding for basic earth science research could be under serious threat.
So: finding funding to pay yourself is getting harder and harder, and feeling ever and ever more competitive. Now, throw this into the mix: the agencies that fund the kind of science we climate resarchers do could have their funding--already slimmed down, in adjusted dollars, compared to past decades--cut further, or entirely.
This news has thrown many of my colleagues into varying degrees of panic. People who work primarily with NOAA and NASA funding are extremely freaked out. Early career researchers (like...me, and basically all of my friends) are realizing that it wouldn't take that much to make our careers disintegrate in front of our eyes. People are talking about private sector jobs, about leaving science, about redirecting their research in ways that sound less threatening to the climate deniers who are now running our government. All of these things are bad.
Of course, in the grand scheme of things, whether or not I, my friends, or any of us scientists keep our jobs is small potatoes. What matters is what we do to the planet, and whether we use our infinite human resourcefulness to try to address our enormous, indiscriminate climate future. The climate system doesn't give a %*$ whether we think it's changing or not: it's going to evolve anyway, and it's going to affect our lived experience and economy whether we research it or not. What matters is what this administration does to our climate policy and global agreements, not whether I and my buddies have jobs. But still. If we lose our base of young climate scientists and dismantle the programs that study, monitor, and interpret how our planet works, we're setting ourselves up to be weaker, less well-informed, and less nimble in our responses to future challenges. Let's just...not put ourselves in that position, OK? Everyone on board, here?
We won't know exactly how this whole situation is going to shake out for a few more weeks, but until then, I'll be making sure I know as much as I can about the budgeting, policy-setting, and administrative processes of the US's science agencies. Sounds like fun, huh?
No recipe today. Too much work to do. Next time, mahleb and pistachio sticky buns, using a yeasted sweet dough, from "The New Sugar and Spice," a lovely new baking book by Samantha Seneviratne.
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