How to adult. My journey.

{thread} 1/n I was raised by a father who turned out to be a racist. I loved him. But working in his sheet metal factory as a teen, I learned trust & respect from my coworkers in Tuckahoe, mostly African-Americans and Portuguese immigrants.

2/n I learned about the Holocaust in school, of course, but I understood the Holocaust through the lens of a German survivor of Hitler’s putsch, who limped permanently from a 1932 gunshot. He was the shop foreman.

3/n I learned about sexual abuse being in the Boy Scouts, after being assaulted there; that’s when I started realizing there were boys who liked boys. I was confused, but hated the individual, and the Scouts for doing nothing.

4/n I learned about religious teaching in Sunday school. Our attendance at the Presbyterian church suddenly was terminated after an anti-war sermon on US involvement in Vietnam. On to become a Methodist.

5/n I became a marksman in the Scouts. But never forgot what was happening all around me. I resolved to never pick up a gun again to point it at any human being. I did once have to shoot a rattlesnake once to save our ignorant (favorite) cat.

6/n I left the Scouts, the church, and became both politically and scientifically curious, and then active, in junior high. My science and history teachers had a lot to do with that. So did my mother, who cheered me on, mostly in private.

7/n In high school, I practiced not being racist, prejudiced. Met my first “nice” gay people and realized they are individuals and not serial assaulters. Black students were friends. People who were losing relatives to war.

8/n In college, I learned so much more, had Puerto Rican classmates and folks from all over. I thrived. But I wasn’t yet an adult even though I married my high school sweetheart at 19, some 43 years ago.

9/n We raised 14 children, through childbirth, adoption, fostering. Our kids and grandkids give us joy and love. I don’t understand racism except it seems like people get pigeon-holed by their experiences.

10/n Whether raised that way, or from a dramatic/traumatic event, labels get attached and imprinted. We need to not harden our hearts so much. Let go of our prejudices. Stop labeling people! 

11/n In graduate school, I lived in LA (Hollywood) for a year. I met my first queer/trans people. They were human, too. That same year, we had our first child. Family first, more important than a job. I was learning how to adult.

12/n In Oregon, finally after a year in LA, I began to better appreciate the environment. I was focused on betterment of me and the ones I loved, and even understood poverty first-hand for a time.

13/n As a prof, having to move across country to Florida for a job, I was determined to do right by others. My lab became a safe space. I instilled values in others to be supportive of women and minorities in their struggles.

14/n I confess to making many mistakes in my journey, and try to own up to them. I am s lifelong learner, and I’m not so obtuse to think that I still can’t learn more. However, we now live in a very strange time.

15/n Is it right that men in power continually lie about what and why they are doing or did, and to whom? Is it normal for men to sexually harass people and not suffer consequences? 

16/n Is it normal for politicians to excuse past bad behavior to stay in office once their muck has been raked? There should be accountability. There should be contrition. But labeling and judging because of a label?

17/n [n=18(yay!)] Everyone has skeletons. Let’s use our votes wisely. Let’s stamp out discrimination. Imagine 🎶. Answers may be in your heart. Gov. Northam: please resign and go home. ☮️❤️

{end} #ScienceNotSilence #Resist #PolicyOverParty #EnvironmentalJustice #Liberty

Signed, a citizen of 🌍 🌎 🌏 

Letter to EPA - why you need science experts

I sent this letter of comment to the EPA’s Clean Air Science Advisory Council today. They meet December 12-13. They don't have science advisors any more.

4 December 2018

Mr. Aaron Yeow, EPA CASAC

I write to request that this letter be shared with the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) at their upcoming meeting. I write in opposition to the disbanding of the Particulate Matter Review Panel of the CASAC. First and foremost, I am a chronic asthma sufferer. I am also an atmospheric scientist who has worked for over 30 years on problems associated with air pollution and climate change, including working on agricultural and forest smoke management as well as working on ozone precursor studies in both Florida and Oregon. I’ve taught Air Pollution Meteorology and Atmospheric Chemistry at Florida State University, where I used to serve as a professor and research associate in geophysical fluid dynamics. I’m also acutely aware of the need to reduce wildfire danger in communities, particularly in the west in the summer months, which could cause increased exposure in winter months, but would be necessary to minimize catastrophic threats in summer. The presence of fine particulate matter in air has been well established in the literature as being a major contributor to disease, particularly in vulnerable populations. My work in Florida was done in collaboration with agencies in both Democratic and Republican administrations, and was foundationally related to public health concerns that were grounded in science, not politics.

By eliminating the 20-member Particulate Matter Review Panel to the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the EPA will have little outside scientific expertise available to provide the latest perspective from the peer-reviewed science community and its research. In a recent op-ed in the New York Times, the EPA’s own former and most recent staff director of an important Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Christopher Zarba, who worked for 38 years at EPA, has called on the agency to reverse this decision. I join him in that call. I have no doubts about the abilities of the CASAC, but they can’t possibly cover the gamut of important scientific aspects of a complex issue such as air pollution.

It is a complete abrogation of the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency to take the actions proposed here in eliminating the role of informed outside scientific experts, as has happened in other recent actions at EPA. It is akin to a decision that might have been made as acid rain or tobacco smoke rules and regulations were being considered as it became clear that public health was severely compromised if significant government action had not been taken by regulatory authority. I’m old enough to remember the frequent air pollution episodes of New York City, when I grew up just north of the Bronx in the 1960s, and the smog episodes of Los Angeles basin when I began my graduate study at UCLA in the late 1970s, and have seen the results of improved air quality (and benefited medically from it) thanks to the implementation of Clean Air Act. These small particles are direct threats to public health and if not regulated, will increase death and disease. Similarly, ozone precursors need to be regulated to reduce lower atmosphere ozone concentrations, which also pose significant health risks. I also have collaborated on atmospheric deposition research related to reactive gaseous mercury, and am concerned that the EPA has not moved fast enough to regulate mercury in the atmosphere.

Given that the important work of the CASAC will inform the process of updating federal regulations on criteria air pollutants, and the important contribution that particles in the PM 2.5 and PM 10 standards to deterioration of public health, this poor decision needs to be reversed immediately, and the advisory board restored or reconstituted. For one thing, it is my understanding that there is no epidemiologist among the members of the CASAC. Much of the important research that informs our understanding about PM 2.5 particles and their negative affects on asthma is rooted in epidemiological studies. Without such expertise on the CASAC, there is an important missing perspective; the Director also lacks this ability to make informed decisions related to toxicology, immunology, exposure levels, modeling and monitoring, among other aspects. Science advisory boards exist to provide that expertise needed to serve the public servants who volunteer or are chosen to serve on committees on the CASAC and others. There must be honest attention paid to the science.

Some exposure studies in the international literature have even suggested that the standard for PM 2.5 should be further tightened and that even ultrafine particles need to be incorporated into actionable criteria. Although I’m not as familiar with that research as I am with the presently regulated small particles and ozone and its precursors, I have grave concerns that we are headed backwards, and that EPA is devolving away from its core mission. Let’s not lose site of important mission of the EPA, as reflected in the Clean Air Act, 42 U.S.C. §7401 et seq. of 1970¹:<

The Clean Air Act (CAA) is the comprehensive federal law that regulates air emissions from stationary and mobile sources. Among other things, this law authorizes EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) to protect public health and public welfare and to regulate emissions of hazardous air pollutants.

One of the goals of the Act was to set and achieve NAAQS in every state by 1975 in order to address the public health and welfare risks posed by certain widespread air pollutants.

As an asthma sufferer, I have decreasing confidence that the EPA is willing to protect the public health of our citizenry, including my own children and grandchildren, some of whom also suffer from asthma. EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment. I strongly urge you to restore my faith that you are willing to do that, by bringing independent scientific expertise back to your decision-making process when it comes to air quality.
I am more than willing to speak with you more about this decision, if you are needing further information.
Sincerely,
<electronically signed 12-4-2018 6:59 PM>
Dr. Paul Ruscher, PhD
Fellow, American Meteorological Society
Dean of Science, Lane Community College
¹https://www.epa.gov/laws-regulations/summary-clean-air-act

We are not asking the right questions - about science, disasters, and being human

Sorry, this is blunt. On #disasters and #ClimatePolicy and #meteorology

“What is safe for me?” is a question many National Weather Service forecasters and television weathercasters fielded over the past week about #Florence (and so many other natural disasters). But that’s the first wrong question. Or, “Should I stay or should I go?”

These are the wrong questions. The responsible meteorologist can give you forecasts and likely impacts, with appropriate levels of uncertainty. Emergency management can provide guidance on what actions to take. Communities and individuals have a shared responsibility on this one. But fundamentally, we have to make our own decisions. In life or death situations, it is critical that they be well-informed.

The pulmonologist can’t tell you which cigarette you smoke will cause the lung cancer that may kill you.

The #publichealth community can’t fingerprint which air pollution episode was the one that permanently damaged your lungs.

The gastroenterologist may not be able to tell you which contaminant you ingested was the one that made you ill.

These are also the wrong questions.

Doctors can tell you that these things are bad. Similarly, climate scientists can see the symptoms of a warming world in real and modeled storms. Increased heat & liberated water vapor --> more rain. And now, new information shows how rapidly the ocean is warming.

The right question is, “What is safe for humanity?” [Or, how can we rid our ecosystems of the worst invasive species on the planet, industrialized humans?]

Our exposure limits are set too high for the 6 (and only 6) categorical #airpollutants. Industry resists each and every change or addition, and #EPA is now self-crippled. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 (2007!, defying the Bush Administration!) that EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants from tailpipes. And in spite of 10 years of effort, the #GOP (largely, but not exclusively) continues to ignore it, or fight any attempt to do so, or to extend such regulation to the other major pollutant source, fossil fuels used for power generation. And mercury and others are problems, too!

Now, about #hurricanes and #climate.

Was #Florence caused by #climatechange? The other biggies? No. 

Are hurricanes and other storms changed as a result of warming? Yes! 

Globally? Yes! Locally? Yes! 

Are impacts worse? They can be! How do we know this? Because we build models that are testable based on physical and dynamical heat and energy exchange mechanisms that we can measure.

#ClimateChangeIsReal

Scientists continue to study complex feedback mechanisms on storm energetics. You can’t supercharge a heat engine such as the Earth system without creating consequences. Jim Hansen once imagined a landscape filled with 1 or 2 Watt light bulbs covering every square meter of Earth's surface, and did a rather simple calculation of what that would mean for heating the atmosphere. It is still a very instructive example of a system that is out of balance. Excess heat must be redistributed or dissipated. In the ocean and atmosphere and pedosphere and cryosphere and biosphere. And we don’t fully measure or understand any of these. Yet. But scientists are learning more and making successful predictions as to root effects. And they are not favorable to species, globally.

Fingerprints are being detected. Nevertheless, they are still easier to detect and predict than human behavior. And fundamentally, humans have made bad decisions in planning, preparation, and response. At the community level and individually. That’s tragic.

What is the right question?

What can we as a society do to fix things? Some suggestions:

• Stop the political/free-market interference with scientific determinations of which pollutants should be regulated and at what levels.
• Move as quickly as possible to a carbon-free energy/transportation system.
• Ensure all residents have access to shelter, power, comfort after tragedy.
• Educate the public about the importance of clean air and water.
• Support independent scientific research.
• Don’t hire a power company from Whitefish, Montana to fix a broken power grid in Puerto Rico. (How’d that one get in there?)
• Improve public education re: disaster risks.
• Honor the heroes but do what you can to keep them from undue risk.
• Don’t shame the victims.
• Demand accountability.
• Reduce waste.
• Fossil fuels? Stop government supports (corporate welfare subsidies). They just line the pockets of the companies that extract, move, and deliver them. Washington I-1631 will be interesting to watch roll out if it passes, too.

And finally, we can all be that better human being. You know the one. The ones that your parents or older siblings, aunts or uncles, or grandparents read to you or told you about when they tucked you into bed.

I see you, Florida! I have a love letter. Sort of.

Hi, Florida. It's been a while since I've been back. I was introduced to Florida when as a child we traveled by train from New York City to Daytona Beach to visit my grandparents who had just moved to New Smyrna Beach. The first thing I saw when I got off the train that March 1962 day was a water fountain with a sign above it that said Whites Only. 

We had just moved from our small house in Hartsdale up to the new house my family had  built in Katonah, after my maternal grandparents decided to leave the city and stop being snowbirds. That spring break trip was my awakening to the idea that there was racism in America. I am still concerned about that, but more about that later. 

I write you now from the "left" coast where most people regardless of party still respect the environment and do not necessarily enrich themselves from the bounty that nature provides. 

I write to you from a perspective of having taught roughly 8,000 of your students when I was a professor at Florida State University. Also having taught nearly 1,000 of your public and private school educators through professional development and outreach. And finally having taught many of you in my science classes. 

In Miami Dade County alone I taught over 200 of your practicing teachers and helped them to receive either Masters degrees or certificates which enabled them to enhance their teaching portfolio to middle grade and/or high school math or science. I served on their graduate committees, I met them face-to-face and we taught them how science is done and how science could be taught in different ways. 

I worked with an array of amazing colleagues from 2006 to 2008 in statewide educational reform, writing the Florida State sunshine standards in science. I worked with some amazing politicians and their staff in the Florida legislature to talk about K-12 reforms in education. Most of the time I was impressed with their dedication to doing what was right. 

For the 25 years that I lived in Florida, I worked with state agencies such as the Florida Division of Forestry, Division of Emergency Management and the Department of Environmental Protection on issues of importance to all of state residents, in my work which was almost completely done as a volunteer.

 I worked on improving public health understanding of pollution through environmental education and on protection from and response to natural disasters. As a meteorologist and an asthma sufferer I have always been very concerned about public health, particularly with regard to air quality. 

For several of my years teaching at FSU I taught a graduate course in atmospheric chemistry. I also worked with federal agencies including NOAA, FEMA, United States Geological Survey & the Corps of Engineers and I sent many of my own students to the state and federal agencies after having taught them the best I could about the meaning and practice of science in the role of science and society.

In those years as a professional, I taught scientists, future scientists, nonscientists, and science educators the value and importance of science that would help them to understand their value as an educator, scientist or citizen. I also volunteered with my County 4-H extension office in which I joined with a Florida Marine Patrol officer to teach kids about marine and environmental science, taking kids to the springs, to the rivers, to the coast and helping them understand the idea of ecological balance and natural preservation.

During my time in Florida I watched government moves from a sometimes efficient role to one that became blindingly partisan to the extreme. The GOP took over the Senate and the House, the Governor’s Mansion and decimated the functionality of many of the Florida agencies that were responsible for environmental protection and preservation. I witnessed my own students who joined some of these agencies depart, disgusted by what they were being ordered to do, or not say.

In some ways, the Florida of the first decades of the third millennium has been a test laboratory for federal government today. We have now witnessed the obliteration of individual rights, particularly for women and people of color by the patriarchy. In Florida in 2018 all voters have a chance to take a critical look at what good government may mean. I worked among the team of scientists at FSU and other institutions on the Deepwater Horizon tragedy providing scientific perspective that was often largely ignored by a Democratic administration and by the companies that were responsible for the catastrophe and it's follow up. We were muted intentionally. And it was only through the efforts of Florida’s own Senator Bill Nelson and Rep. Ed Markey of Massachusetts and their staff that we were able to get a visual confirmation that provided the proof of what we were saying - that the oil that was billowing from the Gulf floor was far more voluminous then had been reported by the companies and agencies involved. That and other affronts to the environment and wisdom of science hurts, yes. But what hurts more is the enabling of the white patriarchal supremacy that is taking over this nation. It shakes me to the core to see women who cry out for justice and young black men cry out to be treated as human beings and refugee children ripped from their parents arms and imprisoned. Racism, classism, religious persecution, and misogyny never left, but now they all feel somehow accepted.

Every Floridian should vote by Tuesday vote. Restore felons’ voting rights, please; what Rick Scott has done with the parole commission is reprehensible. I’ll believe the nation (or at least, Florida) is reversing course if Rick Scott and Al DeSantis do not win. I’m reasonably sure that the GOP will lose the House, but that Mitch will remain in charge for two more years. But if Scott & DeSantis win, I’ll be disappointed. I suspect I won’t be alone. Make me proud! A blue wave in Florida would be welcome at this point in time, at least the rising tide begins to float all of the boats in dry dock due to sea level rise. Let the sunshine disinfect the hatred and greed that has become ubiquitous. Make me proud.

Dr. Paul Ruscher is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and now serves as Science Dean at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.

OpEd on climate, science, civilty

10/26/18

On Monday, October 29, an important trial is scheduled to begin at the Federal Courthouse in Eugene. In Juliana v. The United States, young plaintiffs who are concerned about the accelerated rate of greenhouse gas emissions by the USA and other nations is putting their future at risk, due to global warming. The science, including recent updates by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warn of alarming consequences to our atmosphere, oceans, water balances, and flora and fauna. This alarm is based on sound peer-reviewed science conducted across the world. And the USA, China and others are not doing nearly enough to stem the dangerous rate of emissions caused by human activity.

Our scientists who work for federal agencies are being silenced, neutered, or reassigned to unscientific jobs, while scientific advisory panels are being eliminated, and not just in the EPA (UO graduate Ryan Zinke in Interior is doing his part as well). Scientists come in many types – we are women and men. We are white and we are people of color. We are immigrants and refugees. We are human. Scientists make mistakes probably just as often as any reader of this paper. Scientists are trained to be objective in how they treat results they obtain. They strive to work harder at finding answers, and publish their results through rigorous peer-review in scientific journals. You can read them in libraries.

Nowadays we find our scientific community under attack, whether it is related to climate change or not. And these individuals are not all Republicans, so let’s not tar the entire GOP with that brush. Here in the Willamette Valley we are represented by reasonable men in Washington DC who accept the scientific evidence of climate change, because they believe the scientists they talk to. It does not require a “belief” in science to be there, too. But it helps to have a skeptical approach towards claims that have not undergone such scrutiny, and are advanced by heavily funded groups that receive funding from large political action committees or fossil-fuel companies. Scientists are not in it for the money, as is so often claimed. We are the curious and industrious truth-seekers who strive to understand and make things better.

The present anti-science approach to federal government policy is reprehensible. Your ballot may provide an opportunity to raise your voice against it. We owe it to the future of our children and our grandchildren to pay attention. Let’s all do our part to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and encourage our representatives at local, state and federal levels to increase their diligence in this matter. 

Fortunately there are still good scientists working on this issue both inside and outside of the federal government. In Oregon, we have the Oregon Climate Change Research Institute (OCCRI) at Oregon State University (http://www.occri.net). The national climate information portal is also a great resource for this information; you can find them at https://www.climate.gov. Both of these resource sites contain very readable summaries of the scientific evidence for the human footprint on climate change, and its likely impacts going forward. I, as a climate scientist, still have hope, that our governments will take action to reduce our dependence on carbon and to induce individuals to take responsible action as well. We also must do this being responsive to those who are more likely to suffer from environmental injustices, and encourage a restoration of funding of environmental justice and environmental education programs with a basis in sound science.

Sincerely,

Paul Ruscher, PhD

Ruscher is a Fellow of the American Meteorological Society and serves Lane Community College as its Science Dean. 

PS - I’ve been inspired by the turnout at the Federal Courthouse this AM supporting @youthvgov. Here’s an op-Ed I submitted to the R-G last Friday. Maybe they'll publish it but it's here in case they don't!

It’s Autumn in America - and T-13 Days

Riverbend Medical Complex, Springfield, Oregon, 24 October 2018

T-13 Days

Autumn in America should not be a time of concern. Yet, here we are with what could be our driest fall season on record in the southern Willamette Valley, an election looming in which my Congressman is running for reelection against one of the most notorious anti-climate-science deniers on the planet, and trust in government, science, and media are at all-time lows. Can we do better? I have a few thoughts. 

Thirty-one years ago this month, I defended my PhD dissertation at Oregon State University in Atmospheric Sciences – Diagnostic Studies. My 6 years of graduate study at OSU led me through climate diagnostics and modeling, turbulence and convection, an appreciation for data collection in the field, and ultimately developing my own numerical models of weather phenomena and routines suitable for weather and climate study. I also studied learning theory and higher education, to be better able to teach (a PhD minor consisting of 8 graduate classes in education baffled my graduate committee members, but I think it served me, and my students, well). I became a meteorology professor at a world-renowned academic institution (Florida State University), and worked across disciplines in fields as disparate as education, psychology, engineering, and hydrology, while still honing my mad weather, climate (and water) science skills. I am a climate scientist, atmospheric scientist, geoscience educator, fluid dynamicist, and sometime hydroclimatologist. I’ve trained hundreds of new degreed scientists and hundreds of math and science educators. I may be an old white guy, but I’ve long been a champion of diversity in science and society. And after 25 years at FSU, I moved back to Oregon, to a community college, where over 40% of our nation’s future scientists start their higher education careers.

1988 was my first year as a tenure-track faculty member, and while I was teaching general meteorology, synoptic meteorology, climatology, boundary layer meteorology, and atmospheric chemistry, I was also beginning my own exploration of this evolving science area of global warming and anthropogenic climate change. Work by Wally Broecker and Jim Hansen was revolutionary, and now, more than 30 years later, their “predictions” of future climate states are remarkably true, particularly given the infancy of our scientific knowledge and computing power at that time. I committed at that time to learn as much as I could, particularly to help blunt political partisanship that was already rearing its head. I remember meeting then Senator Al Gore at the 1991 American Meteorological Society meeting when he was our keynote speaker; we got to the bar after the event at the same time, and we spoke for about 10 minutes on the importance of getting his message out to educators, to help the teachers relate the science to the young people — they are our hope.

There are so many reasons for me, a husband, parent, grandparent to be hopeful for the future, because I see what the young people are doing today. I see the plaintiffs in Juliana v. United States working hard, I see students across the globe doing solid work in the GLOBE program (globe.gov) and other international environmental education programs, and I see my own children and grandchildren and their respect for our environment and the people who live in it. Despite the fact that I remain a very hopeful person, I write today regarding something substantively worrying about my America.

The USA today is a place of bifurcation. Bipartisanship has evaporated, and those few voices who have reached across the aisle have either departed the chamber with that aisle, or have retreated to what they view as the safer confines of cloak rooms and political money-machines. What were once reasoned voices who embraced the notion that science could inform public policy have retreated to their base, but in ways that are much more complex than party politics. 

Democrats from coal-mining or gas-guzzling states are more concerned about environmental legislation that limits mining, or places restrictions on water, air, and soil contamination than they are with environmental justice. Ethanol affecianados in the midwest tout growing our own fuel, propping up the corn farmers and collectives, in what is arguably one of the worst possible plant-based solutions for ethanol. And those from auto-manufacturing states or states with high proportions of commuters are more concerned about maintaining low gasoline prices than they are about clean air, dangers of hydrofracking, transportation of bitumen from tar sands, or offshore drilling. 

This does not get the Republicans off the hook, of course, either. They have almost in lock-step supported the Trump administration in its diabolical abandonment of principles of environmental protection for our lands, our biosphere, our air, and our water. Two anti-environmental directors of EPA, as well as those who lead the Department of Agriculture and Interior, have led to reversal of national environmental policy that has its roots in administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Richard Nixon, among other Republicans who’ve supported environmental initiatives. These political appointees, supported by many in the Democratic party when they appeared before the Senate, aided by other appointees who do not require Senate confirmation, are dismantling regulations supported by their own agency scientists, hired competitively for their scientific chops, and not their political leanings. Many of them are speaking out and/or are leaving their agencies. 

This national move had an experimental laboratory in state government in Florida, the state where I fully developed my own scientific credentials, thanks to competitive grant funding from agencies like NOAA, NASA, and NSF. I witnessed first-hand Republican Governor Charlie Crist send out marching orders to all of his state agencies to have a climate action plan. I worked directly with scientists and planners at the Division of Emergency Management, Division of Forestry, and Department of Environmental Protection, helping them to do their work. I worked with the Department of Education to adopt climate change and evolution in the K-12 science standards that the state adopted (rather weakly, as it turns out) in 2008. I trained many of the individuals who went to work for these agencies, and they worked to develop their action plans and consider and write regulations to support their scientific work and implement sound policy. I then witnessed the abrupt transition to the administration of Governor Rick Scott, who proceeded to dismantle sensible environmental regulations that were written with broad (at the time) legislative support. The transformation of the Florida GOP to a party of denial had been completed and has been amplified by Governor Scott. Many of the people who I worked with in these state agencies are long gone, in many cases having left because their agency just did not support their scientific (not political) values.

We are witnessing an age where truth is no longer respected, where outright falsehoods, lies, and make-believe numbers are shared by leaders, probably in full knowledge that these are false, but furthering their belief that if these are repeated enough, a drumbeat of support will develop. Scientists and science communicators are becoming unhinged as our work is ignored, mischaracterized, and maligned by a largely ignorant or uninformed public. Violence against your opponent (outside of the boxing ring) is now not only tolerated, but encouraged. I’m pointing at you, Congressman Gianforte. I’m pointing at you, President Trump. And I’m pointing at you, politicians in state houses and Congress, who are enabling this behavior.

You are also enabling a nationalistic tendency of America First across the world, and ignoring basic human rights principles of refugees, immigrants, indigenous populations, and right to thrive and live in a world which we, in America, are largely responsible for creating — one in which fossil fuel extraction and development, devoid of any rational action to curb deleterious impacts but only beholden to the profit motive, has for decades harmed the planet.

I’m lucky in some ways. I witnessed the 1960s and 1970s, an era when people cared about peace, and people cared about each other and the environment enough to lead to action. Those actions led to abandonment of a war on the people of Vietnam. America began to act to clean up the waters of our national rivers, to admit that we had been poisoning people who lived in our poorest communities with bad air and soil, and where clean-ups were noticeable, and the dawn of the Civil Rights movement. I spent a year in LA in graduate school in the late 1970s in times when the air quality was horrible, and I’ve been back enough times to see how clean air regulation has improved air quality there. We have witnessed how trace amounts of poisons can harm us, and science has shown us the way out. Now is not the time to roll these laws regulations back. It is not the time to blunt efforts to regulate greenhouse gases, and mercury and other toxics. The Trump Administration likes to claim that they are reducing unnecessary and redundant regulations. How long do you think our environmental efforts of the last 50+ years will continue to reap rewards if the polluters not only no longer pay, but they are allowed to operate without controls? 

The election of 2018 is not one where Trump is on the ballot. And yet, he is a presence, as locally, regionally, and at the state levels, actions are often taken following partisan playbooks that seem organically-driven, but end up coming from entities such as ALEC, the Heritage Foundation, or Koch Brothers. Big oil, big sugar, big industry. They drive the agenda when they can, and the press often will be ignored as the veritable 4^thestate does its best, but is monikered with prefixes such as the “Lying Washington Post” or “Failing New York Times” by people in power.

I am not sure the sky will fall if the Democrats don’t recapture the House of Representatives, seats in state legislatures or Governor’s mansions, but I can be sure of one thing, if bipartisanship and reasoned governance and international cooperation does not the ground running in Washington DC in January, we are destined to be further isolated, further scorned by our international partners, and destined to watch as other American nations, and the rest of the world trade and treat with each other respectfully, leaving us to become increasingly self-reliant, and relying on fear. Is that the America we all want? One where our military might and nationalistic tendencies govern what we do as a nation? To our people? To our environment?

Think about this before you fill out your mail-in, early, or in-person ballot on or before Election Day. What can you as an individual do to restore faith in government? Build and stock safe rooms? Prepare for rapture? Speak-out and act on things that you care about? Whatever you do, do it from a perspective of love and respect, if you can, and let’s not be the nation that is trying to bomb ex-residents of the White House and journalists (the new thing today, apparently). The voices of our ex-Presidents and their spouses, and those of the members of the 4^thestate who are attacked at every Trump rally, may be our only hope for the future.

As George Carlin once riffed – Earth will be fine, we humans are screwed. Our respect for each other as humans, the flora and fauna around us, and our land, air, and water are all foundational to the better aspects of human evolution (“nature”). I would not call the political influences that characterize the Trumpist behavior and development “nurturing” — rather the classic debate of “nature vs. nurture” that makes us human seems to be careening towards fear-based individualism. We can do better. It started with events like the Women’s March, the March for Science, and People’s Climate March. But its roots are in social justice movements that began many decades ago. 

Let’s keeping speaking, marching, and moving the bar forward, not backward to a paternalistic, racist, anti-science trope. Which I might call tripe. 

Paul Ruscher • Eugene, Oregon • 24 October 2018 • T-13 days

Resistance is not futile

/resume (continued from a threaded tweet ... )

Upon reflection, I am happy to report that my teenage years were spent protesting war, in particular in Vietnam. Only 12, I volunteered for the campaigns of Eugene McCarthy and then Bobby Kennedy who were ready to upend the status quo of the two-party system, 50 years ago this year. My dad supported George Wallace. That was awkward. Neither of us got our preferred candidate, as Nixon won, and Nixon became acceptable to him and many others of the "Silent Majority". He was going to end the war. But he lied, cheated, and conspired to hide it all. Sound familiar? It should. His right-hand legal advisor? Roy Cohn. And who did Roy bring along as his apprentice? Roger Stone. From my high school, FFS! Yeah, he was using political dirty tricks while we were both in school during student government elections. But that's another story.

By 1972, my senior year, I was a McGovern supporter, and my Dad still wanted George Wallace, but he ran as a Democrat (southern Democrats were still a racist thing, as the Republicans were still the party of Lincoln, sort of, while the emerging Goldwater branch of the #GOP answered to the John Birch Society; read Max Boot’s column today for more on this). I decided to apply to become an alternate service conscientious objector. I did not wish to flee to Canada, which was an easy cop-out. My 1-AO status would have allowed me to serve as a medic. I applied for the 1A-O, and then my number came up in the last draft lottery - 20 out of 365. Shit! The war was not yet winding down, but Peace talks had resumed (the ones Nixon's crew sabotaged in 1968). Coast Guard, here I come unless I get picked for a service! When I received my draft notice envelope, my father waited with glee to see which service I’d be reporting to. The county draft board’s letter affirming my request shocked him to his core, and I felt righteous. It also broke our already damaged relationship, which took years to rebuild. I was such a jerk as a teenager in so many ways. Weren't we all, in at least some respects? I was no Brett or Bart or Donald, though.

But the draft ended as the war wound down and I could go to college without a deferment. Things got quiet after Nixon for a while. Then the hawks (in both parties) started exploding the debt & deficit to restart the arms race with the Soviet Union - gotta have a bogeyman if you want to keep the American public afraid. I protested the buildup of the nuclear arsenal as scientists with my entire family (only 3 kids at that time) and #UCS imagined a nuclear winter. Little Corvallis had one of the largest marches in the country.

I protested with Greenpeace against whaling, as we surrounded a Norwegian whaling ship anchored in Portland's Columbia River harbor ... we surrounded it with our canoes. Yeah those strategies were useful.

Some things never change. It is time for action, resistance, integrity to take over the dialog. Movements like #BlackLivesMatter, #MeToo, #MMIW, and #IBelieveHer are critical. And so often disrespected. By people like me. An old white man. But so not me.

I was the first in my family to get a 4-year degree. I did not want, as the oldest son, to take over the factory that my grandfather built. As an apprentice and journeyman #sheetmetal worker, I learned a lot from my Dad, who had followed in his footsteps. But more from his foreman, an immigrant, who escaped from Nazi Germany after the putsch. And the Portuguese immigrants, and descendants of slaves who commuted from Harlem to their non-union job.

The #MarchForScience was to be transformational. And when I was invited to speak in Eugene, I was proud, not of myself, but of everyone who showed up and have not let the dream die. The movement was inspired by the #GOP War on Science that others have written about, and Trump. Dreams dashed, with only the free press and courts to buffer.

The dreams of Harriet Tubman. Of Gandhi. Of Russell Means. Of David Oppenheimer. Of Martin Luther King, Jr. Of Carl Sagan, Jane Goodall, and Jacques Cousteau. Of Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld, Ban-ki Moon, and Kofi Annan. Of Malala Yousafzai. Of James Hansen. Of Harvey Milk. These are some of my heroes who had dreams, too.

But our dreams have become nightmares. The administration has demonized the press for doing its job, and is using every trick in the book to pack the court with “strict constitutionalists” (except when it comes to #2A, for example). And by making up new rules to ignore a valid Presidential nomination to the Supreme Court, just to wait for 11 months for a “good” one, and then add another, this time one of highly dubious integrity and credibility. And the "silent majority" has returned anew; the same one that resulted in a near Constitutional crisis in the mid-1970s. Another president later would use his stature to create what should have been a #MeToo moment, and a different Supreme Court Justice was chosen and ratified by a Senate that should not have assented. And the Senate will likely still be in GOP control in January 2019, whereas the House will likely move to the Democrats. We can't count on any of this happening.

As an individual I can do stuff. As a manager of a large #science academic unit I am constrained. Somewhat. In some respects I can’t wait until I retire. But I confess to feeling safer knowing that my employer-covered health insurance and #Obamacare still precludes insurance companies from excluding preexisting conditions. I’m luckier than 10s of millions of Americans. 

I participated in a fundraising event on Saturday night that rocked me to my core. Over 100,000 in my county alone are food-insecure; 3/8 of our population!. Thousands are not well-sheltered. The economy is roaring, while those who are not in it fail to thrive. Poverty is increasing and our nation, among the #G20 nations, is among the worst in terms of our social contract with its people.

Those of us who can need to up our game. Because a corrupt fringe of one party has enough power now that it can consolidate acceptance across the monied establishment parts of the GOP and Democratic Parties. There are some heroes out there, atheists, Christians, Jews, Muslim, Buddhist, etc., working together. Don't be bound by a narrow social definition who you are. 

I don’t know if, for 2018, there is any answer other than not the GOP in the broad scheme of things. I know of some dedicated, committed people who won their GOP primary races, particularly from science and education careers. They are probably really good. Everyone should be engaged in voting and helping others vote. Talk issues. Take action. Demand more of you representatives from the city hall or town/county seat to the US Capitol. Get involved.

/fin