Climate scientist Sarah Myhre becomes embroiled in conflict after speaking out against a senior scientist's problematic statements about climate change.
Sarah Myhre Ph.D. is a Research Associate at the University of Washington and a board member of both 500 Women Scientists and the Center for Women and Democracy. She is actively investigating and publishing on the paleoceanographic history of the Pacific ocean, using ocean sediment cores and robots on the seafloor. She is a freelance writer, grass roots organizer, and a leading voice in the field science communication. She is also an uncompromising advocate for women's voices and leadership, both in science and society.
This story originally aired on Mar. 23, 2018, in an episode titled “Women in Science”.
Story Transcript
It’s almost a year ago to the day that I was evicted from my house. I’m a single mom and being evicted in a city like Seattle is really scary on an academic salary. At the same time that this was occurring, the hate and bigotry, white supremacy, misogyny and bullying were unleashed into our culture from the election of Donald Trump. It was a terrifying time for many of us but myself included because I faced losing my stable housing.
About a month and a half after that, after receiving that eviction notice, I was on the way to Olympia, the state of Washington’s capital, the Monday after the Women’s March to give invited scientific testimony to the House Environment Committee on the need to reduce greenhouse gases. I advocated, as a scientist, for the reduction of emission trajectories to a cooler and safer future for the state of Washington.
After giving testimony, the lawmakers asked us questions and one of the lawmakers asked us a question about a problematic atmospheric scientist and weather celebrity in Washington. Now, this particular atmospheric scientist gives great weather, has a huge platform, does lots of public education, and has very problematic communication of climate change. At every weather event, every fire, every storm he hedges and does not attribute these events at all to climate change. And it’s a problem because we need scientists in the public spaces to not equivocate around the risks of climate change.
As an earth scientist myself, I don't give a damn about weather attribution because climate change is fundamentally not about weather. Yes, it’s interesting. Let’s figure those questions out, but climate change is a planetary scale phenomenon.
So I chose to answer the lawmaker’s question. I gave an analogy. I said, “No matter how high this individual says that he can jump, the laws of gravity still apply to him. And the same is true for his communication of climate change. No matter how he equivocates about warming, the planet is still changing and it’s changing forever.”
From that moment of speaking truth in public, my career changed forever because I’m now on record articulating my dissent with a very powerful man in my field. When you call out a climate scientist, a senior scientist for their problematic communication of climate change, things get very uncomfortable very quickly.
Of course the first response that I had was self doubt. Had I understood his position correctly? Had I understood my position correctly? Why had I spoken at all? I could have avoided an avalanche of hostile emails and uncomfortable meetings if I had stayed quiet.
On the terrible advice from a colleague that I deeply respect, I had coffee with this individual alone. I got to the café first. I sat down. And as he came to the table, he came with his finger outstretched at me and pointed at me as he sat down.
“I know who you are,” he said. “You're a climate extremist. You're a climate radical. It’s because of people like you that we’re not getting anything done.”
He said over and over again to me, “You know nothing about the science. You know nothing about climate change.”
In the middle of our conversation he asked me, “So, how do poor people die in the state of Washington?”
I said, “I’m not gonna play this game with you. If you want to tell me something, just tell it to me.”
He said, “In the state of Washington, in Eastern Washington in the winter, poor people, poor Mexican people, they die in traffic accidents related to ice. And in the future of warming, there's gonna be less ice on those roads and fewer brown people are gonna die in the future.”
When he said this, alarm bells started ringing in my head. You cannot use the bodies and the deaths of people of color to equivocate about the relative benefits of future warming scenarios. And you cannot use the bodies and the deaths of people of color to undergird your skepticism of consensus science.
At the end of this meeting, he demanded that I recant my testimony. I said, “No, I have no intention of recanting my testimony.”
He then threatened me, saying, “If you don’t recant your testimony, I will recant it for you.”
I left the meeting physically shaken and thoroughly disgusted, intent on moving on with my life. In the next few weeks, I wrote and published an op-ed with Jane Zelikova and Kelly Fleming in The Seattle Times calling on EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt to use basic science and act on climate change to protect the American public.
In The Seattle Times’ website of this op-ed, this same problematic weather celebrity showed up and in his comment he called Jane, Kelly, and myself “young, idealistic and not real scientists.” And said that we were “totally wrong.”
He didn’t have to show up there, but he chose to show up there and shit on three women scientists. The presence of a local weather celebrity in the comments created an amplified tsunami of bullshit and misogyny that further undermined our participation as women in public spaces.
Why? Why did those words matter? Well, first, I'll tell you what those words did to me. I wish I could tell you that they didn’t hurt me, but what he did that day profoundly hurt me because it pierced into that piece of me that I carry around as a scientist that has always said, “You'll never be a scientist. You'll never be good enough to participate in science. And no matter how hard you work and no matter how many papers you publish, you will never be considered an expert in your field, because people like you, they don’t get to be experts.”
“Young, idealistic and not real climate scientists.” Why did those words matter? Because it’s an erasure. It feeds directly into the cultural trope that women are decorative and men are the ultimate arbiters of information and power.
There's a lot of space in science for a certain kind of woman, this science ingénue, the gritty and gutsy, yet ultimately powerless and disposable, role that many women find themselves in. But you know what? Ingénues, they don’t give invited scientific testimony. And ingénues, they don’t write op-eds. And ingénues, they definitely do not stand up to senior scientists.
As a thirty-five-year-old single mother, I have decidedly aged out of the ingénue category. I am now firmly in the nasty-woman category. That is right. And that means when I speak in public about science or about feminism what I receive is misogyny because I am stepping out of the lane of behavior that is appropriate and acceptable for people that look like me and sound like me.
So that day that I was so discouraged, wondering if I should stay in science, I recovered from that day and I didn’t go away. In fact, I have become much, much stronger. I’m now a contributing writer for Seattle’s newspaper The Stranger, where I write about science and climate change and misogyny and, indeed, this problematic weather celebrity.
I’m a founding board member of 500 Women Scientists, I’m a board member of The Center for Women and Democracy, and just last month I was awarded as one of Seattle’s Most Influential People of 2017, an honor that was also given to the state’s governor, to our attorney general, and to mayoral candidates.
In this moment I’m reminded of a quote from one of my favorite feminists, Lindy West, who says that women’s nos in the culture are constantly eroded and degraded. A woman saying no in public, in front of other women, is a political statement. And I have learned this year that being a woman scientist itself is a political statement and standing up for myself in public is also a political statement.
A year ago when I received that racist eviction notice because I put a Black Lives Matter sign in my front window, I didn’t go away then either. I fought that illegal and racist eviction with the City of Seattle and the Department of Construction and Inspection and the Office of Civil Rights, and I won my fight and I am still in that house. And my son did not have to move across town and leave his daycare friends, and we did not have to pay that price because I said no in public.
I am talking to you here right now because I have chosen in the last year to put myself out in front and say no in public in a time when we need it the most. But saying no in public comes with so many yeses. Yes to a kind and safe culture inside and out of science. Yes to equity and diversity and inclusivity. Yes to opportunities for everyone regardless of their race, gender, ability, or identity. And yes to women, especially women of color, in power and in leadership.