Scientist Navigates a Changing Climate: In Conversation with Dr. Heather Ford

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The Babblery
The Babblery
Scientist Navigates a Changing Climate: In Conversation with Dr. Heather Ford
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On April 5, 2025 Dr. Heather Ford joined other scientists around the United States to protest the Trump Administration’s witch hunt against his imagined “woke science agenda.” Since World War II, the US has seen a broadly bipartisan support for the federal funding of science, which has yielded a financial return much greater than the stock market. But scientists today are reeling—in Heather’s words, they’re “devastated”—by cuts in US funding that are reverberating around the world.

Heather is a researcher in Paleoceanography, modeling long-ago climates by studying tiny marine fossils. A native of California, she teaches students at Queen Mary University in London, where she is, as she points out, an immigrant like many of those being turned away from the United States. In this interview, Heather explains how the job of “scientist” is now a global one, how her work adds to human knowledge about climate, and how climate change affects all of us, whether we believe in it or not. [Click for transcript]

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About Dr. Heather Ford

Dr. Heather Ford is a climate scientist who researches what warm climates look like in the geologic past to help us understand future climate change. She grew up in Central California and attended University of California Santa Cruz earning her PhD in Ocean Sciences. Her research uses the chemistry of marine sediment to reconstruct past ocean conditions. The ocean plays a huge role in our climate so understanding ocean conditions in the past can help us understand and project climate in the future.

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Scientist Navigates a Changing Climate - Heather Ford

Introduction

[00:00:31] Heather Ford: It is such a privilege to teach people about climate change and to think about how systems are connected and how our communities are connected with the landscape that we live in.

[00:00:46] Voiceover: This is your host, Suki Wessling. Although most people in the US probably know that the federal funding infrastructure is being drastically altered, I think it’s safe to say that not enough people understand how that infrastructure works. For example, someone may disapprove of welfare and cheer cuts to welfare, but then when their locally owned grocery store closes, they don’t see the connection between the poor in their community buying food and the health of their community’s small businesses.

[00:01:15] These connections affect people personally. Today we’re going to talk about the interconnections that are severed by the huge hatchet that’s being wielded against the federal government’s funding of science.

[00:01:27] Heather Ford: My name’s Dr. Heather Ford. I am a climate scientist and what I do is I look at climate over really long, geologic time periods to understand basically how do we use past climate to help understand future climate change. 

[00:01:42] Voiceover: Heather is a climate scientist, perhaps the type of scientist most maligned by the current administration after, say, practitioners of transgender healthcare. 

[00:01:52] Heather Ford: I’m an elder millennial. I was born in central California in Stockton, California. And I now actually find myself in London where I work at a university, I teach and I do research. 

[00:02:05] Voiceover: I met Heather at the first large rally after the inauguration. The one called Hands off. She had been in California on sabbatical, and though she doesn’t work in the US she agreed to talk to me. Before we met, she asked me to read an article she’d authored that was about DEI, diversity, equity, and Inclusion, and women in science. With the current administration’s focus on eliminating all DEI, I asked her to start by putting her article in context.

Our political climate and how it’s affecting science funding

[00:02:35] Suki Wessling: You sent me this article from Nature, and I usually like to ease into things, but I really feel like this is the elephant in the room, which is you’re a scientist and you are a climate scientist, and we have an administration that, um, to say they’re behaving badly is an understatement. Can you describe the article and why you sent it to me?

[00:03:02] Heather Ford: So Nature is one of these like flagship, magazine kind of publications that then in addition to, to publishing, you know, really high impact, really big papers also talks about the policy around science and keeping kind of the, the, you know, the scientific community informed.

[00:03:19] And I think one of the biggest thing, even as a international scientist is that the, the, the cuts that Trump is proposing with his skinny budget basically carve out a lot of, um the science that we do, basic science. Um, and he’s specifically really cutting at, um, cutting out climate science because, you know, the ‘woke climate agenda,’ and, you know, any sort of, you know, ridiculous, um, adjectives that he, that he uses to describe like, um, a multifacet multi-agency endeavor to understand future climate change. And the cuts that he’s proposing to, it’s the, a variety of, federal agencies because climate science, um, envelopes so much of, of, the scientific enterprise right now. It cuts across multiple different federal agencies. So one of the, sort of the crown jewels of the scientific process in the United States is the National Science Foundation.

[00:04:16] The National Science Foundation is where the United States funds basic research, and he’s proposing a 56% cut to the budget for, for the National Science Foundation. This is where we do, um, basic science that becomes, a lot, some of the stuff that we do in National Science Foundation spins off and becomes things like Google. Um, a lot of the things within Silicon Valley that, um venture capitalists and then sort of go in and, and fund. That’s that the, it’s built by basic science research that’s funded by National Science Foundation. Um, and then there are other cuts that are proposed, like the National Um, Protection Agency, the EPA, over 50% of it’s budget is gonna be cut. NOAA, um, is is looking at a similar 25% cut. It’s looking specifically at the the, the climate kind of science division and ocean, um, divisions. NASA, um, which a lot of people think of as, as, as looking at space, um, you know, going to Mars, going to the moon.

[00:05:17] But a lit, huge part of the science sort of, um, that happens within NASA is observing the, you know, the earth from space. So another thing that’s being proposed to be cut from NASA is basically a lot of the science, satellite systems that we have that observe the earth from space. And a lot of those are really key for providing climatological, um, observations that we use and that we need for, you know, understanding hurricane pathways, um, a lot of things that, that impact everyday people in a huge, big way come from some of those devices. And it’s, it’s really, I, I cannot overstate how like, just devastating these cuts are to the climate community and especially the climate science community. Everybody that I know is just walking around completely depressed about this, and it’s, it’s really, um, it’s really, it’s really heartbreaking. That’s kind of the only way to describe it.

The purpose of science and scientists

[00:06:13] Suki Wessling: I like that you use that word because the sort of popular conception of the scientist is this cold calculating person who doesn’t, they aren’t doing this for any altruistic reason. They’re, you know, especially, you’ve got this, this theme in popular culture of the science, who’s scientist, who’s evil, who wants to dominate, who wants to, you know, control.

[00:06:39] Heather Ford: Sorry, that was my dog.

[00:06:42] Suki Wessling: It’s okay. 

[00:06:43] Voiceover: I want to interject here that throughout this interview, all the sighs, burps and other intimate sounds you hear are coming from Heather’s dogs, Sammy and Stevie. That’s our story and we are sticking with it. 

[00:06:57] Suki Wessling: I’m the child of scientists, my husband’s a scientist. and my children are scientists. And so I have an intimate understanding of this from a family perspective. But can you talk a little bit about that? You, you said that, scientists are feeling this sort of despondence that is, an emotional thing. Why is it emotional when it’s just cuts in funding and it’s just, you know, that’s, that’s not emotional. Right?

[00:07:23] Heather Ford: So one of the things that I’ve been doing pretty regularly is I, I’ve been calling my representative and, you know, the, the, the young little interns that are probably about the, you know, they’re, they’re, you know, recent graduates or re or still, you know, doing an internship, um, in the university age.

[00:07:40] Um, and I, I feel like one of the ways that I connect with them, and it, it’s almost emotional talking to them, is, you know, I’m an educator. I teach, you know, people in emerging adulthood and I’m about 20 years older than them, and I want them to have a better future than the one that I have. You know, I, I want them to God willing, you know, have a safe, adult life.

[00:08:06] And I, I think the part that affects us is, you know, if you look at, if you, if you are a climate scientist, you, you have a sense of like, if we don’t do something that everybody’s quality of life will go down. And, and ultimately, like, I want people to be safe, right? I want communities, these people’s communities to be safe.

[00:08:32] And seeing these cuts happen, will, people will die. And it’s hard to communicate that with people, you know? People won’t won’t be getting the messaging that they need to evacuate for hurricanes. Um, they won’t have, you know, there, there’s, um, discussions about, um, one of the parts of, of NOAA is the National Weather Service, right?

[00:08:54] And nobody thinks about the National Weather Service, but all the apps AccuWeather, you know, so many of them take National Weather Service data to make their meteorological predictions, but the National Weather Service has a, has a responsibility to effectively communicate climate risk or weather, you know, weather problems.

[00:09:15] And there’s, there’s meteorological agencies that are understaffed and, and now aren’t giving 24 hour coverage, right? If you’re in a tornado path in, you know, the, the middle of the United States and you don’t have staffing and you’re not getting those tornado warnings, and that’s just gonna get worse with climate change like these communities will suffer.

[00:09:36] And I think that that’s the part that makes me personally, makes me frustrated. Like I, um, you know, the, the type of work that I do specifically doesn’t necessarily impact the day-to-day of, of a, of a US citizen, but there’s so much of what’s being cut that does impact people’s lives. And I think that’s the part that is really frustrating.

[00:10:01] Like if I, if I talk to my friends who kind of do similar work, like they’re like, what’s the point? In some ways, like they are, they are really despondent because if the work that we aren’t doing that sort of goes towards building the, the bigger knowledge around climate science, if we can’t, if the, if the US government, if Trump and his, you know, ‘syncopaths’ are, are, aren’t gonna take this seriously, like, what’s the point? Because these people will suffer and they’re only going to suffer because. People wanna line their pockets with more money than they, than they can already spend. Right. And it’s, it’s average people who are just gonna get hurt by not having the support of these federal agencies.

[00:10:47] Voiceover: This is The Babblery. Dr. Heather Ford doesn’t just do climate research in a vacuum. Her work is part of the interconnected science, education and research system that has made the US the envy of the world.

How not teaching climate will affect future students

[00:11:00] Suki Wessling: I wanted to sort of relate it to something that I read at one point, a scientist saying that when there, the huge discussion about science education was about teaching evolution. What the scientist said was that evolution underpins at that point they said all of the important science that’s being done, and you can’t do science without really understanding this process. And it occurred to me while you were talking that in a sense climate is now in that position, that if we are raising kids, not learning about what the climate is. And again, this gets back to the cuts because the more cuts there are, the less funding there is for students to learn these things and then go out and disseminate that learning. You know, the way our system works is, is one of trickling from the people who do the research down into our schools, those students learn things, they get excited, they become scientists, they, and goes back in that loop. So what about this question of, of climate being fundamental to our education right now?

[00:12:18] Heather Ford: Yeah, I mean, I think that cutting science and how it goes into our education, it’s gonna, it’s gonna impact American competitiveness, right? Like, this is I the, the United States has such a huge role in international science in, there’s so much about, like, so for instance, one of the impacts that we have for like, um, the using, um, climate models, so computational simulations to project future climate change.

[00:12:51] There’s a huge amount of international collaboration that happens to be able to do those models, and so much of, of international collaborations depend on data and infrastructure provided by the United States that Trump has basically dismantled, that has these cascading impacts for our international collaborators and other powers will fill that void that the United States has leaving, which means that we’re basically, um, we’re gonna be removed from this international collaboration, which means that, you know, students aren’t gonna be able to learn about these things, they’re not gonna be able to benefit from the international, um, practice of science as well um, from a really like basic standpoint. 

[00:13:39] Um, like if I, one of the things that I do for my university students is because, like climate models and computational simulation sounds very like abstract and like, it, it’s, it’s hard to kind of imagine how you go about using climate models to think about future climate change. One of the things that I started, um, I, I developed this course, which is basically the students learn how to manipulate these um, climate model outputs to, to make their own maps of a particular region that they’re interested in. And the whole reason that I did this is I kind of wanted to democratize climate science.

[00:14:16] I wanted them to feel like they had ownership to be able to, like, this is, this is a data set that’s publicly available for you to use. Here are the tools to be able to look at it so that you can have some sort of like, sense of knowing, okay, if, if these are the kind of parameters that I have, this is what the climate’s gonna look like. If I have these kinds of parameters, this is what the climate’s gonna look like. And you know, if we don’t have access to that climate data, if we don’t have, you know, those kinds of international collaborations, our students are gonna lack in preparedness, right? If they don’t have a understanding of how climate science works, how the, how humans interact with the landscape and how the an how the landscape can change and will change with climate change, they’re going to be at risk for their lives. They’re gonna have risk for their communities, how they fit into the communities, um, their economic development. All these things are at risk, right? The decisions that you make, if you know that sea level is going to rise and that particular part of the coast is gonna be flooded, maybe you won’t buy, you know, a property in that kind of area, right? They’re, you’re gonna be making decisions and these are, these decisions are being made, right? Like climate risk, FinTech is expanding because all insurance companies, all of these people are making these decisions based on climate risk data. And it’s not like this isn’t going to happen and defunding this isn’t going to make it suddenly go away. It’s just gonna put these, you know, people who are younger at risk.

On avoidance strategies

[00:15:53] Suki Wessling: As you were speaking, I was just imagining, I mean, the, the little literal head in the, in the sand, you know, the, the whole idea that by ignoring something it’ll go away is, um, well, it’s primitive. I mean, in the literal sense of that, not in the sense of calling, you know, certain cultures primitive, but in the sense of, of how, in the sense of brain function, that’s the sort of, that’s the sort of response that

[00:16:21] Heather Ford: It’s an avoidance strategy, right? It’s like that’s what my dog uses, right? When like, they’re being bad, right? Like, oh, I’m not gonna make eye contact. Um, and it, yeah, it’s the same thing. You know, it’s with COVID, right? Like, whoa, if we stop testing it, you know, it’ll go away. It’s, climate change isn’t going to go away.

[00:16:40] It’s not, it just isn’t.

The science pipeline explained

[00:16:43] Suki Wessling: Yeah. Yeah. Another thing you talked about and I think is really important to think about as far as how our science system works, is all of this funding, and it sounds like so much money though, you know, when you look at the slice of the pie, it’s this teeny slice of the pie, but it sounds like so much money.

[00:17:07] But then you said Google. So you look at how, how the system works. It, it works to support students who then do research, which goes into the public domain, which then people use. And can you explain a little bit about why, you know, why funding for science by the US government and Google can be in the same sentence?

[00:17:34] Explain that process.

[00:17:36] Heather Ford: If, if I’m a US based scientist, I either instruct students so they, they learn things, or a lot of times what happens is that you’ll apply for a grant with the National Science Foundation and that money will come with some undergraduate support.

[00:17:52] So you’ll have an undergraduate researcher or sometimes many undergraduate researchers who might work in your lab. And so, um. My understanding is that there, um, you know, there was a lab in Stanford where the two people who basically spun out, um, Google were working as undergraduates thinking about kind of the, the, you know, what are, what are the, you know, mechanics of kind of indexing and searching and that sort of stuff, right. And they basically, that that basic research which was funded by the National Science Foundation, they were able to use the skills and kind of the, the, the knowledge that they gained in that, in that lab, in that undergraduate research experience and, and spin out Google, right?

[00:18:34] It’s like you get kind of the seed funding from the National Science Foundation. So either sometimes, you know, professors will, um, do some kinds of research and then that will be spun out into a company. Um, the, and so like the National Science Foundation like gives seed money to a lot of things that go into the broader economy.

[00:18:56] So it’s not just basic research that that gets funded with National Science Foundation. So again, that impacts like United States competitiveness, it, it impacts our economic futures. Like if we’re not funding that kind of basic research that gives people opportunities that can, ideas that can eventually spin out into the economy, what happens?

[00:19:17] 

[00:19:19] Voiceover: You’ve been listening to the Babblery’s interview with climate scientist, Dr. Heather Ford. When we return:: 

[00:19:26] Heather Ford: We are seeing that there’s still some groups that are being left behind and aren’t part of the conversational, and that includes underrepresented minorities: Those are communities that are generally poorly engaged, these are often the, the communities that are most impacted or marginalized by climate change. 

[00:19:41] 

Segment 2: The how and why of being a scientist

[00:19:50] Voiceover: I’m your host Suki Wessling. Dr. Heather Ford is an American climate scientist working in London. She’s watching the US government’s assault on science funding and scientific fact from afar. But one of the themes we kept coming back to in our discussion is the interconnectedness of the scientific community. In this segment, we talk about that interconnectedness and explore the experience of becoming a scientist. We also explore, because it’s at the heart of what’s happening in the scientific community, the push for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

[00:20:21] First, we discuss the science community pipeline. At the root of every successful company you’ve heard of, and of course the failures as well, you’ll find federal investment in research at universities doesn’t just line the pockets of administrators, as some would have you believe. This investment draws top scientists to universities to do their research where they employ grad students to conduct research and teach and undergraduate students, therefore, also benefit. Those professors, grad students, and sometimes undergrads take the work they’ve done into the private sector fueling the huge economic engines that run the American economy.

[00:20:57] Heather starts by talking about the way that the American Post World War II system gave students the experiences they needed to thrive in public and private sector science-related work.

[00:21:09] Suki Wessling: Not only do they not get those experiences that, that might go into the private sector, right? But like the, there’s also public sector jobs that are now gone because of the choices and, uh, a lot of, a lot of the gains that the United States economy has had, has been in science, in technology, right? Like a, a huge amount of the GDP is related to science and technology that’s, that’s seeded by National Science Foundation, basic research. And yeah, if you, you’re like, this isn’t sometimes I think like one of the push is like a lot of things, oh, we’re, you know, AI is just gonna replace all of this and it’s so not true because you know these people, people need training. They need a need, need creative spaces to, to do basic research in the universities provide this. And that’s the other part of like, not only are are you seeing an attack on science in these federal agencies, but the universities themselves are also being attacked, right?

[00:22:13] Heather Ford: So not only are they having their funding, um, pulled or, um, you know, the, the agenda items changed, um, but the, the very process of the university is being challenged, um, now, and that is also very frightening. Um, and I, yeah, it will impact, it’ll, it’s, it’s devastating to think about the experiences that students will no longer have access to.

The joy of science

[00:22:44] Heather Ford: I certainly benefited from those experiences. When I was an undergrad, I worked in an undergraduate lab, um, that’s how I found my field that I currently work in, is I worked in a lab that did this. Um, I’d like to think that the contributions that I’ve made to science are, are good and interesting. Um, and I also, you know, students have worked with me and, and undergraduate students have worked with me either when I was a postdoc or you know, now when I’m a, um, you know, a university professor, um, like they, they they get this experience and they also get to get this joy of science. You know, there’s, there’s science is joyful in many ways. The process of science is joyful. 

[00:23:25] Like I, I work on little tiny microfossils that are about the size of a grain of sand that you have to look at through a microscope. And the first time you show somebody these little microfossils, they’re just, they’re mind blowing, like how beautiful and how intricate they are. And it’s, it’s amazing that you can use the chemistry of these little tiny microfossils to tell you something about past ocean conditions. And that is, that is just a fundamentally mind blowing concept.

[00:23:59] And there’s joy in learning something like that. And it, you know, it, it, it. It frustrates me that those experiences won’t are being robbed of future generations by this administration and the choices that they’re making and a and all of his little tech bro psychopaths are, are basically pulling the ladder up behind them and it’s, it’s devastating.

How one scientist was made

[00:24:27] Suki Wessling: Yeah, so I wanted to, I, I love what you said about the joy of science and can you, let’s back up and, um, let’s, let’s meet little Heather. What, what were you interested in as a kid and was science an obvious place for you to go or not?

[00:24:46] Heather Ford: Um, I think I always liked science. I liked, I mean, I think like any, uh, you know, I’m an older millennial. I’m 42. Um, I think, uh, most people who grew up kind of in my age, and kids today are still like, kind of obsessed with dinosaurs and I really liked fossils and I, I liked paleontology. I didn’t think I was gonna be like, you know, in Jurassic Park and kind of like hunting for fossils or anything like that, um, but I liked science. I liked, um. I always say that the gateway drugs to science are the stars, dolphins, and dinosaurs. Right. And you find in, in, in any of those three, you end up finding something that really sparks joy in science, right. And so for me it was like a combination of like dinosaurs and dolphins.

[00:25:30] Like I really liked the ocean. Um, I didn’t grow up in the ocean. I grew up in the Central Valley. But we would, we would go to like the Monterey Bay Aquarium often when I was young. And I just, the, the vastness of the ocean is really. Interesting and inspiring to me. And I think what was, for me, kind of a pivotal moment, um, when I was growing up and it honestly informs my research today is when, um, when I was, oh gosh, I was a, I think I was a sophomore in high school, um, it was the 97 98 El Nino, which I think still is the largest El Nino event recorded. And El Nino, um, is a, is a climatological event that happens in the Tropical Pacific and it has these wide ranging teleconnections, it causes floods in California where I grew up. Um, it causes fires in Australia and so my high school was right across, um, the street from the levy of the Calaveras River, and I remember walking along the levee and just seeing the water was so close to breaking the levee, and if it hadn’t broken up farther up the head headwaters it, you know, it would’ve devastated the Sacramento and Stockton communities. And you’re talking about like probably a million people that would’ve been impacted by those levee breaks.

[00:26:51] Um, and I, you know, teenager Heather was just flabbergasted that this, this climatological event in the tropical Pacific could have such huge repercussions for the global community. And so I think that that really kind of, it was the, the event that really made me think about climate and how it has these, these, you know, long distance teleconnections and how it influences communities differently.

[00:27:19] And I wasn’t in college, I did a, you know, a degree in geology. Um, and then I learned about marine geology and how you can use these fossils to understand climate over, you know, millions of year timescales. And so that’s kind of what I do today. I look at tropical climate conditions over the last 5 million years and how that has evolved over the last 5 million years because, like, as you can see from El Nino, the Tropical Pacific has a, a very large impact on our global conditions. So if you can kind of understand what’s happening in the tropical Pacific, you have a, a large appreciation for what’s happening with, with global climate. Um, so yeah, that’s kind of, that’s kind of my, my origin story..

[00:28:01] 

[00:28:06] Voiceover: You are listening to the Babblery. I asked climate scientist, Heather Ford, about the current administration’s witch hunt against so-called woke funding in our science infrastructure. As a woman scientist, she sees firsthand why outreach to women and traditionally marginalized communities is vital to maintain our scientific progress. 

[00:28:28] Heather Ford: So talking about NSF funds ’cause I have the statistic, ’cause I sent it to a colleague of mine and I was like, this is bonkers. Um, so for the National Science Foundation, specifically women principal investigators, so like leads on a grant represent only 34% of all active grants. So, you know, women make up about half of the population. Right? But in terms of who’s getting competitive grants, um, and who’s applying for National Science Foundation, it’s about 34%. And of those grants that have been terminated by Trump’s agenda, 58% of the grants that have been cut are women leads.

[00:29:07] So even though women represent about a third of grants that are, that are awarded by the National Science Foundation, the 58% of them have been canceled because they don’t fit in with Trump’s woke agenda. So right away you’re already seeing like active discrimination on a couple different fronts. And, you know what’s interesting is that, um, I think especially one of the things that’s important for climate change is that because of the, the, the unique ways that it impacts our community, is that you wanna have everybody on board, right? You want everybody to have some sort of stakeholder engagement in how to build resilient communities. How to, um, think about any mitigating factors and think about re relocation, if that comes down to that and what it looks like to them. You don’t want one person who has one set of ideas and one sort of set of values to be making the decisions for an entire community that has a, a wide variety range of interests and needs, right?

[00:30:09] Not no one person can understand like an entire community’s needs. And so being able to have everybody at the table, and have some sort of input I think is really important. And one of the things that’s mandated by Congress, which is one of the things that’s being cut, like 90% of the, the budget for broadening participation, that’s what it’s called, broadening participation. This is one of the things that’s like mandated by Congress, right? This is done in the nineties, I think. I could be wrong, but it’s been, it’s been a part of the National Science Foundation grant awards for a very long time. It’s just the acknowledgement that it’s important to have a variety of voices.

[00:30:47] When you’re thinking about the process of science, when you’re thinking about how different, you know, research or inventions, impact communities, it’s important to have a variety of people that can come to the table and, and do the process of science because we don’t, we don’t want everybody who looks exactly the same and who has the exact same set of experiences to dominate culture.

[00:31:08] And so, um, broadening participation was really to try and engage with communities, um, and get more voices at the table. This includes, women. This includes, um, underrepresented minorities. And so there’s been a lot of, programs, regardless of whether or not they’re effective or not, but the intention is to broaden participation and we have seen the participation of women increase in science, for instance, that’s largely driven by white women. Um, but there has been gains in, in, in science for, for white women specifically. But we are seeing that there’s still some groups that are being left behind and aren’t, aren’t part of the conversational, and that includes underrepresented minorities: the black, um, the Hispanic communities, um, indigenous groups, um, those are communities that are generally poorly engaged, with kind of like the scientific process. Um, and these are often the, the communities that are most impacted or marginalized by climate change. Um, so really especially important to get them, like, get their input and get their stakeholder engagement in, in thinking about these sorts of things.

[00:32:13] And so it’s important to engage them and have them be you know, educated to, to, to, to understand the scientific process so that they can also, you know, participate and add value to the conversation.

[00:32:25] Suki Wessling: Yeah, I think that one of the things that’s particularly distressing to me as a woman knowing that I’m probably gonna get the number wrong, but I believe that the amount of medical research that’s aimed at women’s health is something like 9%, and we make up over half of the population and we have, different bodies.

[00:32:50] And that’s really, you know, the Republicans love to, uh, argue that men and women are different, but then when it comes to research, they’re now saying that we don’t need to research women’s bodies. And this goes also for, say, people of African descent. Some amazing breakthroughs have happened, for example, with sickle cell anemia.

[00:33:12] That would not have happened without. Black people being in on the conversation, you know, this is important to us. Yes, it’s a small group of people who suffer from this, but it causes immense suffering in our community. And so, so talk a little bit about the wider question of being a woman and ways that science has ignored us in ways that it’s not ignoring us, but that perhaps might get impacted by these cuts.

[00:33:48] Heather Ford: I think one of the things that, if I speak from my experience just as a white woman. Um, one of the things that often makes the scientific process challenging is, is isolation. Um, so like if you’re not, you know, for lack of a better a word, like part of the boys club, there’s a lot of, you know, purposeful or not, there’s exclusion that happens, um, in terms of like project building, like who gets put on grants, um, that sort of thing.

[00:34:21] And I think that, you know, one of the things that’s been really key for my career is the ability to apply for grants and be the principal investigator on a grant and direct my own research and not rely on, you know, being grandfathered in and sort of like you know, being part of a boys club that has that, you know, that would, would foster my career. It’s given me a lot of autonomy and a lot of independence to be able to, to apply for grants on my own. 

[00:34:53] Suki Wessling: You mentioned that, that women are going to be less funded and that women tend to do this type of research that is deemed woke

[00:35:02] Heather Ford: mm.

[00:35:03] Suki Wessling: and I guess I would say we know why that is.

[00:35:05] Because people’s careers are not separate from their social experiences and also their physical experience in the world. 

[00:35:16] To think that science is somehow separate from the fact that it was practiced largely by white men for most of its modern history is just to deny reality. That’s not, not even debatable.

[00:35:31] Heather Ford: I had a roommate who did her economics PhD and one of the things that she was really interested in was kind of like microloans and developing nations, right?

[00:35:40] and the language around this has changed a lot. I’m sure this is a, this is a time capsule of like, you know, 2010s Heather going through our PhD program and so my understanding was is that if you wanted like improvement in communities like, development, like thinking about country development, is that you would, you would give these micro loans and you’d give them primarily to women, right?

[00:36:04] Because women would reinvest in the community. And I think that that says a lot about value. And how generally, not exclusively, but how women value communities is that we’re gonna use this money, we’re going to use this, this idea, this grant money, and we’re going to make the community better.

[00:36:28] I think probably the way that we’re socialized, and I don’t know if there’s a biological intuition or anything, I don’t know, it’s probably just because we’re socialized this way, is that we, you know, are in interested often in investing in community. And so I think that that, you know, drives a kind of research a lot of women do, um, because, you know, we’ve disproportionately been impacted by these funding cuts and how it doesn’t fit in with the with the ‘woke agenda,’ um, I think that women often think about these community level questions, and that is evidently problematic because it does consider how your lived experience impacts the way that you, you, you know, you interact in society, um, whether it’s gender, whether it’s race, whether it’s economic status, It’s how you bring yourself to the table, and that’s a value.

[00:37:23] Voiceover: You’ve been listening to the Babblery’s interview with climate scientist, Dr. Heather Ford. When we return:

[00:37:29] Heather Ford: it is such a privilege to teach people about climate change and to think about how systems are connected and how our communities are connected with the landscape that we, live in. 

[00:37:59] Suki Wessling: Listeners, have you checked out the Babblery Substack at babblery.substack.com? There you can find all sorts of materials related to the full episodes, such as short written pieces by Babblery guests, writing on subjects related – and sometimes wholly unrelated – to the show theme, and also Minibabbles, short companion audio pieces. Subscribe at babblery.substack.com. 

Segment 3: The relevance of science and research to our lives

[00:38:47] Voiceover: This is your host, Suki Wessling. I met Heather Ford, a climate scientist based in London at the hands-off rally in Santa Cruz, California.

[00:38:55] In the past, you would’ve found a lot of scientists, perhaps almost all of them, who didn’t see their work as directly political. But in today’s climate, especially with funding cuts at the federal level, coupled with an all time high level of disrespect of the scientific method, scientists are indeed waking up.

[00:39:13] Heather’s research is not the type of work that most people, even well-read scientists in other fields would know much about. She studies tiny fossils from distant prehuman history. I asked her to draw a line from her research on long past climates to the concerns of people today, who have to make decisions about where to live, what kind of work to pursue, and even whether and how to raise children.

Connecting research of the distant past to today

[00:39:42] Heather Ford: The kind of research that I do doesn’t like impact, like a person’s kind of day to day and how they experience weather or climate. So the kind of research that I do, um, usually gets, you know, summarized in some way in the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. So the IPCC report for short, this is a report that happens every five-ish years, and sort of talks about the, our, our state of climate understanding.

[00:40:08] So one of the things that is, um, embedded throughout the IPCC is using the geologic record to understand and contextualize future climate change. So I look at a time period where, um, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are very similar to where we are with human, um, inputs today. So how do we look at this time period about 3 million years ago where we know that carbon dioxide is similar to what we are today and what does that warm climate look like?

[00:40:39] If we use that as kind of a pseudo analog for future climate change? How was precipitation different? How, where did rainfall or not fall? How much of it fell? Um, what did the oceans look like? How did they circulate how much carbon was stored in them? So it’s kind of an abstract way of thinking about future climate change.

[00:40:58] But, you know, same thing with history. We hopefully learn from the past to help understand and contextualize what’s happening today. And if you don’t look at the past, you’re not gonna understand the future. And it’s the same sort of thing with climate. If we look at the geologic past, we know how warm climates look like, or we’re studying to understand how warm climates looked and how they functioned to help us understand what’s gonna happen with the future.

How will climate change culture and politics?

[00:41:22] Suki Wessling: Climate change is affecting all of us, whether we want it to or not. And you are now outside of the us, um, but you’re American and you have stakes here. I assume you still feel that. Um, I think that all of us who think wider than our own little sphere know that this is gonna affect us all.

[00:41:44] So can you talk a little bit about the ways that climate is gonna be important and go ahead and, and go into politics, especially immigration, how all of this science that we need that is being cut is going to reflect in different parts of our lives around the world.

[00:42:10] Heather Ford: Yeah, I mean, I think you, you, you brought it up really interesting with my, with immigration because I think that one of the big challenges with future climate change was that you will see community displacement, you’ll see people who migrate. And we’re seeing that as well with, um you know, a lot of the issues, um, in the Middle East and like Syria and Yemen, like especially with the, the famines that have happened there, like a lot of that is a lot of the, the sensitivity of those communities to things like famine as exacerbated by climate change.

[00:42:43] You know, the United States military calls, um, well, it did, uh, call climate change a, a threat multiplier. And so basically these areas that are al already, um, socially or economically unstable or, you know, those are often intertwined, um, are, are being magnified, by, by climate change. And so I think that, um, you know, a lot of the things that we’re gonna think about is storm strength is gonna get, or, or is likely to get stronger so hurricanes will get stronger. Atmospheric winds, like heavy precipitation events that you get in the Pacific Northwest are gonna get stronger. Um, wildfires are gonna, um, be, uh, more common. 

[00:43:29] You know, it’s interesting. So I’m, I’m my family, um, part of my family’s from the Minnesota area, so I’m, that’s where I’m registered to vote. Um, and still you, you can still vote as a United States citizen from abroad. Um, and so I, that’s where I vote, that’s where I’m registered to vote. And, uh, Minnesota is often thought of kind of like this climate refuge because, you know, there’s no hurricanes, there’s, there are tornadoes, but not as much as that you would get in like Kentucky or something like that.

[00:43:57] And it’s not on the coast, so there wouldn’t be like sea level rise. Um, but what’s interesting is right now it’s actually, um, there’s these huge fires that are happening in northern Minnesota that are, don’t seem to be like on the media in any way, shape or form, but huge areas of Minnesota are currently on fire.

[00:44:13] Um, and tho and that’s likely exacerbated by climate change, right? Like, so even though Minnesota’s kind of thought of a climate refuge, it’s still still vulnerable to, to climate change. And I think what’s interesting, even as a climate scientist and knowing like all the kinds of things that are going to happen with future climate change, it, it really is alarming, especially in the last few years, how, you know, you can think of an idea as an, as an as this abstract thought and know like, oh, this will get worse or this will get worse.

[00:44:48] Um, but I think what myself and my colleagues are struggling with is just how present it is in the last few years. Like, you know, there was horrific flooding in Europe, um, a couple years ago. You know, Germany had huge flooding and I think that also one of the things that was really interesting about that experience for those groups that were impacted by those large floods is that I think a lot of people think that climate change is something that just happens to poor brown people. And then it was happening in Europe and can, and largely consistent with what we would predict with climate change. And then they’re like, but this isn’t, this isn’t supposed to happen here.

[00:45:30] And I was like, well, where did you think was going to happen?

[00:45:34] Voiceover: You are listening to the Babblery, and we’re speaking with climate scientist, Dr. Heather Ford, who, like all of her colleagues, is trying to figure out how to work on the shifting ground created by the new political landscape in the US, as well as the shocking changes that they can’t seem to get everyday people to pay attention to. 

[00:45:56] Heather Ford: I think that what is shocking is just even though in an abstract sense, we know what’s going to happen due to climate change and, and actually seeing it happening has been sort of an adjustment for myself, um, and my colleagues.

[00:46:11] Because you, you, yeah. You sort of know that it’s coming, but then to actually see it, you’re like, oh, oh, okay. Right.

[00:46:18] Suki Wessling: That’s not theory. That’s real people.

[00:46:21] Heather Ford: Yeah, exactly. In real communities that are being impacted by, by climate change.

[00:46:25] Suki Wessling: Yeah, and when you look at the migration patterns within the United States, I find it so interesting that the states that are likely to be most impacted, a lot of them are states that are seeing a large influx of people. You know the Southwestern states?

[00:46:42] Heather Ford: Arizona has a huge increase in population. I’m like, there is no water, people. There is no water.

[00:46:48] Suki Wessling: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and it’s just fascinating to me that that’s happening and that the governments are largely ignoring that, um, the state governments and the local governments.

[00:47:01] And it’s so interesting, of course, for me to be in California, the ultimate woke state, um, where, where as the state that as governor Newsom, recently pointed out is the fourth largest economy in the world, not just in the country we’re sort of, our policy- setting is, is incredibly important. and it’s so interesting to see that, you know, neighboring states, you look at Arizona and think, what are they doing? I mean, they’re in a worse situation than California. California has a lot going for it that doesn’t rest on people living on the coast. Right. Uh, you know, and, and there’s a lot of California that’s very sparsely populated, so if relocation has to happen, it’s actually, though we have such a huge population, it’s not- it’s doable, but a lot of these places that are growing, it’s not doable. There’s nowhere to go. And so I start looking at that and then I look at also the politics of the anti-immigration politics, which could get us right back to the health of science in the United States because of the fact that we do not produce enough homegrown scientists. We, we have- the crown jewel of the United States is our graduate programs in science that bring in brilliant minds, and many of them stay here. That’s not gonna happen much, at least not in the next four years.

[00:48:36] Heather Ford: Yeah, I think that the, like the, the rhetoric around visas and, um, immigration is a, it just knowing as an international scientist and living abroad, just knowing how international science is and, and seeing those opportunities lost for collaboration and international exchange is, um, really disappointing.

[00:49:03] Yeah. Um, and you know, a lot of those students end up staying in the United States and some of them end up going back to their countries of origin and um, and that also improves the richness of those collaborations, right? Because they’ll go into their, the country bringing ideas, you know, stimulating their own economy or, you know, stimulating the process of science there, the, the scientific enterprise and, um, you know, the, the ridiculousness of like, oh, somebody, a graduate student was jaywalking and had a ticket, and now like, they’re not allowed, they’re deported from the country. Right. It’s like, why, why?

[00:49:49] Suki Wessling: That, that is a question I can’t answer because I, I guess I’ve never, I, I was raised in a pretty conservative town and I went to public school, and our public schools really emphasized that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and that, that has, is what built the strength the, even though this was, you know, sixties and seventies, the, and we didn’t really use diversity in the sense we use it today, there was this, this belief that the diversity of America was its strength. This, this sense of people come here for opportunity and they build things. And science is all about building things. It’s all about creating. 

Science is a hopeful enterprise

[00:50:35] Suki Wessling: And um, so I guess where I’d like to go last is to ask you about the, the fundamental hopefulness of the scientific enterprise. Because to be a scientist is to believe in the future, right? There’s you, you can’t do science, not believing in the future. So talk a little bit about the helpfulness.

[00:51:07] Heather Ford: I gotta dig deep for that one ’cause the last couple weeks have been challenging. But I think that the, like, I think like I have the best job in the world in many ways. Like there, like at times it can be frustrating and, you know, my, my job can be at, is at risk because of, um, cuts and stuff like that. Um, but I, I get to work with emerging adults who are really smart and really like the kinds of questions that they ask are so big and so important, and it is such a privilege to teach people about climate change and to think about how systems are connected and how our communities are connected with the landscape that we, that we live in. And I what I love about teaching science is seeing people get excited about how these systems are interconnected and how their, their lived experience is connected to these, to these broader and bigger questions. And I think that like I, you know, it’s, especially if you do something like climate change, it’s so easy to get into kind of the doom and gloom of it all and just say like, oh, we’re screwed. Like, you know, we’re gonna obliterate the planet. And obviously that’s not true, like a huge asteroid. Hit the planet 66 million years ago, and things still survived, right? Like, like at some point the cockroaches will just outlive us all right? Like if you, if you wanna get like, really like, you know, nihilistic about it.

[00:52:57] But like, there, there’s also so much hope about climate change and especially with, with younger people, like so many of them, you know, are trying to organize, are trying to build the future that they want, are trying to decarbonize are, you know, there’s a huge movement about, you know, not buying new clothing, like make, making do mending.

[00:53:22] Um, you know, I think what’s interesting is like the rise of crafting, um, and kind of like this slow, like slowing down fashion, like fast fashion, slow fashion. Like, I think that that’s, like, that’s not, you know, me doing that necessarily, that’s Gen Z. Or like, I wanna learn to knit and make my own sweater and have kind of an ownership over it as well and, um, and gain a skill.

[00:53:46] And I think for them, the kinds of ways that they’re thinking about their future is really inspiring. And I think that that is kind of the hope that I have for climate change is that they are like, they want a better future for themselves. I think that they get really frustrated and disenfranchised by our political theater that’s happening at the moment.

[00:54:10] You know, voter engagement for, for youth is really low. Um, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t care about their future. Um, they’re just disenfranchised for, you know, purpose, very purposeful reasons sometimes. But I have hope. I ultimately do have hope because I think that, you know, if anything, the, the insurance actuaries are gonna make us go in a decarbonized direction. Um, but I think that people, people themselves want better for themselves and they want better for their, for their children. So I think ultimately everybody’s just trying their best out there, so I will always have hope.

END

[00:55:14] Voiceover: Thanks to Dr. Heather Ford for sharing her work her joy and her hope with us and to her dogs for patiently putting up with mom’s divided attention.

[00:55:23] You can learn more by checking the show notes at babblery.com. The song intertwined is by Unwoman at Unwoman.com.

[00:55:31] Thanks for listening.

[00:55:32]

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