Over at Dot Earth, NCAR’s Kevin Trenberth gets his parting shots in on the fired Mickey Glantz, and in the process changes the focus from a discussion programmatic priorities into something a bit more personal. Kevin apparently didn’t get the memo explaining that Mickey was fired as a member of a low-priority program at NCAR, and not for the people with whom or manner in which he chose to collaborate with physical and social scientists. Most troubling about Kevin’s piling on is his assertion that Mickey’s failure to participate in the IPCC somehow lowered his standing at NCAR:

Physical and social sciences are indeed different in several ways. In physical science we deal a lot more with facts and numbers, and the theories and analysis are based on physical laws. In climate science, we have been able to state that global warming is unequivocal (to paraphrase from the IPCC report) and will continue to some degree for decades regardless of mitigating actions. And so everyone will have to adapt to and cope with the effects of climate change. How we best do that is widely recognized at NCAR and elsewhere as a major issue requiring interactions between physical scientists, who provide the best information possible, and social scientists, who are involved in how best society can adapt to the projected changes to minimize impacts, reduce vulnerability, and best use the information to improve decisions. Many of us are engaged in these aspects, including through IPCC, perhaps even more than Mickey? In fact there are many other social scientists at NCAR and it is not fair to say that social science has been “removed”. Unlike Mickey, many are heavily engaged in the IPCC process.

Kevin explains that he wasn’t part of the management team that terminated the Center for Capacity Building, but in this letter defending the decision on behalf of his employer, is it really a good idea to suggest Mickey’s failure to participate in the IPCC as part of the justification for his firing?

Kevin sees “many other social scientists at NCAR”. By my count, there are four people trained as social scientists at NCAR on its “scientist ladder” (i.e., based-funded scientists on the tenure track). There are 2 economists (Miller, Lazo), one population scientist (O’Neill), and one sociologist (Romero Lankao). There are approximately 110 such scientists on the tenure track at NCAR. Where Kevin sees “many” I see four — perhaps the difference betweens seeing four social scientists as “many” versus “few” lies at the heart of Glantz’s beef with his former employer. I will be happy to be corrected if there are other social scientists on the scientific ladder I don’t know of.

Final note: Kevin’s inane comment that physical scientists deal more with “facts and numbers” reveals some of the cultural divide that Glantz and others have discussed.