Why this [former] NASA climate scientist wants you to stay angry. Kate Marvel reflects on her fiery resignation: “I don’t think we rebuild science without getting mad.”

This interview contains a Q&A about the biggest wild card of all – the global carbon-cycle feedback. But of course with Trump’s attack on science itself (not just climate science) its up to other nations to tease out the answer. And yeah, that should make us all mad enough to march on DC, march permits be damned. But then we’ve had enough info to do that for decades and everyone mostly goes about their business.

***Q. As I understand it, your recent work has been on carbon-cycle feedback. That’s arguably one of the most consequential unknowns in all of climate science. Can you help me understand what’s at stake?***

*A. It’s important to draw a distinction between two kinds of feedback. Physical climate feedbacks are about what happens to the planet for a given level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Clouds changing, ice melting, more water vapor; those are relatively well understood. But there’s a deeper question: Of the carbon dioxide that human beings emit, how much of it actually stays in the atmosphere to drive those changes? That’s carbon-cycle feedback.*

*Right now, the biosphere is great. It’s taking out about half of human-emitted carbon dioxide. Which is awesome! Thank you, plants. Thank you, trees. Thank you, plankton. But there’s no guarantee that’s going to continue into the future, because it’s incredibly hard to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere when you’re on fire.*

*Understanding how much of any given future ton of emissions is going to hang around in the atmosphere is really important. And it’s something we really don’t know very well, because it’s a merging of so many different areas of science. You’re asking, “What does an individual plant do? What does a plant growing in a forest ecosystem do? How does that feed back onto local weather? How does that feed back onto global climate change?” You need expertise in plant biology, ecology, meteorology, climate science. It’s a very thorny question, and it’s one that we’re not going to be able to solve without teams of people.*