State Factors

I got a meeting with the Bobs.

- Office Space (1999)

Ahhh, the meeting.  A centerpiece of professional life that more often provokes adjectives like “dreaded” or “useless”  (or ones far more, um, colorful…) than anything inspiring.  Field scientists can be especially meeting-averse — some I know might sleep in a room full of spitting cobras if it got them out of some university committee meetings.

But not all meetings make you want to swallow a scorpion.   In science, some are a great chance to catch up on the latest goings-on, either in formal talks or over a beer or two, and some are just plain fun as well as catalysts of scientific progress. Such was the case this week.  For the last 4 days, ~ 40 nitrogen junkies of one stripe or another — ecologists, biogeochemists, atmospheric scientists, agricultural scientists, epidemiologists — gathered at the USGS Powell Center in Fort Collins CO to explore how human disruptions to the nitrogen cycle and climate system interact, and what that might mean for key socioeconomic sectors in the U.S.

This was the launch to an effort that Eric Davidson and I are leading, but that is built on the energy, creativity and effort of a long list of scientists around the world.  And it was the kind of meeting I like best.  We brainstormed.  We argued.  We pondered.  We dug for new information; we tossed around ideas both wacky and compelling; we created, refined, abandoned and exhumed one conceptual model after another.  And we walked out the door set forth on some new paths, ones that should not only help us understand the science of nitrogen-climate interactions better, but that might also make a difference in figuring out what society should do about them.

Why nitrogen-by-climate?  Let me do the annoying “answer a question with a question” thing.  Do you like clean water?  Clean air?  A diversity and abundance of food?  A world that’s not tossing species into the dustbin of history? Climate change poses threats to all of those things.  And as it turns out, so too does humanity’s runaway tendency to create, mobilize and spread around vast quantities of the essential element nitrogen (and phosphorus, but I’ll save that for another day…).   Global change scientists sometimes refer to these types of issues as “multiple stressors.”   Kind of like: “Dammit, that key report is due at work tomorrow, my kid is vomiting all over the house, my dog just ate the neighbor’s cat, and the f%$#ing sprinkler valve ruptured and is flooding the basement.”  Not exactly an enjoyable – or sustainable – situation for the recipient of such stresses.

So it goes with the environment and the benefits it provides for our daily lives.  Take the biological diversity of the ecosystems that surround us.   Change the climate, and species can literally start feeling the heat, sometimes blinking out of existence entirely.  Same goes for loading those ecosystems with too much nitrogen.  It can be like flooding a poor but stable town with piles of money – there will be some winners, but plenty of losers and a whole bunch of new chaos.

So what happens when we simultaneously change the climate and load up these ecosystems with nutrients that are typically in short supply?  They’re suddenly dealing with the vomiting kid and ruptured valve at the same time, and the odds of bad outcomes can skyrocket.

In the climate change world, there’s a long list of these worries, and as we all know by now, a societal reluctance to get serious about avoiding (or adapting to) them.  But for some things on the list, maybe that apparent multiple stressor is also an opportunity. Consider air pollution, ozone specifically.  Ozone sucks:  it makes people sick, and in some cases, hastens their demise.  It also slows the growth of our major crops, to the tune of billions of dollars of lost productivity every  year.  Anybody who lives in a city with ozone  alerts knows they happen in summer. Why? Because it takes hot temperatures to fuel the kinds of atmospheric chemical reactions that lead to ozone formation.

But guess what happens if you have Sahara-hot temperatures but not many nitrogen oxide gas molecules in the air?  Well, you sweat like a pig…but you don’t breath in much, if any, ozone.  And that’s because nitrogen oxides are a key control on making that ozone….and getting those high nitrogen oxide concentrations comes from humans messing with the nitrogen cycle.

Same goes for dead zones.  Turns out climate change might often (though not always) make these oxygen-deprived areas of our coastal oceans worse.  But if we don’t dump a bunch of nitrogen and phosphorus into our rivers and then into our oceans, that won’t happen.

Could dialing back our profligate use of excess nitrogen have significant co-benefits for the climate problem?  I think the answer is yes, and that’s one question we explored in some depth this week.

Typically, in the climate science community, nitrogen is thought of as a valve on the rate of climate change.  E.g., more nitrogen means more of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide…but also more plant growth (and hence less CO2) and more heat-reflecting aerosols.  Turns out the balance of all those things is probably about a wash, give or take  - at least in the short term.  In the long term, business as usual almost certainly means more warming from excess nitrogen, because of rising nitrous oxide levels.  But on the climate impacts side, less nitrogen is almost certainly a good thing right now.  Turn down the nitrogen faucet enough, and we might be able to worry less about what climate change is going to mean for clean air and clean water, and turn our focus to other challenges.

And the best news of all?  There’s all kinds of room to scale back our use of nitrogen (and phosphorus) without  threatening the main reasons we’ve messed with these cycles in the first place.  Thanks to regulations like the Clean Air Act, we’re driving more than ever….but seeing a decline in nitrogen oxides in the U.S.  The rest of the problem is mostly about growing food (and of late, biofuels).  In these realms, our efficiencies of nitrogen use are improving, but still not good.  Happily, plenty of evidence shows that we can do much, much better….without cutting down on the amount of crops we can grow.

Such were the kinds of issues we chased this week.  Our focus on climate and nitrogen was not only about the science of it all, it was because of the Congressionally mandated National Climate Assessment (NCA) that is now ramping up.  One of our goals from this meeting was to launch a process that can produce a formal report for the NCA.  One portion of the NCA process is a formal request to the community for scientific input – some of which may be used, some not.  In our case, we hope to produce a usable report that not only outlines the scope of the nitrogen challenges in the U.S. and why they matter for climate change, but provides some guidance to policy makers on how we might address those challenges…without turning U.S. socio-economic systems upside-down.

After a great week in Fort Collins, I think we are well on our way.  More info in the future as this process moves along.

May I help you? said the scientist, his hands holding each other.
I need me some strychnine, said Harrogate.
You need some what?
Strychnine. You know what it is dont ye?
Yes, said the chemist.
I need me about a good cupful I reckon.
Are you going to drink it here or take it with you?
Shit fire I aint goin to drink it. It’s poisoner’n hell.

- Suttree (Cormac McCarthy)

I’m a sucker for Cormac McCarthy novels, but they’re not a refuge for those after a feel-good story.  Even his comical moments – such as the above recast of Faulkner’s Emily and her arsenic purchase – are typically moments of dark humor in an ultimately tragic tale.  Every character is flawed, life’s lessons are doled out with a heavy price, and nobody emerges unscathed or without sin.

Perhaps McCarthy should take a look at the saga surrounding the now infamous GFAJ-1 bacteria and its hotly debated relationship with arsenic.

Back in December, when the paper first came out, I reacted as did many in the scientific community.  First, surprise, intrigue and a bit of skepticism.  Second, more skepticism after reading the paper.  Third, a touch of scorn following an email discussion about the paper’s problems.  And fourth, considerably more scorn when I considered and watched the overblown press conference and its lead-up teasers.  No matter how cool the result, nobody likes science being turned into an analogue for sweeps week.

But then, as the weeks passed and all hell broke loose, I found much of my initial scorn dissipating, replaced by a vague but growing discomfort with the entire saga.  Yes, the paper had holes in it – possibly big ones.  Yes, the press conference and its trappings were Exhibit A for how not to engage in science communication.  But the community reaction was at times vicious, often personal, and frequently imbued with hypocrisy.  Criticisms of the paper or its authors were based on conjecture and conspiracy as much as demonstrable fact.  For a while there, I could hardly get through a day at work without reading or hearing some personal jab at the study’s lead author, Felisa Wolfe-Simon.   And some in the blogosphere seemed bent on leveraging criticism of the study and its authors into their own 15 minutes of fame.  All in all, hardly the science community’s finest hour.

Meanwhile, being a biogeochemist, I’d get people asking for my opinion.  And I found myself (uncharacteristically) demurring, perhaps because while many seemed to see clear villains (Wolfe-Simon, NASA, the paper’s reviewers) and heroes (those exposing the study’s flaws), I saw a muddled landscape with generous helpings of blame to go around.  So for the most part, I shut up while my discomfort grew.  Then came the physical publication of the paper, an unprecedented side dish of technical comments, another round of blogospheric flogging…and a new wave of questions from students and colleagues about what I thought.

Hence this post.  I’m not going to deconstruct the paper itself – that’s been done ad nauseum now.  Instead, I’ll focus on just a few opinions – or lessons learned – from the communication of the findings and the community’s response.

Communicating and discussing a cool new result is good.  Taking it too far is bad. 

Increasingly, we are pushed to communicate our science in more ways, more quickly, more effectively, and to more people.  For the most part, this is a good thing.  We should reach beyond ivory towers, we should strive to make our science more open and accessible, and we should embrace new media technologies that can help do both.

But there are risks in all of this, as the arsenic saga clearly demonstrated.  NASA and the study’s authors engineered an initial P.R. blitz that created unmatchable expectations, and then disseminated claims about the study’s implications that were profound (and unnecessary) exceedances of what the data demonstrated — even if all those data are sound.  It was both distasteful and clumsy, and a lightning rod for much of the more vituperative backlash.  Above all, scientists must maintain credibility by not attaching meaning to their data that the data do not support.  That was not done here, and making this mistake around a high profile result can have consequences that reach well beyond a given study or its authors.

Lots of blame to go around.

The above said, too much of the science community’s response was unprofessional, and at times became downright shameful.  The study’s authors were categorically labeled as “bad scientists”, the funding agency accused of half-baked conspiracies, and the lead author besieged with personal criticism.  Too often, such responses were based upon nothing more than a read of the paper, a past experience with one of the authors or the funding agency, or worst of all, a rush to jump on the bash-the-arsenic-study bandwagon…without even having read the paper.  To be sure, not everyone behaved badly, and some excellent and balanced analyses can be found (e.g. see some of Jonathan Eisen’s commentary).  But many – myself included in the initial days post-publication – crossed the line.

Yes, the press conference was handled poorly; yes, the paper has flaws; yes, some of the authors’ responses to the community unveiling of such flaws have been questionable.  None of that justifies descents into personal attacks, undocumented assumptions, or generalizations about a given author’s scientific capabilities as a whole.  Only outright ethical breaches (for which there is no evidence), might – might – condone many of the harsher criticisms one can find online.

Scientists are people – and thus we have failings.  We gossip, we overreach, we sometimes say mean things.  And that’s precisely why the practice of science seeks to filter some of the more damaging of inherent human tendencies.  We are told to leave our biases at the lab door, to strip any personal comments from our peer review process, and to encourage big ideas and the frequent failure that must necessarily accompany the testing of such ideas.  Today’s new media options present new challenges to these professional principles…which brings me to my next point.

Blogs cannot be both a mechanism for professional peer review and unconstrained open forums.

The very nature of many scientific blogs is to blend some science with personality, humor, sarcasm, community discussion, and forays into writing that would never appear in more formal outlets.  Some have been described as online analogues to a lab meeting held at a bar.  But the arsenic episode has exposed a tension between different uses of blogs or other new media tools.  In response to the Wolfe-Simon et al. paper, some blogs posted lengthy technical responses to the study – much like traditional peer review – but also engaged in the types of personal comments and/or conjecture the peer review process would shun.

You can’t have it both ways.  The bar-discussion atmosphere humanizes the scientific process – for better and for worse – but it by definition crosses professional boundaries on which science depends.  It also makes public what were once largely private conversations, meaning that everyone in science will need to develop even thicker skins…in a profession that is already (and necessarily) replete with rejection and peer-critique.   The Wolfe-Simon paper was led by a junior scientist, many of whom understandably battle confidence issues as much as balky lab instruments or unpredictable field conditions.  For many early career scientists, the onslaught of more personal invective heaped on top of stinging professional critiques would be a ticket straight out of the profession.  And that’s a damn shame.

If you want a blog or other new media site to serve as a rapid, efficient and open peer review forum, it has to be just – and only – that.  For any such site, maintaining credibility and maximizing effectiveness means “staying in your lane” — and that requires vigilant avoidance and/or removal of personal comments and irrelevant conjecture.  Too much of the discussion of GFAJ-1, despite some claims to the contrary, has not held to these principles.

It’s wrong to label Felisa Wolfe-Simon with a scarlet A(s).

Much of my discomfort with this entire episode has derived from the extraordinary polarization that has developed around the study’s lead author.  Science has plenty of flawed papers, over-interpretations of data, and distasteful publicity seeking.  But rarely do the people at the center of such moments catalyze such an avalanche of professional and personal criticism.  Nor, typically, is a single author of a flawed or controversial paper – even the lead author – so completely singled out.  Dr. Wolfe-Simon achieved unimaginable fame, notoriety and withering disdain in one fell swoop (while her co-authors are rarely mentioned).  One would think she was a polarizing national political figure instead of a young scientist bent on chasing a big idea.

Is her idea right?  Probably not – though we don’t yet know.  Has she made some questionable decisions in response to both the fame and criticism?  Sure, but she’s also been readily willing to share GFAJ-1 with anyone who wants it, including with those who have spearheaded the criticism.  Ultimately, none of us know what Dr. Wolfe-Simon’s – or anyone’s – motives and priorities truly are, and few (if any) of us would have navigated the arsenic maelstrom without sin or misstep.  A single paper and its aftermath – no matter how flawed that paper might or might not be – should not be a final referendum on a young scientist’s abilities or potential.

Young scientists who chase big ideas will be wrong more often than not.  They will make mistakes in the lab, and in public and professional spheres.  Some will have more abrasive personalities than others, and some will have better mentors than others.  But absent major ethical violations (again, for which there is no evidence here), no junior scientist full of passion for an idea deserves crucifixion for a professional failure or two.  If a paper is flawed, it should be dismissed.  The scientist should not.

Beyond the patently obvious “it’s the decent and human thing to do” that is.  For those who have not heard, science journalist and NYT dotEarth founder Andy Revkin suffered a small stroke recently.  Not surprisingly, he was back writing in no time, even about stroke science itself.  Like many out there, I’d known Andy through his writing for years – last month, I was fortunate enough to work closely with him in a small group at the Google Science Communication workshop.  That meeting, and the subsequent news of his health scare, made me reflect a bit on his contributions to science communication.

They are many – but what impresses me the most is how he approaches science journalism much as the best of scientists approach their own craft.  Andy brings a healthy dose of critical thought to any topic, and from what I can tell, won’t take anything on faith.   There are those in my field who get pissed off when he makes a point that counters their own take – but he invariably does so via thorough analysis.   As scientists, we should all recognize, respect and encourage that approach to the job.  We all joke about the Fox News tagline, but Andy’s work truly is fair and balanced. (Randy Olson, who knows Andy well, correctly points out this week on his blog that Andy deserves considerable recognition and gratitude for his contributions and professional courage.)

Put it this way: though I have years of experience working in tropical forests and a few fancy-ass credentials to throw around, if I were to tell Andy those forests would respond to climate change in some fashion, he’d damn sure want to see the evidence.  And if someone with little experience in the field told him an account that contradicted mine, he’d want to see their evidence too…but just as importantly, he wouldn’t dismiss them out of hand.  And if he went with the other guy, I’d probably be pissed for a bit too!  But this is how the analysis and communication of scientific findings should work…and how science itself should work. Let the facts rise to the top, no matter their source, try to leave your biases at the door, and never lose a central lens of critical thought.  Sounds easy right?  Well, it’s not – not in science, and not in science journalism.

But for a long time now, Andy Revkin has set a very high bar.  So here’s hoping he kicks back just a bit, plays his guitar a little more, and writes a little less…just so we all benefit from his writing and analysis for decades to come.

Want to learn more about biogas energy potential, and read a good story as well? Check out this great article from Hillary: http://goo.gl/39PC1

There’s even a sign.

Confused?  OK, here’s the rest of the story.  The sign marks the entrance to Earth University, an agricultural institution on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, about 50 km from the port city of Limon.  Today we followed Univ of Florida PhD student Silvia Alvarez to Earth U, where she gave us a tour of the tropical forest fertilization experiment she initiated as part of her dissertation research. That’s Silvia in blue below; the second picture shows a couple of dendrometer bands – used to measure trunk growth – around one of her trees.

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Tropical forests will play a big role in determining our future climate, but we don’t know exactly how.  One key piece of that puzzle is to get a better handle on how they cycle essential nutrients – hence Silvia’s ambitious experiment.  Sadly, we have only a very few such experiments across this big and highly varied biome, so what she’s done here is critically important.

It’s also hard!  These plots are full of different species of trees, all of which tend to grow in different ways.  Inevitably, some of those trees will fall over during your experiment, and when a big one goes, it takes out a bunch of others with it.   The plots also have more than their share of added excitement in the form of venomous snakes, plus the world’s nastiest ants, a nest of which Silvia stirred up for our behalf today.  This is a bullet ant – and they ain’t your average picnic pests.  They come supersized (pushing an inch long) and pack a wallop that nobody wants to experience.  Why “bullet” ant?  Supposedly because getting stung by them is akin to being shot.  Put in more scientific terms, on the Schmidt Sting Index, bullet ants occupy the top spot.  In other words, of all the zillions of bugs in the world that can put the hurt on you, this one’s the worst.

Following our forest tour, we grabbed lunch and then checked out some of the other stuff at (on?) Earth.  The biogas generator systems were a highlight for Hana, as her oil palm project – done earlier in the week – was also pointed at trying to figure out if oil palm operations could reduce their greenhouse gas footprint and generate their own power by capturing methane emissions.

Earth U is all over this with a variety of neat schemes.  In one, waste from the cafeteria goes to feed everyone in the picture below except Hana:

And then the waste from the pigs heads next door into a methane generation and capture system, which in turn provides power to run the university.

Pretty cool!

If you’re into nutrients and ecosystems and that sort of thing (and really, why wouldn’t you be?), it doesn’t take long before you come across somebody referring to “KCl’s”.  By which bit of unitelligible shorthand they mean a standard method for assessing how much readily useful nitrogen is hanging around in soils.  It works like this:  grab some soil, dump it in tubes full of a strong salt solution (typically potassium choride, hence the KCl moniker), let that salt knock the nitrogen molecules off the soils and into the solution, extract the solution, measure the nitrogen concentrations, do the statistics, write the paper, publish the paper, do it all again, get an interview, get a job, get tenure…and eventually you too can be filling the internet with stories about how your students are now doing their own KCl’s.

In other words, it’s a rare biogeochemist – at least of those who work on land – who has not tangoed with a KCl at least once in his or her professional life.  Which means lots of these soil extractions have been done, in all kinds of unexpected spots all over the planet.  And yet I’m willing to bet that the pictures below are a first for Cafe Mundo, one of San Jose’s finer restaurants:

Yep, that’s Samantha, proudly displaying her KCl’s while awaiting…

a nice bottle of wine, well earned after a week of hard field work.

And still no rest for the weary – while I blog away (and thus am of no meaningful help whatsoever), Sam, Hana and Adrienne settle in back at the hotel for yet another round of KCl extractions.  Such is the power and the glory of biogeochemistry.

It’s no secret that tropical forests have an astounding diversity of life.  This creates surprise – and sometimes disappointment – in some who visit down here when they find that there’s not a jaguar behind every tree.  The life is here, but while some of it’s obvious, a lot of it can be tough to see.  The birds are often way up in a dense canopy, easy to hear, but hard to find.  The snakes and frogs are masters of disguise.  The cats are secretive and tend to come out only at night.  And so on.  But yet you know a riot of life surrounds you at all times, and one reminder of that could be found this week on the simple walk between the Cerro Osa dining hall and the bunkhouse.  Each night, when heading for bed, we’d find the path lit up with hundreds of neon green pinpoints of light, twinkling like some fictional constellation. Hone in on one, and you’d find two eyes that belong to a little spider, just one of untold thousands that seem to blanket the station grounds at night.

Last night’s spiders, on the heels of a sunset hour at Matapalo beach (with the requisite macaw flyovers and beachside monkey battles), were a welcome up-tick from a frustrating morning.  We’ve spent much of the weekend trying to track down an action packer of our gear that had to be left in Puerto Jimenez. Briefly, yesterday seemed to be the end of that mini-saga — another trip to town resulted in the box being located quickly, to be followed only by a brief stop at the grocery store before returning to the field.

No dice.  Car dead upon exiting the store. The usual remedies were tried (i.e. jump the battery, etc) to no avail. And then the guy below discovered the battery was completely dry.

Following an unsuccessful push start, another guy down the street walked up and took over – roping our rig to his, and pulling us to a start.  Off we went, first to fill the battery with new water, then to drive around a bit to hopefully generate a little charge.  This done, we tested our newly basted battery to see if it was once again functional.  Nope.  Turns out it’s cracked, and the liter of water we put in the top took about 5 minutes to exit out the bottom.

OK, so be it, buy a new battery.  Nope again.  It’s Sunday, hence the nearest place to get a battery is on the Panamanian frontier….six hours drive away.  So off we go to the local rental car joint to get a replacement rig for the day.  At which point the guy running the rental car outfit (Gerardo) jumps in with both feet, just as the others in town who have assisted us on this morning.  He closes up shop, hops in the car with us, and proceeds to steer us to a variety of local homes, where he tries to wake up whoever might be inside, as each denizen apparently has some connection to possible sources of batteries.  Here’s Gerardo rattling the cage of the guy who owns the auto parts store:

It was ultimately an unsuccessful attempt, so back we go today to try to replace the battery.  But it was a reminder of another reason we love this part of Costa Rica:  the people.  The kindness and generosity we experienced in town yesterday was not an anomaly – it seems to be the rule down here.  Got a problem?  Move over!  We’re taking care of it.