"I Was Just Forced to Resign from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory": Climate Scientist Peter Kalmus

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AMY GOODMAN : This is Democracy Now! , democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report .

The planet is quickly warming, and severe impacts from climate change will continue to accelerate unless action is taken immediately to prevent irreversible changes. That’s according to the U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, calling for urgent action. In a video released last week, he cited a new update from the World Meteorological Organization that warns El Niño is expected to arrive in the coming months, with 90% certainty.

SECRETARY - GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES : The science is clear: El Niño is arriving on our doorstep in the coming months, with 90% certainty. The world must treat it as the urgent climate warning it is. El Niño conditions will pour fuel on the fire of a warming world. Impacts will hit even harder, travel even further and cross borders with devastating speeds. The only effective response is climate action equal to the crisis, ending the addiction to fossil fuels, accelerating the shift to renewables, protecting the most vulnerable and delivering early warning systems for all.

AMY GOODMAN : Well, even as the climate news gets more dire, on Monday, climate scientist Peter Kalmus says he was forced to resign from his job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. His new Substack post is titled “I Was Just Forced to Resign from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory: This administration would love for science to just go away.” He writes he “started getting concerned about climate change in 2006,” and at the time, he was sure “that by 2020 humanity would be on the same page about climate change, and well on its way to solving it for good. How could I have been so incredibly wrong?” he writes. “I overestimated humanity,” he says.

For more, we go to Chapel Hill, North Carolina. We are joined by climate scientist and activist Peter Kalmus, for the first time, Peter, not identifying you as a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab.

Why did you resign?

PETER KALMUS : Yeah, thanks for having me back. I can speak freely for the first time on your show.

Well, the surface reason for my resignation was a mandate to return to in-person work at the laboratory. So, I’ve been fully remote in North Carolina for four years. A big part of the reason I left Altadena in 2022 to work remotely was because it was getting so hot there and so fiery. There’s a fire that made a smoke cloud that encompassed my entire house and my family for like — I think it was over a month, it was about a month, in 2020, the Bobcat Fire. And that got kicked off by a really strong heat wave, like heat that I’ve never felt before. Birds were literally falling off of trees while I was walking on the sidewalk. It was just remarkable. It was too much for me.

And obviously, as a climate scientist, I can see that we’re on this escalator towards warmer and warmer and warmer temperatures, and world leaders are not doing anything about it. This idiotic regime now in the United States, led by Trump, still thinks it’s a hoax. It is waging a war against solar panels. It’s just remarkably foolish.

So, that was part of why I left. And then, you know, two years after I left, the house that I had lived in and my entire neighborhood, my town of Altadena, burned down in the Eden Fire.

So, you know, it’s still getting worse. We’re still burning fossil fuels. We’re accelerating the burning of fossil fuels. This industry, oil, coal, gas industry, has been dishonest for half a century, blocking action, bribing politicians, playing dirty, lying through their teeth, going and testifying in front of Congress, saying that they’re not going to stop lying. They’re still doing it. Their ads are ridiculous right now, and the greenwashing that they do —

AMY GOODMAN : Can you explain —

PETER KALMUS : — is absolutely insane.

AMY GOODMAN : Can you explain what NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab does, what you did there, and what you’re going to do now, Peter?

PETER KALMUS : Yeah. Thanks for that. JPL is, in my opinion, the — well, at least it was — the crown jewel in the NASA system of centers. So, it’s this beautiful campus in Pasadena, California, nestled in the hills there. And it is responsible for a huge fraction of the Earth-observing satellites that monitor climate change and monitor weather around the world. The public doesn’t really realize what a huge role JPL has played in monitoring the Earth.

But more famously, it’s responsible for putting rovers on Mars. You know, it does these spectacular landings on Mars. It explores, you know, the planets of the solar system and its moons. So, David mentioned the Europa Clipper. That’s a JPL mission, which is going to study the ocean under Europa. And he’s absolutely right, by the way, that we tend to really take for granted the boisterous, gorgeous life on planet Earth, in a way that I think is — you know, we have to stop doing. It’s remarkable how we take it for granted. JPL also…