“Fundamentally, we were trying to learn about these systems to prevent people from dying unnecessarily from heat,” said Kevin Gurney, an atmospheric scientist.
“Fundamentally, we were trying to learn about these systems to prevent people from dying unnecessarily from heat,” said Kevin Gurney, an atmospheric scientist.
One of the many, many aspects of this clusterfuck that I want to point out is that doing science is not like riding a bike. You can’t park your science in the garage for a couple of years and then come back and expect it to work out. Science is, on the practical level, a lot of very sensitive instruments that age fairly quickly and require a lot of maintenance. But it’s mainly a web of people, each having their own specific set of skills, all collaborating towards a given goal. No one knows really everything about a collaborative project. Stopping funding means waving a hand through a fine web of connections that are impossible to quickly set up again. It takes some 3-5 years to set up a good working group on any given project.
…and considerably longer to develop certain aspects of a field. I’ve seen Professors whose work came to fruition 20, 30 years later. It wasn’t the person themselves, but the team they assembled around them ( which also takes lots of time).