Saving our Skins: Chapter 20. Changing Faces
Saving our Skins: Chapter 20. Changing Faces
Atmospheric Reflections from a Lauder Stargazer
The continuing story of “Saving our Skins”. No, it’s not about our skins this time. A digression from the main script with a playful diatribe about the changing face of science.
Updated September 5, 2021.
First the good news. Our contribution at Lauder to the ozone problem was in no small part attributable to changes in the way science was organised and funded in New Zealand.
Until 1992, Lauder was an outpost of the New Zealand Government’s Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR). We were part of its Physics and Engineering Laboratory (PEL) headquartered at Gracefield Avenue in the suburb of Petone, near Wellington.
With the 1992 re-organisation of science in New Zealand, we became part of the newly formed National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd (a limited liability company). To advertise “limited” in a research organisation would have been a bad look, so it was abbreviated to NIWAR. But that too proved awkward. Five-letter acronyms are just one letter too many, so it was soon shortened to NIWA. We joked that the first thing they dropped was the Research. It was one of nine new Crown Research Institutes (CRIs), with more targeted research outcomes than the old DSIR. Their briefs were to provide research solutions “from DNA to the dinner plate”. These new faces of New Zealand science would be flexible and responsive to changing needs. They would also be expected to return a profit to the Government, who retained ownership.
I was the manager at Lauder at the changeover time, and recall hosting a visit by Malcolm Grant, then CEO of Met Service that had just undergone a similar transformation. Previously it had been more cumbersomely called the Meteorological Service of New Zealand and was part of the Government’s Department of Transport (mainly because air travel was so dependent on weather conditions). It was now a shiny new State-Owned Enterprise (SOE), charged with returning a profit to the government. Quite a similar model to the new CRI’s. In fact the difference between an SOE and a CRI quite escapes me.
I had presumed that our new CEO would be appointed from within DSIR and failed to pay due homage to Grant when I introduced him to the staff as “somebody who might one day become important” (my tongue has always been faster than my brain). They were unwise but prophetic words. Soon afterwards he was appointed CEO of NIWA, so was then the Lauder manager - and therefore a very important man. One of the first things he did in that role (for some reason) was promote Andrew Matthews over me to manage Lauder. And a good choice it was too.
It’s strange that NIWA and MetService never amalgamated. There is too much wasted overlap between them for a country as small as ours with its limited financial resources for research. That duplication of effort has become even worse in more recent years, since NIWA began encroaching directly on MetService’s patch by providing its own daily weather forecast service. In my opinion, it’s time to revisit the question of amalgamation.
The main difference with the new science structure was that funding of the CRIs from Government would be in the hands of a newly formed agency held at arm’s length from them. Prior to that DSIR had been allocated annual budgets and they decided how the money would be divvied up between the branches. With the new CRIs, a separate funding group was set up called the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology (FRST). It was a great system, especially for us because ozone research was suddenly in vogue. We wrote proposals for research. We sent them to FRST (no need for managers intervening in those days). FRST sent them out for review by international scientists, as there was insufficient expertise in New Zealand at the time outside our own group. Ozone research was flavour of the month and our team at Lauder blossomed.
As time went on, NIWA management also burgeoned, and they felt they needed to do something to justify their fat salaries. They made the research application process much more cumbersome and eventually the funding agency became completely bogged down. Over time the funding model gradually reverted to the old DSIR model, where each year FRST simply distributed something like the previous year’s budget directly to the management teams in the CRIs, who decided which groups would be the lucky recipients. This reversal was complete in about 2010. Gone were the days of peer review. We were in the hands of managers in NIWA with little knowledge of the issues, and Lauder’s advocacy at the highest levels within the company was poor. About this time, the emphasis on water research expanded at the expense of atmospheric research.
The progression of logos depicted above tells the story (spot the difference between the second and third version). The NIWA logos started in 1992 with the functional NIWAR, printed on recycled paper. That was quickly followed by the glossy rainbow version, designed to link the acronym to the Māori word aniwaniwa, which means rainbow. The words Taihoro Nukurangi translate roughly as “where the ocean meets the sky”. The third is a spoof version generated by somebody who can’t be named to highlight a perceived diminishing importance that management attached to “Atmosphere” compared with “Water”. The most recent corporate version was released in 2018 after management decided that the old one was no longer “Fit for Purpose”. I’m sure you’ll all agree that the new one is much more so! I certainly hope so, because the changeover must have cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In 2012 NIWA management decided they had better things to do with the money than continue to pass it on to Lauder. There was talk about Lauder folding completely. Eventually we escaped with three staff – including me - taking redundancy packages.
I had volunteered to take the package they offered. A couple of years earlier, I’d cut down to 4-day working weeks to improve my life balance and had been considering cutting that further, down to 3 days. Paul Johnston - our section manager at the time - also volunteered because, like me, he was close to retirement anyway. We felt that with two senior staff departing, the redundancies could be limited to just those two. We left on amicable terms, and we both continue to work for NIWA in an emeritus capacity. Unfortunately, another colleague – Karin Kreher – was also targeted for redundancy, but that was probably more to do with her close association with Greg Bodeker, whose company was viewed by NIWA as a competitor. After leaving NIWA she joined him at Bodeker-Scientific and she now continues a successful career with her own international science consultancy business.
About 5 years before that crisis, there had been a conscious move to expand our capability from measurement to include modelling the atmosphere. That was an important step because, unlike measurements, models can be used to predict the future. But unfortunately, that expansion, without commensurate increase in funding was the root of the problem.
News of the impending cuts became known to the wider global community of atmospheric researchers who, unlike NIWA management, had a good appreciation of the importance of our high-quality measurements in a data sparse region of the globe. There was a ground-swell of international support led by our old friend and colleague, Susan Solomon, who was by then working at MIT. That culminated in an article in Nature titled “Staff cuts sound the ‘death knell’ for atmospheric observatory”. The views it expressed called for a response. A group of us led by Olaf Morgenstern, the leader of the atmospheric modelling group, wrote a response letter of reassurance that outlined the current situation. That was published in the same journal and together these would be hooks for NIWA management to support ongoing research. They were forced to make a public statement about the continuation of funding.
But the cuts were still extremely damaging, and Lauder has struggled to recapture its research focus. While high quality observations have continued, the in-house ability to analyse and interpret that data diminished. In the years since I took redundancy, staff levels have gradually increased (though not to the levels of its heyday), and the facility is again becoming a viable research centre, rather than merely a data-gatherer.
Part of the recent success of Lauder within NIWA is because they took on-board our advice to re-organise the management structure to have Lauder administered through the Wellington branch which has an interest in the work, rather than the Christchurch branch which did not: they were focused on freshwater research. That change showed that the lifeblood of science commonality runs thicker than practicalities of geographic convenience. Advocacy at the highest levels in NIWA improved a lot. It’s now more informed, and more forcefully applied. The outlook for the future is looking much more secure, especially under a government that cares about the environment and is prepared to put its money where its mouth is.
I still have a good working relationship with NIWA - at least I have up until now. Instead of being their trumpeted “Principal Scientist for Radiation Research”, I’m now just a lowly “Emeritus Scientist”. It’s an odd title, which I guess means that though I’m not officially a scientist, I perhaps deserve to be one. I still have an office at Lauder which I attend one or two days per week – if it suits. NIWA also provide a laptop computer, access to software, and IT support. And access to the library. Best of all – there are no more time sheets to be filled out each week. But sadly - no salary or corporate purchasing card.
NIWA continues to be a good place to work, and a good employer. But it’s not perfect by any means: most notably with the ever-increasing administrative empire. One thing that I found particularly galling - as one of NIWA’s more successful scientists - was how my salary increases compared with the CEO’s. Over the 16-year period from 1992 to 2008, probably my most productive period, my salary tracked inflation. At the same time, the salaries of the various CEOs increased at twice that rate. I still keep a copy of the graph below on my office wall in case the CEO happens to drop in. I’d like him to see it. This growing inequity is not just a NIWA problem. It’s the same in all the capitalist world and will be a growing source of discontent until its redressed.
The face of science isn’t the only thing that’s changed. And those other things are mainly to our detriment. We’re at the mercy of short time-horizons of governments who think on a three-year re-election cycle, and some of our past managers haven’t been much better. There is little or no succession planning either. The “powers that be” appear to prefer starting with a clean slate when staff depart. From the prevailing bean-counter viewpoint, it’s even better if departing staff are not immediately replaced, as that saves money.
We’re also susceptible to other external factors. At a local level they pose an existential risk for Lauder. Tourist centres, Queenstown and Wanaka, are only 70 km away as the crow flies. Those areas currently have the fastest rates of population increase in New Zealand. And the predominant wind flows directly over those burgeoning populations before the air arrives at Lauder.
There have also been huge changes in local land use - from extensive dryland sheep grazing in the 1980s to intensively irrigated dairy and beef farming now, with their associated costs to the environment. It’s been heart-breaking to watch parts of the once pristine Manuherekia river become too polluted for swimming in recent years. And on some cold still mornings the stench from cattle can be hard to bear.
Luckily though, that seems to be a localised issue that’s confined to altitudes in the atmosphere less than a few metres above the surface. Our measurements of trace gases and aerosols show that, so far, the atmosphere above Lauder remains pristine. But for how long?
I’m pretty sure this is the chapter that persuaded NIWA management to withdraw their offer to help publicise “Saving our Skins”. ☹Next week: back to the bigger picture. Our skins may be saved, but is our bacon already cooked? …