I Was Just Forced to Resign from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

This administration would love for science to just go away

Yesterday, Monday, June 8, was my last day doing climate science for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, after 15 years of service. I’ve been a remote worker in North Carolina since the summer of 2022, and I was forced to resign due to a mandate to return to in-person work.

I don’t have another job lined up. Instead, I’m hoping to focus on my writing much more, and I’m planning to continue doing heat science work as a freelancer. I’m nervous about losing my salary for my family, but I haven’t felt this free in a long time, and I’m excited about what I can do now. I’m already well on my way with a new writing project (fiction for a change, and I’m having a blast!). Also, both my sons will be at UNC with in-state tuition in the fall, and we’ve already saved for that. I think it will work out.

I’d been very constrained at NASA for a long time. I was arrested twice for climate civil disobedience, but I was reprimanded and told that a third arrest would lead to my termination (I got arrested a third time anyway). At one point, after jumping up on the stage at the AGU, the biggest climate science conference in the US, I was under review by the JPL Ethics Office for a year. This was so stressful it gave me health issues. My overarching goal has been, and always will be, standing up for young people, working class people, marginalized people, and all of life on Earth, and standing against the billionaire class and fascism. I think I can probably accomplish this goal more effectively without the Big Brother-like constraints of my former job.

I moved to Altadena in 2008 to work as an astrophysicist at Caltech, searching for gravitational waves. (Incidentally, this means that I’ve worked for one employer, Caltech, for a total of 19 years, since JPLers are technically Caltech employees.) I’d started getting concerned about climate change in 2006, halfway through getting my PhD in Physics. 2006 was also the year my first son was born, shifting my perspective toward the future. What kind of world would my son live in? Certainly a hotter one with less biodiversity. In 2006, though, I was certain 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? I overestimated humanity. And I underestimated the percentage of people who are actual fascists, and the percentage of people who are so susceptible to fascist propaganda that they support the fascists. Anyway, by 2010, halfway through my astrophysics postdoc, I became so concerned about climate change that I simply couldn’t concentrate on astrophysics anymore. It was so stressful that I had no choice but to switch to climate science. I left the LIGO collaboration in 2012, after having led several burst searches and improved their incredibly advanced detectors. They discovered gravitational waves in 2015, the scientific discovery of a lifetime. I will never forgive all our asshole world leaders who have ignored global overheating and protected the dishonest fossil fuel industry, both for destroying so much of this gorgeous planet, and also for forcing me to give up my first scientific love, astrophysics.

To switch into climate science, I started knocking on doors. The first scientist I talked to didn’t have funds for a postdoc, but she directed me to a climate scientist who ended up hiring me after I completed a small trial project. He happened to work at JPL. Thus began my wonderful time at the most amazing NASA center of all the NASA centers. JPL is not only a national treasure, it’s a treasure for all of humanity. Or maybe, it was. It has been absolutely pummeled by this administration, and it will be interesting to see how, or if, it recovers.

I started out in cloud physics, studying marine stratocumulus clouds. These low clouds cover huge regions of the ocean to the west of continents in the subtropics, and act like air conditions for the planet by reflecting sunlight. It now appears that they are decreasing as the planet heats up, which will make the planet heat up faster. Then I started applying for my own grants from NASA, because I wanted to shift towards what to me is the core of climate impacts, the parts I can’t look away from: extreme heat and dying ecosystems. I ended up winning three big grants as Principal Investigator, and a fourth was my idea and an extension of my work (I decided to be the Science PI). Each lasted over three years, and supported teams of several scientists, postdocs, students, and statisticians. The first studied dying coral reefs. The second studied how extreme weather is changing over the US midwest. The third studied extreme humid heat. The fourth extended my coral reef ideas to kelp forests and trees in the Sierra Nevada.

Meanwhile, during COVID, JPLers were almost all fully remote and more productive than ever. JPL leadership therefore decided to make fully remote work a “permanent” option. I jumped on it, for two reasons. First, my partner Sharon had just received an ACLS Emerging Voices postdoctoral scholarship to work at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina. This was a tremendous opportunity for her career. Second, we’d lived in Altadena for 14 years, and that whole time it had gotten gradually hotter and more fiery. I envisioned the heat and fire increasing, without an upper limit, indefinitely into the future. And it was already getting pretty bad in my opinion.

September 5, 2020, was an insane heatwave in Altadena, heat like nothing I’d felt in my entire life. The next day, the Bobcat Fire erupted a few miles east of house. It soon threatened the Mt. Wilson Observatory, the place where Edwin Hubble discovered that the universe was expanding. For about a month, maybe more, it’s hard to say now, my family was forced to live in a smoke cloud. We taped up the windows, brought the HEPA filter from our 9/11 days in Manhattan out of the closet, and set up for remote work and school, four of us in one bedroom. I did interviews for the Times and many other publications from the floor of my bathroom. My lungs and throat ached, and my fingers and toes started to tingle constantly. It was concerning, and exhausting. One night, we had an evacuation warning. This was super stressful. It led to Sharon and I having a fight which was detailed in a ProPublica article. I had trepidations about being so vulnerable, but I agreed to the interview because I was desperate for the public to understand how serious climate change truly is.

Despite my deep love for Altadena, I’d had enough. So in the summer of 2022 we moved to North Carolina, Sharon started her job at Duke, and I started working remotely. In January of 2025 the Eaton Fire erupted and burned most of Altadena down, including the house we lived in. The ProPublica article had made me seem a little crazy. I guess the planet overheating like this, and everything we’re losing, and will lose in the future, makes me a little crazy. A lot of my friends and colleagues lost their homes, and are still struggling and picking up the pieces.

It’s been brutal being a climate scientist since Trump rolled into office, less than two weeks after my beloved Altadena burned to the ground. Scientists are the natural enemies of fascists. This is because scientists aren’t loyal to Dear Leader; instead, we’re loyal to reality.

This fascist regime loves fossil fuels. Brute power and fossil fuels go together. There’s nothing subtle about a tanker of oil, but boy can it make things explode and go vroom. And climate change itself, all the disasters, is a good excuse for declaring emergencies and eroding our civil rights.

What kind of person wants science to go away? The lack of curiosity. The idiotic unpeeling from reality. The narcissism. The brute desire for control through violence.

On his first day in office, January 20th, Trump forced all remote federal workers back to the office. This caused chaos and suffering. That was the point. Russel Vought said he wanted “bureaucrats to be traumatically affected” and federal workers to be viewed as “the villains.” JPL employees aren’t technically federal workers. But JPL leaders disappointedly decided to comply in advance, just like so many of our institutions, out of fear. So they adopted a mandate to force all remote employees to return to the lab by October 27, 2025. I’ve lasted quite a bit longer for various reasons, including having saved up vacation and sick time, and needing to take medical leave after rupturing my patellar tendon. During this period, I put in two remote work exception requests, both of which were denied. I was approved for a temporary medical accommodation for my knee, but it required me to reside in California. Out of options, I had no choice but to resign.

I’m honestly not sure if we need more climate science or not. I know the US government hasn’t really ever cared about global overheating, under either party, and now Trump is actively trying his best to accelerate it. A lot of cities and counties, however, do want to protect their citizens. Hopefully I can still help them, at some level, prepare for increasing extreme humid heat. In my mind, though, even the smartest shade structure placement or urban forestry plan will be no match for even a few additional years of foolish, wanton, unnecessary fossil fuel burning. We’re on an escalator to a hotter planet. The only real, lasting remedy is to get off of that escalator.

Splash screen at NOAA website, citing “evolving priorities” under this idiotic administration.

I’m terrified of the hotter future we’re heading toward; I’m even more terrified of heading there in the dark, without NASA Earth-observing satellites, without NCAR, without an ocean heat observing system, without grants supporting scientists, without weather forecasters. And I’ve never seen the fossil fuel industry so emboldened. Their deadly profits. Their ads and outrageous disinformation. Trump’s idiotic war in Iran, and his idiotic war on solar panels.

Anyway, if you can, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, at least for a while. I don’t need a lot of money to live, but this Substack newsletter is currently the only income I have, and it could actually go a long way towards supporting me. Now that I’ve lost my full-time job, I will be writing here a lot more. My content will always be free for all, but please pitch in if you can.

With love and rage,

Peter

Here’s my letter to colleagues.

Dear friends and colleagues,

After 15 years, today is my last day at JPL. I am being forced to resign due to the return-to-office mandate, which JPL chose to adopt shortly after this administration imposed it on federal workers. I’ve fought it as hard as I could, but I’ve finally run out of options. Moving back to Pasadena and living permanently apart from my family was simply not a realistic option for me; and expecting my family to give up their lives in North Carolina and move back to California after four years was never even remotely a possibility.

To say that working with you all has been the honor of a lifetime for me would be a huge understatement. For eleven years, before I went fully remote, I’d bike in from Altadena each morning and I’d have to pinch myself that this was my life. I’ve been a big space nerd since the first grade, and you all probably know how important it is to me to contribute to stopping global overheating. Doing climate science at JPL, therefore, did indeed feel like being at the center of the universe.

But all good things come to an end. I’m looking forward to focusing more on my writing. I’m also planning to continue doing heat science work as a freelancer, either through my Duke University affiliation or through a private firm that I’m setting up. Maybe I’ll get a chance to work with you in the future.

Either way, I hope to stay in touch, and I wish you the very best!

Warmest regards,

Peter