Slow day? let’s talk about a woman in STEM, just for a change.

So yes today is kind of slow.

Between bad weather, sleeping clients, HR departments that keep on getting impressed by my qualifications but finding better candidates, I am having a bit of a hard time staying awake honestly.

Also my daughter sleeping patterns, or lack thereof, does not help.

I need to find work or a business to buy.

Last one I was looking at was a Roastery in Estonia(because of course after you fail at importing green beans, you double down on importing and roasting…why not?)

And that has also collapsed under the weight of selective lockdowns.

So Yes, today I am having a creative crisis and hence I write a second article.

Kinda tough looking for news worth commenting. But I have found this one, and maybe is interesting.

Turns out the knowledge of climate change, or greenhouse effect as it was known back then, is much older than we realize.

Also turns out not only that Exxon knew about it, but also Ford and GM did.

Amazing right?

Especially GM, that in the last 40 years it rarely looked as it was knowing anything, really.

Enters Ruth Reck

Ruth Reck is my new favorite scientist no one knows about.

She was the youngest graduate at the time at the Minnesota State University and in 1954(not the youngest woman, mind you, the youngest graduate in absolute. In 1954).

She then went on to get a PhD in Physical chemistry, cause our Ruth was probably not too shy when it came to choose subjects the sole name of which would scare me into accounting (it is what has happened, kinda, to me).

So Ms Reck gets hired by GM to run studies on the areosols emitted by car, which, the GM executives thought, might have a cooling effect on the planet and hence balance the nefarious effects of fossil fuel usage.

Turned out that the opposite was true.

I don’t know really where to start on this one. Should I get angry because GM and Big auto already knew Global Warming was real and hidden it?

No, because apparently they were more clueless than malevolent, at least at that time.

Should I get angrier because, you know, ms Reck and some of her colleagues actually proved the GM folks wrong and yet both GM and ford, where some other brilliant folks reached the same conclusions kept on lobbying to avoid higher fuel economy standards and less polluting vehicles?

No because the market made its course, and punished in the form of better Japanese cars that forced them to innovate, to a degree.

So what should I do of this story?

Well, I have an idea.

Let’s celebrate Ruth Beck.

An hero, a woman in STEM and a living proof  that humans can do wonderful things against seemingly impossible odds.

If today we are starting, and hopefully managing, to do something for the planet we owe it to people like Ruth and her colleagues, that silently made their work on simulations on experiments with a dogged determination and without fanfare. We owe these people a lot more than we realize. And that’s a shame. So next time you want to lionize the Steve Jobs and the Sheryl Sandbergs, spare a thought to Ruth, a professor of Atmospheric sciences, that with her work is doing more for mankind than many people will ever realize.

So this is what I make of this story.

I want to thank

• Ruth Reck
• Syukuro Manabe
• The Late Richard Wetherald
• Gilbert Norman Plass, who did similar work and reached similar results at Ford.

And all other people like them. For today, though, I focus on these 3 folks. A real source of inspiration.

The full story is covered in much more detail here.

https://www.eenews.net/stories/1063717035

I suggest you check it out, it makes for a very interesting read.

Now if you don’t mind, I go back looking for a job. A bit more optimistic and less bored.