Comments on: “There is no Nobel Prize for Earth Science” https://habitablezone.com/2022/05/04/the-is-no-nobel-prize-for-earth-science/ Tue, 07 Apr 2026 09:51:21 -0700 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: podrock https://habitablezone.com/2022/05/04/the-is-no-nobel-prize-for-earth-science/#comment-49593 podrock Thu, 05 May 2022 17:56:35 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=93940#comment-49593 But there was none at the high school level. In college, Intro Geology was a hard class to get into. I got lucky getting into it as a freshman as it was mostly taken by upper class students checking off their science elective requirement. (Registering for classes at the college was done by bidding on classes with a set number of points per student. I used up half my points to get in.) I do think there should be a Nobel Prize for Earth Science. Many worthy researchers out there that deserve it. But there was none at the high school level. In college, Intro Geology was a hard class to get into. I got lucky getting into it as a freshman as it was mostly taken by upper class students checking off their science elective requirement. (Registering for classes at the college was done by bidding on classes with a set number of points per student. I used up half my points to get in.)

I do think there should be a Nobel Prize for Earth Science. Many worthy researchers out there that deserve it.

]]> By: ER https://habitablezone.com/2022/05/04/the-is-no-nobel-prize-for-earth-science/#comment-49590 ER Thu, 05 May 2022 12:03:48 +0000 https://www.habitablezone.com/?p=93940#comment-49590 In the early 1970s, I graduated from the University of South Florida with a double major in astronomy and math. I flunked out of astronomy grad school and went through a difficult period of agonizing reappraisal, eventually winding up as a public relations hack for the nuclear power industry. It was there that I got a real education in the environment, public policy, and the incestuous relationship that exists between industry and government. It was time for a reckoning. In 1974, I made the decision to use my technical skills in service of the environment and real human needs, which was just rising to prominence as a public issue. I wanted to use my knowledge of STEM, computer programming, and my background in nuclear power generation to do something useful--helping to locate and manage earth resources. "Relevance" was a big deal in in the '70s, it was a time of innocence. Unfortunately, guiding your career in such noble directions was always complicated by the need to simply earn a living. The best I could do was get a job as an apprentice photogrammetrist, a stereo plotter operator. This was essentially a blue collar job, operating machines that were used to draft topographic maps from aerial photographs. I started off at minimum wage, but I hoped it would get me into the new field of remote sensing. Our customers were construction firms, government agencies and mining companies (Florida supports a very big phosphate strip mining industry). In 4 short years, I became a master photogrammetrist, with advanced experience on 4 separate high-level stereo plotters. When I realized there was little prospect for career advancement in photogrammetry, I decided to go back to school and pick up some courses in geography and cartography that might look good on my CV. I wound up in the Geography Department, a field which in those days was essentially a social science--the study of the relationship between human activity and the natural environment, at an academic and theoretical level. In other words, it was an interdisciplinary environmental science. I didn't learn much of use to a remote senser, but I learned a lot about the environment, and how Man relates to it. It succeeded in integrating all my previous academic and professional experience into a set of job skills that was relevant to a rising new technology and vital new social issues. I got my Master's in Geography by the time I turned 30, and quickly leveraged it into a job as a scientific programmer for a major oil company, working in computer mapping and satellite remote sensing for geophysical and geochemical applications. From there I moved on to other jobs in image processing software development, municipal and urban planning and Geographic Information Systems. This academic infrastructure needed to support this work already existed in the 1970s. I was just fortunate enough to stumble onto it. As for Nobel Prizes, well, Al Gore got his, didn't he? In the early 1970s, I graduated from the University of South Florida with a double major in astronomy and math. I flunked out of astronomy grad school and went through a difficult period of agonizing reappraisal, eventually winding up as a public relations hack for the nuclear power industry. It was there that I got a real education in the environment, public policy, and the incestuous relationship that exists between industry and government. It was time for a reckoning.

In 1974, I made the decision to use my technical skills in service of the environment and real human needs, which was just rising to prominence as a public issue. I wanted to use my knowledge of STEM, computer programming, and my background in nuclear power generation to do something useful–helping to locate and manage earth resources. “Relevance” was a big deal in in the ’70s, it was a time of innocence.

Unfortunately, guiding your career in such noble directions was always complicated by the need to simply earn a living. The best I could do was get a job as an apprentice photogrammetrist, a stereo plotter operator. This was essentially a blue collar job, operating machines that were used to draft topographic maps from aerial photographs. I started off at minimum wage, but I hoped it would get me into the new field of remote sensing. Our customers were construction firms, government agencies and mining companies (Florida supports a very big phosphate strip mining industry). In 4 short years, I became a master photogrammetrist, with advanced experience on 4 separate high-level stereo plotters.

When I realized there was little prospect for career advancement in photogrammetry, I decided to go back to school and pick up some courses in geography and cartography that might look good on my CV. I wound up in the Geography Department, a field which in those days was essentially a social science–the study of the relationship between human activity and the natural environment, at an academic and theoretical level. In other words, it was an interdisciplinary environmental science. I didn’t learn much of use to a remote senser, but I learned a lot about the environment, and how Man relates to it. It succeeded in integrating all my previous academic and professional experience into a set of job skills that was relevant to a rising new technology and vital new social issues.

I got my Master’s in Geography by the time I turned 30, and quickly leveraged it into a job as a scientific programmer for a major oil company, working in computer mapping and satellite remote sensing for geophysical and geochemical applications. From there I moved on to other jobs in image processing software development, municipal and urban planning and Geographic Information Systems.

This academic infrastructure needed to support this work already existed in the 1970s. I was just fortunate enough to stumble onto it. As for Nobel Prizes, well, Al Gore got his, didn’t he?

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