One of my Facebook friends linked to “EPA staffer leaves with a bang, blasting agency policies under Trump” (Washington Post):
When Mike Cox quit, he did so with gusto. After 25 years, he retired last week from the Environmental Protection Agency with a tough message for the boss, Administrator Scott Pruitt.
What was this guy’s job?
Cox was a climate change adviser for EPA’s Region 10, covering Alaska, Washington, Oregon and Idaho.
In other words, if watching grass grow is too much excitement for you, the federal government will pay you to watch a process that proceeds on a geological time scale!
How tough is this job?
he’s been very involved in Bainbridge, Wash., coaching youth sports and serving on local boards and commissions. For two decades, the fit 60-year-old rode his bike eight miles to the ferry, then uphill to his Seattle office.
The Bainbridge ferry takes 35 minutes to cross. If there is 10 minutes of waiting/boarding/unloading time that’s 45 minutes per trip or 90 minutes per day on the ferry. Plus he had to bike 16 miles round-trip on the Bainbridge side and also do some biking in Seattle. Assume 3 hours per day of commuting? If he started from his house at 0700 and had to be back to coach “youth sports” at 3 pm, that’s a solid 5-hour work day.
Item 1 in Mr. Cox’s speaking truth to power is a complaint that the Trumpenfuhrer is “denying fundamental climate science.” What kind of educational background is necessary to start a debate regarding atmospheric physics on a planetary scale? Mr. Cox “holds a BS from Huxley College at Western Washington University” (source).
After 25 years of work, he’s retiring with a full pension at age 60. Having done at most 5 hours of desk-work per day (sitting is the new smoking!) and biked 100 miles per week, let’s assume Mr. Cox lives to be 100. So the taxpayers will be paying him for 40 years.
I really can’t figure out why you have so much contempt for anything and everything federal. Your response is practically hyperbolic.
Now, I don’t know the first thing about this Mike Cox, or whether he did anything useful. But your assumption is that there’s nothing anybody in the EPA could possibly do that’s useful; this Mr. Cox could only having been “watching the grass grow.”
Gee, I dunno, let’s see. Current scientific consensus (yes, “current” consensus, like all science, subject to revision and refinement) is that climate change is significantly man-made and that the effects may be significant. (Neither you nor I has a degree in any field related to physics or an earth science, so why don’t we both listen to those who actually study this stuff for a living instead of assuming our pilot’s license gives us some kind of magical knowledge about what’s “really” true.) Why would it be unreasonable for the EPA to look for evidence of climate change? To gauge possible environment, economic, and social impacts? To monitor trends, etc.?
Again, I’m not saying I know anything about this particular guy. But, unlike you, I don’t automatically assume that everybody working for the federal government is a slacker.
He’s not “watching the grass grow.” He’s watching the climate change!
Take a look at the movie Chasing Ice . Watching climate change can be pretty hard work.
You don’t have enough information to conclude that the guy only worked five hours a day.
Trump also appears to disagree with the consensus in the field. It shouldn’t require an advanced degree in that field to point out his nonsense. If someone were to claim that smoking doesn’t in fact cause cancer, it would be reasonable for people other than oncologists to disagree.
Also, what exactly is the definition of a full pension?
Gross oversimplification and wild assumptions about this guy, his competency, his personal life, and the value of an entire field of science. What’s the point of this?
Maybe he is responsible for my shower that has no water, my toilet that won’t flush and my dishwasher that doesn’t clean
Grumpy Cat, why are you assuming that the consensus is accurate as to the effects of “climate change” (in which direction? of what kind? oh, wait, asking for details that might be policy-relevant is “nonsense”!)?
The list of times the consensus was wrong is extensive, especially in relation to human behaviors. Semmelwiess, H. pylori, why would climate research uniquely or specially be immune from confirmation bias or ideological prejudice?
I find the constant renaming to be a sign that there is no real problem, or at least not one we can do anything about on human-friendly time scales. You don’t rename a problem if you really think it needs action right now. You only rename it if you want a steady paycheck complaining that there is a problem and not enough money is being spent on it. Changing the name increases the chances that the check-signers will think something has changed, justifying more checks.
Of course Phil and virtually (actually?) every media commentator/newspaper/magazine seems to get the federal pension wrong. The federal pension for Mr. Cox is 1% of salary for every year he has worked, so assumming his salary is $100,000/yr, his “full government pension” amounts to a life-sustaining $25,000/yr. Not exactly rolling in the dough!
Nobody seems to realize the federal government fixed their employee retirement system in the early- to mid-eighties, so nobody is getting wealthy off of the system.
State/local/railroad government systems are an entirely different story, on the other hand. But I wish folks would separate the two issues.
Michael Cox salary history:
https://www.federalpay.org/employees/environmental-protection-agency/cox-michael-w
Mike:Thanks for the information about how stingy Uncle Sam has become. (And, if he isn’t getting enough to ride a carbon fiber bike through age 100, I wouldn’t call the system “fixed” from the point of view of Mr. Cox!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Employees_Retirement_System says it is 1.1 percent per year times the average of the highest three years. We don’t have 2016 data so let’s assume the 2015 base salary of $126,291 is the average. That is only about $35,000 per year. But Mr. Cox had only a Bachelor’s degree. So he would have worked for about 38 years total. If his pre-EPA jobs had been at another federal agency he would get credit for those years too, right?
[And the same Wikipedia page says the retired Federal worker will also get Social Security (max benefit $31,668/year) and would have a Thrift Savings Plan, which is a 401k-style deal with employer matching contributions. So the annuity part of the pension is just one piece.]
presidentpicker: Thanks for that. The RDBMS-backed web site has changed the world! (well, maybe not, but at least we can understand the world a little better/quicker)
So he would have worked for about 38 years total. If his pre-EPA jobs had been at another federal agency he would get credit for those years too, right?
That’s possible, but there’s no way to tell whether it’s true.
And the same Wikipedia page says the retired Federal worker will also get Social Security (max benefit $31,668/year)
Presumably he wouldn’t get Social Security for at least two years. The age of eligibility is 62. The maximum benefit requires waiting until 70.
Companies in the mutual fund business typically tell people that their retirement income needs to be around 80% of the income that they have in their working years in order to main the same standard of living. In order to that, Mr. Cox would have had to pour quite a large fraction of his salary into that TSP plan over the years.
It is kind of awesome that a guy with a Bachelor’s can earn nearly $130,000 per year (including bonus) as a “scientist”. BLS says that a physicist with a PhD should expect about $115,000 per year (see https://www.bls.gov/ooh/life-physical-and-social-science/physicists-and-astronomers.htm ).
Continued oversimplification and assumptions. You haven’t even started on your whole having-sex-with-twenty-year-olds thing yet. Did this guy do something to you personally?
How are you able to keep all those planes flying in the air with this incredible weight of contempt and disdain you seem to carry on your shoulders?
It’s like you’re becoming that uncle who everybody tries to avoid talking to at family parties.
Why are there so many haters in this thread? This is exactly the kind of post that keeps me coming back to the philg blog experience.
I’ve been reading philg since the blog was mostly about travel and cameras and airplanes and computers and, I, for one, love the introduction of much more nationalist and traditionalist subject matter.
Phil,
It’s not so much that a person starts to collect a pension at age 60. It’s a 44 year old, who pads his OT in their final few years (a “best 3 year” scenario), leaves at 20 years work, and collects for 35-40 years, that’s the taxpayers #1 problem. And I’ve never understood why they are so coveted for employment private industry when they do retire? Where in this country is a Governor who will tell a municipal union “You’ve received pay increases 30 straight years. If you are retiring with 300 unused sick days, you are either too healthy or we give you too many sick days,no increase!”.
Pepe: Why so many haters? I wish I knew! I think this guy’s career is, in fact, exemplary for young people. He had a fantastic work-life balance. With only a Bachelor’s degree and without doing anything physically dangerous or challenging he earned more than 3X the median American worker’s wage. He was able to live in one of the most beautiful areas of the United States. He didn’t pay any state income tax (Washington State being tax-free), which favors above-average earners. Most of his retirement income is secured by the federal government, which can print more cash as necessary.
His letter to the Trumpenfuhrer got him into the news, but I think young people should be more interested in the background facts. There is no reason to think that his career was atypical.
>Pepe: Why so many haters? I wish I knew!
One thing people appear to be objecting to is the clear implication that this individual did not produce enough value for the U.S. economy to pay for his salary and pension based on nothing more than a human interest story in a newspaper.
@Насекомый
Get some TSP in a home improvement store, and add 1-2 teaspoons per dishwasher load.
http://www.homedepot.com/p/SAVOGRAN-1-lb-Box-TSP-Heavy-Duty-Cleaner-10621/202935861
It is indeed a disgrace that the detergent for peons get gutted, whereas businesses still are allowed to use the good stuff with phosphates. Anyway, the really good (commercial) dishwashers use superheated steam, and no detergent.
Regarding “hate speech”, those who use that term seem to be closer to brownshirts than the trumpistas in terms of their methods.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/vermont/articles/2017-03-03/professor-injured-after-students-protest-against-guest-talk
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung
Neal: Where is this “clear implication”? I have no way of knowing how the U.S. economy would have unfolded without Mr. Cox toiling away in the 5 hours/day that he seems to have had available after commuting and community/kid activities. Maybe Mr. Cox is responsible for the recent stock market boom!
The posting was for young people . Do they want to go into private industry and be out on the street at age 55 looking for a retail job? Or do they want to bike/ferry to work, sit at a desk for 5 hours/day, and then bike home to coach their kids’ sports teams? Do they want to bite their nails about retirement security every time the stock market moves? Or let Uncle Sam send them inflation-adjusted checks until their death, even if they live to be 140 years old?
>Where is this “clear implication”?
“In other words, if watching grass grow is too much excitement for you, the federal government will pay you to watch a process that proceeds on a geological time scale!”
>The posting was for young people.
I would advise not giving young people advice based on employment conditions you imagine after reading a human interest story in the newspaper.
It seems that you are hostile to science, Neal! You assume that watching processes on a geological time scale does not boost the U.S. economy. May I refer you to the March for Science, in which you might learn that the unconditional dumping of cash onto university loading docks is the very best way to boost the economy!
@philg: I wasn’t aware that any of the March for Science participants (much less the organizers) were calling for “unconditional dumping of cash onto university loading docks”, but then I don’t know any more about the march than what I read in the headlines. Please forgive my skepticism, but do you have any evidence that this is actually what the organizers or a significant proportion of the participants wanted?
>You assume that watching processes on
>a geological time scale does not boost
>the U.S. economy.
I am assuming no such thing. I am claiming that the words I quoted were intended to imply that this individual’s work at USEPA was not of much value. If I have misunderstood the meaning of that passage, a simple, non-sarcastic clarification of what was actually meant would be useful for me and the others who apparently misunderstood them.
It seems that you are hostile to science, Neal! You assume that watching processes on a geological time scale does not boost the U.S. economy. May I refer you to the March for Science, in which you might learn that the unconditional dumping of cash onto university loading docks is the very best way to boost the economy!
Where’s does this focus on boosting the economy come from? When the EPA reduced the amount smog in American cities or ordered the end of lead in gasoline, that may or may not have “boosted the economy,” but who cares?
@pepe vulgaris
> Why are there so many haters in this thread? This is exactly the kind of post that keeps
> me coming back to the philg blog experience.
>
> I’ve been reading philg since the blog was mostly about travel and cameras and
> airplanes and computers and, I, for one, love the introduction of much more nationalist
> and traditionalist subject matter.
First, grown-ass men and women should leave spinelessly dismissive words like “haters” to twelve-year-olds.
Second, not that it matters, but I’ve been following Greenspun since the desktop publishing book days. He’s written a lot, and I haven’t always agreed with him but his past opinions were clear and substantiated and I could respect them.
I don’t know if he’s using his blog to have fun at everyone’s expense (trolling) or he’s just grown old and sour. His later posts rip people apart, but he won’t put himself on the line by backing it up with his opinion. More often than not, I leave wondering if the only point was to make someone look bad and he doesn’t really have an opinion. That feels scummy.
Maybe you’re right, and I just don’t gel with the aggression and belligerence that seems to go hand-in-hand with this “nationalist and traditionalist subject matter.” Maybe it’s all just arguing for the sake of arguing.
Whichever it is, he sure seems to be increasingly gleeful about it.
Hark! Is that the lowing of oxen lately gored?
@The Practical Conservative:
“Grumpy Cat, why are you assuming that the consensus is accurate as to the effects of “climate change” (in which direction? of what kind? oh, wait, asking for details that might be policy-relevant is “nonsense”!)?”
If you don’t trust the scientists, it’s not hard to work through the reasoning yourself. It’s just conservation of energy. No matter how complex the Earth’s climate is, it can’t violate conservation of energy.
1. We’ve basically got a system with one input, solar energy, and one output, thermal radiation. A warm object radiates heat into space (you can feel thermal radiation by holding your hand over a hot stove). A warmer object radiates more heat, so the Earth warms up to a temperature (“equilibrium temperature”) where the incoming solar energy and outgoing thermal radiation balance each other. (If input > output, energy accumulates and the Earth warms up; if input < output, energy is lost and the Earth cools down.) Fourier figured this out in 1824.
2. The atmosphere reduces the rate of outgoing thermal radiation. Specifically, H2O and CO2 molecules absorb infrared and re-radiate it in all directions, including back downward. Therefore the equilibrium temperature where input = output is higher than it would be without an atmosphere (compare the Earth to the Moon, which is at the same distance from the Sun, but lacks an atmosphere). Tyndall found in 1862 that a vessel filled with CO2 is opaque to infrared.
Tyndall compares the atmosphere to a dam thrown across a stream: it causes heat to accumulate until it reaches the equilibrium temperature, just as water accumulates behind the dam until it reaches the top.
3. We’re steadily raising the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. This further reduces the outgoing rate of thermal radiation. (We can directly measure the infrared re-radiated by the atmosphere, and we can see that it’s increasing.) Therefore, we’re raising the equilibrium temperature: the Earth has to warm up until input = output again.
To use Tyndall’s analogy, we’re rapidly raising the top of the dam (the equilibrium temperature). This means that additional heat will slowly accumulate, like water behind the dam, until it reaches the top. But by that time the top will be even higher, because we haven’t stopped burning fossil fuels.
If you don’t think the additional CO2 is causing global warming, where do you think the extra energy is going?
4. If you think global warming is happening, but it’s not caused by CO2, where do you think the extra energy is coming from?
Again, it’s basically a system with one input and one output. We know from the geological record that the Earth has had dramatic swings in climate over long periods of time (tens of thousands of years) due to changes in the Sun’s brightness, slow variations in the Earth’s orbit, and the reflectiveness of the Earth. But we can measure all of these things, and over the last 100 years or so, and the next 100-200 years or so, they’re hardly changing. The only thing that’s changing is atmospheric composition.
5. How do we know that warming won’t be so slow as to be imperceptible?
There’s a 2012 paper which does the following:
6. If you ask economists how to deal with the greenhouse gas problem while minimizing the economic cost, they’re pretty much unanimous: use a carbon tax that steadily increases, offset by income tax cuts (or forgone income tax increases).
Global warming from burned fossil fuels is a moot question because we’re just about out of fossil fuels. The headlines you see about massive shale and tar-sands reserves and so-forth are nonsense. That stuff is almost all unrecoverable. You have to burn as much energy to extract it as the ultimate product provides.
Twenty years ago global warming from coal and oil and natgas might have been an interesting subject. But now we’re in the situation that inside the next 15 years everyone will be begging for more oil and coal, watching the economy rapidly contract, and not giving a damn about the climate. The global warming debate is going to disappear very quickly, watch.
Great post, thanks Phil. Having previously lived right in that neighborhood of Seattle by the federal building, that’s a perfect description of the common short work day in the neighborhood.
At the same time that this may offer a great perspective for someone to learn about a potential government opportunity, the private sector in the Puget Sound region could easily net a career individual with federal government skills and a scientific mind an additional $3-6 million dollars over that time, not accounting for stock appreciation.
With just a bachelor’s degree, a little honing of skills over the years, Mr. Cox could have found his way into the Microsoft world as a technocrat; while not earning a pension, he would have been enjoying a base salary after a decade or so of $170,000-$300,000, eligibility for an annual bonus in the 20-60% range of that salary, and typical stock-based compensation from $60,000-240,000 per year easily, all with that same 5-hour work day; with any luck, there are opportunities for advancement into director and leadership roles with more appropriately inflated compensation opportunities, though this could raise the chances of an expensive divorce or child support situation with that much money on the table.
Unfortunately it would be an additional 15 mile cycle in one direction to work from the ferry terminal, through the International District, to the Mountains to Sound Greenway, Mercer Island, and weaving through Bellevue to get to the campus. The common tactic used by mid-career technocrats at Microsoft today who live in the nearby islands is to negotiate “remote work” arrangement, enabling the individual to work from their home a few hours a day, stopping by the office a few times a month.
Jeff: Great idea, and thanks for the on-the-ground perspective.
One big issue, though: How can a 22-year-old predict which company is going to be around 38 years later? In retrospect Friendster was dumb and Facebook is obviously worth $trillions, but was that obvious when the companies were at equivalent stages of development? Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems both seemed promising and yet both resulted in a lot of involuntary career terminations. Who knew that one guy in Finland (Linus Torvalds) could trash multi-billion dollar enterprises in Silicon Valley? Microsoft seems invulnerable today, but what if another company came up with a substantially better desktop OS? Something that learned all of your repetitive actions and began doing much of your work for you?
It is not a fact that the scientist publicly lecturing his former employer can code or design and setup software or hardware systems. Working in military, it would be tough for someone become GC14 only with bachelor. DoD encourages employees get graduate degrees, reimbursed, at least used to. Why is EPA different? Maybe it is not interested in real science? Or maybe the scientist was not? It would be very tough for someone with only BS to be anything in pure or applied science. I do not know any examples.
Started from his house at 0700? That would be a luxury.