Read Room
The Nobel laureate picked up by idiots
Dave Lowe was a year ahead of me at New Plymouth Boys High School. When he had just finished his book, the alarmistA memoir of his life as a climate activist, I feel like I know him, in part because we both suffered from bullying at school and both were barely encouraged by teachers.
A teacher told me I was not fit for journalism. I have been working in the industry for over 50 years now. But how also did our teachers fail to recognize the potential of a student who won part of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize as lead author of a report on climate change?
Lowe writes, “After three years of misery and failure in high school, I had had enough. I was 15, legal school age, and left for an entry-level job at the New Plymouth switchboard.” His duties included making cups of tea for senior technicians and removing grease from mechanical telephone equipment. It was dirty, dull work with dangerous solvents that left his hands raw and chafed, with grease under his fingernails. And then this heartbreaking line: “But no one bullied me.”
I wonder if the bullying we both suffer from has had any long-term benefits. In my case, it made me aloof, easily offended by arrogance, and determined to stand up for those being bullied. I call it the journalism of indignation.
With Lowe, you get the sense that his treatment by the same school rugby villains resulted in a commitment to never give in to math and science challenges that beat other scientists.
He still faces bullies in the form of climate change deniers, but is optimistic about the progress climate scientists have made over the years. Along with others in the field, he knows there is still a long way to go, but he will be strengthened by recent announcements about government climate change strategies.
Today, Lowe and his colleagues can be confident early on that politicians are finally taking note of warnings that have been emerging from their work for decades — the science of outrage, I’d like to call it.
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The two of us had something else in common: As teenagers, we were both influenced by the newly minted surfboard trend that swept Taranaki in the 1960s. Lowe came in as a board rider, I as a reporter (and body surfer). While he writes the alarmistit was his first experience with the widespread pollution from city sewers, industry and farms.
But for him, a major environmental problem turned out to be depolice that he couldn’t really see. He would spend most of his life studying the buildup of carbon dioxide and methane on Earth, with such extraordinary effect that he would become one of the world’s foremost climate scientists.
I had an easier run; the pollution problem I finally investigated was visible. After some of Lowe’s surf buddies told me about what they saw off the coast, I was able to photograph what could be seen in just about all of Taranaki Maunga’s 530 named streams – the water turned white, red, green, brown and others. colors that shouldn’t be there.
My experiences in the following years and a series of articles led to awards (and legal threats). But mine was nothing like Lowe’s. He would spend most of his life studying the accumulation of greenhouse gases on Earth and be a key part of the global scientific movement to warn the rest of us.
His early family life was spent in what most people in New Plymouth called the “transit houses,” World War II dormitories at New Plymouth Airport. His family was not rich in possessions. But it was a happy childhood with many outdoor activities. His father made him interested in technology through ham radio, his mother in languages. He would later become so fluent in German that he obtained his doctorate there.
His teenage life was heavily influenced by a man he describes as an inspirational elementary school teacher, Ray Jackson, the father of his best friend, Con Jackson. He advised Lowe on the value of reading. “I read a lot of books when I was younger but pretty much gave up on it during the horrific years of high school. At the telephone exchange we read comics and magazines instead of books.”
Lowe loved books so much that he read through the entire science section of the New Plymouth Public Library and decided to go back to high school for another year to get into college. As a returnee, he was not particularly welcomed by the teachers, but at least there was no bullying and he dived into his schoolwork with a passion for studying that never let go.
As for his best friend Conrad Jackson, we worked together as cadet reporters at the… Taranaki Herald in 1965. We went our separate ways, but recently met again when he drew my attention to Lowe’s book. Jackson edited early versions. I see his journalistic influence; what could have been an impenetrable dissertation moves with an accessible flow and contains personal anecdotal revelations in a way that avoids sentimentality.
It’s still a deeply emotional story. Lowe is exceptional in his dedication to science, but acknowledges his obsession, so overwhelming that at times you can understand why his first marriage failed.
Here’s a man who spent half his life sleeping alone in icy tin sheds whose existence seemed constantly threatened by stormy versions of the element he was studying. In a way, it’s an archetypal Kiwi yarn of outdoor resilience and determination. Lowe was (is) tough being triathletes and marathoners, except his physical stamina had to be topped up by one of the best mathematicians ever to have arisen.
His account is hampered by modesty. I suspect that others had to rely on him to tell the full story of his contributions to a science that barely existed when he first got involved. The Nobel Prize shows what can happen.
His reluctance may also be why no one associated with him has taken to Wikipedia to update the entry that says New Zealand has only had three Nobel laureates. Lowe is the fourth.
The Alarmist: Measuring 50 years of climate change by Dave Lowe (Victoria University Press, $40) was named Best First Nonfiction Book at this year’s Ockham New Zealand National Book Awards.