Professor Antonio Lazcano: repression of science in the U.S. through the lens of political strongmen in Latin America. What can science-killing in Nicaragua, Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil and Mexico tell us about the Trump repression? Followed by latest news – like Goddard Institute for Space Studies building shut down soon. Naomi Klein asks “Which side are you on?” & sea level expert Robert Kopp. Sounding the General Alarm is not alarmism.

Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

 

WHEN GOVERNMENTS ATTACK SCIENCE

ANTONIO LAZCANO

In 1633, Galileo faced the Roman Inquisition. He was accused of heresy for saying Earth circled the Sun, and not the other way around. Under threat of torture, he was forced to recant his views and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. In the United States, scientists are suddenly fired, funding cut. Some receive death threats and most are fearful to speak. Why do humans fall in love with science, turn against it, and then love it again? Is this a fundamental weakness in our minds that could limit progress understanding this planet?

Antonio Lazcano is a science professor at The National Autonomous University of Mexico, known as UNAM. He promotes the study of evolutionary biology and the origins of life. His 250 plus publications are highly cited. Lazcano also specializes in scientific journalism and teaching. On April 17 he published this Editorial in the top journal Science: “When state support for science fails”. Looking at America dismantling science, can we find a map in the clash of politics and science in many countries before us?

 

 

Listen to or download this 26 minute interview with Antonio Lazcano in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

IT’S NOT JUST THE RIGHT!

BOTH LEFT AND RIGHT POWER-MEN HAVE ATTACKED SCIENCE

LAZCANO: “The former presidency that we had with Manuel López Obrador was one in which signs were not only not supported, but actually attacked in a very violent way directly by the president, accusing, for instance, a number of colleagues of, laundering money and so on. I was very surprised by this. And then, actually, looking at what’s going on today in The United States, which has, without doubt, the most powerful scientific system in the world nowadays, I was amazed to see that the same was happening there.

Mister Trump certainly belongs to a much much more conservative, political position that, Manuel López Obrador. And for me, it was very curious to see that regardless of the ideological attitude, both people from the right and from the left had this opposition to the development of of science.

And then I began looking at the situation in Latin America, and I was very surprised to realize that the same was going on in our part of the world, with Ortega in Nicaragua taking over the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences, with people like Melei in Argentina attacking science, Bolsonaro in Brazil, the former president of, Brazil doing the same. And then, it came to me that the real problem is that in Latin America, regardless of our rather strong, historical connections and identity, we have been unable to develop a scientific policy for the entire region, and it’s something I’m very concerned about.”

ALEX ADDS: Obrador a Mexican President from 2018 to 2024 was not right-wing. He is considered progressive, a left-wing populist, and social democratic. But the Mexican state was heavily dependent on oil revenues. It is my understanding the National Oil Company Pemex has over $100 billion in debt. It is not a national wealth fund. Yet Mexican Presidents use that oil income to stimulate the economy.

When I look at science papers and interview scientists, I often find Latin America and South America are almost completely missing. Yes. We talk about the Amazon, but there’s a a great hole in what we don’t know about South America and Latin America. For more on the situation in Mexico, see this article from April 2023 “Can Mexico turn around its environmental train wreck?” Correspondent Louise Boyle and José Luis Montenegro write: “Mexico’s latest 2030 target to cut carbon emissions is weaker than the goal set in 2016, giving it the unenviable title of Latin America’s largest emitter per capita.”

But now Mexico has elected a scientist as President. Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo was also an environmental engineer before entering politics and a a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Check out this article on what that could mean for climate policy and action.

Mexico Has Elected A Scientist President. What Will That Mean?

 

REPRESSION OF SCIENCE IN VENEZUELA

Nicola Maduro’s impact on science in Venezuela has been complex and multifaceted. On one hand, he has participated in international climate discussions, such as the COP27 summit, where he proposed reinvigorating the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization to protect the jungle. However, his stance on fossil fuels contrasts with other leaders advocating for their immediate end, as Venezuela’s economy heavily relies on oil.

We have a 2024 article in Nature saying scientists in Venezuela are afraid to talk, many have left the country, and more want to. According to another article, half the country’s scientists and academics have already left. What happens to a country with no scientists?

 

Research collapse feared amid Venezuela election rift

 

LAZCANO SAYS: “No modern democracy can survive without science. I have to say that quite explicitly. Science provides a way not only of understanding what surrounds us, not only understanding the nature of the universe, of the environment, of ourselves, but also is a way of, making knowledge available to all of us.

And when you teach science, when you do outreach in scientific research, you are actually democratizing scientific knowledge. In the case of Venezuela, which is obviously a dictatorship, what you have is the absolute lack of understanding of former President Chavez, and current President Maduro, having very little support for for for science. And I think what they do, what they have done, or what they do now is to think of science as done by an elite. And being strongly populist, having a strongly strong populist attitude for them, an elite, a group of experts, a group of specialists is something they can quite easily identify and promote as enemies of the people. If you listen to the speeches of Mister Maduro, for example, what you realize is that he’s appealing all the time to common sense. Well, common sense is useful if you want to cross the street, but it doesn’t provide you an understanding of the literacy of say, the intricacies of ecological relationship in in a given country.

I think that science is an essential component of any current democratic culture.

DECLINE OF SCIENCE IN BRAZIL…

ALEX: Few people realize that Brazil is a major fossil fuel producer. They are the largest for petroleum in South America and the ninth largest in the world. Brazil’s state-owned oil and natural gas company, Petrobas controls over 90% of the domestic market. Is nationalizing fossil fuel production is a protection for science or the planet’s atmosphere?

LAZCANO: Well, Brazil had a superb, scientific community in the sixties.  It was growing. The same was true in the case of Argentina. The same was true, true in the case of Chile. And then in the seventies, Latin America was strongly, struck by military coups that ended  democratic regimes for a number of time. It’s interesting to realize, for instance, that if you read Charles Darwin travels, the journal travels, you can see how he describes general process typical of Latin American political culture in the Nineteenth century.

Normally have a very little understanding of the significance of culture and of science, and the same was true in the nineteen seventies. Brazil’s growing scientific community was strongly weakened by the dictatorship. Many people had to leave the country. And when democracy returned, you had a flowering group of students, of researchers, and they were, of course very concerned as all of us should be worldwide about the future, the fate of Brazil. Attacks by people there have no understanding of the significance, the ecological, – the worldwide significance of the Amazon – had to face very serious threats.

If you look at the number of people defending the environment that had been killed worldwide by illegal wood trade, by the destroying of the of tropical forest and so on. You can understand the ordeals these people face. Well, happily, there are a number of European, how shall I say, foundations or groups, mostly Germany and Norway, they are supporting very strongly the groups of scientists protecting the Amazon. And this has certainly relieved the pressure, the political pressure that our Brazilian colleagues had to face.”

WHERE SCIENCE BREAKS DOWN IN LATIN AMERICA

There are many models in Latin America of how the new science purge by the Trump Administration may unfold. We talk about a few cases from Antonio’s Editorial. Trump is very fond of the President of Argentina, Javier Milei. We discuss science set-backs in Argentina.

LAZCANO: “One should keep in mind that about three decades ago, Argentina had two Nobel awards given to scientists. It was an extraordinary an extraordinary sophisticated scientific environment. I remember when an as undergraduate student, I was reading all the time the books published by [an Argentinian publishing house].

I’ve been twice to Argentina, and I had always felt at home. And given their sophisticated, their complex scientific and cultural life, well, it turns out that Mister Milei, the current President, has a very little understanding of the significance of science. He has cut the the budget for science. He has threatened academic liberty.

And if you look at the entire Latin America, and let me use Argentina as an example of what’s going on, you see that we have an extraordinary identity, cultural identity. We have very strong common historical roots.

One thing that makes me extremely envious of the European Union is the fact that they have developed what they call the Erasmus program, in which you can have an undergraduate from Denmark going to Greece or a graduate student from Germany working in Spain. If a German student can feel at home in Spain or an undergraduate girl from Denmark can work without any problem in a lab in Greece, it will be in principle more easy for, let us say, an Argentinian undergraduate student to feel at home in Guatemala. We have been unable to develop an equivalent program to the Erasmus in Latin America.

And nowadays, since several centuries ago, science depends very strongly on on exchange of ideas, on the free exchange of ideas, on the mobilizing people from one country to the other. And, unfortunately, this has not been a goal of Latin American governments or societies for several decades.”

NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT SCIENCE? (and visa versa)

LAZCANO “I think that one has to keep in mind that no modern democracy can be a strength at this size in the absence of a strong scientific system. Science is a universal patrimony. Science is something that has not only a right to develop, but also should be reinforced as part of the politics of any current modern society. You’re speaking of, climate change. I will also speak about biodiversity, about the, alternative, developments of alternative energy sources, about the need to have a proper use knowledge and use of our, biological and mineral resources.”

IS SCIENCE-DENIAL AN ANGLO-SAXON THING?

ALEX SMITH: We are talking about repression of science in The Americas. When scientists are vilified on television and social media, like Anthony Fauci has been in America, that seems to erode public trust in scientific results. Then we get conspiracy theories and religious ideas might replace real science. How do you see it?

LAZCANO: “Well, I think it’s interesting to say that for all the prejudices that exist in the Anglo Saxon world, countries that have a strong Catholic background, like, for instance, Latin America, have no problem with, science. For instance, only twice in my life, I’ve had had any problems with people preaching against evolution.

And in both cases, they they came from The USA. In Latin America, the ideas of Darwin are proper and are very well accepted. So, I don’t think that the religious issue is that strong. My problem be is that or I should say the problem that everybody has is when you disconnect the richness of scientific understanding from public, and political policies. I think that’s a real issue.

There’s an anecdote that I wonder how well known it is in The United States, but I think it’s very significant. There is a recent paper published in Nature in which, a professor from Stanford analyzes the strength of American sciences, which by all means is the most is the strongest worldwide. And he argues, and I think he’s right, that during the second World War, an extraordinary American engineer Vannevar Bush convinced president Roosevelt that one should develop an alliance between industry, universities, and the government in order to make science an element in the war against the Nazis. And then when the conflict, when the Second World War was coming to an end, Bush wrote in a very famous piece that if science helped to win the war, science should help us to keep and maintain peace. Well, the outcome of that policy is an extraordinarily strong American scientific system as that in The United States.

Many people are not aware that, during his first term, Mister Trump actually accepted that kind of advice. In early March when the epidemic the the pandemic was, raging worldwide, he actually met with the leaders of the pharmaceutical industry with a number of scientists like Doctor Fauci. Mister Trump offered political support, fiscal facilities for the pharmaceutical industry to develop to develop vaccines. And the outcome was the very quick development of, the messenger RNA vaccines. As doctor Fauci says in his memoirs, the Trump administration will be fairly proud of the of the fact that that alliance’s was made in 2020. It’s a pity that Mister Trump hasn’t followed the same policy nowadays.”

ALEX: Do you think American foreign policy has contributed to the instability of scientific research in Latin America?

LAZCANO: “Quite on the contrary. I think that if you examine the many treaties and exchange programs that we used to have until recently, nobody knows what’s going to happen to them in the near and and medium term future. Actually, the exchange program was quite extraordinary. I can’t actually, I should reinforce, I should underline the fact that Latin America Science, was envisioned by the, interaction with USA Science scientific community. I remember a very good friend of mine when he was appointed head of the biophysics and bio chemistry department at the University of Houston calling me and telling me, okay.

We are quite close to the to Mexico. I’m head of the department. What can we do to promote exchange programs? I myself had a tremendous intellectual depth to my American scientists and colleagues and who became my professors. So I think that any reasonable foreign policy of any country should actually promote those academic exchanges.”

BREXIT VS. SCIENCE

“And we have a direct example, dear Alex, of what can happen otherwise. Brexit actually cut in a terrible way the scientific ties of the UK with the rest of European science, and that has damaged British science in a terrible way, cutting support for projects, complicating the possibility of young scientists being trained in The UK and so on.

Nowadays, the scientific system forms such an, inter closely interwoven web that it’s impossible to think that, any country can be isolated either by foreign policies, decisions, or by cutting support or cutting exchanges, and have a healthy scientific and educational system.”

ALEX: SCIENCE THREATENS POWER

Persecution of scientists is not new to America. The head of the atomic bomb project, J. Robert Oppenheimer, was investigated during the 1950’s Red Scare. He was vilified as a Communist and his security clearance was revoked. Why do we build up scientific heroes only to bring them down?

With the early history of the Catholic Church denying science and punishing scientists, and more modern persecution including by the Nazi’s in Germany against Jewish scientists, science has always been seen a threat to some institutions of power. It has always struggled to breathe. Science is not a continuous line of development, or it is, it depends on disappearing in some times and places and reappearing in others. The main barrier to better science is psychological and psycho-social. The current case in America is not unique, but part of a long story.

ROOTS OF ANTI-SCIENCE IN AMERICA

I’m re-reading the classic book “Anti-intellectualism in American Life” by Richard Hofstadter. It was published in 1963 and won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. As Wikipedia puts it:

“...he saw these themes as historically embedded in America’s national fabric, resulting from its colonial and evangelical Protestant heritage. He contended that evangelical American Protestantism’s anti-intellectual tradition valued the spirit over intellectual rigor.”

Look into the strong religious bend of figures in and behind the current Trump Administration, and you find these same forces still at work. You might want to read Hofstadter to understand the repression of science in America today.

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NAOMI KLEIN

ANIMAL EARTH OR PHANTOM LIFE IN THE MACHINE?

When it comes to Artificial Intelligence and your ghost life in the data farm, which side are you on? Naomi Klein is famous for her book “Disaster Capitalism” and here latest book “Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World”. On April 19th, Naomi spoke with Emma Vigeland on The Majority Report. On the radio show, I play a clip you need to hear, including:

“Like, are we on the side of life? Are we on the side of, you know, an animate world with humans and other life forms? Or are we are we throwing in with the machines?”

That was Naomi Klein speaking on The Majority Report April 19. 2025. The title on YouTube, is “Trump’s End-Times Fascism – Naomi Klein”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pw7nMKN7Bfc&t=735s

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CLIMATE KILLING NEWS: FAST AND FURIOUS

A mashup from the fire-hose end of April 2025 – by Alex Smith

* Is the famous carbon dioxide measuring station on Mauna Loa closing? Daily figures from the site stopped updating April 16. The lab on the mountain top is listed for cancellation in Trump Admin documents. But somehow the daily data is still available from UCSanDiego at https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/ As far as I can tell, he Keeling Lab is still operating, but it’s data is not showing up in some government web sites. Strange…

Climate Change Science Atop Mauna Loa Could Stall Amid Federal Cuts

April CO2 passed 430 part per million, the highest in last three to five million years, long before humans appeared on this planet.

* Robert Maguire reports April 21st on Bluesky:

“A few weeks ago, chemical lobbyists asked the Trump administration to shut down an EPA website showing the locations of thousands of dangerous chemical facilities.

The EPA just took it down.”

That’s right, “The Government’s Chemical Disaster Tracking Tool Just Went Dark”. You don’t need to know where all that deadly stuff is with your sick kids and dad with cancer.

* Mike Ludwig at Truthout reports: “The Trump administration also deleted the Council on Environmental Quality’s Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CEJST), which the Biden administration set up to map out areas vulnerable to pollution and climate impacts such as flooding and wildfires.”

Ludwig continues: “The EPA quietly announced that a list of nearly 70 aging coal-burning power plants received a presidential exemption from rules requiring reductions of harmful pollutants including mercury, arsenic, benzene and fine particulate matter that lodges in human lungs. “

* New York Times, April 21: “E.P.A. Set to Cancel Grants Aimed at Protecting Children From Toxic Chemicals. The cancellations, set to apply to pending and active grants, also affect research into “forever chemicals” contaminating the food supply.” By Hiroko Tabuchi

OFF AGAIN ON AGAIN

Here is how it works. Tech bros. and billionaires prepare a hit list. Trump uses Executive Orders to kill off anything that bothers his particular mind, like wind turbines, or his lobbyists, or people who buy into his Meme coin. They cut everything and see who complains. If it is CEO’s or Wall Street Kings, the funding might be reinstated, after all the staff were fired.

* Daniel Swain, heard last week on Radio Ecoshock, now says:

Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social April 21

“It looks like most Regional Climate Center websites & data pages are coming back online (or will shortly) as funding has been, at least temporarily, restored! But RCCs remain at risk given clearly stated goal of ending most NOAA-funded climate research & monitoring.

There remains concern that budget “passback” document leaked ~10 days ago, which zeroes out most climate funding for NOAA, would still (if enacted) result in closure of RCCs & further concern re: executive branch request that agencies implement ASAP (before Congress finalizes).

Scientist Zake Labe says due to strong support, funding for Regional Climate Centers have been restored by NOAA and the Department of Commerce.”

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/regional/regional-climate-centers

But that may be temporary. There is no money for the Regional Climate Centers in the leaked 2026 Federal Budget pass-back document.

* These are desperate times over at America’s flagship science operation: the Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Before Trump, about 1,000 were employed there. The previous head of GISS was world-famous James Hansen. Recently another great scientist Gavin Schmidt took the helm. I followed his work and posts for years at realclimate.org. Schmidt has appeared on Radio Ecoshock.

Now Gavin Schmidt is re-posting efforts to save “numerous datasets scheduled for decommissioning in May.” A group in the UK called PANGAEA is collecting as much American science as possible, before it goes dark.

Meanwhile the lease on the actual building for the Goddard Institute has been cancelled. It must be emptied out in weeks. This kills off one of the great hubs for science, intertwined with Columbia University. the classic building has a restaurant on the ground floor, made world-famous as the hang-out for Seinfeld and his friends. No new building has been proposed.

Schmidt told CNN:

“The work continues, the data, the products, the science will continue because science is done by people not by buildings”. CNN adds A NASA spokesperson said in a statement “employees would be placed on temporary remote work agreements while NASA seeks and evaluates options for a new space for the GISS team.”

* As reported by Politico’s Sara Schonhardt: Rubio eliminates office that oversees climate talks The Office of Global Change was notified Thursday that it would be shuttered.
By Sara Schonhardt 04/24/2025

The State Department is eliminating the Office of Global Change, which oversees international climate change negotiations for the United States.

A State Department spokesperson confirmed that the office is being eliminated to comply with President Donald Trump’s directives to cease participation in international agreements.

* “Major European institutes join race to save US science data” That was published April 24th in the journal Nature, by Jeff Tollefson. They continue..

“As the administration of US President Donald Trump slashes budgets, crucial data sets on climate and other subjects could disappear.

…After Trump was elected last year, Eric Nost, a geographer at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and other volunteers began backing up US data, worried about the information disappearing. Trump 2.0 has lived up to expectations, Nost says, by endangering various kinds of data. But he adds that the situation at NOAA represents the first major threat to core data sets that are crucial for all kinds of environmental research. One scientist who was recently fired from the agency confirmed to Nature that the websites in question include data sets used in active weather-forecasting operations. “If those were to go out, it would be really bad,” says the scientist, who asked to remain anonymous because they fear retaliation while seeking new employment.”

This is in addition to an earlier alarm about lost American climate data in Nature in February.

07 February 2025 (paywall!)  “Scientists globally are racing to save vital health databases taken down amid Trump chaos”  The mass-archiving effort is in response to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removing some of its web pages.  – By Smriti Mallapaty

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SEA LEVEL RISE: From Bad to Extreme

The show features a mashup from Alex Smith with clips from Naked Science, and Bob Kopp on The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists panel.

Twenty feet – 6 meters – of sea level rise by 2099? Who says so? the producers of “Naked Science” on YouTube. That would be the UK independent film company “Pioneer Productions”. They specialize in disaster videos for more than one and a half million subscribers. Their productions have aired on Discovery Channel, PBS, National Geographic Channel and more. If there is an asteroid coming or something erupting, “Naked Science” is there for the fearsome spectacular. On the other hand, you get snippets of science that can be confirmed, and possible realities beyond the official line. As we see, official climate predictions are generally underestimates, too cautious, leaving out key forces.

This YouTube video titled “Is a Climate Catastrophe Already Underway?” on the Naked Science Channel is provoking and worth watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7wvtZKrTuE&t=1031s

 

But let’s see what a seasoned climate and sea level scientist is saying. Dr. Robert Kopp is a scientist and climate policy scholar at Rutgers University. He leads the Earth System Science and Policy Lab there. Bob Kopp is a world-recognized authority on sea level rise. He appeared in a video/podcast from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Apr 17, 2025. The title is “Beyond the Threshold: The Urgency of Climate Change”.

From Kopp, it sounds like four to six feet – 1.2 to 1.8 meters – of sea level rise by end of this century is a reasonable expectation – if we maintain high rates of emissions for the next 20 or 30 years. That alone should flood downtown Manhattan and doom Miami, not mention mega-cities in Asia. Imagine the storm surge!

But pay attention when Bob Kopp adds there are unknowns and possible rapid tipping points in glaciers – which could add even much more. We don’t know. Maybe it will be ten feet (3 meters) higher sea levels by 2100. Twice that seems unlikely from the science we have so far. But we don’t know.

Robert Kopp appeared on Radio Ecoshock in 2021.

HEAT STORM! How it kills and who.

 

For most of civilization, sea levels were fairly stable. From now on, the sea will rise higher and higher for centuries – no matter what humans do. That process has already been triggered. Unless there is an asteroid strike, or a thousand-year chain of volcanoes, massive amounts of ice from the Poles will fall into the sea. That transfers water from land to sea. Except for a few regions with rising land, all generations to follow will assume and live with a sea always encroaching further into the land. That is one lasting legacy from the fossil fuel age.

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MORE SEA LEVEL WARNINGS

John Englander (from 2016 Ecoshock)

The Monster Climate Rolls On Oct. 26, 2016 – American oceanographer John Englander, author of “High Tide on Main Street” explains the great march inland of rising seas. From UK, Dr. Ted Shepherd: how Arctic heating creates weird weather in the Northern Hemisphere. Download or listen to Radio Ecoshock 161026 in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)

 

The Monster Climate Rolls On

 

Lordy, that is enough for one week, when every week seems like ten. Hopefully I’ll be back next week with more science truth in dark times. Don’t forget to give love, and take love.

I’m Alex. Thank you for listening, and caring about our world.