Shut down science. Close the EPA and Greenpeace. Forget all that climate hoax stuff! We still get hotter faster. Seas rise higher, sooner. Expect more super-storms, wildfires, and closed down rescue services. Disaster management specialist Dr. Samantha Montano joins us. “Stand Up for Science” rally – short speeches by Bill Nye the Science Guy and Michael Mann, famous climate scientist. Plus headlines from the real world. From the gathering darkness, I’m Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock.
Listen to or download this Radio Ecoshock show in CD Quality (57 MB) or Lo-Fi (14 MB)
DISASTEROLOGY
SAMANTHA MONTANO
When a major wildfire burned into the village next to my home, an instant city of fire-fighters showed up in 24 hours. They had food and shower trailers, pumps, aircraft and tents. They were organized by professionals. Americans: you can forget all that. Emergency professionals are fired. DOGE cut off key training to make any more.
The new gospel of Trump says climate change is a hoax. Disasters are just natural accidents overplayed by big media, they tell us. You don’t need seat belts, speed limits, or lifeboats in the new free states of Libertaria.
What do real Emergency Managers say? Dr. Samantha Montano has a Ph.D. in Emergency Management. Samantha is assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy. She has taught courses on disaster preparedness, response, and recovery. Her latest book is “Disasterology: Dispatches From The Frontlines of The Climate Crisis”. She is a co-founder of Disaster Researchers for Justice and the Center for Climate Adaptation Research.
Listen to or download this 31 minute interview with Samantha Montano in CD Quality or Lo-Fi
During the recent burning of Los Angeles, a Fire Chief credited a specially-trained meteorologist who provided short-range forecasts, on very local scales, to help direct where fire-fighting resources should go. Those “incident meteorologists” got 250 hours of special training. That is gone. According to The Hill, the Administration canceled special training for meteorologists to support disaster work.
Samantha led the paper “The Landscape of Disaster Film: 2000–2020”. We discuss the relationship between so-called “disaster movies” like “Contagion” or “Titanic” – and teaching students or the public about real-life disasters.
From the book “Disasterology”:
“Climate change is so insidious because it intertwines itself with our existing vulnerabilities and amplifies them. It further threatens what is already fragile and at risk. It takes these hazards that we have always had to manage – hurricanes, flooding, landslides, wildfires – and changes the way they manifest. These changes, interacting with other factors like population movement toward high-risk areas, poorly written and enforced regulations, social and economic inequality, decaying infrastructure, and poor development decisions, create our risk.”
There used to be a winter quiet period for American disaster specialists. Now wildfires strike in January in California and February in New England. Hurricane season starts early and ends late. Deadly heat stays for months. Samantha confirms there is no “quiet period” any more for disasters. Samantha Montano works long days all year round, and we are just at the start of serious climate disruption.
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WRECKING SCIENCE
The new Trump-appointed Head of EPA, Lee Zeldin just said: “We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age.”
No doubt you hear lots about the black circus currently destroying a generation’s work to clean up this planet. The new Environmental Destruction Agency is tossing all those rules, like controlling pollution from industry or worrying about killing off that river.
Isn’t it time to get back to river fires? The Cuyahoga River flows from Northeastern Ohio, through Cleveland and into Lake Erie. It was so oil and polluted the river caught fire and burned at least a dozen times. The river fire near Cleveland in 1969 gained national attention and eventually pollution regulations cleaned a lot. All those rules are being tossed. Apparently America was great when the oily rivers burned.
It’s an awe-inspiring scene in Washington these days. The former Environmental Protection Agency plans to replace the annual climate science report with new guidelines: carbon dioxide is good and global warming is too. That’s what the kiddies will learn from their government as they sweat it out until the next big storm. Yep, it’s a clean sweep, using clunky AI, stupidly chopping out everything with words like “climate”.
NOAA discontinued it’s monthly science podcast. The March 3rd notice on the “Planet NOAA” page says “Due to recent federal layoffs that included our podcast team, we are no longer able to continue the series.”
BRAVE SCIENTISTS: NYE AND MANN
There are brave scientists speaking up, and millions of people who honor science and it’s gifts. Here are Bill Nye the Science Guy speaking to a crowd at the Lincoln Memorial on Friday March 7, 2025. The protest speeches were not recorded well, so I took that audio into my studio and upgraded it for radio.
Listen to or download this 5 minute “Stand Up for Science” speech by Bill Nye in CD Quality
Next up is the bravest man in climate science: Dr. Michael Mann. He’s known as the “inventor of the hockey stick” but Michael is much more. A huge number of important scientific papers count Michael Mann as an author. He also published several book including ’The New Climate War” and “Our Fragile Moment”. Michael Mann:
Listen to or download this 8 minute Stand Up for Science speech by Michael Mann in CD Quality
WHILE YOU WERE AT THE CIRCUS…
EARTH GOES FURTHER OUT OF BALANCE
MEANWHILE… the world continues to warm. More of the Sun’s energy is staying on the planet. This is not a theory or a guess. Instruments mounted on satellites regularly measure this. It is called Earth Energy Imbalance and that directly changes oceans and their currents, melting Poles, the patterns of wind and rains, and discomfort or danger for your body.
Here’s the thing: Earth was hotter than ever before in 2023. It was a big jump over previous years. That is alarming, but it was an El Nino year, when things tend to be hotter. The real test, scientists told us, including NASA’s Gavin Schmidt on this show: does the heat keep on going in 2024 during a weak cooling by La Nina? It does. That means an unknown factor is speeding warming, beyond previous expectations.
According to an Editorial published in Nature Geoscience, March 12th:
“This January saw global mean surface temperature reach 1.75 °C above the preindustrial climate.”
We don’t know why. The best theory is – due to ship emission regulations and due to warming of the atmosphere – there has been a change in cloud formation, particularly low clouds around the tropics. I covered this with NASA scientist George Tselioudis in my Radio Ecoshock show January 15, 2025. Find a link in my blog.
SO HEADLINE ONE: Forget trying to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C over pre-industrial.
We are cruising at 1.75 degrees C now. This alone needs to be a headline story every day. No matter what your local weather was, Earth just lived through it’s hottest January on record.
The cause is no surprise: greenhouse gas emissions continue to bubble up to new highs. The so-called developing world is rapidly joining other high-carbon economies, like yours. The Trump boys want to cut the lease for the long-time carbon measuring station at Mauna Loa Hawaii. DOGE estimates it would save $150,000 a year. When Charles David Keeling took is first measurements in 1958 there were 313 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. According to NOAA “The global average carbon dioxide set a new record high in 2023: 419.3 parts per million.” On March 10th 2024, CO2 levels reached 430 parts per million, ten parts per million higher. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing rapidly. This will drive more climate change, faster. It is a super-threat.
The oceans are responding, and so are Polar glaciers. A NASA press release March 13 says “NASA Analysis Shows Unexpected Amount of Sea Level Rise in 2024”. They give two reasons for this. One is mega-tons of water added by melting glaciers on Greenland and Antarctica. But the larger driver is the simple physics of water expanding as it heats. Most of the excess solar energy is going into the sea. Record ocean temperatures are being recorded around the world. “According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimeters) per year, compared to the expected rate of 0.17 inches (0.43 centimeters) per year.”
NASA continues: “’The rise we saw in 2024 was higher than we expected,’ said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. ’Every year is a little bit different, but what’s clear is that the ocean continues to rise, and the rate of rise is getting faster and faster.’”
NASA Analysis Shows Unexpected Amount of Sea Level Rise in 2024
In a faraway country where science is believed, France announced it’s third national climate adaptation plan. They have 52 measures to prepare for temperature rises that could reach 4C by the end of the century.
Carbon going up. Temperature going up. Sea levels going up. Civilization in trouble, maybe going down. That’s the real news, no matter what they tell you.
I’m Alex Smith. This is Radio Ecoshock. Thank you for listening, and caring about our world.