Killer summer heat in Spring? Don’t worry. Donald Trump shoots the messengers. Closing down climate in NASA and NOAA, the news from Paul Voosen at the American Academy. The voice of Canadian weather and science David Phillips helps process the news. Plus a quick replay from Arjit Varki: denial as a basic function in the human mind.

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Summer is two months early in Central Asia. The first 11 days in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan were all above 30 degrees C or 86 Fahrenheit. Just listen to the harsh heat wave hitting India’s capital Delhi and it’s 33 million people. Delhi has been over 40 degrees C (104 F) three days this month.  The summer heat is yet to come!

Still don’t care? How about the first 100 degree day in Phoenix, already – a month earlier than usual. That’s a Spring heat wave over the whole U.S. Southwest.

No matter what weather you experienced, according to the Copernicus Climate Change Service and US NOAA, the world had the warmest January ever recorded. It was 1.75 degrees C above the pre-industrial level. Eighteen of the last nineteen months were over the alleged 1.5 degree safety line for climate change. We get the hottest months ever recorded on this planet, despite the La Nina conditions which normally cool things down. This is over-the-limit super heat.

Donald Trump got elected promising cheap gas at the pumps. He would turn the USA into an energy super-power. Off with protections and National Parks. Drill by the beaches, frack by the schools, do whatever you want. Because they are firing the regulators, scientists and the prosecutors who enforce anything related to pollution, the protection of nature, or climate change.

The Artificial Intelligence bro’s are scanning all government data to find anything related to climate change. They want to delete all that and fire the scientists who generate data on climate. Or just fire scientists generally. Who needs those egg-heads?

We need funeral music. The end of climate science in America is nigh. That’s not a fringe worry anymore, it is happening in real time.

REPORTING FROM THE CLIMATE WAR ZONE

Paul Voosen

Paul Voosen holds a master’s in science journalism from Columbia University. On April 11th, he filed this story at science.org, the publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The title is: “Trump seeks to end climate research at premier U.S. climate agency – White House aims to end NOAA’s research office; NASA also targeted.”

I’m just going to pass this on, quoting from Voosen’s article:

“President Donald Trump’s administration is seeking to end nearly all of the climate research conducted by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), one of the country’s premier climate science agencies, according to an internal budget document seen by Science. The document indicates the White House is ready to ask Congress to eliminate NOAA’s climate research centers and cut hundreds of federal and academic climate scientists who track and study human-driven global warming.

The administration is also preparing to ask for deep cuts to NASA’s science programs, according to media reports today.

The administration’s plan would “eliminate all funding for climate, weather, and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes,” says the document, which reflects discussions between NOAA and the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about the agency’s 2026 budget request. Currently, NOAA operates 10 research labs around the country. They include influential ocean research centers in Florida and Washington state; five atmospheric science labs in Boulder, Colorado, and Maryland; and a severe storm lab in Oklahoma. It also operates the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in New Jersey, the birthplace of weather and climate modeling, as well as a lab in Michigan devoted to the Great Lakes. The agency further funds cooperative institutes, which support a large collection of academic scientists who work closely with the NOAA labs.

The proposal would cut NOAA’s competitive climate research grants program, which awards roughly $70 million a year to academic scientists. It would end support for collecting regional climate data and information, often used by farmers and other industries. And it would terminate the agency’s National Oceanographic Partnership Program and college and aquaculture sea grant programs, which support a host of research efforts.

NOAA officials still have time to persuade OMB to alter the request, but NOAA sources said it is unlikely to substantially change. But this proposal is only the first stage of the budget process; Congress will have the final word in setting NOAA’s spending.

At NASA, science programs also face severe cuts, according to details first reported by Ars Technica. The White House is considering requesting a nearly 50% cut to NASA science’s office, down to an overall budget of $3.9 billion. According to Ars Technica, the plan calls for: “a two-thirds cut to astrophysics, down to $487 million; a greater than two-thirds cut to heliophysics, down to $455 million; a greater than 50 percent cut to Earth science, down to $1.033 billion; and a 30 percent cut to Planetary science, down to $1.929 billion.”

Such NASA cuts would require ending the operations of a huge host of earth science satellites. They could also result in the closure of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, which has thousands of employees and is one of the agency’s premier centers for earth science research. The cuts would also end plans for Mars Sample Return, the DAVINCI mission to Venus, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is almost fully assembled.“

That is from Paul Voosen at science.org, with work from Eric Berger’s report April 11 at arstechnica.com on the NASA cuts.

Close the Goddard Space Flight Center? Forget new earth science satellites? Fire the biggest and possibly best climate science teams in the world? All this is deeply wrong.

IS IT THE FALL OF EMPIRE?

In the year 410, the Christian Father Saint Augustine kept a diary of his times. The German tribes known as “the Vandals” were storming across North Africa. They surrounded his ancient city of Carthage. Then he received impossible news: Rome itself was sacked. Augustine forsaw the ancient institutions of learning, government, and the arts crumbling away, leading to a long period now called “The Dark Ages”.

Are we there yet? I don’t think so. But we can smell burning institutions in America, once a light of Democracy for the world. Big name universities like Harvard, Princeton and Columbia are being defunded and told what to teach. Until now, the brightest students, scientists and scholars came to those universities to learn and spread their brilliance. They have all been sent home, abruptly, with no warning. They find an email announcing an immediate cut to funding, and told to self-deport.

One scientist I follow on Bluesky was fired in February, rehired a week ago, and then fired again. Others have watched five or ten years of research suddenly wiped out, along with their paychecks that paid the mortgage. Big black holes of data are opening up in America, formerly the largest depository of weather data and climate science.

In recent weeks I asked guests from Europe and Australia whether climate science can be maintained and go forward without NASA or NOAA. In today’s feature interview with the grand old man of Canadian weather and climate – I ask again. Twice. Because nobody, none of our guests, could take that seriously. After working this beat for decades, I see NASA and NOAA science in almost everything. The new deniers plan to kill that off.

On April 8th, Trump stands in front of some burly men who might be coal miners, looking strangely out of place in the Oval Office. He signed an Executive Order to boost the American coal industry. Trump wants a rash of new coal plants to fuel data farms for Artificial Intelligence. He’s dumping any incentives to buy electric cars, and removing any legislation requiring phasing out gas vehicles. The electric revolution is over along with all that other green crap, he says. The new Environmental Destruction Agency fired any investigators and dumped the pollution rules, so just go for it.

The new Orwellian Great Leader says: “There is no climate change – that was all a scam!” Don’t believe your lying eyes. Never mind the heat, and all those bodies overseas. But the disasters will come again, and again.

David Gelles writes about “Climate: Economic Disaster Warnings” for the New York Times, April 10. He notes a Morgan Stanley report expects the world to heat by 3 degrees Celsius. A U.N. Gap report also found the world likely to warm to 3.1 degrees C over preindustrial by the end of this century. That means flooding of cities like Rio, Shanghai and Miami, just to name a few. A February report from First Street, found the U.S. would lose $1.47 trillion in lost real estate values by 2055, just 30 years from now. 80,000 homes would be lost to floods in the next 15 years in New York City according to reporters Zaveri and Howard.

Günther Thallinger is a member of the supervisory board of Allianz SE, the giant Swiss insurer. He told the times:

“The math breaks down: the premiums required exceed what people or companies can pay,” he said. “This is already happening. Entire regions are becoming uninsurable.”

But the risks extend well beyond the insurance business, Thallinger said.

“This is not a one-off market adjustment,” he wrote in his post. “This is a systemic risk that threatens the very foundation of the financial sector. If insurance is no longer available, other financial services become unavailable too. A house that cannot be insured cannot be mortgaged. No bank will issue loans for uninsurable property. Credit markets freeze. This is a climate-induced credit crunch.”

  • David Gelles in the New York Times April 10th.

You think the stock market is melting down now. Wait until the real world melts down too. You won’t have to wait long.

So let’s get to our feature guest with Canada’s take.

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THE VOICE OF WEATHER & ENVIRONMENT

DAVID PHILLIPS

The world’s second largest country gets a lot of weather. For more than 40 years, Canadians heard about it from David Phillips. He was a senior climatologist for Environment Canada and spokesperson for the Meteorological Service of Canada. David is a weather historian and author appearing on radio, television, and magazines, and winning many awards including the Order of Canada. His two bestselling books are: “The Day Niagara Falls Ran Dry” and “Blame It On The Weather.”

Listen to or download this 33 minute interview with David Phillips in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

David officially retired from the Canadian weather service at Environment Canada last year. But who can quit a lifetime project? He is considered “emeritus” and still has access to main computers. As you will hear in the interview, David is a master communicator.

In the 1990’s, Environment Canada offered two key tips about why global heating may be less visible in the early stages. First: the winters will heat up even more than summers. I just looked at a map of global heating in 2024, and winter in the far north was much warmer than before.

Second: Environment Canada also warned that extra climate heat might hide in warmer night temperatures. We discuss all this in the interview.

I’m hearing more about “weather whiplash”. For example, a rainy period encourages plant growth. That is followed by sudden drought and high temperatures favoring wildfires. Canada’s premier fire scientist Michael Flannigan told us thin soils in the northern Boreal Forest only take three days of dry heat to create fire-ready conditions. There have been flash droughts following heavy rains in many parts of the world.

I’ve been tracking climate media for 35 years. I remember when meteorologists and their official associations were reluctant to discuss climate change. TV weather people hardly ever mentioned it. We talk about the evolution of weather science as it gets closer to climate science, and visa versa.

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Show song: AI In the Dark

Listen to or download this 2 minute show song “In the Dark”

 

CLIMATE DENIAL IS HUMAN

In the New Denialism, I hear an echo. We have seen this movie before. Here is what I wrote in my blog in 2017… sounding like today!

Humans society in times of climate change is like a sinking boat taking on water. The crowds will rush from one side to the other. As we know, sometimes that causes the ship to tip, throwing everyone into the sea. Right now in America and Australia, and perhaps soon in the UK or Europe, the captains try to say there is no problem.

Donald Trump denies that climate change is happening. It’s a “hoax” he says, as he appoints fossil fuel people to regulate the environment, science and energy. Of course, the physics of the melting ice world, heating oceans and rising seas don’t care what he thinks. According to a Florida risk analysis agency, by the year 2045, Trump’s so-called “winter White House” called Mar-a-Lago will be underwater 210 days a year.

In this week’s program I play a ten minute excerpt from my key interview with genius medical researcher Ajit Varki on his book “Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind.” It was posted Posted on January 11, 2017 – and remain important to understand today’s dark news. Find the full blog here, and please download or listen to the full interview with Dr. Varki.

Climate Denial Is Human

Download or listen to the full 31 minute interview with Ajit Varki in CD Quality or Lo-Fi

 

An early Spring heatwave has struck Pakistan and North India. India’s capital of Delhi has been over 40 degrees C (120 F) three times already this month. Thirty three million people live around Delhi. Next week we talk with a scientist recently back from India – working on the new science of extreme heat. The risks are astounding.

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Let’s meet again next week.
Alex, Radio Ecoshock