Aug 23, 2025 02:58 AM
(This post was last modified: Aug 23, 2025 02:59 AM by C C.)
https://grist.org/politics/the-trump-adm...ly-soviet/
EXCERPT: Lysenko’s pseudoscientific ideas outraged his peers. Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist who founded the world’s first seed bank, openly challenged his rejection of genetics. Lysenko denounced him, and the secret police arrested him in 1940. Vavilov, who had worked to prevent famines, starved to death in jail three years later.
This kind of scientific misinformation and the consequences it can bring now sound eerily familiar to U.S. climate experts like Shaina Sadai. She has been stunned by how quickly politics have overshadowed science since President Trump took office. The most recent government climate report, which the Department of Energy released last month, for instance, so drastically misrepresented the studies it cited that the researchers whose work it drew from publicly decried it. “I’m just really having a hard time with the barrage of apocalypses every day,” she said.
Sadai spent the last several years working international court cases, including a climate case law students from the South Pacific brought to the International Court of Justice. Over 130 countries signed on, and many outlined the existential threats they face from extreme heat, flooding, and other weather phenomena. Some, like Palau — which could see large portions of its land vanish beneath rising seas this century — argued that failing to curb emissions violates human rights under international treaties. Meanwhile, the United States urged the court not to overreach. This galled Sadai, who advised several of the countries supporting Vanuatu’s case, including Sierra Leone and Namibia. “I want so desperately for my country to be on the right side of things,” she said. Instead, Judge Yuji Iwasawa delivered the court’s decision that countries must act on climate change the same day the U.S. moved to weaken one of its primary tools to do just that.
The timing underscored a growing global divide: As the world moves toward greater climate accountability, the United States is pulling back, once again exiting the Paris agreement and undercutting decades of environmental regulations. This retreat comes amid a broader weakening of democratic norms, said Timothy Frye, a professor of post-Soviet politics at Columbia University. When power becomes heavily concentrated, protections begin to fray.. (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPT: Lysenko’s pseudoscientific ideas outraged his peers. Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian botanist who founded the world’s first seed bank, openly challenged his rejection of genetics. Lysenko denounced him, and the secret police arrested him in 1940. Vavilov, who had worked to prevent famines, starved to death in jail three years later.
This kind of scientific misinformation and the consequences it can bring now sound eerily familiar to U.S. climate experts like Shaina Sadai. She has been stunned by how quickly politics have overshadowed science since President Trump took office. The most recent government climate report, which the Department of Energy released last month, for instance, so drastically misrepresented the studies it cited that the researchers whose work it drew from publicly decried it. “I’m just really having a hard time with the barrage of apocalypses every day,” she said.
Sadai spent the last several years working international court cases, including a climate case law students from the South Pacific brought to the International Court of Justice. Over 130 countries signed on, and many outlined the existential threats they face from extreme heat, flooding, and other weather phenomena. Some, like Palau — which could see large portions of its land vanish beneath rising seas this century — argued that failing to curb emissions violates human rights under international treaties. Meanwhile, the United States urged the court not to overreach. This galled Sadai, who advised several of the countries supporting Vanuatu’s case, including Sierra Leone and Namibia. “I want so desperately for my country to be on the right side of things,” she said. Instead, Judge Yuji Iwasawa delivered the court’s decision that countries must act on climate change the same day the U.S. moved to weaken one of its primary tools to do just that.
The timing underscored a growing global divide: As the world moves toward greater climate accountability, the United States is pulling back, once again exiting the Paris agreement and undercutting decades of environmental regulations. This retreat comes amid a broader weakening of democratic norms, said Timothy Frye, a professor of post-Soviet politics at Columbia University. When power becomes heavily concentrated, protections begin to fray.. (MORE - missing details)
