American scientists say their work is under attack and ask Canadians for help

CBC

20-02-2025

CBC News | Posted: February 20, 2025 7:00 PM | Last Updated: Just now
Also: Yukon craftsman makes beautiful furniture from trees killed by wildfires
Image | What on Earth logo slimmer
(Sködt McNalty/CBC)
Open Image in New Tab
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox every Thursday.
This week:
American scientists say their work is under attack and ask Canadians for help
Image | Gretchen Goldman
Caption: Gretchen Goldman, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, hopes the courts will protect U.S. scientific institutions and research. (Jaela Bernstien/CBC)
While fielding questions at the front of a packed conference room in Boston, Gretchen Goldman checks her phone.
She's waiting to find out if her husband will be fired in the latest round of layoffs of federal scientists under U.S. President Donald Trump.
A month ago, Goldman voluntarily left her own government job in D.C. as climate change research and technology director at the Department of Transportation.
She saw the writing on the wall.
Goldman is now the president of an advocacy group, the Union of Concerned Scientists, and can speak out while many of her former colleagues cannot over fear of losing their jobs.
"Science is under attack in the United States," she said in an interview after the panel. "I think we're seeing a lot of fear and people not feeling they can speak up."
American and international scientists from various fields across government, academic, industry and research institutions gathered in Boston for the three-day annual conference hosted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Some of the scientists were guarded around media, afraid to say too much.
Others were still processing the breakneck speed of widespread layoffs, slashing of research-funding, data purges and new restrictions imposed on U.S. scientific institutions like the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
AAAS program organizers had to scramble for last-minute substitutions to replace federal scientists who dropped out because they'd suddenly been banned from travelling.
Many who attended said they expected changes after the election, but not so dramatic or sudden.
"We're kind of still, I think, in a bit of a state of shock. Now we have to recover from that and go into action mode," said Rémi Quirion, president of the International Network for Governmental Scientific Advice.
What form that action should take depends on who you ask.
Quirion, who also advises the Quebec provincial government, said Canada can help by recruiting — encouraging scientists who left for jobs and resources in the U.S. to return home.
Within the U.S., there's momentum building to advocate and lobby congress.
AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh told a crowd gathered for the Boston conference's opening ceremony that there will be action — both quiet and loud — in the coming weeks.
He avoided specifics, but said the AAAS would be working hard because "500 years of enlightenment is something you don't throw away."
"We're gathered in a moment of turmoil. And I don't want to sugarcoat that," Parikh said.
"Science and engineering and medicine are sources for truth and facts and objectivity. We live in a time when that seems under threat. And we have to be able to say that."
Matte Heide, director of communication strategy for the Union of Concerned Scientists, also called on the international scientific community to speak out.
"If some people stand up, those who are able and willing to … it builds courage," he said.
Heide is especially worried about the preservation of public access to weather and climate information.
That concern is shared by Doug Wallace, the associate scientific director of the Marine Environmental Observation, Prediction and Response Network (MEOPAR).
He said it would be "extremely disruptive" for Americans and Canadians if NOAA data goes offline or disappears.
Wallace, based at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said he's already reached out to American counterparts at NOAA to offer help saving vulnerable datasets.
At the end of the conference, CBC News asked Gretchen Goldman if she'd heard back from her husband.
She told me he still has his job, for now.
Goldman also said she refuses to give up hope.
"A lot of it is just rhetoric at this stage. It's playing out in the courts, we're going to see what actually holds."
— Jaela Bernstien
Check out our podcast and radio show. In our newest episode: Sociologist Dana Fisher says disasters like the Los Angeles wildfires and Hurricane Helene can spur community action in the face of the climate crisis. The author of Saving Ourselves: From Climate Shock to Climate Action says individuals coming up with solutions for resilient communities are what give her "apocalyptic optimism." She shares how we can use the idea in our own personal fight against the climate crisis.
Media Audio | What On Earth : How to become an 'apocalyptic optimist' during scary times
Open Full Embed in New Tab Loading external pages may require significantly more data usage.
What On Earth drops new podcast episodes every Wednesday and Saturday. You can find them on your favourite podcast app or on demand at CBC Listen. The radio show airs Sundays at 11 a.m., 11:30 a.m. in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Reader feedback
Rebecca Lamb wrote: "Hi, I am from Southern Saskatchewan near the SaskPower coal plant…. I was wondering why the heat and steam generated from the plant is not piped
underground to local communities, homes and businesses. This free energy
would create a secondary income for SaskPower and cleaner energy."
Feeding"waste heat" into networks for heating buildings is a climate-friendly idea that's getting more and more interest these days and being used in many parts of Canada..
In fact, SaskPower says it already does this. "A great example of this would be our Shand Greenhouse, which is directly next to Shand Power Station. Waste heat from Shand is used to heat the greenhouse year-round. At our Cory Cogeneration Station, waste heat is used by Nutrien at the Cory Potash Mine for their process."
But what about Rebecca's suggestion of using heat from the coal plant (or other thermal power plants)? "There are a few reasons why it wouldn't be feasible," SaskPower said in an email. "The major issue is the distance the heat would need to travel and still remain hot enough to be useful. In addition, most power stations are at the edge of or well outside the closest community, so significant new infrastructure would need to be constructed and maintained by both the company and the buildings receiving this heat."
Write us at [e-mail]. (And feel free to send photos, too!)
The Big Picture: Haunting owl in a haunting habitat
Image | The Edge of Night
Caption: (Jess Findlay/Wildlife Photographer of the Year)
Open Image in New Tab
After spotting this dilapidated barn on a blueberry farm outside Vancouver in 2019, photographer Jess Findlay knocked on the door of a nearby home. The man who answered gave Findlay permission to explore, but warned him about the "really crazy noises coming from back there." Findlay had a good feeling about what he would find. A few nights later, the dramatic sight of a male barn owl soaring through the dark window of the barn "left a real mark on me," he recalled. He spent 10 nights trying to capture what he had seen with his camera, a flash and a sensor to time everything just right.
The result is a reminder that "every little bit of habitat" for wildlife – even manmade structures such as old barns – "makes a huge difference," he said. However, even these kinds of habitats are in danger. The next time Findlay drove by a couple of years later, the barn was gone.
Findlay's photo, Edge of Night, was one of , in the People's Choice Award category of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, announced by competition organizer, the Natural History Museum in London, earlier this month.
– Emily Chung
Yukoner makes chairs from trees killed by wildfires
Image | Yukon woodworker Ulrich Trachsel
Caption: Ulrich Trachsel sits beside a chair he made of local aspen. The owner of Ibex Valley Wood Products says he sources deadwood from burn areas to make furniture. (Julien Greene/CBC)
Open Image in New Tab
From Ulrich Trachsel's driveway, just west of Whitehorse, you can see the deep orange slash of the Takhini burn — a visible scar from a past wildfire.
Stands of trees that even from a distance look like toothpicks fringe the spine of a hill. Trachsel uses trees like these to make furniture.
"I just see all this wood around and I want to use it," he said. "I just started to really appreciate dead standing wood and how convenient it is — and also how pretty it is."
Most lumber sold in the Yukon is trucked up from places like Alberta and British Columbia. Trachsel, the owner of Ibex Valley Wood Products, said that doesn't work for him — the costs to the environment and climate are too great.
Trachsel cuts deals with local harvesters targeting dead trees mostly destined for someone's woodstove. Right now, the majority of wood commercially harvested in the Yukon is sold as firewood.
By doing this, Trachsel spares live forests and avoids greenhouse gas emissions linked to transportation.
The wood harvested from Yukon burn sites is also perfect for his purposes.
"It is already mostly dry," he said.
Peter Wright, executive director of the Yukon Wood Products Association, said he wants to see more local timber used not just as a heat source. Trees like white spruce are valuable in other ways, he said, and that could bolster local economies.
"Every time that a truck brings something in, whether it's a chair, whether it's a table, whether it's a 2x4 that could have been made here, when that truck hits the road south, all of the revenue, all of the profits, all of the employment leaves with it," Wright said.
There are longstanding problems, though, he said. Timber harvesting projects are getting mired in delays during the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board process.
Wright wants to see more trees in burn areas felled and the environmental assessment process move far more quickly. That's something the Yukon Wood Products Association is negotiating over with the Yukon government this year.
Wright said unlike places in the South, the Yukon doesn't have an industrial-sized kiln capable of quickly drying wood. That makes harvesting trees that are already dead an obvious priority.
"We're not taking green trees that are still growing," he said. "We are salvaging areas. And every month that stands more of it is falling down naturally on its own. We're battling time."
Hilary Cooke, a co-director with the Wildlife Conservation Society, said both dead and living trees play crucial roles in the territory's boreal forests.
"There's life in these burns," Cooke said. "There's one species of black-backed woodpecker… that's where they're going to nest…. As they [forests] regenerate, it becomes habitat for moose, and a whole community of bird species that like that regenerating willow, aspen."
Cooke said the ecological importance of burns is understudied in the Yukon, and she'd like to see the territory take a more measured approach when eyeing these areas for timber harvesting.
"The best thing we can do, and what we have an opportunity to do, is to think in advance about what values we want on the landscape," she said. "That's a process of regional land use planning and regional forest management planning.
"It's where everyone comes together."
Trachsel's business is small and just getting off the ground.
He's confident there's a market for what he's making, like the set of chairs he was recently crafting out of aspen — the same type of tree that surrounds his home.
To Trachsel, it's pretty simple.
"What we can buy in this town is not good quality," he said. "It's usually from far away, and it's cheap because it's mass-produced.
"I want everyone to enjoy locally-made, locally-grown wood products."
— Julien Greene
Thanks for reading. If you have questions, criticisms or story tips, please send them to [e-mail].
What on Earth? comes straight to your inbox every Thursday.
Editors: Emily Chung and Hannah Hoag | Logo design: Sködt McNalty