Science is under threat in Argentina — we must call out the danger

[carride]

I saw in yesterday's Ambito, though the International Nature publication discussed is in English. Written by the president of the Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Argentina, Víctor Ramos.

Science is under threat in Argentina — we must call out the danger

Extreme-right presidential front runner Javier Milei plans to disband ministries and privatize research. That would be disastrous for Argentina’s science and for the nation.

www.nature.com

La revista Nature publicó una nota sobre la “amenaza” de Milei a la ciencia en Argentina

Su autor, el presidente de la Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales de Argentina, Víctor Ramos, advierte que el candidato de extrema derecha, Javier Milei, planea disolver ministerios y privatizar la investigación.

www.ambito.com

"Argentinian presidents have far-reaching powers. They are both head of state and head of government, as well as commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Milei is an economist and darling of certain media circuits, who expresses admiration for Donald Trump while espousing anti-science views and advocating an extreme minimalist state. He has repeatedly denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change. He has said that he wants to shut down the ministries of the environment and health, as well as the Ministry of Women, Genders and Diversity. He wants to privatize or eliminate the National Scientific and Technical Research Council, CONICET. He plans to replace free public primary, secondary and university education with a voucher system."

..."Milei’s plans are short-sighted, and they upend Argentina’s long traditions of prioritizing state-funded education and valuing science. For a country classified by the World Bank as upper-middle-income, Argentina has a proud history of research. It has produced three Nobel prizewinners in science: physiologist Bernardo Houssay, biochemist and physician Luis Federico Leloir and biochemist César Milstein. Argentinian diplomat Raúl Estrada-Oyuela was the chair of negotiations and a leading force for the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first legally binding global treaty on climate change."

 

[Macanudo]

Science is no longer real science and has morphed into a religion. It is being used as an opportunity for political theater and as a source of legitimacy for political control over economic behavior.

 

[carride]

Science is no longer real science

Perhaps that might be true for some things you are reading and watching, but obviously not true for the majority of real science. For a country like Argentina who relies heavily on making money from land based commodities such as minerals and petroleum plus all the agricultural products, it is real science that makes it happen. The private and public enterprises would not have been able to produce without the science that the author must have contributed. 50+ years of study, research, and education of all the others. The slow and steady scientific process that the private economic sector who not have the time or patience to invest, instead learns from the research and creates $. Then there is tourism which relies on all the understanding of the natural resources.

I do not know much about the inner workings, but I do compare to the USA with its large USGS government agency of earth scientist (and bureaucrats) who provide the science for similar industries to create $. This author is just one expert who is from that segment of the Argentina government supported scientific community. There must be others in computer science, engineering, biology, etc… Like government agencies or funded groups of NOAA and CERN in USA. I am sure there are several more.

 

[Macanudo]

Milei is an economist and darling of certain media circuits, who expresses admiration for Donald Trump while espousing anti-science views and advocating an extreme minimalist state. He has repeatedly denied the existence of anthropogenic climate change.

Nobel laureate—physicists John Francis Clauser from the United States: “The popular narrative about climate change reflects a dangerous corruption of science that threatens the world’s economy and the well-being of billions of people,” Mr. Clauser said in a May 5 statement.
“Misguided climate science has metastasized into massive shock-journalistic pseudoscience. In turn, the pseudoscience has become a scapegoat for a wide variety of other unrelated ills.”
“It has been promoted and extended by similarly misguided business marketing agents, politicians, journalists, government agencies, and environmentalists. In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

 

[WoodbridgeNJ]

Yes only the far left in the USA can tell Argentina what real science is

Al Gore made a fortune $$ saying there would be no more ice at the North Pole by 2015, now that he's made his billions its time for a new generation of fear merchants to profit. If Milei wins there will be no more snow in Patagonia by 2030

 

[Quilombo]

Oh boy, another far right circlejerk where people deny the fact that climate is changing, in 10 years when we're having week long 40ºC heat waves in CABA I look forward to people saying that the mountains in Bariloche are #FakeNews and that the Earth is flat.

 

[FrankPintor]

Some fact-checking: https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/...ts-sign-declaration-denying-climate-emergency

"The two main Dutch actors behind the declaration are Guus Berkhout, a retired geophysicist who has worked for oil giant Shell, and journalist Marcel Crok.

Both have been accused of receiving money from fossil fuel companies to finance their climate-sceptic work. They deny the allegations,

When looking closer at the list of signatories, there are precisely 1,107, including six people who are dead. Less than 1% of the names listed describe themselves as climatologists or climate scientists.

Eight of the signatories are former or current employees of the oil giant Shell, while many other names have links to mining companies.

One of the signatories is Ivar Giaever, a joint winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1973 for work on superconductors. However, he has never published any work on climate science.

According to an independent 2019 count of the declaration's signatories, 21% were engineers, many linked to the fossil fuel industry. Others were lobbyists, and some even worked as fishermen or airline pilots."

 

[carride]

Al Gore made a fortune $$ saying there would be no more ice at the North Pole by 2015

In my opinion, there is no real climate crisis.”

ZeroHedge

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

www.zerohedge.com

Why are you dragging climate science into this discussion? There are approximately 50 sentences in that essay and only one is a reference to something about Trumps opinion on climate science. The article was first discussed by one of the main newspapers of business news in Argentina. They must know the expert geologist scientist who published that essay because their research is essential to understanding the commodities which are significant source of revenue for the country.

 

[Macanudo]

Attacking Milei's position on climate change is not going to reduce inflation or help the economy. Argentina is broke and can't pay its debts. The government can not continue to spend money that it doesn't have. Someone has to make the hard decisions on what jobs and programs to cut. Let the free market decide which scientists bring value to a project. We are probably going to suffer through a difficult economic adjustment period no matter who is elected.

 

[gringoexpress]

Oh boy, another far right circlejerk where people deny the fact that climate is changing, in 10 years when we're having week long 40ºC heat waves in CABA I look forward to people saying that the mountains in Bariloche are #FakeNews and that the Earth is flat.

Do you always get this upset when people don't share your religious beliefs?