"'Don't discuss polar bears": memo to scientists

[Andrew Green]

Listed as a "new requirement" for foreign travelers on U.S. government business, the memo says that requests for foreign travel "involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice, and/or polar bears" require special handling, including notice of who will be the official spokesman for the trip. The Fish and Wildlife Service top officials need assurance that the spokesman, "the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears" understands the administration's position on these topics.
Two accompanying memos were offered as examples of these kinds of assurance. Both included the line that the traveler "understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070308/ts_nm/polarbears_scientists_dc

 

[Shaderon]

Shhhh Don't talk about the "P" word....

That's ludicrous!!!

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Considering the amount of science currently being censored by the regime currently in power, it's not. I mean, when officially such things do not exist, one cannot take the chance of reason and reality coming into play.

 

[exile]

Remember in Orwell's 1984 how individuals who `disappeared' were then treated as though they had never existed, or in the jargon of the State, became `unpersons'? It looks as though this particular species has become an `unpolarbear' in exactly the same sense... One can see this eventually extending to the whole High Arctic biome, which will then become an `unecosystem'.

 

[Shaderon]

So can they discuss unpolar bears then?

It's really bad that we have to tell people they can't discuss something, science is all about learning and spreading knowledge, not keeping stuff under wraps.

 

[tellner]

This is only the latest and not even the most egregious direct assault on science by the hacks, thieves and religious fanatics who make up the current administration. From the holdup on HPV and the repeated alteration of scientific documents on global warming to the reclassification of lead and mercury as "not significant toxins" it's been unprecedented since the days of Lysenko in Stalin's USSR. Add in the current dictum that all scientific pronouncements and statements must be approved by a new Executive official for sensitivity to Administration political views - that's right any scientific results coming out of government agenvies require the signature of Comrade Political Officer - and the term "The Bush War on Science" leaves the realm of hyperbole and enters that of common sense.

 

[jetboatdeath]

This is only the latest and not even the most egregious direct assault on science by the hacks, thieves and religious fanatics who make up the current administration. From the holdup on HPV and the repeated alteration of scientific documents on global warming to the reclassification of lead and mercury as "not significant toxins" it's been unprecedented since the days of Lysenko in Stalin's USSR. Add in the current dictum that all scientific pronouncements and statements must be approved by a new Executive official for sensitivity to Administration political views - that's right any scientific results coming out of government agenvies require the signature of Comrade Political Officer - and the term "The Bush War on Science" leaves the realm of hyperbole and enters that of common sense.

Bush's war on science? Look how many people Gore fired for not "agreeing" with him on this global warming issue.

 

[Empty Hands]

Bush's war on science? Look how many people Gore fired for not "agreeing" with him on this global warming issue.

How many? I challenge you to produce evidence of even one person fired for this reason while Gore was veep.

 

[jetboatdeath]

How many? I challenge you to produce evidence of even one person fired for this reason while Gore was veep.

OK
http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/happer.html

 

[jetboatdeath]

OK
http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/happer.html

A few more
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_n12_v46/ai_15544248

 

[Jonathan Randall]

Bush's war on science? Look how many people Gore fired for not "agreeing" with him on this global warming issue.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

 

[exile]

Bush's war on science? Look how many people Gore fired for not "agreeing" with him on this global warming issue.

Sure, I'd fire someone too who was supposed to be doing medicine and attempted to defend the idea that tuberculosis was caused by evil spirits, or whose understanding of chemistry included the phlogiston theory of fire. The case at issue in the OP—you might try rereading it—is that this administration is forbidding scientists to talk about the recent severe degradation of the artic and its effect on ecosystems in the high latitudes. And you're equating these two cases?

I'm suprised you tried that one on, JBD...

 

[Empty Hands]

OK
http://www.sepp.org/Archive/controv/controversies/happer.html

OK, it looks like Clinton/Gore did engage in some shenanigans. Bad on them, good on you for finding it. Their documented misdeeds here however still do not rise to the level of the Bush administrations unprecedented undermining, which includes direct editing of reports and the ridiculous memo reported in this thread.

In any case, arguing in this manner is still a tu quoque logical fallacy. Even if Clinton/Gore were the worst science bashers possible, it still wouldn't change the Bush administrations actions, for right or wrong.

 

[Blotan Hunka]

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54483

Believe it or not, over the last century America's major media have predicted an impending global climate crisis four different times – each prediction warning that entire countries would be wiped out or that lower crop yields would mean "billions will die." In 1895, the panic was over an imminent ice age. Later, in the late 1920s, when the earth’s surface warmed less than half a degree, the media jumped on a new threat – global warming, which continued into the late 1950s. Then in 1975, the New York Times' headline blared, "A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable." Then in 1981 it was back to global warming, with the Times quoting seven government atmospheric scientists who predicted global warming of an "almost unprecedented magnitude

Here's a hint: As "Deep Throat" famously told Washington Post "Watergate" reporter Bob Woodward, "Follow the money."

Whistleblower shows how all the main players – from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations – benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming. Indeed, just three weeks after the U.N. ratcheted up international fears over global warming, a panel of 18 scientists from 11 countries has now reported to the U.N. that the only thing that can stop catastrophic climate change is a global tax – on greenhouse gas emissions.

That's right. Global problems, real or conjured up, require global governmental solutions. As Whistleblower explains, environmentalism is nothing less than the global elitists' replacement ideology for communism/socialism. With communism largely discredited today – after all, 100-150 million people died at the hands of communist "visionaries" during the last century – elitists who desire to rule other people's lives have gravitated to an even more powerful ideology. More powerful because it seems to trump all other considerations, as it claims the very survival of life on earth is dependent on implementing its agenda.

Thus, while scientists and climatologists who dare to question the rigid orthodoxy of man-made catastrophic global warming are openly ridiculed and threatened with decertification, the movement for global governance, complete with global taxation, is moving into the fast lane.

 

[Flying Crane]

http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=54483

well, the same site where this piece came from also sells this book:

Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil


By Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. and Craig R. Smith
...
In "Black Gold Stranglehold," Jerome Corsi and Craig Smith expose the fraudulent science that has made America so vulnerable: the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and that it is a finite resource. This book reveals the conclusions reached by Dr. Thomas Gold, a professor at Cornell University, in his seminal book "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels" (Copernicus Books, 1998) and accepted by many in the scientific community that oil is not a product of fossils and prehistoric forests but rather the bio-product of a continuing biochemical reaction below the earth's surface that is brought to attainable depths by the centrifugal forces of the earth's rotation.

Sort of sets the tone for the kind of message likely to be posted on a site like this...

 

[Xue Sheng]

So I guess the question now is how do we get polar bears to drill for oil.

 

[exile]

well, the same site where this piece came from also sells this book:

Black Gold Stranglehold: The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Oil


By Jerome R. Corsi, Ph.D. and Craig R. Smith
...
In "Black Gold Stranglehold," Jerome Corsi and Craig Smith expose the fraudulent science that has made America so vulnerable: the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and that it is a finite resource. This book reveals the conclusions reached by Dr. Thomas Gold, a professor at Cornell University, in his seminal book "The Deep Hot Biosphere: The Myth of Fossil Fuels" (Copernicus Books, 1998) and accepted by many in the scientific community that oil is not a product of fossils and prehistoric forests but rather the bio-product of a continuing biochemical reaction below the earth's surface that is brought to attainable depths by the centrifugal forces of the earth's rotation.

Sort of sets the tone for the kind of message likely to be posted on a site like this...

Before his current gig, Gold was probably making big bucks doing research for cigarette companies arguing that the overwhelming correlations between lung cancer, emphysema, heart disease and smoking was a purely accidental statistical glitch...

 

[heretic888]

Sort of sets the tone for the kind of message likely to be posted on a site like this...

Oh, don't mind Blotan. He always posts articles from right-wing thinktanks in discussions like this. After awhile you just get used to it.

It should also be pointed out that the "scientists and climatologists who dare to question the rigid orthodoxy of man-made catastrophic global warming" are basically a fringe minority (we're talking perhaps dozens compared to thousands here) and a number of those are under the dollar of the oil companies or right-wing ideologues themselves. The scientific consensus on global climate change is pretty well-established and has the empirical data to support it.

Of course, it doesn't surprise me that the Far Right looney tunes are inventing grandiose conspiracy theories about the scientific community (it's just a trick to make use socialist!) about this research. Its similar to the nutjobs that shoot their mouths off on the Internet about how evolutionary theory is an "atheist conspiracy" and the scientific community "just hates God".

Its very clear which side has academic consensus, peer-reviewed research articles, and empirical findings on their side... and which side has goofy ad hominems and grandiose conspiracy theories.

Color me unimpressed.