Another gag on US scientists

[kallend 1,646]

seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/306820_bears09.html?source=mypi

U.S. bars talk of climate change effects on bears
Memos set strict limits on what officials can say abroad

P-I STAFF AND NEWS SERVICES

The Bush administration is ordering federal wildlife officials headed for international meetings on polar bears not to talk about how climate change and melting ice are affecting the imperiled animals.

It is the latest in a string of cases in which the administration has carefully controlled or even banned government employees' public speech about global warming.

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The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[JackC 0]

I don't get it. What do the US government hope to achieve?

[quade 3]

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I don't get it. What do the US government hope to achieve?

It's not the U.S. government. It's the people that are politically and financially connected to it; Haliburton for instance.

THEY hope to keep the money flowing from oil sales.

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[JackC 0]

Check.

Capitalism sure can be myopic at times.

Edit: actually, is there any evidence that the oil industry are the puppet masters here? It might seem intuitive but...

[Royd 0]

Where's that great faith in the evolutionary process to adapt to environmental changes? Why the wringing of hands?

[willard 0]

Ok, I'll play devil's advocate here.
When your boss sends you to a meeting or seminar it is well within their rights to set forth what and what not to discuss without having to give a reason.
There are enough "meetings" about global warming that result in nothing more than a net contribution to the problem from all the hot air without anything being done.
Maybe by keeping the talks centered on what can be done to help the bears something will actually get accomplished.

[sundevil777 94]

From your link:

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Hall, the Fish and Wildlife Service director, said in an interview Thursday that "these memoranda could have been better worded" but that requiring strict adherence to a set agenda had "been a longstanding practice."

Are the polar bears really endangered?

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A new study suggests predictions by some scientists that global warming and the melting of ice caps will doom the polar bear to extinction are way off base.

A survey of the bears in Canada's eastern Arctic reveals they are thriving, not declining. Biologists say the polar bear population in the 54,000 square-mile Davis Strait has more than doubled, from 850 in the mid-1980s to 2,100 today. That backs claims by Indian hunters who say the bear population is growing.

Some bear experts though insist this says nothing about global warming, that it only shows that conservation is working.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[ExAFO 0]

Huh...And I thought this was going to be about PhDs with BDSM fetishes.

Illinois needs a CCW Law. NOW.

[JackC 0]

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Where's that great faith in the evolutionary process to adapt to environmental changes? Why the wringing of hands?

What has evolution got to do with free speech? Are you saying scientists should adapt to censorship?

[billvon 2,426]

> Where's that great faith in the evolutionary process to adapt to environmental changes?

?? It will. However, "the evolutionary process" often involves mass extinctions during rapid changes in climate; it's happened before. Do we really want mass extinctions? We would all die (every human, that is) if plankton was one of the things that went extinct, for example. And that might be just evolution in action, but you (or your kids) wouldn't like it very much.

[rushmc 18]

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I don't get it. What do the US government hope to achieve?

It's not the U.S. government. It's the people that are politically and financially connected to it; Haliburton for instance.

THEY hope to keep the money flowing from oil sales.

Or maybe it is because it is pure bs!

This crap is put out as though it is fact. When in fact it is far from it. So, unles an objective report can be put out maybe it should be stoped.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside,
if we falter and lose our freedoms,
it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
Abraham Lincoln

[Lindsey 0]

Or maybe it is because it is pure bs!

This crap is put out as though it is fact. When in fact it is far from it. So, unles an objective report can be put out maybe it should be stoped.

And GWB is obviously qualified enough to decide what biologists with years of education in their fields should be allowed to say about issues in their areas of expertise. Mmm Hmm.

--
A conservative is just a liberal who's been mugged. A liberal is just a conservative who's been to jail

[billvon 2,426]

>And I thought this was going to be about PhDs with BDSM fetishes.

Or a clever practical joke played on some boring american researchers by those zany CERN folks.

[sundevil777 94]

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Where's that great faith in the evolutionary process to adapt to environmental changes? Why the wringing of hands?

What has evolution got to do with free speech? Are you saying scientists should adapt to censorship?

They should adapt to doing their job and sticking to the agenda. Not the same as censorship, I think. They aren't going as private citizens, right? If I was sent to a engineering conference and didn't follow directions to pursue the agenda set by my boss, I wouldn't expect it to be tolerated.

People are sick and tired of being told that ordinary and decent people are fed up in this country with being sick and tired. I’m certainly not, and I’m sick and tired of being told that I am

[1969912 0]

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Or maybe it is because it is pure bs!

This crap is put out as though it is fact. When in fact it is far from it. So, unles an objective report can be put out maybe it should be stoped.

And GWB is obviously qualified enough to decide what biologists with years of education in their fields should be allowed to say about issues in their areas of expertise. Mmm Hmm.

Are you referring to zoologists who specialize in bears discussing climatology?

"Once we got to the point where twenty/something's needed a place on the corner that changed the oil in their cars we were doomed . . ."
-NickDG

[JackC 0]

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They should adapt to doing their job and sticking to the agenda. Not the same as censorship, I think. They aren't going as private citizens, right? If I was sent to a engineering conference and didn't follow directions to pursue the agenda set by my boss, I wouldn't expect it to be tolerated.

Federal wildlife officials will be an attending international meeting on polar bears. Part of the discussion will, I'm sure, be about the natural habitat of the polar bear. The natural habitat of the polar bear may be disappearing and one of the main contenders for causing it is climate change. Federal wildlife officials who go to these meetings have been told not to talk about how climate change is affecting polar bears.

So if the Norwgian deligate and the Canadian deligate start a conversation about climate change and it's effect on the polar bear, the American deligate is not allowed to be part of that conversation. If there is a seminar on climate change and it's effect on the polar bear, the American deligate is not allowed to attend.

It seems to me that it's not a matter of sticking to the agenda, it's about restricting the American deligates ability to contribute. In the business world, companys do censor their employees for various reasons. However, science is not a business in the usual sense of the word and it does not work well in handcuffs.

[rehmwa 2]

One wonders how the memo (to stick some agenda) would be enforced?

Pretty well can't enforce it.

Conferences are totally unable to stick to agendas, they nearly always devolve into popular subjects and 'boil the ocean' discussions, and broad based unvalidatable action plans assign to people and organizations not present.

They might as well admit it and not send out memos like these. I assume that memo was to avoid some little conference coming out and saying everyone should join Kyoto again and have to go through that fiasco again. Bad political move to try and head that off.

The only real successful global warming mind control attempts are getting meteorologists fired if they disagree with the GW line.

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[Royd 0]

Where's that great faith in the evolutionary process to adapt to environmental changes? Why the wringing of hands?

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What has evolution got to do with free speech? Are you saying scientists should adapt to censorship?

The main argument is about the effect of GW on the poor, pitiful polar bear.

The polar bear has the ability to live a large portion of its life in the water. It also has the ability to traverse solid land. It hunts from the ice because it is convienent. I'm sure that it could kill just as many seals or walruses from a rocky shoreline.

Hunger is a real motivating force for changing behavior.

Somehow, I don't think that GW is going to stop the earth from tipping on its axis, which is the main cause of winter in the temperate zones. The ice is only going to retreat so far, no matter how much humans screw up the environment.

The only ice that can cause the ocean to rise is that which is on solid ground. The Artic ocean is like ice cubes in a glass. It never overflows.

The whole alarmist "The sky is falling" mentality is BS.

[narcimund 0]

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How about we ban dissent in the scientific community?

That should ensure that we get it right.

I thought this would fit well in this thread too.

First Class Citizen Twice Over

[billvon 2,426]

> The polar bear has the ability to live a large portion of its life in the water.
> It also has the ability to traverse solid land. It hunts from the ice because
>it is convienent. I'm sure that it could kill just as many seals or walruses
>from a rocky shoreline.

Uh - no. The polar bear has adapted to a partially aquatic life in a polar sea. In doing so it has given up some of the adaptations for a land-based life. Other land-dwelling bears do a better job of land predation; thus they will out-compete the polar bear.

This isn't to say they won't try, which is why polar bear attacks on people have been going up recently. But brown bears are just plain better at finding food on land, since they _have_ evolved to be predators.

Given say ten thousand years, the polar bear could adapt to changing conditions, perhaps by becoming more aquatic so it doesn't need ice. It would probably end up looking something like a big seal. Or it might become better adapted to land, and be able to compete with other land based predators.

Given only a few hundred years, it will simply die out. That's how evolution works. Those that can't adapt to rapid changes die.

>Hunger is a real motivating force for changing behavior.

Unfortunately it does not change physical structure. It will not make a polar bear a better land predator, nor will it make it not stand out like a sore thumb on a dark, rocky coast.

>The ice is only going to retreat so far, no matter how much humans
>screw up the environment.

Some glaciers are now gone completely. (The Spider Glacier, Lewis Glacier, Milk Lake Glacier, and David Glacier to name a few.) So the statement "the ice can only retreat so far" has been proven correct - it can retreat until it is all gone.

>The whole alarmist "The sky is falling" mentality is BS.

The sky is not falling, it's just getting warmer. Ice melts when it gets warm. That's a pretty simple concept.

[rehmwa 2]

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> Some glaciers are now gone completely. (The Spider Glacier, Lewis Glacier, Milk Lake Glacier, and David Glacier to name a few.)

don't forget Paul Michael Glacier

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Driving is a one dimensional activity - a monkey can do it - being proud of your driving abilities is like being proud of being able to put on pants

[idrankwhat 0]

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> Some glaciers are now gone completely. (The Spider Glacier, Lewis Glacier, Milk Lake Glacier, and David Glacier to name a few.)

don't forget Paul Michael Glacier

rehm shot.

[willard 0]

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> Some glaciers are now gone completely. (The Spider Glacier, Lewis Glacier, Milk Lake Glacier, and David Glacier to name a few.)

don't forget Paul Michael Glacier

And the one that was a mile thick and covered much of the upper midwest. It left us some really cool lakes, though.

[Royd 0]

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Given say ten thousand years, the polar bear could adapt to changing conditions, perhaps by becoming more aquatic so it doesn't need ice. It would probably end up looking something like a big seal. Or it might become better adapted to land, and be able to compete with other land based predators.

Or, since the polar bear is the largest land based predator, it could just wait until some other predator makes a kill, and take it away from them. The options are endless, but then, they might start looking like a hyena.

[billvon 2,426]

>Or, since the polar bear is the largest land based predator, it could just
>wait until some other predator makes a kill, and take it away from them.

So you think polar bears will battle killer whales for seals they catch? Somehow I think that would lead to an even faster extinction. Or perhaps they could battle brown and grizzly bears. Would be fun but I suspect one species would lose rather quickly.

On the plus side, at least you're acknowledging that global warming is a problem and is destroying habitats.