WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Polar bears, sea ice and global warming are taboo subjects, at least in public, for some U.S. scientists attending meetings abroad, environmental groups and a top federal wildlife official said on Thursday.
Environmental activists called this scientific censorship, which they said was in line with the Bush administration's history of muzzling dissent over global climate change.
...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...
"This administration has a long history of censoring speech and science on global warming," Eben Burnham-Snyder of the Natural Resources Defense Council said by telephone.
See here.
Don't Discuss Polar Bears without Permission
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Doug
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Don't Discuss Polar Bears without Permission
"We could have done something important Max. We could have fought child abuse or Republicans!" --Oona Hart (played by Victoria Foyt), in the 1995 movie "Last Summer in the Hamptons."
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Dardedar
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DAR
This little quote is essential:
"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.[...]
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."
"Special" handling.
This little quote is essential:
"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.[...]
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."
"Special" handling.
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Barbara Fitzpatrick
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Possibly to keep quiet the knowledge that polar bears are a done deal. They are not going to survive in the wild. We're probably going to lose several species of seal as well. If we stopped burning fossil fuels today, the amount of time it would take to reverse the course of global warming is too long to keep the polar ice from melting (ice-free summer arctic is only one to two decades off. If/when global warming gets turned around and the arctic refreezes, if we have enough polar bears in zoo, we can repopulate them in the wild. We probably won't be able to save the Innuit cultures at all. Three generations away and, presupposing they are still a cohesive group at all and not just melded into majority-urban society, they will probably have lost the skills and the knowledge. Of course, how they change is their choice, but the change is being forced on them.
Barbara Fitzpatrick