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The Management

Guest Blogger Amy Baker:

The Liberal Party has alleged recent climate science censorship by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party. “This is a government in denial about climate change,” says Mr. Godfrey. “They don’t like the science, and now they want to censor it. This is Orwellian.” Source.

The party cites the elimination of climate change references on government web sites, punctuated by the complete shut down of the government’s website on global warming on June 30th. The website had provided tools for educating students about climate change, but now only displays this limp, bilingual message:

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is tied closely to leading climate change skeptics in the United States and the petroleum industry,” said according to MP Mark Holland. “This government has a track record of listening to people with dubious views on the environment and climate change.”

Prime Minister Harper has been making friends with notorious Republican advisor Frank Luntz (for some background on Luntz, and “Luntz-speak” read his infamous memo). Numerous high profile Republicans use Luntz’s tactics extensively.

Canada.com recently reported that the Prime Minister has been under attack lately for his relationship with Luntz.

“The government’s strategy of pretending to be concerned about the environment while both dismantling programs to address climate change and scrubbing government websites clean of any information proving that global warming exists has Frank Luntz written all over it,” said Mr. Holland.

This is proof positive that you need to pay attention to where your children (and national leaders) are playing, and who they’re playing with. The United States has set a bad example for scientific integrity, and Prime Minister Harper has picked up some terrible behaviours.

The Society of Environmental Journalists has posted an interesting discussion on the difference in mainstream coverage of climate change in Europe and the United States (hat tip: RealClimate). The main difference: balanced journalism in Europe (and elsewhere) doesn’t mean giving space to crackpots. Quoting Fiona Harvey, environmental correspondent for the UK’s Financial Times:

… it’s quite rare to get pieces questioning the science of global warming. The science is so overwhelming. So these fringe voices who still manage to get themselves heard in the U.S. press are not quoted in the mainstream stories in Europe. You will see them occasionally, but usually they just write angry letters saying, “You’re all wrong.”

They are regarded here as what they are: fringe voices without a great deal of substantial scientific backing.

Read the full discussion here.

Oh, The Skeptical Environmentalist author Bjørn Lomborg isn’t dead, we just haven’t thought about him in awhile. But since his tome comes up with some frequency in science-confusing circles, we wanted to call your attention to the Pacific Institute article “Where’s Waldo? A Review of The Skeptical Environmentalist” written by Dr. Peter Gleick and published by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2001. Gleick’s main critiques (e.g. “Biased optimism,” “Selective choice of problems,” “Hidden value judgments”) are almost universal themes of bad science.

Download “Where’s Waldo? A Review of The Skeptical Environmentalist” (PDF)

The threat of climate science disinvestment continues. Two weeks ago it was US climate satellites in peril. This week the issue is British research centres slated for closure.

“The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) yesterday confirmed controversial plans to close the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology’s (CEH) unit at Banchory, together with three other units in England. The move has sparked claims the decision was tantamount to ‘disarming’ Britain in the battle against global warming.” Source

A few more developments like this and we may be forced to answer “How’s the climate doing?” with “Open a window.”

The Internetwork for Sustainability reports from New Zealand that the political/scientific gap may be widening on climate change. While United States politicians from both parties and other leaders continue to bury their heads in the sand, the worlds’ scientists are increasingly alarmed by the surprising pace and impacts of global warming. For example, scientists are seeing sea level rising much faster than expected. In the face of this new evidence, some scientists are deliberately restraining their public statements so that they don’t sound as alarmist as their findings suggest they should be. Link

In other news, columnist Jay Howard recently defended the Bush Administration’s two-faced approach to science (calling for funding for science education with one side of the mouth while hushing scientific analysis with the other). In his column Howard argued that “the left” abuses science worse than the Bush administration, and thus they should keep their opinions to themselves. In illustrating that point, he took a few swipes at the Union of Concerned Scientists. UCS responded in a follow-up column that punches holes in Howard’s argument (and its factual mistakes) the size of icebergs.

The United States hasn’t cornered the market on silencing scientists. Case in point, Russia, a country who knows a bit about suppressing inconvenient facts. Greenpeace is currently protesting a Russian agency’s attempt to silence its own environmental experts. At issue, an environmental impact assessment of a planned oil pipeline — the world’s biggest, and an apparent threat to Lake Baikal (a World Heritage Site). Of the 52 scientists who prepared the assessment, 43 have signed a statement calling the pipeline “a great potential danger to the lake.”

What would Washington do? “We are receiving phone calls asking to think twice before going public with the outcome of our work,” said one of the Russian scientists. “In the meantime, the Federal Service is using loopholes in the Russian legislation to block the negative conclusions.” Source