Don't mention the polar bears, Bush tells US scientists

[cal04]

The Bush Administration has been accused once again of gagging US government scientists by getting them to agree not to talk about polar bears, sea ice and climate change during official overseas trips.

A leaked memorandum issued by a regional director of the US Department of the Interior states that officials within the US Fish and Wildlife Service will limit their discussions when traveling in countries bordering the Arctic region because of sensitivities about climate change.

"This 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," says the memo from the regional director Richard Hannon to his boss, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

It is not the first time that US government officials have been accused to trying to gag scientists on climate change. James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a world authority on the climate, complained last year that public relations officials appointed by the Bush Administration had tried to limit his access to the media.

(snip)
"This memo has got to be put into the wider context of what President Bush has done to stifle debate on global warming over the last six years," said a council spokesman, Eben Burnham-Snyder. "The Bush Administration has a long history of restricting scientific discourse on global warming's impacts and solutions. This continued restriction hampers our experts' ability to do their job effectively and aggressively deal with our global warming challenge."


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2344771.ece

[halobeam]

1. UnBelievable....

not really. This is all and I mean ALL out of control.

[buddysmellgood]

2. Polar bears are huge boogey man to Bushco. That image does not poll well for them.

[Double T]

3. bushco lies again and fabricates false impressions of actual environmental disasters........

science, fact and reality have no place in a psychopath's agenda. The environment will have an opportunity to recover after January 2009, unfortunately many more Polar Bears and Walrus Pups will die waiting for the total failure of a president to leave office.

[cal04]

4. Bush Administration Issues Another Gag Order on Global Warming

Once again, the Bush administration has carefully controlled and even banned government employees from talking about global warming. In this latest incident of suppression, two memorandums written late February put strict limitations on what US Fish and Wildlife Service employees were allowed to discuss at conferences in Norway and Russia. A third memorandum extends the policy to Canada and “any northern country”.

In short, representatives from the US whose job it is to conserve Arctic animals and plants are not allowed to discuss the number one threat to those species – global warming. After the memos were made public, the administration responded yesterday by claiming they were made to ensure US representatives “talk about only what’s on the agenda” of the meetings. The memos come just months after the Bush administration announced it would consider protecting declining populations of polar bears under the Endangered Species Act.

“The polar bear has created a 24/7 forum for the U.S. government to be grilled about what its position is on global warming, and it’s really put the Bush administration in a tight, tight corner,” said Kieran Suckling of the Center for Biological Diversity, whose group sued over the animals. “It’s crazy to say, ‘The polar bear is endangered but we’re not going to do anything about global warming.’ They realize that message is so counterintuitive it cannot be delivered by anyone but the most seasoned hack available.”

Because of the ban, experts have been relegated to simply discuss how to minimize dangerous interactions between humans and polar bears. In recent years, polar bears have been venturing closer to native villages as melting ice has changed their natural hunting patterns. Craig Perham, a biologist specializing in polar bears, was invited by the World Wildlife Fund to Siberia to help villagers minimize dangerous human-bear interactions. A memo on February 26th even made reference to Perham, saying he “understands the administration’s position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to those issues.”

http://www.jwharrison.com/blog/2007/03/09/bush-administration-issues-another-gag-order-on-global-warming/

[stonebone]

5. When will somebody stand up to this thug?

[rodeodance]

6. The only thing he would understand is IMpeachment!

[w4rma]

7. Bush's priority is protecting big oil. (nt)