It's happening down there:
Scientists doing climate research for the federal government say the Bush administration has made it hard for them to speak forthrightly to the public about global warming. The result, the researchers say, is a danger that Americans are not getting the full story on how the climate is changing.
Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.
And now it's happening up here:
Environment Minister Rona Ambrose has stopped an Environment Canada scientist from speaking publicly about his own novel.
Mark Tushingham has written a science fiction novel called Hotter than Hell.
It is set in the not-too-distant future when global warming has made many parts of the world too hot to live in and has prompted a war between Canada and the U.S. over water resources.
Tushingham was scheduled to speak in Ottawa about his book and the science underpinning it. But an order from Ambrose's office stopped him.
This is worse since Tushingham's work is a novel. A work of fiction. What the fuck?
OH, MAN: Ledes don't get much better than this, do they?
A scientist with Environment Canada was ordered not to launch his global warming-themed novel Thursday at the same time the Conservative government was quietly axing a number of Kyoto programs.
Kick. Ass.
3 comments:
So much for freedom of speech. I thought maybe Rona would be a positive force in the government. I guess the government must see this as retribution for the 60 or so "rebellious" scientists that refute global warming and were according to Conservatives, "muzzled" by mainstream media.
Now that the government is conservative, all government employees must conform? Sounds like a form of communism to me-no individuality allowed.
What year is it anyway? 1984? I do feel those icy eyes watching me from time to time.
It's rather disturbing that the government can threaten any employee for things they do out of their office time. The fact that they reacted like this, though -- when the issue called for them requesting a reissue of the press release that offended them, or a press release of their own clarfying the matter -- tells me they're scared of what he's saying.
And he's some author who's publishing with a vanity press. The guy is 100% irrelevant. What would they do if someone with some real weight behind them pushed, I wonder?
They're absolute fools.
I never would have heard of this book, now I want to go out and find it. Salman Rushdie knows: Nothing sells a book like a little censorship.
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