Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Environmental Information Services

English: University of Victoria library, bikes, and rabbits. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Environment Canada (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Fishery Officer heraldic badge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

PRIs Environmental News Magazine - Living on Earth

Muzzling of federal scientists widespread

Hundreds of federal scientists said in a survey that they had been asked to exclude or alter technical information in government documents for non-scientific reasons, and thousands said they had been prevented from responding to the media or the public.Fafard said what concerned him the most about the survey results was that so many scientists reported cases in which the health or safety of Canadians may have been at risk.

Present at the news conference was Francesca Grifo, senior scientist with the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists, a group that started a campaign to address “suppression and distortion” of science in the U.S

Evidence for Democracy

Foreign affairs can't comment on chemical conventions after eliminating enviro division. http://t.co/Z5tVgoIRl0 via @pressprogressca

RT @ErikJohnline: .@DianeOrihel giving 1st/2 talks at @LaurentianU “The Activist Scientist: Oxymoron or the New Norm in Canada” starting at…

Peter Ross, pictured in 2003 when he was still a toxicologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada. Ross once gave frequent media interviews about contamination of Canada's waters, wildlife and northern people. But, after years of not being allowed to talk to media, his department was terminated in the spring of 2013 because his work was deemed to be no longer important.

Published on April Fool's Day
In response to a 133-page complaint filed by the University of Victoria’s Environmental Law Centre, Assistant Information Commissioner Emily McCarthy has stated her office is investigating possible violations of the Access to Information Act.

Canadian scientists protest government muzzling of researchers

Censorship is Alive and Well in Canada
Muzzling Civil Servants: A Threat to Democracy, the UVic researchers present some chilling findings: Scientists are either told not to speak to journalists or to spout a chewed-over party line, rubber-stamped by their PR masters; the restrictions are particularly tight when a journalist is seeking information about research relating to climate change or the tar sands; Environment Canada scientists require approval from the Privy Council Office before speaking publicly on sensitive topics “such as climate change or protection of polar bear and caribou.”

The Crimean Conflict and Energy

Canadian government gag order for scientists ?

The Canadian war on science
long list of various environmental programs that the Harper government has discontinued or slashed funding to

The sound of silenced scientists
2,000 protesters were scientists. That’s right, scientists — from government and academia — dressed in white lab coats and assembled in mock mourning for the “death of evidence” under the Harper government.
It takes a lot to make scientists — a group used to being unappreciated — angry in public. Two things have fueled their indignation: severe and targeted cutbacks on government research programs and new rules limiting the ability of journalists to talk to government scientists.

Research cutbacks alarm scientists
individuals who want information, that information is simply not going to be there because they [government librarians] don’t collect it anymore, or where it is collected, the libraries are closed or the accessibility to them is reduced

Comparing US and Canadian routine science secrecy
Dave Ng writes: What if there was a non-political research project that involved a collaboration between NASA scientists and Environment Canada scientists? How easy would it be for a journalist to talk to the scientists involved? It turns out it would take only 15 minutes for something to be arranged with NASA. With Environment Canada, however, it would take the activities of 11 media relations people, sending over 50 pages of internal emails, before a list of irrelevant information was finally sent back - all of this long after the deadline had passed. This is what happened to journalist Tom Spears in April 2012.

Fiona Fox, chief executive of the Science Media Center, has claimed that leading scientists independently advising the UK government are being actively prevented from speaking to the public and media, especially in times of crisis

Session - Unmuzzling Government Scientists: How To Re-Open the Discourse

In 2008, Environment Canada ordered its scientists to refer all media queries to Ottawa, where communications officers and strategists would decide if the scientist could respond and help craft "approved media lines".
Stories written for the CBC, Postmedia news, the journal Nature and others have then revealed how these communication restrictions had spread to other government departments.
And the situation is somewhat similar in the United States. A recent article in the Columbia Journalism Review details how restrictive practices established by George W. Bush’s administration still hold under the current government.

Junk Science Week: Muzzling government scientists?

"What an incredibly ridiculous denial column."

Climate Insensitivity: What the IPCC Knew But Didn’t Tell Us it has become apparent that the IPCC knew a lot more than it revealed in its 2013 climate compendium about how low the earth’s climate sensitivity is likely to be.

( It's the spin, doctor )

IPCC AR5 footnote 16 states:

No best estimate for equilibrium climate sensitivity can now be given because of a lack of agreement on values across assessed lines of evidence and studies.