anything to keep the tar sands flowing

Mr. Harper is blind to everything but economics, and history will judge him harshly. I hope voters will remedy this situation before it's too late. Everybody i know is either concerned or outright freaking about climate change, and the Conservatives will soon be left behind if they don't smarten up.

Can nobody stop this man?

Harper's iron-fisted governance is appalling and dangerous.
MPs quake in their loafers and deflect all inquiries - "you'll have to talk to the Minister about that"
None have the guts to say anything about anything without a talking-points memo from the PMO.
How the HEdoubleL did this happen??

ideology at play

this government has demonstrated over and over again that it isn't interested in using science/ facts to shape its policy. here are a few examples:

- only OECD country that doesn't have a National Science Adviser reporting directly to the leader

- rejection of contraception as part of initiative on maternal and children's health despite years of research (e.g. UNDP, IHO) saying contraception is one of the essential tools to address those issues

- appointing climate skeptics and deniers to key gov't advisory bodies

- Harper's own letter dismissing the ill-fated Kyoto Protocol as a "socialist scheme" and using the denier spin that CO2 can't be bad because it's essential to life

- view that environmental protection and economic activity are mutually exclusive when years of legislation to address issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion haven't killed the economy

plausible deniability

This reminds me so much of the Afghan detainee affair, only on a much grander scale.
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that climate change is here... look not to far to see the warmest jan and feb on record ever in Vancouver.
If Harper is muzzling our scientists then he has something to fear. If it was natural, he would have nothing to hide. If he could right now, at this time, be doing some damage control but is sitting idle instead, then he has something to hide.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/40/2/parlbus/commbus/senate/Com-e/fish-e/rep-e/rep02may09-e.pdf

on page 11:
"Approximately 84% of these estimated resources are thought to lie in offshore areas, and natural gas is expected to be three times more abundant than oil.()
41)"
and as footnote 41, in red, bolded, increased font (the only statement in the whole document to be like this):
"US Geological Survey, “90 Billion Barrels of Oil and 1,670 Trillion Cubic Feet of Natural Gas Assessed in the Arctic,” News release, 23 July 2008"

As I've mentioned before, Mulroney up in the north in 1993, making deals with the Inuit and basically ripping them off for the bulk of their royalties, and getting them to string microwave devices for the government, to boot. 1999 sees Inuvuk formed and the Canadian government is laughing all the way from that point, just waiting for that darn arctic ice to melt so they can get in to exercise their offshore rights.

Monkey see monkey do

Harper is doing exactly what George W. Bush did to scientists in the United States last decade. Bush appointed poorly educated political hacks to run government science agencies and threatened scientists for providing data to the public on global warming, endangered species, pollution, etc. See Chris Mooney's books "the Republican War on Science". We have our own Canadian war on science now. To the Conservatives ideology is everything.

Stevie is a very sick,

Stevie is a very sick, fundamentalist puppy, relying on "faith" to solve the world's problems. Because it is "written".........

If he'd ever get majority, not only the scientists, but the whole country would be silenced and sold off.

What he's concerned about is not "economics", but monetary games he's been brainwashed with at the university, at the intellectual level of the nazis' racial theories.

Climate problems are very much part of real economics, but to understand this is far too much to expect from these presently ruling, neoclassical market economic maniacs pushing the world into self destruction with the help of "conservative" politicians.

Lapped up by the public as "wealth creation".

Ed Deak.

Reasons

As several posters responding to previous articles have stated: follow the money. Anthropogenic global warming (climate change) theories quickly fell by the wayside when some of the affected, poorer countries started insisting that wealthier, polluting countries were liable for the damage caused (speaking BIG $ here), and when big corporations realized that much popular opinion slanted towards having them change the way business was done. What better way for governments to put a halt to this than by disregarding/ disparaging data, halting scientific research, and muzzling scientists.

Rule No. 1

Controlling what the public sees and hears is essential to the successful operation of a stable dictatorship.

Allo, is that Ann?

Maybe the muzzled scientists will join Ann Coulter and together they will take their complaints to some Human Rights Free Speech tribunal.

Oilsands Cash Irreisistable!

Copenhagen was so long ago and whatever they said it was really just the mood of the scene at that time. The food was great too.

http://www.montrealgazette.com/business/Ontario+Quebec+sing+different+oilsands+tune+when+cash+beckons/2718408/story.html

ANN COULTER MUZZLED

I don't think so. Perhaps anyone who thinks that should read Kady O'Malley's take at the CBC.

Here, I'll provide a link:
http://www.cbc.ca/politics/insidepolitics/2010/03/ann-coulters-adventures-in-ottawa-so-what-really-happened-last-night.html

Please take special note of this:

The situations are in no way comparable - Harper is just being himself - he's not just uncomfortable with his kids - he's uncomfortable with a free and open society and he's 'really' uncomfortable with empirical evidence which doesn't support his own prejudices. In fact, the person who's most like Ann Coulter - and uses the same tactics - is Stephen Harper.

Who does this deciding, censoring, and muzzling?

It sounds very much like Gordo's own Public Affairs Bureau (biggest newsroom in Canada) ...

Does Harper have a PAB running things for him in Ottawa too?

David Eby, let the people speak!

"David Eby, executive director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association added, "We are firm believers that even ignorant ideas need to be heard and discussed.

I don't think that it helps the university's reputation as a place of dialogue and discussion and a movement toward truth," Eby said of the events in Ottawa.

Alyssa Cordova, of the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute, one of the organizers, said the decision was made after police informed them they could not guarantee the safety of Coulter or their officers.

Abby Deshman, policy director with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said universities have a responsibility to ensure the safety of the controversial figures invited to speak on campus.

"I don't think a university can anticipate everything, but ... sometimes more security is going to be needed to ensure that both sides of the debate are heard."

Eby agrees, saying protesters have the same rights to speak as Coulter does.

"Part of free speech is recognizing that yes, Ms. Coulter has the right to speak, but so do all the people who are offended by what she says have the right to come out and to protest and to say that she is wrong and to put forward their own ideas."

Campaign of muzzle & spin

For the spin side of the Haprer strategy on climate change, we need only look to US Republican spin doctor extraordinaire Frank Luntz, architecht of W. Bush's denialist strategy -- a strategy based on use of clever euphemism, which in turn has been used to obfuscate the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change. Why is any of this important to Canada? Well, in 2006, Luntz made a trip to Ontario to deliver a lecture to Conservative-linked Civitas Society, and on this trip he met Harper to offer advice on how best to counter the growing tide of climate change science. In the weeks following this meeting, we begin to see eerie similarities between Bush policy and the language & environmental policy directives coming out of the PM's office. The Harper Conservative approach to climate change begins mirror the Bush version. You be sure Luntz also offered Harper some tips on how to reign in scientists.

Yes, follow the money, but also follow the spin doctors to get your answers.

Scientists Begging for their 15 minutes of Fame

There is, of course, the idea that some funding might be cut. Scientists are also trying to protect their jobs. Their job is, of course, research and study - press conferences, not so much, even though nowadays in the age of Al Gore it must be mighty tempting for Eco-Scientists to jump in front of the lights and become famous by singing from the The End is Nigh hymnbook.

As Environment Canada said, the new communications policy has allowed its scientists and experts to interact directly with the media on numerous occasions.

“The new policy merely assures that communications with the media are co-ordinated, to achieve the goals set out above -- namely, quick, accurate and consistent responses across Canada,”

It's worth remembering what Bob Dylan said, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows".

Harper may not be a Hitler,

Harper may not be a Hitler, but so called "conservatives" are either borderline, or full blown fascists, always advocating rule by a religion, or ideology based special interest ruling sector.

Used to be born aristocracies, now "prominent business leaders", who are under some divine orders to rule.

I grew up in an ultra conservative fascist family, in a fascist country, educated as a fascist, served in one of Hitler's satellite armies in WW2, survived sentence of death by the nazis and escaped the communist gulags, so I have a pretty good idea what fascism and dictatorships are about.

Now can see the daily growth of it here, and all over the world under the fraudulent ideals of "market economics" "competitiveness" "globalization" and world government, all typical fascist theories depriving people of personal freedoms and decision making.

The EU is already sinking into it very fast with the Lisbon Agtreement.

Ed Deak.

Kudos to Schindler and

Kudos to Schindler and several others who do have the courage to speak out. Unfortunately, in Alberta, the ones who do are a handful of mainly retired professors whose jobs aren't in jeopardy, and unfortunately, they speak out only one by one - like tiny stick pins attacking the giant Gulliver, instead of as one massive group in defense of each other the public interest.

Also, it's too bad that the ones who aren't retired don't band together and support each other publicly en masse when needed (such as when the 4 Health Canada scientists were fired for going public.) Chickens supreme.

I think this article should be sent to every major scientific organization and scientific university department across the country with the simple question attached to it in bold letters, "If you care about your children's future, what specific political steps are you and your colleagues going to take to combat this muzzling?"

It is time we gave Harper the boot.

I may be the only Canadian who wishes the Liberals had retained Stephane Dion. like Joe Clark, Dion had a weak TV presence, but he also had a vision and the fortitude to execute it. We need to elect leaders who have more to them than a cute face and a way with cameras. They may look awkward, but so do a lot of great people.

Stephen Harper and John Baird make me want to vote from the rooftops. Schoolyard bullies both.

Send Harper and Prentice a message

prentice@parl.gc.ca

enviroinfo@ec.gc.ca

http://powellriverpersuader.blogspot.com/2010/03/gordon-campbell-erupts-in-anger-over.html

Send them a loud message...HELL NO!

No Enbridge,No killing of Fish lake,or the way go the ways of the WIGS and the dinosaurs!

Typo

Or go the way of the WIGS and Dinosaurs...

Cheers...."Recall in the fall"

to BC Mary: Who does this

to BC Mary: Who does this deciding, censoring, and muzzling?

The BC Libs, the federal conservatives and the right-wing US conservatives all attend the same political workshops. I have been told from attendees that this is the case. So the people who help determine the BC Liberal policy and news briefing were trained by the same people who determine the federal Conservative policy.

realisticman: Scientists Begging for their 15 minutes of Fame

You miss the point. Scientists need to express their findings. That is what they learned to do since they were in high school. When a high school student writes a lab report, the are expressing what they found out in the experiment. When some of them become professional scientists after many years of study and research, they still musty express their findings. To deny them of this is denying them their freedom of speech.

Maybe Ann Coulter would agree with you.

consistency

“The new policy merely assures that communications with the media are co-ordinated, to achieve the goals set out above -- namely, quick, accurate and consistent responses across Canada,”

How odd that when questioning climate change is involved, so many people cry foul when scientists agree and complain that dissenters don't get their fair share of air time, but when politics rears its head we need aP.R. flack to ensure they walk in lock-step.

realistically, if Mr Minority's muzzled scientists

... got paid the same $10K Coulter gets for her show, perhaps they'd be more willing speak out.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/24/f-rfa-macdonald.html

But the poor dear needs the attention:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmLJDrsaJmk

Those who can, do; those who can't, bully:
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/npd.htm

Ann Coulter

I'm so glad Ann Coulter made to The Tyee for the weekend. We now have a story to comment on that has no bearing on life but raises the ire of most literate folks. We can comment on this for the weekend and keep our energy levels flowing at a high level, but without burning greenhouse gases. This will keep us warm. Its a win-win all around.
A few comments I mentionrd elsewhere:

Ann Coulter should thank Francois Houle, vice-president academic and provost of the University of Ottawa for the free advice he gave her about the laws of Canada. Instead she attacks him and says he committed a hate-crime. It is actually she who committed the hate crime by attacking him for giving her some helpful advice. She needs help and a lot of it. Even an article calls her an "Inflammatory right-wing pundit." I wonder if she will sue the newspaper.

I think it's time to revive "American Woman" by the Guess Who. Here are a bit of the lyrics.

American Woman ------The Guess Who

(Bachman-Cummings-Kale-Peterson)
(Prologue)
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman, she gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind
American woman gonna mess your mind

I like realisticman's ironic moniker

He believes that scientists overstate climate change to save their jobs, but he doesn't believe corporations and their government minions (with their own clear corporate ties) obfuscate to boost their bottom lines.

Personally, I have more faith in the scientists.

This Harper bashing is so

This Harper bashing is so rote and pathetic.
No one is muzzling real scientists who look at all the facts and make rational decisions except a bunch of childish students and profs who will not let an alternative opinion be espoused if it does not conform to their "the sky is falling" anti business and ,anticonservative only, antigovernment creed.
Have any of you seen the tar sands?
I have flown over the place numerous times and while yes it is a pretty big operation compared to your average refinery or even the beautiful Hamilton steel mills it is not nearly as gross in the waste produced.
Look around and you will see it is lost in the vastness of the mosquito ridden scrubby muskeg swamps that surround it.
The rivers downstream are still clear, full of fish and relatively pristine considering the largest come from much further south.
The land reclaimed looks great and the air downwind is very clear. Deer, moose and black bear still wander into the edges of Ft Mac.
500 ducks died landing in a settlement pond during and extreme late season cold snap when I saw many in my travels all over the prairies standing freezing and starving buried in snow with little or no open water in their normal nesting grounds for that year.
I would dread to know how many died in that 2 week deep freeze all over the prairies but all the city folk will go nuts over the tar sands.
Get your educations and get out and see the real world.

newar

You're right. Soon there won't be a single respectable and honest scientist working for the federal government.

And the only ones left will be pretend scientists in the meteorological service who provide regular updates of the weather forecast.

I have seen the tar sands - have you?

wouldn't it be terrible if

wouldn't it be terrible if these scientists carelessly left their reports lying around so they got stolen and published? Or if someone hacked into their computers? Simply awful! Oh my.

Muzzling

Harper does not just muzzle scientists. He did not let George Gallway into Canada to speak and he has stacked the board of a Canadian Democracy group. He is fervently pro-Israel and anti-Palistine. He is turning Canada into a reactionary right wing state and we we look like fools internationally. His party is stacked with fundamentalist kooks who think the universe is 6000 years old and that man walked with the dinosaurs.
They cut taxes to the wealthy and now want to start cutting our social infrastructure, based on the funding crisis they created. Who voted for these people?

Letter to Harper: Liberate the Climate Scientists Now!

Mr. Harper,

Your persistently juvenile and misguided "government" has once again gone beyond the limits that can be tolerated by the broad masses of the Canadian people. Just how long do you expect to get away with these displays of ideological petulance, before you are inevitably crushed at the polls by Canadian voters? Canadians are finally beginning to see you clearly for the traitor to this country and the threat to its noble ideals and institutions that you really are.

Allow me to make a brief list here of the more egregious recent examples of your complete unfitness to govern the nation: [long list omitted]

And now - with your customary high-handed and delusional stubbornness - you have the audacity (and I have to add, the political naiveté) to think that Canadians will not notice, will not be furious, will not rise up in arms, now that you are muzzling publicly funded environmental scientists and preventing them from communicating with the Canadian public. These are the very scientists who need to be speaking truth to grossly misinformed "leaders" like you and guiding this nation and its people away from their new-found pariah status as the worst per-capita GHG polluters on the planet.

This needs to stop, Mr. Harper, and stop now. You are stuck in the craw of the Canadian public, but there's more than one way out. It's too late now, I think, for you to save your position as the leader of the evanescent minority Conservative government of this country, but you can still do a great deal to save yourself from the extreme ignominy that will otherwise follow you out of 24 Sussex Drive.

Liberate Canada's public scientists, allow them to speak freely, and you will at once begin to appear less alien to Canadian values and less threatening to Canada's noble traditions of social democracy . Or you could be loathed for all time as the right-wing ideological control-freak who sealed Canada's status as an international pariah nation.

The PMO has no business attempting to control the free expression of scientific views in the Canadian public forum in this autocratic and completely un-Canadian manner. The people of Canada expect you to liberate these scientists immediately.

Yours in revolutionary spirit,
Des McAllister McMurchy, Sointula, BC

What, another national embarrassment? Will anyone notice?

Copenhagen. Rights and Democracy. Proroguement. Tar sands. Our role in defeating the proposal to ban tuna exports. Harper breaking his own fixed election date law. The unprecedented centralization of power in the PMO. The government's treatment of Afghan detainees and of Richard Colvin. I could go on.

Harper is Canada's George Bush minus the mangling of language. He's embarrassing Canada and turning us into an international pariah. An international joke. Just like the Americans were too self-absorbed to notice how the rest of the world viewed them under Bush, Canadians are failing to take heed of our diminished international reputation under Harper.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/env

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/26/rajendra-pachauri-climate-science-persecution

How to get rid of Harper.

Unless voters become more pragmatic, we will suffer through another couple of years of right wing b.s.

Centre-left voters have to back the candidate most likely to defeat the conservative.

In BC this is essential; polls show the liberals and ndp combined are well over 50%---over 60% with the greens.

Supporters of the provincial ndp should realize that the federal liberals ARE NOT THE SAME AS THE CAMPBELL LIBERALS. And in some areas federal liberals have to take a serious look at their local ndp choice.

Before voting green people should consider if this choice is harmful. Voting green in 2000 denied the US the greenest president in history, but elected an oil man instead.

What's the worry?

"You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that climate change is here... look not to far to see the warmest jan and feb on record ever in Vancouver."

So, after all, the TRUTH as some pople see it has reached the people. We don't need to go on expounding on it. What other public employee can talk to the media out of their job situation and do so as if they were free agents? If you want the right to speak up in a big way, BECOME a free agent! Scientists are supposed to publish papers on their work, and 'environmentalists' can look up these papers and draw people's attention to them. How is that not adequate? As a taxpayer, I consider that I pay scientists for conducting science, as well as teaching student bodies. I do not pay them for setting up PR operations. They can do that to the extent it doesn't hsppen on tax dollars, in which case the government would also have nothing to say about it.

It sounds to me as if people had a good thing going, because nobody was looking out for the tax-payer, but now somebopdy does, and they don't like the sound of it. Ye cannot blow and keep flour in yer mouth, too!

Federal scientists paid to do science, not PR

Dorothy,

You've got it all wrong. We pay our federal scientists to do science -- free of political interference -- and then report on their findings, free of political interference. We do not pay our scientists to bury findings, or to send them through the back doors of NGOs and interest groups. Nor do we pay our scientists to provide governments with merely convenient truths.

The leaked document suggests not just a muzzling of the free flow of scientific information, but worse, it points to a cynical politicization of our tax-paid scientists.

It's really ironic that you should imply (wrongly I might add) that our federal scientists have some sort of veiled political agenda, suggesting that their free and open reporting on their findings constitutes PR. What utter nonsense. The aim of the Harper government edict is clear. Rather than let impartial experts tell the truth and report freely on their findings, muzzle them, then, instead of science, feed the public selective PR spin, delivered by and filtered through politicians, bureaucrats and spin doctors, who usually know little-to-nothing about the science at hand.

As Dr. D.W. Schindler wrote in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen (March 19), "The taxpayers pay the salaries and research expenses of federal scientists, and it is we [taxpayers] who should benefit directly from the knowledge that they produce, not politicians and spin doctors who wish to shape our minds and federal policies in a science vacuum. Only a well-informed electorate can make decisions that are well grounded in both science and the needs of a democratic society."

Scientists need to be free to report on their findings, regardless of what the political or policy implications might be of those findings.

Just the facts please

"Scientists need to be free to report on their findings, regardless of what the political or policy implications might be of those findings."

I would add that it's best if scientists report on their own findings in the interests of accuracy too. Too often we see how a scientific report gets progressively more and more mis-represented as it goes from originator to media to the public. As a long-time listener to Quirks and Quarks, it's quite obvious to me that scientists are very capable of explaining their work in ways that are understandable to a mass audience. The problems invariably arise when a P.R. representative or reporter attempt to summarize or condense information. If accuracy and consistency are the aims, then it's quite clear we want to get our fact's from 'the horse's mouth' not misinterpreted through a process akin to the childhood game of 'Telephone'.

Science experimental V. applied - part 1

Harper's reductionist/objectivist Fundamental/Conservative Christian roots may be the root of his problem with science.

From Wikipedia:

"Science as discussed in this article is sometimes called experimental science to differentiate it from applied science, which is the application of scientific research to specific human needs—although the two are commonly interconnected.

"Science is a continuing effort to discover and increase human knowledge and understanding through disciplined research. Using controlled methods, scientists collect observable evidence of natural or social phenomena, record measurable data relating to the observations, and analyze this information to construct theoretical explanations of how things work. ... Scientists are also expected to publish their information so other so other scientists can do similar experiments to double-check their conclusions. The results of this process enable better understanding of past events, and better ability to predict future events of the same kind as those that have been tested."

The kicker for Canadian experimental scientists is that Harper is impeding a fundamental convention: "Scientists are also expected to publish their information..." This is because Harper, a reductionist and objectivist, seems only to believe in applied science. He seems to believe that scientists are to be used to achieve the short-term desired outcomes of the corporate world.

It has been my experience that many fundamentalist/conservative Christians tend to follow this belief structure that the earth is man's to do with as he will ...as though it is man's right to extract all that he can as quickly as he can, as "... man shall have dominion over the plants and animals." But, there is a problem with this thinking and one can go to the root of the word dominion to find it.

Science: experiment V. applied - part 2

From dictionary.com:

"...from Latin dominium, property, from dominus, lord..."

Reductionist-objectivists don't recognise that having dominion over something implies a responsibility to take care of it.

Perhaps (mineral and oil-money driven politician that he is) Harper wants global warming so that the Arctic's oil and gas are more easily gotten. He is not worried about his responsibility to care for nature over which he has dominion. It may be that Harper has faith that God's will will be done no matter what he (a human) does.

From Wikipedia:

"Critics of US conservative Christianity believe that these Christians deemphasize what they see as the central message of the Gospels, namely as social justice and concern for the poor. Liberal or progressive Christians note that Jesus spent much of his ministry in the company of "sinners," such as prostitutes and tax collectors, and that he criticized the religious authorities of his day as self-righteous, excessively judgmental, legalistic, and lacking compassion (see, for example, Matthew 12:1-7, Mark 3:1-6, Matthew 23)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservative_Christianity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dominion

dorothy

"So, after all, the TRUTH as some pople see it has reached the people. We don't need to go on expounding on it."

Au contraire... the truth is only what has been undeniably exposed thus far.

Take for example, the melting of the Arctic. On the government website (so far at least), I can only find a map of ice thicknesses that is a median of data from 1971 to 2000. We have been told more than once that the bulk of acceleration in melting has been over the last 10 years... where is the truth now but in the minds of government employed scientists that have been working on this project for at least the last 20 years?... now muzzled as the article says, from revealing that truth.

In spite of the convenient arguments expounded over the last few years, blurring the line between whether global warming is man made or natural, it matters little in the scheme of things. Both solutions require action for damage control. This is way more than another "taxpayer" thing. It becomes a humankind issue when there is a call for action and yet nothing is done.

Ask yourself why the deadline for international agreement over arctic waters is 2012.

And, if it were yours to decide:

Would you rather Harper sit idly while the arctic ice melts so he can go in, drill offshore, and get all that oil and gas that I've mentioned before?

Or would you prefer he set some strict targets to try and curb climate change, thereby benefitting the whole globe?