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Exile For Non-Believers
by Joanne Nova | September 21, 2009
The price for speaking out against global warming is exile from your peers, even if you
are at the top of your field. What follows is an example of a scientific group that not
only stopped a leading researcher from attending a meeting, but then—without
discussing the evidence—applauds the IPCC and recommends urgent policies to reduce
greenhouse gases. What has science been reduced to if bear biologists feel they can
effectively issue ad hoc recommendations on worldwide energy use? How low have
standards sunk if informed opinion is censored, while uninformed opinion is elevated to
official policy? If a leading researcher can’t speak his mind without punishment by exile,
what chance would any up-and-coming researcher have? As Mitchell Taylor points out “It’s a
good way to maintain consensus”.
And so it is. But it’s not science.
Mitchell Taylor is a Polar Bear researcher who has caught more polar bears and
worked on more polar bear groups than any other, but he was effectively ostracized
from the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) specifically because he has publicly
expressed doubts that there is a crisis due to carbon dioxide emissions.
Dr Andy Derocher, the outgoing chairman of the PSBG and Professor at the University of
Alabama, wrote to inform Taylor that he was not welcome at the 2009 meeting of the PBSG.
Keep in mind as you read his comments (below) that Taylor had arranged funding to attend
the meeting in Copenhagen, and has been at every meeting of this group since 19811. With
30 years of experience in polar bear research, it goes without saying that he has something
to contribute to any discussion about polar bear conservation.
This is the original email from Derocher to Taylor explaining why he was not invited:
Hi Mitch,
The world is a political place and for polar bears, more so now than
ever before. I have no problem with dissenting views as long as they
are supportable by logic, scientific reasoning, and the literature.
I do believe, as do many PBSG members, that for the sake of polar
bear conservation, views that run counter to human induced climate
change are extremely unhelpful. In this vein, your positions and
statements in the Manhattan Declaration, the Frontier Institute, and
the Science and Public Policy Institute are inconsistent with positions
taken by the PBSG.
I too was not surprised by the members not endorsing an invitation.
Nothing I heard had to do with your science on harvesting or your
research on polar bears - it was the positions you've taken on global
warming that brought opposition.
Time will tell who is correct but the scientific literature is not on the
side of those arguing against human induced climate change.
I look forward to having someone else chair the PBSG.
Best regards,
Andy (Derocher)
So in polar bear research, your opinion on climate change is more important than your
knowledge about polar bears. (Time to add Science to the Threatened Species List.)
While Mitchell Taylor was ousted, three participants were added to the meeting from
groups whose main activities are political lobbying and education rather than science. While
the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Polar Bears International (PBI) do fund some
minor research, their main output is press releases, rather than scientific papers. Taylor
has published some 59 peer reviewed papers. But none of the three new
representatives appears to have published a single scientific paper related to polar bears.
If they managed large research programs it would be understandable, but PBI’s budget
is apparently barely enough to cover one full time researcher and yet they effectively had
three representatives at the PBSG meeting (including Derocher who is a scientific
advisor for the PBI).
So there were three spaces for people from institutions whose funds depend on there being
a “crisis”, but no space for one of the most published researchers in the field?
If Exxon funding is supposed to affect scientists’ announcements, how could we expect
"Green" funding from groups who hold a very strong position on climate change not to
influence people, or at least to attract job applicants who share their views? Imagine the
scandal if Exxon had funded a representative without a single paper to his name and he
replaced one of the most experienced in the field?
People assume scientific associations to make pronouncements that mean something, but
scientific associations are not scientific so much as political. Committees change. Their
decrees are unaudited, and the media do little investigation or critical analysis and mostly
just repeat their press releases.
One of the few who did note the incident was Christopher Booker. In response, blogger Tim
Lambert in (known as “Deltoid”) weighed in to give Derocher a chance to answer the critics.
So what does Derocher have to say for himself? He comes up with reasonable sounding
excuses to justify his actions, but none of them change the original email. His post hoc
efforts are just that: post hoc. Worse, they are wrong too. He clutches at straws declaring
that Mitchell Taylor is retired—which is evidently news to Mitchell, who has two current
contracts, and is a faculty member at Lakehead University with an active teaching program.
Taylor has also been out in the field since the last PSBG meeting, and what a “field” it must
be. Trekking through snow and looking for predators that weigh half a ton doesn’t sound
like much of a hobby for senior citizens. Derocher comically repeats the “retirement theme”
in his email reply to my question about evidence. “What the media and Mitch Taylor have
failed to note, is that Dr Taylor moved into early retirement last year.”
Derocher is correct that Mitchell Taylor had retired from the Nunavut Government position,
but Taylor is obviously still involved in research. Defending himself, Derocher points out that
it was only a brief personal email, and that there were many factors he left out. But it
obviously wasn’t an email about personal matters, and while there may have been other
reasons not to invite Taylor, the point here is about the way the decision was reached and
conveyed. There was no equivocation in the email. It is obvious that the message for Taylor
was that ...if you had believed in man-made climate change we would have invited you. Like a
Masonic handshake, kowtowing to climate change has become the password for entry.
Full article in PDF below.
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