From Jennifer Marohasy. This shows that scientists are not immune from fashionable and hysterical movements and will act in unscientific ways, punishing those who dare to challenge and question the prevailing orthodoxy.
“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 Alberta, 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 1981. 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 Polar Bear Specialist Group (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) …
Andy (Derocher) …
Keep reading here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/originals/exile_for_non-believers.html
Pdf here: http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/Nova-Exile_for_non_believers.pdf
‘Exile for Non-Believers’, by Joanne Nova, published by the Science and Public Policy Institute, September 2009
Photo Credit: Susanne Miller, United States Fish and Wildlife Service http://www.fws.gov/home/feature/2008/polarbear012308/polarbearphotos.html
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