Alaska seeks to show polar bears aren't threatened

Alaska seeks to show polar bears aren't threatened
By Tom Kizzia | Anchorage Daily News

* Posted on Sunday, May 4, 2008



ANCHORAGE — Alaska's state legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon — researchers just have to fill in the science part.

A $2 million program funded with little debate by the legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival.

Republican legislative leaders say a federal decision to declare the polar bears "threatened" by climate change would have troubling effects on Arctic oil development and the state's economic future. Last week a federal judge ordered the Bush administration to release its already-tardy decision under the Endangered Species Act by May 15. By law, such a decision must be based strictly on science, not on possible economic consequences.

Legislative leaders said they are frustrated that researchers skeptical of the doomsday scenario get marginalized as crackpots or industry shills by the media and scientific agencies. Critics say it's a waste of state money because all the hard scientific research points in the other direction.

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http://www.adn.com/front/story/395540.html

Now why would someone think that? Oh, I know, because most of the repugs in Alaska are. The only hard part, is trying figure out if they are a bigger crackpot or shill

The comments under the article were pretty interesting.

Still trying to figure out what an "academic based" conference is...wisdom unencumbered by facts?

Isn't that the basic definition of a shill? Someone who will say anything for a financial reward.

Maybe they ought to just contract directly with the Heartland Institute. They recently put out a paper coauthored by 500 skeptical scientists. Of course once people found out that they'd been placed on the list they immediately started asking to be removed with some threatening legal action. They put the scientists as coauthors on a paper supporting a series of statements against the theory anthropogenic climate change without consulting with the scientists. It appears that there are so few deniers that they had to artificially pad their paper.