I am confused about why someone would suspend a person who gave an unfavorable report. Do they think that will reduce its exposure?
It is a warning to other scientists to tow the party line. Environmental offices should never be under the bureaucratic oversight of offices charged with natural resources exploitation. One might think that lesson was learned from the Gulf of Mexico disaster.
He probably lied about something. There's and epidemic of that going around in the climate change community.
In which case, the thing to do is attack the lies. Attacking the man, means one can't attack the lies. Which means that they aren't lies, but rather the truth. I take the fact that he was fired without an accusation of lying as evidence that he was not lying. The contention that polar bears are dying has improved in my Bayesian analysis.
Look, somebody needs to tell those silly ol' bears climate change is a hoax and then they'll stop dying!
Amusingly, if one REALLY believed that there was no global warming, there would be no reason to suspend the scientist for this report. Polar bears died. That is just data. The only reason to suppress it is if you KNOW that the deaths were caused by global warming, and you want that knowledge to be anathema
the train of thought is slightly different: "we gonna get XXXXX$ when it drilled.. who is in the way? get him out!"
^^ A lot. The problem is seniority. The infestation of political hacks throughout the federal executive branch is an ongoing present from the bush era of neo-cons and idiot libertarians. To a degree, they cannot be fired. Either they retire, or are shunted sideways; but the latter solution leaves them in place to agitate, collect on past influence, and of course continue to collect a high paycheck.
i understand that you can't clear them all out overnight, but you would think something could be done in a case like this where politics is overuling sanity. especially where it's the opposite politics from the current administration!
Yes, I hope the AK administrator will in turn become an example for others of his ilk to remember when they consider operating against high level executive policy. This is a two-edged sword, by the way. Bush era high level executives had to deal with administrators they did not install who went against policy and published AGW reports. Transparency is the only solution here. Bush operatives tried to quash the AGW reports in secret, but it is hard to fire an administrator for telling the truth. The wider scientific community tends to find their voice. Incidentally, a high level bureaucrat in the Obama admin went on record the other day saying that the suspension was for reasons unrelated to the polar bear report. I reserve judgement until more details emerge, although we may always be unsure what the *real* reason is, as opposed to the excuse for action.
