Scientists Biased, Talk Too Much: Confidential government memo.
Details here, in Blacklock’s Reporter: minding Ottawa’s business, August 11, 2014.
Tar sands, Alberta, Canada. Photo: The Nation.
The primary target of the confidential memo, John Smol, is a professor at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, a widely acclaimed paleolimnologist (fathoming the life stories of lakes), and Canada Research Chair in Environmental Change.
Why does the Harper government want to silence John Smol and his co-researchers? Because they know too much. The current regime in Ottawa is an aggressive booster of the enormously destructive tar sands colossus, and is determined to keep Canadians strictly on message: tar sands = good for Canada, with minimal harm. Period. Trouble is, their message keeps getting shredded by the findings of honest science.
Why won’t John Smol shut up? He knows too much:
“The huge problem is that many environmental problems are long scale. They can take years, decades to show up – or longer, sometimes I work in centuries, even millennia. But politicians think in terms of four years, at best. Look at the tar sands – go ahead, pump it out as fast as you can, we’ll be out of here in four years, what do we care? Industry is even worse, they think in quarters, 90-day intervals. Costs for the future are horrendous, but they’re not in this fiscal cycle. When things go extinct, they’re extinct forever. You destroy a river system, it’s gone. Destroy a fish population, it’s gone. How do you gauge what that’s worth?”
Delve into John Smol’s research, paleolimnology, and why he speaks out, in Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science. Available September 4, 2014, in print and e-book from Between the Lines.
“Who’s to say, now that Google has become an arm of law enforcement, how long that arm will reach? I mean, can we really trust a giant transnational corporation to have our best interests at heart?” Thom Hartmann, The Daily Take, via Truthout, August 06 2014.
Good questions.
Bloomberg News, a US business paper, August 2013: “The government uses corporations to circumvent its prohibitions against eavesdropping domestically on its citizens. Corporations rely on the government to ensure that they have unfettered use of the data they collect.”
As Thom Hartman notes, “we can all agree that child porn is a bad thing.” But then who’s next? Recent exposures of NSA tactics by Edward Snowden and others have made clear that the surveillance state and its corporate partners will grab everything they can, then they decide later who and what is good or bad.
In Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, I asked David Lyon about the comforting mantra that if we’ve done nothing wrong, we have nothing to fear. Director of the Surveillance Studies Centre, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada, Lyon replied: “The idea that I’m innocent until proven guilty is seriously compromised if I’m placed arbitrarily in a category of suspicion, and the reassuring notion that if I have nothing to hide I have nothing to fear is completely falsified when my name is put on a list about which I know nothing.”
Take this blog, for example. Its purpose is to share news and questions about how science is done, and what impacts it has on nature and humanity. But what’s to stop Google from deciding that a blog critical of Google should be shut down?
There are alternatives to the giant trawler called Google. None of them is 100% secure, but at least some browsers are less inclined to sell us all to the highest bidder. One example: DuckDuckGo. And others.
So who cares, some say.
David Lyon again: “Indifference is appropriate only for those who think that efficiency, convenience and speed qualify as values to be placed over openness, fairness, and the accountability of those whose task it is to process personal data.”
Join David Lyon in tracking the trackers.Bold Scientists: dispatches from the battle for honest science, coming September 4, 2014 from Between the Lines.
The federal government is asking Canadians to share our thoughts on how to shape the future of science policy in this country.
Photo: pencanada.ca
Frankly, given the current regime’s dismal record on public science, I doubt they want to know what we think unless it agrees with their corporate agenda, but why not at least give it a try? After all, it’s still a free country. In which, by the way, silence is taken for consent.
The stakes are enormous, really a matter of life and death. Think of the tar-sands, climate chaos, fracking, GMOs….
Evidence for Democracy offers thoughtful recommendations on how to restore public-interest science and evidence-based policy development in Canada. They request our input:
The existing strategy only focuses on science and innovation related to business. It completely ignores all the other science that is necessary for the long-term well-being and prosperity of Canadians. Federal government science capacity is crucial for the support of evidence-informed public policy.
The current strategy is also entirely silent about federal support for basic research. Amazingly, supporting basic research is not identified as a priority for Canadian science. Yet such research lies at the heart of all innovation. No basic research, no innovation: it’s that simple.
Canada’s Science Library Closures Mirror Bush’s Playbook. Details here. More detail in The Tyee’s follow-up story, here.
This is the next step in an escalating right-wing war on honest science and public knowledge, both of which the authorities fear and despise.
Their target, says Canadian paleolimnologist John Smol, is “pesky data” that challenges the government’s corporate agenda. They’ve already gutted a long hit list of vital research programs in Canada, including the world famous Experimental Lakes Area research facility.
John Smol: “The ELA has been a jewel in Canada’s crown – go to any water conference in the world, you just have to say ELA and everyone knows what you’re talking about. And it costs nothing to maintain. $2 million, what’s that, a penny per Canadian, so we don’t get toxic algae blooms, acid rain? It’s like claiming to save medical costs by not letting people have tests and checkups, the long-term data you need to maintain health. The ELA is exactly the kind of thing responsible government should be doing. So why are they closing the ELA? Because it provided pesky data, that’s why.”
(Follow this story in Pesky Data: unspun science for dangerous times. Coming in 2014 from Between the Lines.)
Scientists and other citizens who value public knowledge are resisting the destruction. At a public protest in Ottawa, thousands of scientists carried banners declaring: No Science, No Evidence; No Truth, No Democracy. The stakes are that high.
I have no illusions about the real impact of petitions. But at least the current leaders need to know that some of us are opposed. Here is an opportunity to say so.
Evidence for Democracy is a Canadian organization of scientists and citizens “who care passionately about the role that evidence needs to play in decision-making.” Recently they sent out this urgent appeal:
Irreplaceable scientific information is disappearing due to the recent closure of seven libraries run by Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) and a number of Environment Canada and Natural Resources Canada libraries.
Scientists are saying that many of the books, reports and data at these libraries have already been discarded or destroyed without being properly digitized.
This priceless information is essential for the protection and security of Canada’s waterways. In particular, historical data and information provides the only baseline by which changes in the state of Canada’s aquatic ecosystems and fisheries resources can be evaluated. Without such trend data, assessing the impacts of policy and management decisions is impossible.
Please send a message to the federal party leaders and your member of parliament calling on them to stop closing our science libraries, and to ensure that the remaining information from the closed libraries is made available in a timely fashion.
In 2012, you may have joined a national campaign to block their highly invasive online spying legislation, Bill C-30. The government claimed it would “help police combat child pornography.” But many critics, including the federal privacy commissioner, noticed the sweeping legislation would force internet service providers to maintain systems allowing police to intercept and track online communications without a warrant, effectively wiping out fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of speech. The intent was clear: Increased powers for a surveillance-obsessed regime.
OpenMedia.ca led a national campaign to kill the Bill. In February 2013, the federal Minister of Justice announced that the government “would not proceed” with Bill C-30. “We’ve listened to the concerns of Canadians who have been very clear on this.” Nor, he added, would the government pursue any other measures for “the warrantless mandatory disclosure of basic subscriber information or the requirement for telecommunications service providers to build intercept capability within their systems.”
Turns out they lied.
Now known as Bill C-13, the undead spy bill is back. Now they claim it’s to fight cyberbullying. A good thing to fight. But it’s a cover. Bill C-13 consists of just 2.5 pages aimed at cyberbullying, and 65 pages aimed at making it easier for the government to spy on the online activities of all Canadians. These provisions are lifted straight from Bill C-30. Micheal Vonn, BC Civil Liberties Association: “This is not a bill about cyberbullying. It’s a bill essentially to reintroduce most of the components of Bill C-30, despite the government’s assurances that they would not do so.”
It’s not too late to join the resistance. Here’s how.
(Follow this story in What next? Doing science in dangerous times. Coming in 2014 from Between the Lines.)
Tar sands, Alberta, Canada. Photo: The Nation.
Michael Riordon 