Attacks paid for by big business are 'driving science into a dark era'

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/feb/19/science-scepticism-usdomesticpolicy


The vast majority of scientists on both sides of the Atlantic say rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere threaten to increase temperatures to dangerous levels. Photograph: Paul Souders/Corbis

Most scientists, on achieving high office, keep their public remarks to the bland and reassuring. Last week Nina Fedoroff, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), broke ranks in a spectacular manner.

She confessed that she was now "scared to death" by the anti-science movement that was spreading, uncontrolled, across the US and the rest of the western world.

"We are sliding back into a dark era," she said. "And there seems little we can do about it. I am profoundly depressed at just how difficult it has become merely to get a realistic conversation started on issues such as climate change or genetically modified organisms."

The remarks of Fedoroff, one of the world's most distinguished agricultural scientists, are all the more remarkable given their setting.

[rurallib]

1. I see the census bureau says scientists are leaving the US

http://www.isa.org/InTechTemplate.cfm?Section=InTech&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=66590

innovation and jobs will follow them.

[xchrom]

2. The Inside Story on Climate Scientists Under Siege

http://motherjones.com/environment/2012/02/climate-scientist-michael-mann-video

It is almost possible to dismiss Michael Mann's account of a vast conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry to harrass scientists and befuddle the public. His story of that campaign, and his own journey from naive computer geek to battle-hardened climate ninja, seems overwrought, maybe even paranoid.

But now comes the unauthorized release of documents showing how a libertarian think tank, the Heartland Institute, which has in the past been supported by Exxon, spent millions on lavish conferences attacking scientists and concocting projects to counter science teaching for kindergarteners.

Mann's story of what he calls the climate wars, the fight by powerful entrenched interests to undermine and twist the science meant to guide government policy, starts to seem pretty much on the money. He's telling it in a book out on March 6, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches From the Front Lines.

[snagglepuss]

4. Recommend this video. Vey insightful to what scientists are up

against daily. Shocking to know fossil fuel industry ran an ad demanding the lecture to be cancelled.

[wtmusic]

6. Given their record I don't find it shocking at all.

For 130 years these people have never given a moment's thought about the environment they weren't required to.

[Jim Lane]

3. The scientists are specifically calling out Republican politicians and the Koch brothers

I feared it would be just a tame lament about the general public's low level of scientific awareness. They go beyond that, though, and note how the Republican candidates are competing with each other to be the most hostile to science.

[wtmusic]

5. "...or genetically modified organisms."

Bravo Nina. This second front of scientific denial doesn't get enough press.

[xchrom]

7. Which Major Corporations are Backing a Climate-Denier Think Tank?

http://motherjones.com/blue-marble/2012/02/major-corporations-backing-climate-denier-think-tank

Over at ThinkProgress Green, Josh Israel and Brad Johnson expose 19 major corporations backing the Heartland Institute, the think tank whose internal documents were leaked this week, laying bare its plans to teach students that climate change is a hoax and other anti-climate efforts. As my colleague Kate Sheppard reported on Thursday, the documents—posted here and here—prompted a backlash from Heartland, which deemed at least one of the documents fake and some tampered with. Interestingly, Heartland president Joseph Bast then used the incident to write to donors, first to apologize—the leaked emails identified some private donors, to whom Heartland promises anonymity "because nobody wants the risk of nutty environmentalists or Occupy Wall Street goons harassing them"—and then to ask for more money ("Now more than ever, I need you to stand by us in our time of need&quot .

Heartland's fundraising tactics (PDF) seem to have worked well in the past, given the group's impressive suite of corporate donations in 2010 and 2011. Here's the full list of Heartland's corporate backers, via ThinkProgress:

Altria Client Services Inc.: $90,000

Amgen, USA: $25,000

Anheuser-Busch Companies Inc.: $5,000

AT&T: $100,000

BB&T: $16,105

Comcast Corporation: $35,000

[saras]

8. Better late than never - this should have happened when Reagan got elected...

...but the truth is that so many scientists were so happy to be getting so much money from corporations they didn't really care what restrictions were placed on their research. And now we wonder why certain kinds of public-interest science haven't been done in twenty years.

[kestrel91316]

9. The attack against science is partly behind the attack on

women's birth control - the RW tries to lie and say that the BCP causes abortion, when it is scientific FACT that is does no such thing.

Wow, if it does, though, that means I have had.......(doing math in my head here)........OVER 350 ABORTIONS IN MY LIFE!!!

Yay!!!! Do I get some sort of award??

(and I am only counting one per month - if it's one per pill, well, I DO get an award, lol)