Category Archives: academic freedom

The Hounding of Roger Pielke Jr amid the demise of academic freedom in climate change

Academic freedom is squashed when scholars challenge any of the principle tenets of climate change and one of the most egregious examples of this has been the hounding of Roger Pielke Jr., explained in detail in a briefing paper published today.

If this is what climate change activists and their supporters in academia will do to a senior professor like Roger Pielke Jr., who really only disagrees with them on a single point, it’s no wonder that adjunct professors like myself have been virtually powerless in defending ourselves when the university mob mobilizes to attack with earnest (Laframboise 2019).

Here’s the executive summary, by civil liberties journalist Donna Laframboise:

Climate change, we’re told, threatens the ‘viability of our societies‘. In August 2021, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres declared the alarm bells ‘deafening‘. If this is even remotely the case, humanity is in urgent need of clear thinking.

But the climate movement rejects clear thinking. It has little interest in sorting facts from fiction, in ensuring its efforts are based on evidence rather than dogma. The hostility and venom directed at Roger Pielke Jr, a natural disasters expert who wholeheartedly supports decarbonisation of the global economy, demonstrates this beyond doubt.

Stray but a little from the dominant climate narrative, and activists will fantasise about your violent death. They will dismiss your peer-reviewed publications as marginal, accuse you of spreading disinformation, and successfully campaign to get you fired from part-time jobs. They will publish false allegations about you on the White House website, target journalists who quote you in news stories, and subject you to punitive, intrusive, and extensive financial investigation.

In recent years, Roger Pielke Jr has further discovered that academic freedom is an empty slogan at the University of Colorado (Boulder), his primary employer. Rather than defending its most senior environmental studies professor, his own department is now determinedly harassing and humiliating him.

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Interview with Tom Harris about the state of polar bear conservation Part 2

Here is the second part of a great conversation I had recently with Tom Harris from iHeartRADIO (‘Exploratory Journeys with Tom Harris’) about polar bear conservation, the price I’ve paid for speaking out about polar bears and my new polar bear science book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. We also talked about my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN. Have a listen to the podcast here! Part 1 is here in case you missed it.

 

Why the Covid-19 epidemic is essentially over & current PCR testing protocols are pointless

This is a very good short paper on the current state of the Covid-19 epidemic by two UK respiratory disease researchers that is well worth the read, with a good coverage of the problems with models and PCR testing that is encouraging some governments to renew the panic and restrictions initiated back in March.
Svalbard social distancing_keep one polar bear away_icepeople 3 April 2020
Understanding Covid-19 is pertinent to this blog topic, not least because virtually all polar bear field research has been shut down for the year worldwide, with no indications restrictions will be lifted over the next few months: an entire year’s worth of data will be missing for all kinds of studies. Small Arctic communities that traditionally provided essential logistical support for these studies also tend to have a high proportion of vulnerable citizens and so remain closed to the outside world. Restrictions on travel – the border between the US and Canada remains closed to all but essential traffic – and limits on size of gatherings mean that the government response to this illness has severely impacted my public activities.
Have a look at this important referenced essay: I’ve copied the Executive Summary below.

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Sceptical covid-19 research and sceptical polar bear science: is there a difference?

This essay about medical researchers having trouble getting their papers published because the results don’t support the official pandemic narrative has disturbing parallels with my experience trying to inject some balance into the official polar bear conservation narrative.1 Especially poignant is the mention of models built on assumptions sold as ‘facts’ that fail once data (i.e. evidence) become available – which of course is the entire point of my latest book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened.

Read the commentary below, copied from Lockdownsceptics.org (6 September 2020). Bold in original, link added to the story to which this is a response, and brief notes and links added as footnotes for parallels with polar bear conservation science. Continue reading

Is the demise of polar bears being exaggerated to keep extinction panic alive?

An excellent summary of recent points I’ve made in my latest book and on this blog about the recent push to keep polar bear extinction panic alive with a new model of impending doom was published two days ago in the Spectator UK by columnist Ross Clark (23 July 2020, in Coffee House).

Svalbard polar bear fall 2015_Aars

Excerpt below:

“Wouldn’t it be nice if we could debate climate change for five minutes without hearing about polar bears or being subjected to footage of them perched precariously on a melting ice floe? But that is a little too much to expect. Polar bears have become the pin-ups of climate change, the poor creatures who are supposed to jolt us out of thinking about abstract concepts and make us weep that our own selfishness is condemning these magnificent animals to a painful and hungry end.”

Read the whole thing here.

PS. I noticed Clark refers to me as an anthropologist. I have requested a correction because I am a zoologist.

My polar bear podcast interview with Anthony Watts from WUWT

A few days ago I had the pleasure of talking with Anthony Watts from WUWT as part of his new podcast series. Listen to it here.

Crockford podcast with Anthony Watts 19 June 2020

Below, I’ve copied a post from earlier this year that summarizes some misconceptions about polar bear conservation status and population size. I reiterate here (with links added for convenience) what I said last month:

The polar bear data are contradictory: contrary to predictions, several polar bear subpopulations (at least four of them) are indeed thriving despite much reduced summer sea ice [Chukchi Sea, Barents Sea, Kane Basin, M’Clintock Channel, as well as Foxe Basin and Davis Strait]. I have chosen to emphasis that good news, while Stirling and Derocher choose to emphasize the data that seem to fit their predictions [Western Hudson Bay and Southern Hudson Bay]. This is a classic conflict that happens all the time in science but presents no proof that I’m wrong or that the PragerU video is inherently ‘false’.

Note that Western Hudson Bay bears were last counted in 2016 but have had five good sea ice seasons in a row now, including this year by the look of it, so if ‘lack of sea ice’ is really the cause of the statistically-insignificant decline, then population numbers should be back up. And here is my video about the National Geographic video of the starving polar bear blamed on climate change mentioned by Anthony in the interview:

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New Paper: Body condition of Barents Sea polar bears increased since 2004 despite sea ice loss

A recent paper that attempted to correlate pollution levels and body condition in Barents Sea polar bears reports it found body condition of female bears had increased between 2004 and 2017 despite a pronounced decline in summer and winter sea ice extent.

Svalbard polar bear Jon Aars_Norsk Polarinstitutt

“Unexpectedly, body condition of female polar bears from the Barents Sea has increased after 2005, although sea ice has retreated by ∼50% since the late 1990s in the area, and the length of the ice-free season has increased by over 20 weeks between 1979 and 2013. These changes are also accompanied by winter sea ice retreat that is especially pronounced in the Barents Sea compared to other Arctic areas” [Lippold et al. 2019:988]

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European outrage over my loss of adjunct status and video of my Dutch school lecture

I’ve been home for just over 3 weeks now but even with all the demands on my time from family, friends, colleagues, and the media that I had to put off while I was away, I didn’t want to miss setting down a few final thoughts about my speaking tour across Europe. See previous posts here and here.

Polar bear beer ISBJORN_Jan Erik OSLO 23 Oct 2019

Polar bear beer had a prominent place at the post-conference dinner in Oslo.

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Delingpole interview on the success of polar bear conservation & failed survival models

Tomorrow I will be giving a public lecture in Paris on polar bear conservation success and the spectacular failure of the polar bear survival models used to scare children senseless.

However, while I was in London a few days ago I spoke with James Delingpole, author and columnist at Breitbart who has recently taken to producing podcast and video interviews.

Chukchi Sea polar bear Arctic_early August 2018_A Khan NSIDC small

Yesterday, he posted a column summarizing our discussion, with a link to the entire podcast: “WATCH: Canadian Professor Lost Her Job for Telling the Truth About ‘Endangered’ Polar Bears.” Read it here.

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My London lecture according to Josh

London lecture at the GWPF offices was splendid from my point of view and the audience seemed to enjoy themselves fully. Josh was there and sent his cartoonist’s perspective of the evening*:
Susan-Crockford-PolarBear-GWPF London 21 October 2019 Josh

*PS Thanks Josh and such a pleasure to finally meet you.