Tag 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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Podcast with WildFed about polar bears and domestication as speciation

A couple weeks ago I had a fabulous chat with Daniel Vitalis from Wildfed about a wide range of topics, including my work on polar bears and domestication as a process of speciation. The podcast went live this morning – have a listen here (also copied below), I think you’ll enjoy it. One hour, 36 minutes.

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.

 

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

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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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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Unanswered questions on my expulsion from UVic and its Speakers Bureau

Last week I wrote about my loss of adjunct professor status at the University of Victoria (UVic), preceded by my expulsion from its volunteer Speakers Bureau. It provided background to an op-ed that appeared in the National Post on Wednesday (16 October) by journalist Donna Laframboise exposing this travesty of academic freedom. See also an article in the Washington Times that came out yesterday and note that the GWPF has issued a press release condemning the suppression of academic freedom at UVic and has released a briefing paper called The Defenestration of Dr. Crockford: Silencing Dissent at the University of Victoria.
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Polar_bear_resting_but_alert_original USFWS

Today I’m in London preparing to give another lecture about the Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Donna has published more detail on the questions she asked UVic but which they refused to answer after nearly three weeks. It’s critical to understand that the university is determined to keep any and all details about these events secret.

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UVic bows to outside pressure and rescinds my adjunct professor status

As you may have heard, this summer I lost my status as Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada (UVic), a position I had held for 15 years. This action followed my expulsion from the roster of the university’s volunteer Speakers Bureau in May 2017. However, until April 2017 the university and the Anthropology department proudly promoted my work, including my critical polar bear commentary, which suggests someone with influence (and perhaps political clout) intervened to silence my scientific criticism.

Crockford skull

Journalist Donna LaFramboise has exposed this travesty in the National Post (16 October 2019), which you can read here. I have provided more background below and Donna’s blog post is here.

UPDATE 21 October 2019: See my follow-up post for more background and a critical post from Donna Laframboise on the questions UVic refused to answer. The Washington Times published an article yesterday and GWPF has issued a press release condemning the suppression of academic freedom at UVic and the release of a briefing paper called The Defenestration of Dr. Crockford: Silencing Dissent at the University of Victoria.

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