University of Alaska Anchorage professor Rick Steiner will most likely not be invited to participate in what Anchorage Daily News reporter Tom Kizzia calls, "an "academic based" conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears' survival."From the Department of You Can't Make This Kind of Shit Up comes the proposal by Sen. John Harris (R. Lysenko City) and Sen. Lyda Green (R. Flat Earth Borough) to shell out $2,000,000 to get the worst scientists money can buy to come up with a pre-determined result, at the end of a so-called "science" conference.
We're already the laughingstock of the country, John and Lyda, thanks to your colleagues in the GOP.
Please, please, please call your conference.
Please don't veto the funds, Gov. Palin.
Actually, why don't you fund it to the tune of, say $10,000,000 or so, and invite Art Bell, Charles Thaxton and Ben Stein to chair the various panels.
What better way to make a very clear distinction nationwide between our outstanding Democratic candidates for offices in Alaska and people like Lyda and John. What a great fundraising tool for our candidates a conference like this will be. I suggest you convene this conference right after the August primary. Make it last into the last week of October.
Steiner has been trying to obtain correspondence and documents from the state about how internal discussion, debate and decisions on the vulnerability of Polar bears to an array of ongoing and possible changes to their environment and habitat have been handled. The Palin administration has stonewalled Steiner, demanding he fork over $500,000 or so to get the information.
Needless to say, Steiner is skeptical of the conference's objectives, quipping, "This truly is the conference to nowhere."
By the way, it is about time that somebody in the ADN writes about Steiner's treatment by the Palin administration other than the Alaska Ear!
Excellent article, Tom.
Face-to-Face by Fred Machetanz