Five years after wildlife biologist Charles Monnett's 2006 observations of dead polar bears, believed to have drowned because of disappearing Arctic ice, Interior started an investigation of Monnett's science. The findings — partially published September 28, 2012 — were confused and contained no findings of scientific misconduct.
A retired University of Alaska professor, represented by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, went to court for the testing data on which Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement approval was based, after the agency violated the FOIA by not responding within the required 20-day period.
Topics of the latest reports, published by the Federation of American Scientists, include Arctic changes, mountaintop mining controversies, pollution control law enforcement, climate change, midnight rulemaking, scientific papers/security risks, oil sands enviro issues, and fracking/drinking water.
The Mexican Senate on March 13, 2012, approved a constitutional amendment making attacks on journalists a federal crime — which would help journalists bypass possibly corrupt local police officials. The measure must now be approved by a majority of Mexico's state legislatures.
The complaints came out at the Vancouver meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) this month — the main multidisciplinary science conference held yearly on the continent. Also during the meeting, a letter from six journalism and science groups called on Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to end the muzzling-scientists policy was released.
This year's meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Feb 16-20 in Vancouver, BC, offers dozens of sessions on environmental topics — climate change, mineral resource dependency, water, critique of science journalism, disaster recovery, science integrity in government agencies, and more.
From the latest issue of SEJ's biweekly TipSheet: EOL, which is searchable by both common and scientific terms, has vastly expanded its content since its launch in 2008 and now provides extensive nitty-gritty on about half of all described species, as laid out in more than 950,000 pages and more than 760,000 images.
Mainstream Canada, the nation's second-largest farmed-salmon producer — and a subsidiary of an even more gargantuan Danish transnational holding company — will try to crush and silence environmental activist Don Staniford, who has had the temerity to criticize their operations publicly.
