Nobody has done more to sink the claim that climate change is endangering polar bears than zoologist Susan Crockford — and she may have paid for it with her job.
After 15 years as an adjunct assistant professor, Ms. Crockford said the University of Victoria rejected without explanation in May her renewal application, despite her high profile as a speaker and author stemming from her widely cited research on polar bears and dog domestication.
Ms. Crockford accused officials at the Canadian university of bowing to “outside pressure,” the result of her research showing that polar bear populations are stable and even thriving, not plummeting as a result of shrinking Arctic sea ice, defying claims of the climate change movement.
Her dismissal, which she announced Wednesday in a post on her Polar Bear Science blog, has spurred alarm over the implications for academic freedom and the rise of the “cancel culture” for professors and scientists who challenge climate catastrophe predictions.
“When push came to shove, UVic threw me under the bus rather than stand up for my academic freedom,” said Ms. Crockford, who earned a Ph.D. in interdisciplinary studies, specifically biology and anthropology, in 2004.
Ms. Crockford cited numerous instances of the university promoting her interviews and work, including her participation in a 2007 PBS “Nature” documentary about dog domestication and evolution, as well as her appearances at K-12 schools and adult groups for 10 years through the University of Victoria Speakers Bureau.
That supportive climate changed two years ago. In May 2017, her lectures were shut down after the speaker’s bureau received a complaint about her “lack of balance,” which “I believe poisoned support I might have expected from colleagues in the department,” she said.
“The speakers’ bureau incident made it clear the administration had no intention of protecting my academic freedom against complaints from outside the university,” Ms. Crockford said in an email to The Washington Times.
UVic Associate Vice President Michele Parkin responded with a letter challenging the assertion that Ms. Crockford was let go for “telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears.” She was referring to a recent headline in the National Post of Toronto.
“There is no evidence to suggest that Dr. Crockford’s adjunct appointment was not renewed for ‘telling school kids politically incorrect facts about polar bears,’” said Ms. Parkin. “The University of Victoria, in both word and deed, supports academic freedom and free debate on academic issues.”
The statement fell short of denying that Ms. Crockford’s dismissal was linked to her polar bear scholarship, which almost single-handedly blew up the climate change movement’s promotion of the bears as iconic victims of anthropogenic global warming.
Her books include “The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened,” published in February, in which she said the bears are not threatened.
She noted that the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s 2015 Red List of Threatened Species puts polar bear numbers at 22,000 to 31,000 despite a widespread belief that the population has dropped to a few thousand.
‘Cancel culture’ and academic freedom
Marc Morano, the author of “The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change,” said situations like Ms. Crockford’s have become “all too common in the climate debate.”
He cited examples of prominent scientists who “came out” as skeptics only after retiring.
“Professor after professor has been hounded, silenced, censured or fired for speaking out against the approved man-made climate crisis narrative,” Mr. Morano said. “The message to any climate dissenters in academia is once again reinforced: Stay silent with your skepticism or risk endangering your career.”
University of Victoria economics professor Cornelis van Kooten warned of the threat to free speech on campus. “I think the climate change movement has done extreme harm to academic freedom,” he said, and the movement isn’t alone.
“Put it this way: religion, race, evolution, gender, indigenous peoples, nuclear power, polar bears, deforestation. … Any views on these topics that don’t fall in line with the ‘consensus’ are taboo,” Mr. van Kooten said in an email. “Think the extent to which free speech has been banned from campuses across much of the West in the name of political correctness.”
In her letter, UVic’s Ms. Parkin noted that adjunct professors are unpaid, meaning “Dr. Susan Crockford’s work can carry on without this appointment,” but Ms. Crockford said losing the university position will harm her ability to secure grant funding.
“No one suggested funds were involved,” she said. “The point is that I will not be able to apply for research grants and in most cases will be unable to collaborate with colleagues on their research projects without a university affiliation.”
Ms. Crockford has drawn the ire of environmental activists and scientists with whose views she disagrees, based in part on her associations with climate skeptical organizations such as The Heartland Institute and the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Her Polar Bear Science blog came under fire in a 2017 study in the journal BioScience by 14 academics, including Penn State climatologist Michael E. Mann, decrying the influence of “denier blogs,” which Georgia Tech professor emeritus Judith Curry blasted as “absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published.”
Read more at Washington Times
The NWT has under 50,000 people and Susan Crockford estimates the total polar bear population to be approx 58,000 . Stop shooting them and surprise, look what happens .
Susan Crockford was fired by cowards too afraid to acknowledge the truth .
Science is in serious trouble when people who dedicate their lives are silenced
because a cult tells weak bureaucrats what message is acceptable .
One way that alarmists promote and defend their position is by the large number of professionals and articles supporting the climate change dogma. The firing of Susan Crockford shows how that consensus is enforced.
Over the 15 years I have followed the issue of Global Warming and fought against it in my own limited way, I have come to realize that believers in Global Warming tend to be those individuals who are not critical thinkers, are not analytical, highly trusting of all authority, and lack courage to make decisions on their own volition. In contract, I find that people who question, doubt or reject Global Warming are highly intelligence, very well read, educated across a range of diverse fields and like to know the “why” as much as the “how” in any action that is chosen. It is clear to me that Global Warming as an issue that is anyone can easily dismiss if they review the evidence for an against it with clinical objectivity. Unfortunately, not everyone takes the time or possesses the personal energy to do this.
Dr. Mitchell Taylor, polar bear expert, got dumped ten years ago.
Why? He wouldn’t endorse global warming.
Canadian journalist Donna Laframboise has taken up Crockfords’s cause concerning this blatant effort to silence a critic of the Alarmist Catastrophic Climate Change Cult, even though Susan Crockford ….. never takes a position about whether climate change is happening!!
https://nofrakkingconsensus.com/2019/10/21/university-feels-no-need-to-explain-crockford-story-part-2/
Dr Crockfords book “The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened” explains why the catastrophic decline in polar bear numbers we were promised in 2007 failed to materialize. It’s the story of how and why the polar bear came to be considered ‘Threatened’ with extinction, and tracks its rise and fall as an icon of the global warming movement.
The book also tells the story of Crockford’s role in bringing that failure to public attention and the backlash against her that ensued – and why, among all others who have attempted to do so previously, she was uniquely positioned to do so.
In general, this is a cautionary tale of scientific hubris and of scientific failure, of researchers staking their careers on untested computer simulations and later obfuscating inconvenient facts.
For the first time, you’ll see a frank and detailed account of attempts by scientists to conceal population growth as numbers rose from an historical low in the 1960s to the astonishing highs that surely must exist after almost 50 years of protection from overhunting.
There is also a blunt account of what truly abundant populations of bears mean for the millions of people who live and work in areas of the Arctic inhabited by polar bears.
A well written and reasoned discourse on this matter.
She “may have paid for it with her job “? There is no “may ‘ about it . The University of Victoria is a leftist Berkeley north . The Green Party leader taught propaganda there and bragged about all the hate letters he got .
He has helped screw up BC and now that the crap is hitting the fan he has decided to step down .
Susan Crockford is a true scientist not some con -man dressed in green .
The University showed it’s true colors and the cowards who made the decision
won’t even show their faces . The University is enabling a fraud by silencing
people who can actually back up what they say . Not some con-artist pretender .
Of course as we already know these Unviversities only want those who obey and agree with their leftists administraightors these are no longer campus its indoctrination center for Big Brother