The Federal Government Is Being Accused Of Muzzling Experts From Talking About Climate Change Again

Photo via WikiMedia Commons.
Meteorologists have allegedly been added to the list of government employees that are not allowed to say anything to the media about climate change, but a former employee of Environment Canada says that's only part of the problem.

When the Harper government was elected, a communications directive was issued that prevented scientists from speaking to the media without permission. It seems that meteorologists are now falling under that umbrella.

Beverly Archibald was a meteorologist at Environment Canada from 1986 until 1998 when she moved to the private sector. She is also one of only about 40 meteorologists who have received accreditation as a consulting meteorologist from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.

Archibald thinks a meteorologist being banned from talking climate change with the media is not surprising, because there are better-suited experts that can talk about the subject. But she's more concerned with Environment Canada's data.

"The climate records for Canada are in disarray," Archibald explains. "I just finished a big project for one of my clients, and you can't go back more than 15 years in most cases before the climate record is disjointed or there's missing data or the data is reported on the wrong day."

Archibald says the problems have been happening for years, and the Harper government seems more concerned with keeping these professionals from talking than they are with fixing issues in the agency.

"That's where—as a meteorologist and a former public sector meteorologist—the problem is," Archibald explains. "They're more interested in these reports, but the stuff going into them is often faulty, like the climate data."

Archibald says the science that is being fed into the models needs to be fixed to get the proper data.

"It is even hard to get a continuous precipitation record because of the decimation of the Environment Canada weather observation network," Archibald says. "I don't know, sometimes I look and I wonder where they're getting this information from because they've moved stations, closed stations, places aren't reporting precip [precipitation], and there are huge gaps in the data sets."

The problem seems to have been ongoing since the first major cuts at Environment Canada and the agency moving to more automated stations. Archibald says there may be more stations but they are less serviced.

"The accuracy of these stations is in question as well," Archibald explains. "So, atmospheric monitoring in general, whether it is the tar-sands development or a severe weather development or climate change, that to me, if the government wanted to do something, they should fix up the monitoring network."

I tried to talk to Archibald again to see if she could point me in the direction of the false data and other inaccuracies but she no longer wishes to comment on the story.

Environment Canada told me they wouldn't be able to speak over the phone about Archibald’s accusations, but did respond by email. The funny thing was their email contained some questions and answers but I had never sent them any questions.

The only question they knew I wanted to ask was if the allegations were true, and the communications person asked if I would send him a list of questions so they could prepare. But, as a journalist, I told them I don't like prepared answers. Nonetheless, the response email answered questions that I hadn't asked and provided no chance to get any real answers on the allegations.

Screenshot via the author.
After being pretty much shot down by Environment Canada, I decided to talk to the people who originally brought the issue to parliament. I called my MP, who also worked at Environment Canada in the 1980s, and asked her about these issues.

Edmonton-Strathcona MP Linda Duncan says the party is raising these issues all the time in the house but frankly, the public is the key to getting these issues dealt with.

"Canadians are way ahead of the government on this issue," Duncan says. "Canadians, certainly Albertans, when they've been polled have said they want our government to take deeper action to address climate change and to live up to the commitments we make internationally and frankly as Canadians."

Duncan thinks muzzling meteorologists is ludicrous, as they are some of the government officials who could be talking about the climate change data and bringing it into Canadians living rooms and homes.

"Part of this is bringing it down to the level of the public and who better than our weathermen, who people highly respect and are listened to daily? They should simply be sharing information that is coming to light and my understanding is meteorologists or weathermen across the world have been sharing data that's been collected for many decades," Duncan explains. "[This] is indicating that a lot of the rapidly changing and dangerous conditions of weather that we've experienced—certainly in Alberta as I've noticed flood warnings again in the High River area almost a year to the day after the disaster last year—it is really important that Canadians get this information firsthand and [it] can be reassuring to hear it directly from a government scientist."

Duncan remembers the Harper government's mantra when they were first elected and wonders what happened to their promise of an open, transparent, and participatory government.

"Who's going to decide the information is correct: a highly qualified meteorologist or somebody who does briefing notes for the PMO?" Duncan remarked. "We have fought day-in and day-out to actually get the real information and not get a pared-down, cleansed version from the communications department."

Duncan isn't surprised by the accusations from Archibald, but does find it troubling.

"I just think it is darn, darn sad, and it is more than sad, it is completely disrespectful of Canadians," Duncan says. "They need to stop this, they need to stop stifling our government scientists and let them share information."

The MP says the U.S. is far ahead of where Canada is when it comes to climate data and letting scientists speak.

"There is no doubt about it whatsoever," explains Duncan. "In working in the environmental law field I can't even tell you the amount of times I had to turn to the United States system because there is far more disclosure of information to the public and far more requirements to disclose information."

"We [the Canadian government] have gone in a very reprehensible direction," Duncan adds.

The University of Alberta's Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences also refused to comment on what meteorologists are facing in the industry after school.

Prime Minister Harper recently said no leader would take action on climate change if it would hurt their economy and that paints a grim future for scientists, meteorologists and Canadians as a whole.

The Northern Gateway received conditional approval, and the Keystone XL project is being built in some areas despite still needing the final thumbs up from U.S. President Barack Obama.

The consensus among scientists on climate change, according to NASA, is that it is likely the result of humans—and with more and more severe weather events in Canada and the rest of the world happening every year, how long before the Harper government takes some actual steps and stops muzzling scientists?

As Newsweek reported recently, between 2012 and 2014, the Harper government doubled its oilsands advertising budget. So it isn't likely we'll see any sort of change of thinking anytime soon.  @travisdosser