Times are tough all over – so researchers at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory on Canada’s far north Ellesmere Island are getting the packing crates ready. The Globe and Mail‘s Shawn McCarthy in Wednesday’s edition reported that members of its research staff, in a conference call, described their distress at the conservative Canadian government’s decision not to provide its funding agency the money to keep it running. However, no other outlet appears to be carrying this news so it’s unclear how many other reporters were in on that call.

The station is less than 1000 miles from the north pole. McCarthy reports that, according to many in the field,  the move reflects doubt and even hostility in the Ottawa government to climate scientists who warn that global warming is an urgent matter. Government officials reply that fiscal prudence requires a review of the such funding, to be sure it is spent well, before they can appropriate more.

The station’s vulnerability has been in the news already, including on Canwest News Service last month from science and environment reporter Margaret Munro. Her story focussed on the station director and his struggle to avoid exactly what appears to have happened. Interesting perspective here – if the station closes, its director fears “many of the young scientists will likely head for the US where president Barack Obama has committed more than $500 million to climate and atmospheric research.” Either that, he says, or maybe head for the unemployment line.

The story is simple enough – one station caught in an economic and political storm. If it gets wider pickup, one would hope reporters would try to put this facility’s data into context with the overall, international network of remote outposts, satellites, and other means for monitoring arctic climate, atmospheric chemistry and dynamics, weather, and other such. Without that, it’s difficult to tell whether this place’s sudden deep freeze might be considered an important scalp for those skeptical of global warming and the science concerning it. But if it can be taken as such trophy, that’s news the merits wider circulation.

Some background, with reference to the station, on bitter fights among researchers and government agencies over science priorities can be seen in a recent report in the Globe and Mail by Carolyn Abraham: Researchers fear ‘stagnation’ under Tories. There, one learns, the Canadian minister of science and technology was a chiropractor before entering politics.

-Charlie Petit

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 10:45 am and is filed under Environment & Energy Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.