Don't mention the polar bears, Bush tells US scientists

A leaked memorandum issued by a regional director of the US Department of the Interior states that officials within the US Fish and Wildlife Service will limit their discussions when travelling in countries bordering the Arctic region because of sensitivities about climate change.

"This traveller understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears and sea ice and will not be speaking on or responding to these issues," says the memo from the regional director Richard Hannon to his boss, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service.

It is not the first time that US government officials have been accused to trying to gag scientists on climate change. James Hansen, the director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a world authority on the climate, complained last year that public relations officials appointed by the Bush Administration had tried to limit his access to the media.

The memorandum from Mr Hannon was criticised by the Natural Resources Defence Council in Washington, which wants the US Department of Interior to list the polar bear as an endangered species because of the projected loss of sea ice in the Arctic over the coming century.

"This memo has got to be put into the wider context of what President Bush has done to stifle debate on global warming over the last six years," said a council spokesman, Eben Burnham-Snyder. "The Bush Administration has a long history of restricting scientific discourse on global warming's impacts and solutions. This continued restriction hampers our experts' ability to do their job effectively and aggressively deal with our global warming challenge."

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http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2344771.ece