The Lakeland Times newspaper says it complained to Wisconsin DNR Secretary Cathy Stepp that the agency's webpages were endorsing the "dramatic...hypothesis" of human-caused climate change, and shortly thereafter, the information was gone.
This is how policy, science and public information dissemination is being handled in Scott Walker's Wisconsin.
I posted the first story about two weeks ago about the deletions, but until today, no one had offered a detailed explanation for the changes other than an agency spokesman having said the scrubbing was a routine updating.
Here is the newspaper's story, and it also includes information from Stepp that the DNR has severed its partnership with UW scientists who had collaborated on the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.
This is how policy, science and public information dissemination is being handled in Scott Walker's Wisconsin.
I posted the first story about two weeks ago about the deletions, but until today, no one had offered a detailed explanation for the changes other than an agency spokesman having said the scrubbing was a routine updating.
Here is the newspaper's story, and it also includes information from Stepp that the DNR has severed its partnership with UW scientists who had collaborated on the Wisconsin Initiative on Climate Change Impacts.
After Times' questions, DNR web page catches up to policy Climate-change flap illustrates tension inside natural resources agency |
After questioning from The Lakeland Times, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has changed its climate-change web page to reflect a policy of neutrality on its causes and effects, rather than embracing the dramatic manmade hypothesis the web page has touted since the Doyle administration... But how about the rest of the agency's policies and programs, which have real-life economic consequences? There are increasing signs that, when she discovers advocacy inside the organization, Stepp is indeed removing the biases and steering the course away from bureaucratic activism, and it appears to be more significant than mere cosmetic changes on the website. The climate change guide for teachers, for example, has been removed from the agency's teacher pages on its website, and Stepp says the agency's partnership with WICCI has come to an end. |
