Scientific American reports that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has issued an edict that scientist are prohibited from making any public comment about the plight that Polar Bears find themselves in.

It seems that if you want to get public funding from the Bush Administration to attend a conference you must agree that polar bears, the melting polar ice cap and global warming will not be discussed.

H. Dale Hall, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, defended the policy laid out in the memos, saying it was meant to keep scientists from straying from a set agenda at meetings in countries like Russia, Norway and Canada and you can understand why. Obviously none of those three countries will notice the collapse of the polar ice shelf if noone mentions it.

To take one example, on a discussion on "human and polar bear interface." it was forbidden to discuss the receding Arctic sea ice where polar bears live because it had no relevance to the topic. According to Hall, it was a bear management issue and as such discussion of climate change was inappropriate. Yeah right!

The time, it seems, has come for the Bush Administration to place its collective head even deeper in the sand. The Howard Administration don't need to do the same. They have their heads stuck clearly where the sun doesn't shine, vis-a-vis the Bush Administration.

Read more here.