It is highly hypocritical for Claire Hoy to attack advocacy in journalism (Citizen, Oct. 22), as in every one of his columns he spins the story of some right-wing cause.

Just as there may sometimes be little critical view of popular claims, so writers such as himself do little critical review of his unpopular claims.

A few points are worth discussing here. One is that polar bears are disappearing; their numbers are getting smaller. Some are even interbreeding with grizzly bear, producing cross that will be more likely to survive the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap. Other indicators are the appearances of animals where they have not been before: red foxes and robins are appearing on Baffin Island. Expect arctic fox numbers to dwindle if they haven’t already. And while it is true that global warming has happened before without us, it is happening very much with our help today. Our own Alberta tar sands projects are seeing to that, as well as using up precious natural gas to produce usable oil from dirty oil (the analogy that has been used is using gold to make lead).

Concerning scientists not being able to acquire funding to attack the position that questions our polluting effects, perhaps they are not getting government funding (and we only have Hoy’s word that they are not) because they are already paid very well by the oil companies, so they are embedded scientists, or that their work is of questionable value.

The problem with Hoy’s journalism is that is predictably one-sided and involves little in the way of factual evidence, just allusions to knowing it all.

John Steckley,

Bolton