Scandalmakers

the museum that keeps on giving…us things to write about

Our old friends at the Smithsonian are up to it again, this time “toning down” an exhibit on global warming in the arctic to interject some good ol’ fashioned “both sides of the story” “objectivity.”

Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year’s exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans.

Officials omitted scientists’ interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data, he said. In addition, graphs were altered “to show that global warming could go either way,”

The exhibit is hilariously titled “Arctic: A Friend Acting Strangely.” You know, like your friends who act really weird when you shit in their mouths and spit phlegm balls in their eyes and break their air-conditioners so they have to sleep in the sweltering heat. God what is wrong with those friends why are they acting so bizarre and melting and stuff?

The introductory text is positively giddy with regard to this strange–and exciting!–change. Golly gee!

Earlier spring thaws! Later fall freeze-ups! Greater storm impacts! Reduced sea ice! Unfamiliar species of plants and animals! What do these changes mean for the Arctic, its wildlife, its people—and for the rest of the planet?

Luckily for the Smithsonian, it taint the first time, neither. In 2003, photographs of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge were relocated to a less prominent space in the institution in the midst of the congressional oil drilling debate.

Tags: fair and balanced, smithsonian