[GLIMS] [CRYOLIST] Support for Ricardo Villalba

[Daniel Farinotti]

Hi Etienne (Bruce/GLIMS CCed),

sorry for the slow reply, I hope it will be of help nevertheless:
I've signed the support letter, and asked both WSL's and ETH's 
communication offices to engage.
ETH is surprisingly slow in responding (it's 5 days and 1 reminder by 
now...) but I have much hope for WSL since the picture of Ricado shown 
in Nature's article (link 
<https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08236-y>) shows him with a 
WSL/SLF bonnet.

Thank you for bringing this story to cryolist. I very much hope that 
the community's support will  at least provide some comfort to Ricardo.

Daniel


On 05.12.2017 00:14, Etienne Berthier wrote:
>
> Dear cryolisters,
>
> “S/cientists cannot be sent to jail for their findings/”
>
> We would like to inform you about the unacceptable situation of our 
> colleague Ricardo Villalba (IANIGLA, Argentina). Many of you probably 
> know Ricardo for his scientific achievements 
> (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=27oYl3QAAAAJ). Now, Ricardo 
> is accused of having favoured mining activities in his position of 
> director of the National Glacier Inventory in Argentina. Briefly, he 
> is accused of having mapped only glaciers larger than 1 ha (0.01 km²) 
> leaving smaller ice bodies uncharted and, doing so, favouring mining 
> activities. The coming week will be decisive.
>
> As a community how can we help? Last August, several members of GLIMS 
> (Global Land Ice Measurements from Space) and the WGMS (World Glacier 
> Monitoring Service) wrote two letters to inform the Argentinian 
> justice that their national glacier inventory was being performed 
> following state-of-the-art international standards. As you may know, 
> every glacier inventory has to defined a minimum area mapping 
> threshold and the one used by our Argentinian colleagues of IANIGLA 
> (0.01 km²) is among the smallest used so far, illustrating how 
> detailed and comprehensive their inventory work is.
>
> These letters did not convince the judge. We believe we should now 
> support much more loudly our colleague. Several years ago, the 
> seismological community stood up furiously to support their scientific 
> colleagues following the Aquila's earthquake. Several months ago, we 
> /marched for Science/. It is now time for the wide cryo-community to 
> express loudly its support to one colleague, accused of doing his 
> scientific work as best as possible.
>
> If, like us, you trust the scientific work produced by our Argentinian 
> colleague and want to support him, we ask you to:
>
> (i) the sign the support letter (in which you will find much more 
> details about the case)
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeHCU7ckSoie1BscOnsfKQO_byFkgx3lTA8A-7LbtLFmxX7cg/viewform?c=0&w=1
> Note that you can provide your email in the mandatory field “Passport 
> / ID” if you prefer.
>
> (ii) contact journalists and public media to raise attention of a 
> wide-public around this unbelievable and unacceptable story. Cryo-blog 
> (from EGU, Glacier Hub, AGU, etc…) may also want to report on this.
>
> (iii) Socities, Union and other organizations such IGS, AGU, EGU, IACS 
> etc... may issue some official statements to express their support.
>
> (iv) forward the message beyond the cryolist. All scientists should be 
> fighting vigorously to help Ricardo. So spread the word in your institute.
>
> Thanks for your active support and rapid actions,
>
> Etienne Berthier, member of the GLIMS core team, reviewer of the 
> National Glacier Inventory of Argentina
> Bruce H. Raup, Director of Global Land Ice Measurement from Space (GLIMS)
> Michael Zemp, Director of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS)
> Jeffrey S. Kargel, former Director of GLIMS and current member of the 
> GLIMS core team
> Samuel Nussbaumer, WGMS
> Adina Racoviteanu, Tobias Bolch, Frank Paul, members of the GLIMS core 
> team
>
>
>
>
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