First let me say I’ve been there many times with my wife and children. When we go, we marvel at the sea otters, jellyfish, and the Mola they had for awhile. When we go to an aquarium, I don’t expect to be seeing land mammals with gas masks on them used as climate propaganda, I expect to see fish, invertebrates, and marine mammals.
And here it is after:
We don’t go there to see cows with political statements. In fact, we won’t be going ever again. Monterey Bay Aquarium used to be a place to enjoy. Now it’s just another political hack.
Fortunately, there’s a Facebook group that got together and put enough pressure on the Aquarium to make them realize just how stupid their cow with a gas mask idea was. The gas mask is gone, but the exhibit remains.
Here’s the “apology” letter from MBA to one of the Facebook group members:
Dear Bridget,
The Monterey Bay Aquarium opened its “Hot Pink Flamingos” exhibit to share stories of the threats facing ocean wildlife – and human society – because of global climate change caused by carbon pollution from human activities.By combining live animal exhibits with stories of individuals and communities taking action to reduce carbon pollution, we’re highlighting a hopeful path forward. Most of our visitors are responding positively to that message.
Unfortunately, one element of the exhibit – a cow wearing a stylized gas mask – has become an unintended source of distress for families involved in the dairy industry. The cow has become not (as we hoped) a creative way to engage visitors in the topic of alternative-energy solutions but an upsetting and negative image about dairy farming.
For some, the mask has been a distraction from the important messages that are central to the exhibit: Carbon pollution from human activities is having dramatic and harmful effects on the oceans; and people around the world are making small individual changes, and larger changes in their communities, to cut our carbon pollution and avert a climate crisis.
We can tell those stories just as effectively without putting a gas mask on a cow. Offending dairy farmers was never our intent and we regret the distress the mask has caused. We’ve removed the mask, and are modifying nearby exhibit graphics so they specifically tell an alternative energy story. Many other engaging elements of Hot Pink Flamingos encourage visitors to think about – and talk about – the many things they can do to make a difference.
Monterey Bay Aquarium
886 Cannery Row
Monterey, CA 93940
www.montereybayaquarium.org
Here’s a couple of news stories:
KION-TV: Cow on Display at Aquarium Causes Beef With Farmers
The Monterey County Herald: Farmers have beef with Monterey aquarium’s cow
The online exhibit at MBA used to take comments, they are now closed. Gosh, ya think maybe they just got overwhelmed with negative feedback? This comment by Jim Peters pretty well summed up the stupidity of MBA’s cow exhibit:
You lost your credibility over junk science. No people = no need for cows, no people = less carbon footprint,why not just put a giant condom on the roof?
Before man huge herds of Buffalo grazed all over the plains.
Save the earth- do not emit hydro carbons traveling to the Montery Bay Aquarium in your car! Stay home!
And finally, the science of methane emissions as it pertains to bovines portrayed at MBA is a joke. A gas mask won’t do anything to stop emissions from either head or tailpipe, and will kill the cow eventually. Morons.
The MBA has a poll on their online exhibit page about climate change:
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Only in California.
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the universe.”
~Einstein
Shouldn’t they be more worried about people eating beans? That produces a whole lot more gas.
Is methane really a potent greenhouse gas?
It absorbs radiation much in the same spectra as water vapor.
Let us all vote The MBA poll on their online exhibit page about climate change. Let s see if WUWT readers can make a difference.
also
Gail Combs says:
May 1, 2010 at 7:11 pm
finally figured out why the big push for pure vegan – no dairy,no eggs. Seems children raised without animal protein from some source have retarded brain development as well as behavioral problems.
Also read
Dr Russell Blaylock Nutrition and Behavior
http://video.google.es/videoplay?docid=660369308462355850#docid=2963728494205235281
The MBA website seems to be mathematically challenged.
Your poll snapshot above shows 10% of 10687 responses are unconcerned about climate change. Allowing for rounding that’s at most 1122 Unconcerneds (10.499%)
At this hour, the poll shows 13% of 10886 responses are unconcerned. Even if every one of the 199 new responses were unconcerned, the count can be no larger than 1321. Yet 1321/10886 is 12.1%
Sloppy.
On Australian TV last week there was a program showing research being done to try and find out which breed of sheep emitted the least amount of methane! Seriously, I kid you not!! The scene shown was a scientist with a couple of earnest young female assistants busily measuring the burp and fart “emissions” from a sad-looking sheep penned in a clear plastic tent hooked up by tubes to various instruments. At first it gave me the best laugh I’ve had for a long time but I was later angry and frustrated at the obvious waste of money and that the CAGW scam had spawned such a farce!
Of course, I could always be wrong about thevalue of their research. Maybe it was the super-sized burps and farts from the dinosaurs, mammoths and other mega-fauna that resulted in their final ex-“stink”-shun!!
“Gail Combs says:
[…]
I finally figured out why the big push for pure vegan – no dairy,no eggs. Seems children raised without animal protein from some source have retarded brain development as well as behavioral problems.”
A vegan couple in Germany tried to raise their newborn on soy milk. It starved to death. Lack of essential amino acids. Smarter vegans who actually want their kid to survive and avoid jail time in the process do buy milk powder and reluctantly allow the kid to consume animal products. But they hate doing it.
German:
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/0,1518,482249,00.html
Google translated:
http://translate.google.de/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=de&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.spiegel.de%2Fpanorama%2Fjustiz%2F0%2C1518%2C482249%2C00.html&sl=de&tl=en
“DirkH says:
[…]
A vegan couple in Germany […]”
Oh sorry… got an american couple… Here’s the german case:
http://veganismus.ch/foren/read.php?f=2&i=3374&t=2544&v=f
Whether a blade of grass lives out its life cycle undisturbed or whether it takes an excursion thru the GI tract of a ruminant makes no diffierence: its cellulose decomposes and CO2 & methane are released either way eventually.
As a young boy, and a Steinbeck enthusiast, I always wanted to visit Cannery Row. Unfortunately the Monterey fishing industry fell apart in the late forties (or was it the fifties?)
When we visited the Aquarium three or four years years ago, I was particularly impressed by some panels near the exit that told us that the main reason for the sardines having disappeared from the bay for a couple of decades was the decline in the temperature of the water rather than the other culprit – overfishing.
As far as I recollect the same panels pointed out that the water in the bay had warmed again but was still not matching the temperatures reached in the thirties. Are the panels still there?
jack morrow says:
May 1, 2010 at 7:20 pm
We are wasting our time even talking these people. Their minds are not just made up, their minds are mixed up. All liberals are just like this. Alas.
_______________________________________________________________
Jack, That is just not true. Some are caring individuals who are now realizing they have been lied to. Many are very angry.
The liberals who are not willing to listen generally have KNOWN all along it is a lie and are backing a political agenda using the lies. I went through this with the Organic Consumers Assoc and the US Food Safety bill HR 875. Organic Consumers Assoc originally came out in full support of the bill, even through the bill would destroy organic farming. Maude Barlow the organizer of Organic Consumers Assoc. was handsomely rewarded for selling the US consumers out with an appointment as New Senior Adviser to the UN president on October 21, 2008. Jill Richardson (Orange Cloud) a member of the Organic Consumers Association policy advisory board is the founder of the blog La Vida Locavore. She says she is a “consultant” but in reality she is UC San Diego Sustainability Coordinator and would most likely work with Raymond Clemencon another faculty member, who was one of the negotiators on the Rio Declaration and Agenda 21.
Jill Richardson is working on the practical aspects of UN Agenda 21 as far as I can tell.
For example:
“Currently, we are particularly interested in receiving manuscripts that deal with some of the following subjects, although other submissions will continue to receive full consideration:
Implementing sustainable development strategies, Rio-Agenda 21 and Millennium Development” Objectives: The Journal of Environment and Development
Graduate School of International Relations & Pacific Studies
University of California, San Diego, MC0519
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92037-0519, USA
Here are Jill’s thoughts on UN and Sustainability (read Agenda 21) http://www.lavidalocavore.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=1520
By the way once their ties to the UN were exposed they did some fast back pedaling and modified their stand on HR 875 so they would not loose the sheep they were leading.
“…Nevertheless, we were alarmed by the misleading headlines attached to anti-HR 875 alerts. Even if this bill were passed as is today, it wouldn’t criminalize organic farming. The bill would require farms to have a food safety plan, allow their records to be inspected, and comply with food safety regulations. To say this is tantamount to criminalization doesn’t give organic farmers enough credit…” http://www.organicconsumers.org/bytes/ob168.htm
In reality the bill bankrupts family farms leaving corporate “organic farms” to take over that market niche so I guess she is technically correct.
Isn’t the internet amazing? Do a bit of digging and you find all sorts of ties between “grassroots” movements and the UN.
I am trying to understand the logic of: “cows emit methane, which is a potent GHG, therefore cows are bad, and we need to have fewer of them, so to illustrate that we put a gas mask on a cow.” But warmlogic doesn’t follow the normal logical rules, and in fact turns them on their head. Warmists truly live in their own magical, Alice-in-wonderland world, where down is up, white is black, good is bad, right is wrong, and vice-versa.
It’s actually a wonder they are able to function at all.
North of 43 and south of 44 says:
May 1, 2010 at 8:20 pm
___________________________________________________________________________
Actually Gail I do believe that what comes out of both ends of a cow is trouble according to the CAGW crowd….
Trust me, I use a good amount of that decomposing byproduct. In fact I have free access to a rather good mix of composting manure, which I have moved many cubic yards of.
My veggies and flowers just love it and it has certainly done a very good job of loosening up the clay and heavy topsoil that I used to make my raised planting beds.
________________________________________________________________
They targwet cows because of the multiple stomach and make sure people understand it is not just the hind end. By the By better get all the composting manure you can into the ground now because “they” plan to outlaw it. Some one from England posting here mentioned something about that already being in place in England if I understood him correctly.
It is called the scorched-earth strategies: see HR 2749: Food Safety’s Scorched Earth Policy
Cap and Trade type bills are not the only bills threatening the USA and other countries. Our food supply has also been under attack world wide it is disguised as “food Safety” issues and seed and livestock patent law “harmonization”
MBA Logic 101
Carbon is a pollutant
Life is carbon-based
Ergo, life is a pollutant
If you want to know the real reason for alarm about livestock and methane check out
INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR ANIMAL RECORDING
PATENTING IN THE ANIMAL SECTOR
“…The Patenting Sentinel and Action Service (PSAS) is an important initiative of the International Committee for Animal Recording (ICAR) as regards patenting in the animal sector. This is an issue which is of uttermost importance for the future of all organizations involved in the sectors of animal recording and genetic evaluation. The latest developments in this field and the future prospects are causing increasing concern among industrialists and breeders, thus stressing the need for continuous updating on the progress of animal patenting issues worldwide and raising the awareness of professionals regarding their possibility to take action towards the protection of their professional interests…
ICAR will continue to build on its strength of neutrality and integrity as related to standards and guidelines for animal recording, evaluations and equipment approvals. This will include further strategic alliances with international organizations including EAAP, FAO, IDF, OIE, ILRI, WAAP and ISO.” Animal Patents: http://www.icar.org/%5Cpages%5Cpsas.htm
As usual FOLLOW THE MONEY. Monsanto and company have done real well with plant GMOs but owning all the ruminant livestock in the world must make them really salivate.
Yeah, my kids and I went to the aquarium just 3 weeks ago. While there were a few exhibits that centered around actual information about the sea. About half were dedicated to guilt trips about the abuse man has placed on the sea rather then the sea itself. This was slightly frustrating. It is one thing to say that we need to treat the sea with respect and stop polluting/over fishing both of which are admirable things but half the exhibits being taken up by that was slightly annoying. I kept wanting to learn about the fish, not mans impact on the fish… If I wanted to know that I could have just turned on the T.V. and heard about the oil spill. oh well when advocacy and science connect you get advocacy information.
We’ve regularly gone to the aquarium over the years. Think I’ll skip it this year… and maybe next, too. We don’t go there for a political harangue nor for a guilt trip.
Maybe the S.F. Zoo… don’t remember much other than animals from my last trip up there. Hmmm… There used to be a farm around here that had tours for kids, wonder if they are still in business… it would be nice to visit a farm again…
Or maybe well go ahead and go to Monterey, but take a fishing boat ride. Still get to see fish, but way closer up. ( Caught 3 nice Salmon last time I did that, but it was way too many years ago. ) Didn’t have to deal with any guilt trip propaganda either…
I grew up around cattle- both Dairy and Beef. plus my Pop did a little Rodeo stock work,
To make the display more authentic the cow should be equipped with a urine soaked tail, to slap anyone touching her side, then she steps on the foot of the now soaked,
participant, then maybe more realistic parts could be added-like “attach the milking
machine”- “get the cow into the stall”-and my personal favorite-“where’s the Bull ”
complete with apple tree to climb up and spend most of the afternoon in….
It offends me, as do all the so-called “educational” exhibits that are really political messaging, and I’m not a dairy farmer.
I do drink milk, and eat meat, and plan to continue serving both to my family as long as we can continue to afford to do so.
Had man not developed to the point where he could catch and eat the high quality protein found in animal products, his brain would not have developed to the point where some members of our species thought they could control the weather.
But maybe that particular bit of evolution is a different kind of “mad cow”?
DirkH says: (May 2, 2010 at 3:44 am)
“A vegan couple in Germany tried to raise their newborn on soy milk. It starved to death. Lack of essential amino acids”
Perhaps if they would call it for what it really is, soy juice (not “milk”), people would understand. But then, who would use ” juice” as a replacement for “milk”?
h/t Lewis Black
I consider that the practice of referring to supporters of Leftist ideologies as ‘liberals ‘ is a misnomer. Liberalism used to be about liberty. Extending voting rights and free trade were issues of liberalism in the West a century ago. Groups who want to restrict peoples’ freedoms hide behind the term ‘liberal’, just as calling the Ministry of Propoganda the Ministry of Truth in Orwell’s novel’ 1984′ was a diversionary tactic!
I spent a great evening at MBA in the mid 1990’s. The technical conference I was attending had reserved the entire aquarium for the evening. No speeches, just light snacks, open bar and three hours to wander through the place. The deep ocean tank was really spectacular. Of course, I found it somewhat ironic to be gazing at various sea creatures swimming about in large tanks as I stuffed my face with shrimp, oysters, salmon and lox!
Based on the recent displays reported here, I have no plans for a return visit.
@Larry Fields
FYI estimates of pre-industrial bison in U.S. 30-70 million head. Number of head of domestic cattle in U.S. today is very near 100 million head.
It’s not really the methane they produce it’s the inefficiency in turning silage into cattle before taking in the calories. About one third (35 million head) of U.S. cattle are slaughtered each year. Bison in the wild live 15 or more years not 3 years. So we have now have about twice as many cattle with a five time shorter lifespan which translates to ten times as much food consumption by domestic cattle as wild pre-industrial bison. Ten times as much food being eaten by the cattle means ten times as much methane generated as it is digested.
The problem, given I believe mankind has an insignificant effect on global average temperature, is really about efficient use of energy. Regardless of what’s happening to the climate we are indeed using up all the petroleum reserves at an alarming rate for anyone who might be alive 50 years from now. There’s no similar low-cost replacement for petroleum based energy. The shit will hit the fan in two more generations at most.
Contrary to urban legend only a small percentage of the weight of cattle slaughtered annually in the U.S. comes from grazing on land otherwise unsuitable for agriculture. The weight comes from feeding them silage made of grains and hay which is cultivated on arable land. It takes about six pounds of corn to produce a one pound steak. One pound of lean ground beef has about 800 calories. One pound of corn has about 2400 calories. So it’s almost 20 times more energy efficient to eat corn instead of beef. This doesn’t include the extra energy required to raise, process, and refrigerate the meat as it makes its way from birth to kitchen table.
A huge reduction in fossil fuel consumption could be had by eliminating the middle man and using the agricultural output of arable land for directly producing foods for human consumption instead of for livestock feed. I personally couldn’t possibly care less what effect that has on so-called greenhouse gas production. I’m concerned about conserving fossil fuel to extend the length of time we have to find and deploy a replacement that really works.
E.M.Smith,
I just look out my windows when I want to see some wildlife.
This morning looking out the window I saw a nice sized tom turkey trying to convince three lovely ladies that he was exactly what they wanted. He was also trying to figure out what was in the coop as the chickens were discussing something.
Starting next Saturday morning his name might turn into Sunday dinner.
Now are wild turkeys organic?
Yesterday morning it was Mallards landing in the spring fed brook.
I don’t need any zoo or aquarium to see animals.