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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“Monterey Bay Aquarium” is fighting for their life and doing everything in their power to prostitute themselves to gain more visitors and sponsors. This is a no holds barred fight for their life, they’re pulling out all the stops. Chinese investors from Hong Kong have already proposed giving them $.03 on the dollar for their inventory. Hindsight being 20/20, the Tank Boss admits that they shouldn’t have been so enviro conscious about Bat Guano three years ago, Humming Bird subsonic noise polution two years ago, or Monarch Butterfly incidental CO2 contamination of the environment last year. He said things really started to turn sour back in 2010 when the ‘Deepwater Horizon’ blew up and sank in the Gulf of Mexico and the Federal Government banned all oil imports, off-shore drilling, wind farms, coal fired power plants, nuclear power plants, solar collectors, dry and wet cell batteries, bio-fuel plants, and wind turbines, and the economy kinda rolled over and died. He hinted that this was the reason the Aquarium wasn’t doing as well as it had in 2009.
Update: We have since learned that the EPA arrested the Tank Boss minutes after our interview. He was tried, and immediately executed for inciting a riot via an unauthorized media web source.
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If they’re trying to reduce methane emissions they’ve put the gas mask on the wrong end of the cow. Just proves these greenie freaks can’t tell their a*** from their elbow.
That poll is hilarious!
How do you feel about climate change today?
Worried
Hopeful
Unsure
Discouraged
Curious
Unconcerned
I guess, mostly I’m WORRIED that global taxes on a harmless trace gas will be imposed, but I don’t think that’s exactly what they mean…
Isn’t the acquarium “public”? If yes, you are paying for the exhibit with your own taxes! Only not going there will make no difference whatsoever.
REPLY: No, it is a private foundation – A
I agree, as a horticulturist, this annoys me everytime someone says it. Only mammals have milk, plants do not. Plants have juice (from the fruit usually) sap or latex.
Is that a greenie’s idea of what a gas mask looks like?
Someone has been reading ‘waaaaaaay too many steampunk comic books…
Has anyone seen my cow?
http://www.mwctoys.com/images/RocketeerLooseSide.jpg
Tom in Florida says:
May 2, 2010 at 7:33 am
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
They have “scientifically formulated milk replacers” for lambs and goat kids. We just found out the hard way that the “milk replacers” KILL lambs and kids by causing scours or Enterotoxemia . You are better off at least starting with whole cows milk instead and slowly switching if you have to bottle feed. I have a freezer full of lamb and sheep milk now for just that reason
Ever try to milk a half tame sheep or goat?
Dave Springer says:
May 2, 2010 at 8:22 am
“…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…”
The use of grain and grain by products as animal feed is caused by USDA grain subsidisies. The farmers produce and sell the grain at below the cost of production. It is then sold to the biofuel industry or for beer making. The used dry material is then used as a cattle feed stock called distillers dried grains. Wheat middlings also used in feed is a byproduct of milling wheat into flour or as one horseman put it “Wheat middlings are the left over crap after the wheat is processed to be bread or cereal or whatever else it is going to be…” All Stock pelleted or sweet mix from these feed stocks are generally CHEAPER than whole corn. This makes grain fed cattle CHEAPER to raise than raising them on pasture.
It is all a matter of economics and brainwashing by the USDA extension service. For a really good look at the manipulation of our food supply by the Committee for Economic Development, check out History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job
I pay a premium price and buy pasture raised beef from a local. It is supposed to have more nutrients than feed lot raised but I have no link to the study. It certainly tests better.
The following is from Earth Talk Magazine 2006 – although I surely like a steak once and a while this might be worth a read!
Accumulation of methane in the Earth’s atmosphere has nearly doubled around the globe over the past 200 years. Scientists believe that rising concentrations of this “greenhouse gas,” which absorbs and sends infrared radiation to the Earth, are causing changes in the climate and contributing to global warming.
Livestock animals naturally produce methane as part of their digestive process, belching it while chewing cud and excreting it in their waste. According to the Worldwatch Institute, about 15 to 20 percent of global methane emissions come from livestock. John Robbins, author of The Food Revolution and Diet for a New America, says that methane is 24 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the culprit normally at the center of global warming discussions.
And there are plenty of sources of it: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports that animals in the U.S. meat industry produce 61 million tons of waste each year, which is 130 times the volume of human waste produced, or five tons for every U.S. citizen. In addition to its impact on climate, hog, chicken and cow waste has polluted some 35,000 miles of rivers in 22 states and contaminated groundwater in 17 states, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, says that a food chain with meat at its top is unsustainable not only as a major contributor of greenhouse gases, but also with regard to inefficient dedication of large amounts of acreage to livestock grazing. The USDA, for example, says that growing the crops necessary to feed farmed animals requires nearly 80 percent of America’s agricultural land and half of its water supply.
In addition, animals raised for food in the U.S. consume 90 percent of the country’s soy crop, 80 percent of its corn crop, and 70 percent of its grain. “If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million,” says Cornell ecologist David Pimentel. He adds that irresponsible livestock farming is directly or indirectly responsible for much of the soil erosion in the U.S.
Unfortunately, environmental problems associated with livestock rearing are not limited to the United States. According to the international environmental journal, Earth Times, meat production grew more than fivefold worldwide during the latter half of the 20th century. And as intensive “factory” farming methods of raising livestock spread from the U.S. to other countries–many with regulatory monitoring and enforcement standards far worse than our own–this form of pollution is sure to play an increasingly larger role in environmental problems moving forward.
Aren’t there laws against putting S&M gear on farm animals? PETA already complains about harnesses on horses, doesn’t want livestock in bondage to human whims…
An Aquarium and cows don’t seem to mix. Now, if the cow was grazing the kelp forest, that would be worth a visit..
Ric Werme says:
..if the cow was grazing the kelp forest, that would be worth a visit..
Don’t light my fuse! There is a well=advertized industry here in Oz harvesting kelp, purporting to extract a “tonic” from it and using the rest for fertilizer. In terms on NPK, kelp runs about 0.1, 0.1, 0.5 so it’s a pretty crrok fertilizer. So they catch fish and grind them up as an additive to give it at least a semblance of nutrition value, but it’s still not much differnt to that is being fertilized.
The NZ Dept of Agriculture took one such firm to Court, where the Judge found no redeeming vale in the exercise. He could not pass a jusgement of any consequence because he said the law did not give him the power to prevent citizens from buying useless products.
The the CSIRO in Australia did many field trials, outcome essentially zero improvement. The level of any growth promoters in the mix was so low as the be like homeopathy. So we have a sector of the workforce engaged in useless expendiure when thery could be doing something useful plus a clutch of gardeners and farmers who are spending money for no gain.What a spin!
The ultimate insult is that our National Broadcaster, the ABC, promotes this endeavour in the interests of “organic” chemical free farming, which in several papers has been also shown to be a pickpocket exercise.
Goodbye science, welcome trendiness.
“Ronnie Cummins, national director of the Organic Consumers Association, says…”
As I just said before Organic Consumers Association founder is senior adviser to the UN. The USDA is run by Monsanto, Cargill and the others who want to ban natural livestock and substitute patented livestock.
FOLLOW THE MONEY. The propaganda about what is happening on the subject of food is as bad or worse than that in Global Warming and the same group is behind both sets of propaganda.
“…With World War II, America saw its agricultural system intentionally subjected to political policies that radically transformed it. What was once a decentralized system that provided a means to self sufficiency and independence for tens of millions of farmers was purposefully centralized into a capital-intensive fossil-fuel dependent system that restructured local economies, permitting their wealth to be extracted by what are now transnational cartels dedicated to the so-called free market and globalized trade at all costs.
This transformation was the result of organized plans developed by a group of highly powerful ” though unelected ” financial and industrial executives who wanted to drastically change agricultural practices in the US to better serve their collective corporate financial agenda. This group, called the Committee for Economic Development, was officially established in 1942 as a sister organization to the Council on Foreign Relations. CED has influenced US domestic policies in much the same way that the CFR has influenced the nation’s foreign policies.[1]
Composed of chief executive officers and chairmen from the federal reserve, the banking industry, private equity firms, insurance companies, railroads, information technology firms, publishing companies, pharmaceutical companies, the oil and automotive industries, meat packing companies, retailers and assisted by university economists ” representatives from every sector of the economy with the key exception of farmers themselves ” CED determined that the problem with American agriculture was that there were too many farmers. But the CED had a “solution”: millions of farmers would just have to be eliminated.
In a number of reports written over a few decades, CED recommended that farming “resources” ” that is, farmers ” be reduced. In its 1945 report “Agriculture in an Expanding Economy,” CED complained that “the excess of human resources engaged in agriculture is probably the most important single factor in the “farm problem'” and describes how agricultural production can be better organized to fit to business needs….
Their plan was so effective and so faithfully executed by its operatives in the US government that by 1974 the CED couldn’t help but congratulate itself in another agricultural report called “A New US Farm Policy for Changing World Food Needs” for the efficiency of the tactics they employed to drive farmers from their land.[5]
The human cost of CED’s plans were exacting and enormous.
CED’s plans resulted in widespread social upheaval throughout rural America, ripping apart the fabric of its society destroying its local economies. They also resulted in a massive migration to larger cities. The loss of a farm also means the loss of identity, and many farmers’ lives ended in suicide [6], not unlike farmers in India today who have been tricked into debt and desperation and can see no other way out…” History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Jobt
This article is very well researched and includes five pages of references. So please read it.
Couple of questions for the city kid here:
I thought gas masks kept filtrates (not gases in the physical sense) OUT, not in.
I thought the methane “problem” was at the other end of the cow.
What a disappointing thing to find out about that aquarium. How sad.
@Dave Springer
You’re right to expand the view of pertinent considerations concerning the energy budget of food production, but you need to expand it even further: humans can’t survive on corn kernels (or stalks) alone. At a minimum, a vegan needs to combine rice, beans and corn to obtain minimal protein requirements and would get excessive calories in doing so, increasing the risk of obesity and further enabling the expression of diabetes. Cattle, BTW, don’t need to be fed corn and we’d all be a little healthier if allowed to eat grass finished beef and thus making beef a much less oil dependent food than veggies.
And grass decomposes whether it’s eaten or not: the carbon budget isn’t changed by how many bodies the food passes thru. Your arithmetic concerning the bison and cattle herds doesn’t make any sense: there are (and were) only so many ruminant GI tracts operating at any one time, regardless of the cull rate.
The carrying capacity of the environment has been expanded miraculously by oil dependent ag technology. We are due for an ugly future competing for food when oil gives out. I’m going to sharpen my sword and polish my horned helmet now so I’ll be prepared. Itll be sooner than we’d like to think.
Great comments from guidoLaMoto and Gail Combs re real food and Big Agribusiness.
In the 1830s Richard Henry Dana Jr. often made port in Monterey as an AB seaman in the coastal hide trade. In “Two Years Before the Mast” he wrote of the vitalizing powers of (grass fed) beef:
“This was the most lively part of our work. A little boating and
beach work in the morning; then twenty or thirty men down in a
close hold, where we were obliged to sit down and slide about,
passing hides, and rowsing about the great steeves, tackles, and
dogs, singing out at the falls, and seeing the ship filling up
every day. The work was as hard as it could well be. There was not
a moment’s cessation from Monday morning till Saturday night, when
we were generally beaten out, and glad to have a full night’s
rest, a wash and shift of clothes, and a quiet Sunday. During all
this time– which would have startled Dr. Graham– we lived upon
almost nothing but fresh beef; fried beefsteaks, three times a
day,– morning, noon, and night. At morning and night we had a
quart of tea to each man, and an allowance of about a pound of
hard bread a day; but our chief article of food was beef. A mess,
consisting of six men, had a large wooden kid piled up with
beefsteaks, cut thick, and fried in fat, with the grease poured
over them. Round this we sat, attacking it with our jack-knives
and teeth, and with the appetite of young lions, and sent back an
empty kid to the galley. This was done three times a day. How many
pounds each man ate in a day I will not attempt to compute. A
whole bullock (we ate liver and all) lasted us but four days. Such
devouring of flesh, I will venture to say, is not often seen. What
one man ate in a day, over a hearty man’s allowance, would make an
English peasant’s heart leap into his mouth. Indeed, during all
the time we were upon the coast, our principal food was fresh
beef, and every man had perfect health; but this was a time of
especial devouring, and what we should have done without meat I
cannot tell. Once or twice, when our bullocks failed, and we were
obliged to make a meal upon dry bread and water, it seemed like
feeding upon shavings. Light and dry, feeling unsatisfied, and, at
the same time, full, we were glad to see four quarters of a
bullock, just killed, swinging from the fore-top. Whatever
theories may be started by sedentary men, certainly no men could
have gone through more hard work and exposure for sixteen months
in more perfect health, and without ailings and failings, than our
ship’s crew, let them have lived upon Hygeia’s own baking and
dressing.”
The globalists’ purpose for the promotion of a vegan diet has been previously inferred but not stated outright. The vegan diet creates a more tractable form of livestock: the Sheeple.
Talking of masks, here’s a real doozie:
http://www.ecouterre.com/16363/green-screen-a-living-carbon-capturing-face-mask-that-filters-bacteria/
And the best thing about it is that we can insist that the warmists all wear them or else we can accuse them of rank hypocrisy for not clearing up their own CO2 polution.
If the EPA and other green alarmists are so worried about the that evil toxic gas CO2, perhaps they are the ones who should go around wearing gas masks?
I visited the poll here:-
http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/efc/flamingos.aspx
The latest results show ‘Unconcerned’ has now grown to 15%. I wonder if this is another example of the WUWT effect 🙂
Results:
How do you feel about climate change today?
Worried
36%
Hopeful
14%
Unsure
8%
Discouraged
14%
Curious
13%
Unconcerned
15%
11644 votes tallied
Scarlet Pumpernickel says:
May 1, 2010 at 6:52 pm
Wow.. within a couple of hours of reading your post, I receive an email listing Termites as the number 1 methane producer.. followed by Camels, Zebra, Sheep, *then* Cows!
So I’m guessing that alarmists will be extolling the virtues of fumigation, rather than chowing down on beef?
http://www.eatmorchikin.com/
@ur momisugly Beth Cooper – hear hear. “Liberals” and for that matter “Socialists” have completely different meanings in the rest of the world from the meanings they have in the USA and it makes me wince that liberals are equated with communists in the States. Real liberals are tolerant, reasonable, freedom-loving people and that should not be used as a term of abuse. It worries me greatly that sites like this one which start out each day talking about the evidence for and against man-made climate change usually end up in ignorant right-wing intolerant rants about Obama and government and BURN MORE OIL!!!. I hate to think that climate change science is getting mixed up in illiberal teaparty political prejudices.
A big business niche is available: Exhaust catalyzers for cattle.
First they banned the cattle and the pigs and I said nothing.
Then they banned all cars except electric and I said nothing.
Then they banned all the power on which the electric cars and factories depended and still I said nothing.
Then they banned our cats and dogs – they have carbon footprints too, they said – and I looked away.
Now they’re coming to ban you and me.