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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Veronica says:
May 3, 2010 at 8:30 am
@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. …
_________________________________________________________________________
You are correct. There are liberals and there are pseudo-liberals. Unfortunately it is a lot easier to sell a global dictatorship if it is packaged as warm & fuzzy and good for children, small animals and the environment. These quotes are where the problem comes in.
“What unites the many different forms of Socialism.. is the conception that socialism (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) must be handed down to the grateful masses in one form or another, by a ruling elite which is not subject to their control…” http://search.marxists.org/archive/draper/1966/twosouls/0-2souls.htm
Therefore “socialism” is the ideal vehicle for those who crave power. Remember Paul Warburg was the main architect of the US Federal Reserve Act and his brother Max financed the Bolshevik Revolution. The bankers have taken advantage of the above definition of socialism ever since.
“Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as “internationalists” and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.” – Pg. 405 of David Rockefeller’s Autobiography, 2002
David Rockefeller “… the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.” http://www.newswithviews.com/Cappadona/heidi5.htm
And the work of the UN and the elite orchestrated NGOs that channel the energy and enthusiasm of the young political activists into the “correct” causes needed to advance their agendas.
“Very few of even the larger international NGOs are operationally democratic, in the sense that members elect officers or direct policy on particular issues,” notes Peter Spiro. “Arguably it is more often money than membership that determines influence, and money more often represents the support of centralized elites, such as major foundations, than of the grass roots.” The CGG has benefited substantially from the largesse of the MacArthur, Carnegie, and Ford Foundations…” http://www.afn.org/~govern/strong.html
And then there is The ‘Innocents’ Clubs’: http://www.heretical.com/miscella/munzen.html
“…During the 1920’s and most of the 1930’s Münzenberg played a leading role in the Comintern, Lenin’s front for world-wide co-ordination of the left under Russian control. Under Münzenberg’s direction, hundreds of groups, committees and publications cynically used and manipulated the devout radicals of the West….Most of this army of workers in what Münzenberg called ‘Innocents’ Clubs’ had no idea they were working for Stalin. They were led to believe that they were advancing the cause of a sort of socialist humanism. The descendents of the ‘Innocents’ Clubs’ are still hard at work in our universities and colleges. Every year a new cohort of impressionable students join groups like the Anti-Nazi League believing them to be benign opponents of oppression…”
To hide what is happening history has been rewritten.
“… Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country’s evolution. Or if they have taken up the subject, they have done so to argue against its salience for grasping the essentials of American political history. Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion, even if we accept as true the beliefs that democracy, social mobility, and economic dynamism have long inhibited the congealing of a ruling stratum. This aversion has coincided, after all, with one of the largest and fastest-growing disparities in the division of income and wealth in American history….Neglecting the powerful had not been characteristic of historical work before World War II. ” http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/11/2005/3/#11068
Remember there is no one who is angrier than someone who realizes they have been conned. I am an ex-Greenpeace liberal from the late sixties who woke up.
davidmhoffer May 1, 2010 at 8:30 pm: “Most of us would starve to death if we had to depend on mother earth, good thing we cut the apron strings and terraformed the planet to maximize food production.”
Terraformed terra! Very well put.
@ur momisugly Veronica-
Point well taken, Veronica (and Beth Cooper). Please in turn keep in mind that many “tea partiers” are not illiberal in the classical sense either. Many are “populist” or libertarian, and distrustful of the Republican Right that is trying to co-opt the movement. The MSM tend to paint all Tea Partiers (and other Obama-agenda opponents) as religious-right white supremacist wackos, a very misleading generalization.
The Science Museum in London, England, had a similar exhibition exposing the folly of human carbon pollution but after much negative comment from members of the public it was changed to explain that there was actually a conflicting story about carbon and how it actually benefits the planet, though the threat that climate change was still man made has not been reversed.
Re: Yesteryear’s Bison vs. today’s Cattle
Even more than what was roaming the midwestern prairies is what the prairies actually were, a patchwork of bog-gas spewing marshland, you know, methane. Add to that the riparian woodlands pumping GHG dihydrogen monoxide from deep subsoil (now safely fixed deep under corn’s 6 ft. roots) via their H2O-well taproots. Perhaps cattlemen and corn farmers should receive net carbon credit payouts as a thank you for their Giai-saving geoengineering feats.
“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”?”
Time Wave Zero has given us the novel meme [snip ~ ctm]
CHEM TRAILS and CLIMATE CHANGE: I am really surprised about very uncurious the Monterey Bay Aquarium is when it comes to Chem trails and also how silent they are about this. One can look up at the sky on almost any given day and note the parallel lines, blips, grids and giant Xs in the sky.
I also have to note how very uncurious certain scientists are about this as well.
After ruling everything else out including GM Terminator seeds, could Chem Trails be responsible for the massive Bat Die-offs due to a fungus from White Nose Syndrome, frog funguses, lizard funguses, etc?
After all, what gets spewed out in four plumes by some very high-flying silent white planes must drift down and everything is exposed to this, including all exposed vegetation and even the oceans.
[Reply: the subject of chemtrails is frowned upon here, and should be avoided. ~dbs, mod.]
The Climate Change/Global Warming issue seems to be tied in to AGENDA 21 and the United Nations. Please also be aware of the Club of Rome and the Rockefellers.
Also, it is interesting that some environmentalists and the Climate Change, Earth Day/hour people, etc don’t seem to care at all about Depleted uranium from our perpetual wars or the Pentagon and its perpetual wars. Nor do they care about GM terminator seeds or fluoridated water.
Also, they have remained silent when they should be recognizing those who actually became ill from chemicals such as Agent Orange, Gulf War Syndrome, MCS (Multiple Chemical Sensivity) and the survivors-rescue workers of 9/11. I’m surprised that Christine Todd Whitman-formerly of the EPA was left completely off the hook for lying about the quality of the 9/11 air. These “environmentalists” and Climate Change people don’t breathe a word in defense of the people ill with Agent Orange, GWS, MCS, etc. Instead, they’ve left them at the mercy of the Mainstream Media who either completely ignores them or slanders them with comments such as, “They have unmet psychiatric issues,” they have “Mass Hysteria,”, they’re chemophobes, Chicken Littles, psychosomatic lazy malingerers and want money and special attention.
Having a moderate level of MCS myself, I’m finding myself not getting any attention at all, especially because of people like: John Stossel, Dean Edell, think tank/foundation people such as: Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch, Ronald Gotts, Elizabeth Whelan, Steven Milloy and especially Michael Fumento of the Hudson Institute (who was particularly nasty with us). As for “Mass hysteria,” it took me a few years to understand what happened and everyone I knew thought I was crazy.
The doctors who are heavily courted by the drug/pesticide representatives didn’t help out either. The typical scenario seems to be that allergy tests are run which come out negative and then they referr us to psychiatrists.
Before I go, I have to mention that no doctor I saw checked out the CNS (Central nervous system), checked for a damaged blood-brain barrier or looked for defective or missing enzymes such as (Paraoxenase and/or Cholinesterace).
The MSM (Mainstream Media) also never mentions these things and they certainly do not mention MARTIN PALL’S important work on MCS either.
So, when ALL of the above is ignored by these Climate Change/Global Warming & Earth Month/Day/Hour people and some environmentalists, there is something seriously wrong and they’re nothing but phoney baloneys.
Since when is CO2 bad>? Isn’t it what plants use to breathe? Aren’t the tree huggers aware that the more CO2 we make the more trees and other green things there will be. This is all just more junk science with the intent to control the masses. The majority of the comments on this article bear out that many people realize this yet the media and so called scientists (more like social scientists) continue to promote lies such as this and global warming. Yet they have the gall to go after Mcdonalds for promoting fast food by selling toys to kids (which they have done for years, sugary cereal makers, Mattel, MTV all mass market to youth) but the junk sci guys are doing the same, targeting youth to promote their agenda!!! (mom, dad, don’t do that, it will melt the ice, we gotta save polar bears!)