Much has been made of the revelation that Charles Monnett is under suspension and investigation related to the issues swirling around drowned polar bears and dubious statistical license used to calculate mortality. I got a request from a reader to locate the poster that started it all. Happy to oblige. See below
Monnett, C., Gleason, J. S., and L. M. Rotterman, 2005. Potential effects of diminished sea ice on open-water swimming, mortality, and distribution of polar bears during fall in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea. 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, 12-16 December 2005, San Diego, CA.
Here’s the image and full resolution PDF:
MarineMammalConference-Dec2005 (PDF)
Tom in Florida says:
August 8, 2011 at 1:33 pm
It is also our natural environment and has been for 30 of thousand years or more. Both parties did what “comes natural.” As often as I grumble about development, I find the “green” perception that humans are somehow “invading” parts of the environment where they don’t belong to be profoundly ignorant. The human race reached every significant land mass before the end of the last glacial epoch, arriving in fact in Australia more than 30,000 years ago and in the Americas more than 16,000 years ago. There is no significant landmass except antarctica that does not have (or in some modern case “had”) an indigenous human population.
I’m not telling you what to find offensive, but I do think you should spend more time online. Thick skin doesn’t begin to cover its affects on me and others I know.
Lets take a reasoned look at what the internet does to us. It bombards us with human tragedy every hour. It sends news of non-existent scientific achievement before the papers are ever published. It implies to us that we should know all about Kate Gosselin’s next boyfriend while downplaying the future effects of the first ever lowering of the U.S. credit rating. It shows us faces of people who died before their familes know. It puts corporations with secret deals with marketing companies in charge of our personal information while blasting any request for government to ask for personal information. It promises a great future where all humans are plugged in and a homogeneous social network exists, while protecting no ones privacy.
Now while it’s never pretty to crack wise about someone else’s death, it’s not exactly something that any human online enough has the emotion to deal with as fast as the stories come in. To do so would be to turn oneself into an emotional basket case. So, having said that, Please cut the guy a little slack (just a little).
For future reference, if I should ever die in a hilarious way, I will haunt you all for NOT creating an internet meme about it.
They might be the largest carnivore on the ~surface~ of the planet, but I think Orcas are bigger.
Maybe your self-righteous sanctimony looks pretty in Ireland, but here it just looks like someone who can’t find anything better to do.
Hey, fellas, no need to get into unpleasant arguments. It is a tragedy, of course, but it looks like they went out with an ancient rifle, ancient ammunition and insufficient amounts of it. Foolish. I suppose my original point was that perhaps people are lulled into a false sense of security by the ‘aaah’ factor of the cute bears, whereas they (sensibly) naturally recoil from those ‘ugly’ crocodiles, and take more sensible precautions.
I was at that conference. During the business meeting of the Society for Marine Mammalogy, Vicki Cornish proposed an official SMM Resolution on Climate Change (available here: http://www.marinemammalscience.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=66&Itemid=184)
The proposal came at the end of the meeting and did not allow time for response or comment as was required by the SMM Bylaws. It was expected to be brought up at the next conference in Cape Town, SA. I wrote the SMM president asking about the opportunity for member comment. I was assured there would be an opportunity to comment before formal passing of the resolution. There was a good number of members (including Charter Members like myself) interested in commenting. The Resolution appeared without the required membership comment period.
Partly in response to that move, I produced the Conference Commemorative Poster for the next conference held in Quebec City. The title was “Marine Mammals of the Northern Cryosphere” and included a reconstruction of the Arctic sea ice conditions for the Medieval Warm Period, the Little Ice Age, and present conditions. The poster was released just days following the CRU email release event in November 2009. When presented to the membership, I drew attention to the “Climategate” event and noted that the MBH1998 hockey stick was loosing credibility and it was time to look carefully at the empirical evidence of historical Arctic sea ice for the Holocene Interglacial. I caught Holy Hell for that, including serious criticism from the present and past SMM presidents.
The next SMM Conference to be held in Tampa, Florida, this November will include a workshop entitled “How Modern Marine Mammals Evolved — Revelations from the Confluence of Genetics and Climate Change” on the confluence of genetics and Pleistocene – Holocene climate change. There we hope to bring to light what climate change looks like over meaningful time periods (multiple glacial/interglacial cycles) and the affect it has on speciation of marine mammals. Monnett hasn’t signed up for that workshop yet.
There’s something disturbing on that poster… how comes they didn’t find any bears on dry land?!?
Duster says:
August 8, 2011 at 2:09 pm
“It is also our natural environment and has been for 30 of thousand years or more. Both parties did what “comes natural.” As often as I grumble about development, I find the “green” perception that humans are somehow “invading” parts of the environment where they don’t belong to be profoundly ignorant. The human race reached every significant land mass before the end of the last glacial epoch, arriving in fact in Australia more than 30,000 years ago and in the Americas more than 16,000 years ago. There is no significant landmass except antarctica that does not have (or in some modern case “had”) an indigenous human population.”
The big difference is that these humans were not living there, they were not searching for food there, they were there on a lark. And now they have killed a polar bear with a gun, nothing natural about that. So while I am no bleeding heart liberal nor am I an advocate of any kind of gun control, I simply commented on the fact that it is truly a tragedy that a polar bear had to die so some humans could have some fun.
Peter Walsh says:
August 8, 2011 at 2:06 pm
“”I (here in Dublin, Ireland) […] great Now, please comment on the full comment and don’t be selective.”
They went up there to sleep in tents in the place with the highest concentration of Polar Bears on the planet; didn’t bring a dog, had difficulties with their Mauser, had a non-working alarm system. In other words, criminally negligent on part of BSES. Shut’em down for good and sue them.
Polar Bears are not far removed from Grizzlies. Given a White environment and enough time, I am sure we could recreate them.
We do not know as yet what Monnett is being investigated about , it could be simply be poor book keeping or project control leading to COI and he could be innocent. So lets not be in a rush to form a hanging jury in the way the hard core AGW faithful are, for once we start taken their approach we lose the right to attack such approaches . And that right is all important , for the public may not understand the science but they do understand and disapprove of spinning and lies , and its the public where the fight needs to be won.
Frankly like the Hockey stick , Monnet ordinal Polar Bear work seems to be another poor piece of science, large assumptions made on little evidenced, which if that has not become political useful would have been forgotten about or quietly modified. Something that can’t happen now as its become an icon of the AGW fatih and where as you change science, you can’t change icons.
They shot and killed the polar bear in Norway.
“The attack took place on the Svalbard archipelago, which is home to about
2,400 people and 3,000 polar bears …”
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/08/05/polar-bear-kills-one-injures-four-on-british-expedition-to-arctic
Maybe just a bit o/t but it got me thinking about the guy who liked to live with Grizzlies. It worked great for 13 years then he met a hungry bear he didn’t know and he and his girlfriend got eaten.
The bear was subsequently shot which I consider to be most ironic, the guy regarded himself as being a protector of these animals but his death resulted in one being killed after it did what comes naturally to Grizzlies. Apologies for the Wiki link, I try to avoid using Wiki but oh well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Treadwell
It’s what I’ve been saying all along. Obviously Monnett is a shill for big soda. Without ice, how are the Polar Bears supposed to keep their cola on ice? Nobody wants their mascots drinking warm sodas for the cameras, that’s just not going to sell sugar water. Big Soda is behind all this melting ice crap, except where it’s not.
I have read several links on the internet and recall a nature cable show about animals on earth that, as normal behavior of healthy individuals, deliberately hunt and kill humans for food as a normal behavior under normal conditions.
The view seems to be common that the two species are polar bears and saltwater crocodile. But between the two there may be a distinction about what is deliberate behavior for healthy animals.
Crocodiles lie underwater and essentially hit anything the see above the water that moves. On the other hand polar bears are known to deliberately track a human for many miles and kill them for food as a normal part of their wild behavior. Polar born and bears raised around human settlements have an un-wild behavior (at least in part).
Note: Of course sick or old tigers have been known to kill and eat humans. But not a normal behavior for healthy tigers. Also, people talk about sharks, but it appears that when they attack humans it is a case of mistaken identity . . . they think we are seal-like.
John
Thinking people might want to direct their anger towards the green, feel-good polar bear commercial with the hug instead of people mocking the absurdity of it in light of the attacks.
Is this the photo where the uncropped version shows ice sheets not that far away?
@Stark Dickflüssig:
Just to repeat Louis’ exact words: “Was the teen trying to hug the Polar bear, like in the commercial?”
And Peter Walsh’s (to Louis): “A family in the United Kingdom is in mourning for their son and all that you can do is to make pathetic jokes.”
The “teen” (let’s show a little respect – his name was Horatio Chapple) was asleep in his tent, as was the whole party since there were no lookouts posted, when the bear came into their encampment and killed him. This is clear from the most cursory look at any of the reports in the UK press.
We will get to know more about the circumstances – the reason for the Svalbard trip, the trip-wire failure, the misfiring rifle, the organisers’ responsibilities (all of which Horatio must have relied on for his safety being new to the arctic), the wounds suffered before and after he died – when his body is returned to the UK and the coroner’s inquest is held.
At best Louis’ comment was crass – but yours about Peter Walsh was equally crass before any of us can know the full circumstances of this young man’s untimely death.
BBC wasn’t the only one that spun the climate change story – NBC did the same thing on the Today show.
@ur momisugly Chuckorama – “Big Soda” … classic
Duster
From your comment it would appear that New Zealand is not a significant land mass. If that is the case then the UK isn’t a significant land mass either.
NZ was not settled till around 800 to 1000 years ago.
Here’s another shot of him, posing in front of some mountains:
http://www.bundabergrum.com.au/original/images/snippetWatch.jpg
Tom in Florida says:
August 8, 2011 at 2:45 pm
….
The big difference is that these humans were not living there, they were not searching for food there, they were there on a lark. And now they have killed a polar bear with a gun, nothing natural about that. So while I am no bleeding heart liberal nor am I an advocate of any kind of gun control, I simply commented on the fact that it is truly a tragedy that a polar bear had to die so some humans could have some fun.
I understand, but it really isn’t a big difference. First both bears and humans explore (go on “larks”). It is a basic behaviour essential in all animals, particularly predators – that includes both humans and bears, who tend to need to better knowledge of their territory than herbivores, so both species are born to do that. In fact, in dietary terms humans, bears, wolves and dogs, and – to a degree – pigs all compete for much the same territory and food resources. Both bears and humans frequently regard each other as edible too, though humans tend to be over-lean for bears and generally a calorie poor reward for predatory effort. Competition breeds conflict and there are usually winners and losers in that. Human-bear conflict has been documented over 100,000 years ago. Also, humans adapt culturally (technologically) so the bear encountering an armed group was not new event between the species. There was no “unnatural” element in any part of that small history. Sad, perhaps, but not unnatural in any form.
Fred from Canuckistan says:
August 8, 2011 at 2:03 pm
The people who lead that Arctic camping trip and didn’t bring a dog/s along should be charged with Criminal Stupidity.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-550612/Killer-polar-bear-Im-just-big-teddy-really.html
In the climate wars, it was their stranded bear.