From the Seattle Times – the end game of ‘polarbeargate’:
Scientist who saw drowned polar bears reprimanded
An Alaska scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has been reprimanded for improper release of government documents.
JUNEAU, Alaska —
An Alaska scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has been reprimanded for improper release of government documents.
An Interior Department official said emails released by Charles Monnett were cited by a federal appeals court in decisions to vacate approval by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management of an oil and gas company’s Arctic exploration plan.
The official, Walter Cruickshank, deputy director of BOEM, said in a memo that an inspector general’s investigation contained findings that Monnett had improperly disclosed internal government documents, which he said were later used against the agency in court. He also said the investigation made other findings in regards to Monnett’s conduct, but he wasn’t taking action on those. He would not specify those findings.
Cruickshank called Monnett’s “misconduct very serious,” and said any future misconduct may lead to more severe discipline, including removal from federal service.
Monnett was briefly suspended last year during an inspector general’s investigation into a polar bear research contract he managed. The inspector general’s report, which was released Friday, said its investigation was set off by a complaint from an unidentified Interior Department employee who alleged that Monnett wrongfully released government records and that he and another scientist, Jeffrey Gleason, intentionally omitted or used false data in an article they wrote on polar bears. During that investigation, authorities also looked into the procurement issue.
full story here
“Exonerated”? Monnett flat out lied. He made statements which any person acting as a genuine scientist had no basis other than wild speculations contrary to well established scientific observations. Monnett and his collaborators went forward with their false fabrications in a deliberate attempt to prevent oil drilling and production in the Arctic. When it appeared their falsified reports were not going to be used by the government agency as a basis for stopping the oil production, they proceeded to violate the law and regulatory proceddures by leeking their falsified report/s to people who would act to stop the oil production. That kind of misconduct by Monnett and others is a condemnation and not an exoneration, regardless of anyone’s false pronouncements to the contrary.
If you are going to defend Monnett and his indefensible behavior, you can begin by finding and presenting some scientific evidence demonstrating: 1. Monnett saw four polar bears; 2. the polar bears he saw were actually dead, and not just lounging after a good meal and enjoying a good sunbath while floating; 3. the four allegedly dead polar bears died by drowning at sea, and not by any other causes, natural or unnatural like lead poisoning; 4. why four dead polar bears in the same location and at the same time is anything more than what may sometimes be found under entirely natural circumstances and without any human influences whatsoever. Thousands of polar bear adults, sub-adults, and cubs must die each and every year, otherwise the birth of about two cubs to each female would result in the polar bear population nearly doubling each breeding season. Polar bears who survive into adulthood have relatively short life spans. With so many thousands of natural polar deaths each year, Monnett and his defenders need to demonstrate why Monnett failed to see only four allegedly dead polar bears and not forty-four deadd polar bears.
Jimbo says:
September 29, 2012 at 3:11 pm
Al Gore is just trying to scare the children. I don’t believe anything these nutty scaremongers have to say. I check it out myself.
“Observations of a wild polar bear (Ursus maritimus) successfully fishing Arctic charr (Salvelinus alpinus) and Fourhorn sculpin (Myoxocephalus quadricornis)”
http://www.springerlink.com/content/2740177qk8425851/
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Wonder why he doesn’t show polar bear eating a baby seal?
D. Patterson says:
September 29, 2012 at 3:35 am
“Monnett reported what he wished to see and not what he actually did see. Being in an overflying aircraft, he was in no position to definitively prove the polar bears were killed by drowning due to loss of ice floes, killed by drowning, or perhaps killed at all in all four examples or any examples. Even if all four polar bears were actually killed, and were killed by drowning, Monnett had no evidence whatsoever to conclude they were killed by loss of ice rather than natural causes due to age and/or other natural causes.”
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That they drowned is far fetched, but they all coincidentally died of old age is reasonable?
John Marshall says:
September 29, 2012 at 3:01 am
Ursus Oceanus is a remarkable swimmer but shit happens so some must perish at sea. Their numbers are 20-25K so not endangered at all.
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20-25k is not a large population. Would you consider a human population of 20-25k large?
“”We have confirmed that the [inspector general’s] findings do not support a conclusion that the individual scientists involved engaged in scientific misconduct,” BOEM press secretary Theresa Eisenman said in a written statement. (http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/09/29/polar-bear-scientist-reprimanded-for-releasing-government-documents/)
The minor reprimand is on a different matter entirely – no polar bears – regarding Monnett disclosing what turned out to be agency suppression of information. In other words, whistle-blowing. The investigation was just an internal witch-hunt.
Now – back to the science, please?
Reality check says
Factually, he found four dead polar bears floating in the ocean after a storm. That’s all. Anything beyond that is just speculation unless the guy has photos of the bears swimming for days and days and actually drowning plus footage of their prior activity to put the swimming in context
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Sure that’s correct. But I am going to make a wild guess and suggest that in the original report that the interpretation was underlined as speculation. In other words no lies were told.
Given that more than one dead floating bear seen on a very brief overflight and it’s was considered unusual by a seasoned researcher the speculation seems reasonable.
Considering that we have direct satelite observations of reduced arctic sea ice and some knowledge that bears can’t swim forever it also seems a reasonable speculation.
Reality check says
When one presents wild speculation as fact, as was done here, that is called a lie. So anyone using this story to push global warming lied. Straight up, they lied.
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Don’t wiildly speculate. Show us the section in the report that presents speculation as proven fact.
pinetree3 writes: “20-25k is not a large population. Would you consider a human population of 20-25k large?”
See above: “Latest Fish and Wildlife population count has polar bears at an all time high of 25 to 30,000, up from 5 – 10,000 during the 1950′s and 60′s. We’re up to our ears in polar bears.”
So yes, relatively speaking polar bears have made a big comeback, and are still growing in number. Let’s ask the question in a slightly different fashion: Would you consider a Giant Panda population of 20-25k large?
pinetree3 says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:26 pm
20-25k is not a large population. Would you consider a human population of 20-25k large?
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Seeing that the the Polar Bear is an Apex predator Yeah, I consider that population to be very large. Food has been proven over and over again to be main population growth limiting factor for a given species. There are many other Apex predators that deserve our attention due to real extinction populations levels. The polar bear is not and was chosen as a poster child for a political position. If the population gets much larger you will start seeing all the cute little baby bears being eaten by hungry daddy bears. That will not make such a pretty poster.
My apologies – in my previous comment the quote should have been (to be exact):
“A BOEM spokeswoman, Theresa Eisenman, said the findings in the report do not support a conclusion that the scientists involved engaged in “scientific misconduct.” (http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/lifestyle/2012/09/29/polar-bear-scientist-reprimanded-for-releasing-government-documents/)
I accidentally linked to a different source that quoted the same press release, with slightly varying surrounding text.
Richard Carlson says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:19 pm
[….] That they drowned is far fetched, but they all coincidentally died of old age is reasonable?
Drowning polar bears are not so “farfetched” when you consider the fact that they spend almost all of their time at sea and on the ice edge, except for females in gestation. Polar bears who are too old, injured, and/or ill to catch sufficient prey end up becoming too weak to survive periods of severe weather and sea conditions. This raises the question of why anyone would be surprised or alarmed by the discovery of multiple polar bears showing up dead at sea after a severe Arctic storm. When they die, the sea and edge of the sea ice is where they spend the vast majority of their tim; so their bodies should be found at sea until scavengers have disposed of the corpses. Since polar bears are not necessarily solitary at all times, it should also be no surprise to find several polar bears have met their natural demise at the same place and same time. But all of that is premature. It remains to be seen what evidence their is of a scientific nature to support Monnetts claim their were four polar bears, and the four polar bears were actually dead and not just restin’. Once that hurdle is cleared, Monnett and his defenders need to preseent scientific evidence the polar bears drowned and were not shot to death by hunters, poisoned by debris in the ocean, or mortally wounded in fights with otther polar bears and/or walruses. There are innumerable natural circumstances which will result in the coincidental death of multiple polar bears at the same place and time.
““Exonerated”? Monnett flat out lied.”
Yes, exonerated. The report said,
“We have confirmed that the [inspector general’s] findings do not support a conclusion that the individual scientists involved engaged in scientific misconduct,” BOEM press secretary Theresa Eisenman said in a written statement.”
The investigation never was about his scientific work; it was initiated by his whistle-blowing of the illegal procedures of BOEM. BOEM is the loser in this thing, not Monnett.
On the contrary, there is nothing reasonable about it whatsoever. You might just as well run around in circles and tear your hair out with loud wailing about the deaths of four white-tail deer attributed to Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) along a thirty mile stretch of Interstate highway in Illinois, Kentucky, or Tennessee. The end result is the same with people with the practical experience to know better laughing at your outrageous foolishness.
If you and Monnett want to propagate lies and misinformation, the least you could do is make them at least believable enough to be more entertaining than this utter nonsense. Where in the world do you think polar bears die and leave their carcasses, the Brooklyn zoo? Or, perhaps you think the polar bears take solitary journeys to Superman’s Fortress of Solitude before they deposit their Earthly remains in a hidden Polar Bear Burial Ground? If not, perhaps you can explain where all of the last 10,000 polar bear carcasses ended up in the last year or two without being observed at sea. Nah, you’re the Lazy Teenager, which means you cannot be bothered to actually producee the evidence of these particular four polar bear deaths. Of course not, because Monnett et al made no effort to collect any such valid and meaningful scientific observations. Instead, they read the minds of the gestalt Polar Bear conciousness to produce the right conclusions, but the right conclusions for whom?
Yeah, we can see it now. Those four pitiable polar bears were just the tip of the all but hidden Polar Bear Berg which the dirty and evil scheming oil companies are trying to hide but for the plucky whistleblowing of Monnett and his eagle eyes.Monnett, Lazy Teenager, et al…reasonable? Perhaps they can survey the stinky skunk roadkill problem and diving Global Warming in that study as well?
@bikedude
>Pointman, any references?
>I found this: http://www.usgs.gov/blogs/features/usgs_top_story/polar-bears-long-distance-swimming-and-the-changing-arctic/
>90 miles is still impressive, but quite a bit short of your claim of 687 km?
+++++++++++
Polar Bears have been spotted swimming in the open ocean more than 300 miles from land.
This whole drowning bear thing is stupid.
Sun+no ice = >plankton >fish >seals >polar bears
Unmelting ice = dead polar bears
Doh!
pinetree3 says:
September 29, 2012 at 8:26 pm
’20-25k is not a large population. Would you consider a human population of 20-25k large?’
Looks a pretty good size when compared with the other, more prolific, apex predator in the areas they inhabit:
“In 2006, almost 4% of people who identified themselves as an Aboriginal person – 50,485 – reported that they were Inuit.”
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-008-x/2008002/article/10712-eng.htm
Pinin’ for the Bergs.
===============
Is Ursus maritimus (Polar bear) an exclusive carnivore? The answer seems to be no.
References:
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40511413?uid=3738096&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101264796907
http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/Z08-137
http://www.springerlink.com/content/2740177qk8425851/
http://www.asmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1644/08-MAMM-A-103R2.1
So now we have it. Polar bears can swim long distances, eat vegetation, survive an ice-free Arctic ocean during the Holocene, eat fish, goose eggs, seaweed, garbage, ride on mother’s back, increase their numbers from 5,000 in the late 1950s to around 20,000 / 25,000 today. Yet they are dooooooomed I tells ya! Ditto penguins in Antarctica who saw their number double magically this year after scientists realised they could not count the first time round. This is truly a calamity.
Correction:
Not any old penguin but the Emperor penguin.
Jimbo,
“Is Ursus maritimus (Polar bear) an exclusive carnivore? The answer seems to be no.”
One of your sources says that the berries that polar bears eat are an insignificant source of energy:
“…If correct, our results suggests that the bears which had fed on berries while fasting on land received an insignificant amount of energetic benefit.”
http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/Z08-137
Another is about polar bears eating arctic charr, a fish.
http://www.springerlink.com/content/2740177qk8425851/?MUD=MP
Another said it was mathematically possible for polar bears to maintain body mass by eating arctic charr and seal blubber. The number of bears that would actually do this was open to further study:
http://www.asmjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1644/08-MAMM-A-103R2.1
The last concluded,
“The incidence of feeding on berries varied annually from 2 to 41%. We were not able to determine the energetic importance of terrestrial foraging, but the intake may reduce the rate of weight loss of bears on land, particularly in years when berries are abundant”
Hardly an optimistic overview of future polar bear population.
Given how the Inspector General’s investigators stated in plain language how the administrative investigation was initiated in response to a complaint alleging Monnett and Gleason engaged in “scientific misconduct,” your comment that “never was about his scientific work”is an apparent lie. Using such a lie to spin the events to misprtray Monnett as some kind of heroic whistleblower fails as propaganda. Monnett made it very clear that he considered his Climate Change beliefs were more important than any agency regulations and rules, and he arrogated to himself the authority to decide what is and is not proper government policy and science. Monnett is fortunate to have political allies to shield him from the consequences of his actions.
“Given how the Inspector General’s investigators stated in plain language how the administrative investigation was initiated in response to a complaint alleging Monnett and Gleason engaged in “scientific misconduct,””
That’s a lie. They never said that. They said explicitly that it was *not* about scientific misconduct. And the final report found no scientific misconduct. That’s why it was an administrative instigation and not a scientific one. Stick to the facts and stop making things up.
Rob Murphy says:
September 30, 2012 at 6:00 pm
That’s a lie. They never said that. They said explicitly that it was *not* about scientific misconduct. And the final report found no scientific misconduct. That’s why it was an administrative instigation and not a scientific one. Stick to the facts and stop making things up.
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Then lets talk about character. Do we trust the data provided by someone who has clearly lied and been spanked in public? I think not. It would be my guess that the only reason he got a pass on the research was there was no way for the investigators to prove the data one way or another. Again with that in mind do we blindly trust? I think not.
To me that would be akin to trusting someone with my child who had been convicted of animal molestation. Again, I think not!
“Do we trust the data provided by someone who has clearly lied and been spanked in public? I think not.”
He hasn’t lied. He was exonerated of any scientific misconduct. Why are you pretending otherwise?
“To me that would be akin to trusting someone with my child who had been convicted of animal molestation.”
And I should care what it would mean to you, why?
As the following excerpts from the transcript of the Inspector General’s interview of Monnett demonstrate, the investigator’s stated the interview was about allegations of Monnett’s scientific misconduct and Monnetts spoken acknowledgement that the interview was about the alleged scientific misconduct.
What makes you think you’re going to get away with flat out lying to the readers? Did you think the tape recorded transcript of their statements at the interview would never catch up with you and your false propaganda on behalf of your corrupt political cause?
“What makes you think you’re going to get away with flat out lying to the readers?”
They had said explicitly that the investigation was not about the science, thought they claimed it was administrative at first. Not criminal, thought they people they sent to investigate were criminal investigators. A Marx Brothers investigation.
“CHARLES MONNETT: Well, how does that, um – you say this is basically “scientific misconduct,” and how does that jive then with this being administrative in nature? What‟s that mean, just that it‟s not criminal or something?
ERIC MAY: That‟s correct.
CHARLES MONNETT: Okay.
ERIC MAY: Right, this is an administrative matter under the conditions of Kalkines, so –
CHARLES MONNETT: I see.
ERIC MAY: Okay? And the only – and we explained before, the only reason it would be – reach the level of criminal is if we find that you‟re lying to us.
CHARLES MONNETT: Right, and you‟re going to, you‟re going to investigate, uh, the details of our science and you (inaudible/mixed voices) –
ERIC MAY: Based on the allegations that we received. That‟s correct.
CHARLES MONNETT: Okay, and, and just so I know how to put my answers, do you have scientific credentials of any sort? Uh, what, what, what level of scientist am I speaking with here that‟s going to be evaluating my science?
ERIC MAY: No, we‟re criminal investigators.
CHARLES MONNETT: Criminal investigators.”
“Did you think the tape recorded transcript of their statements at the interview would never catch up with you and your false propaganda on behalf of your corrupt political cause?”
I thought the transcript would have made anybody predisposed to defending the investigation to take pause and realize that the investigators had no scientific background and barely understood 5th grade math. Since the final report found no scientific misconduct, pretending that there was any is a lie. The only reason there was an investigation was because Monnett had exposed the fact that BOEM had not act legally in considering environmental impacts. He was a whistle-blower, and the agency tried to attack him any way they could. The report found no fault with his science.