Penguin Expert’s Reply to Blinded by Beliefs: The Straight Poop on Emperor Penguins:
Update by Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
In a recent essay Blinded by Beliefs: The Straight Poop on Emperor Penguins posted to WUWT July 1, 2014, Jim Steele criticized Dr. David Ainely for posting the following misrepresentation of climate change and its effect on Emperor Penguins:
The following is Dr. Ainely’s response:
“Hey, Jim, I hope you are doing well!!
Michelle LaRue sent me a link to your blog about the emperor penguin situation. Sorry to see that I should have deleted that EMPE [code 1=”<b><span” 2=”style="text-decoration:” 3=”underline;">Em</span></b>peror” 4=”<b><span” 5=”style="text-decoration:” 6=”underline;">Pe</span></b>nguin” language=”for”][/code] stuff from our website back when you and I were discussing it and you were convincing me that stuff wasn’t adding up. I actually began to write text to revise the website but kept putting off as other things reared their ugly heads. Currently, when I do get the revision uploaded — and you’ve shamed me to do it sooner than later — I’m thinking that it won’t include emperor penguins at all.
Another reason I have to do this, practical one, is that I’m supposed to address the Natl Science Teachers annual mtg first week of August (in PA) and talk to them about penguins and climate change. Been gnashing my teeth, when thinking about what to say, about the emperor penguin story.
So, now I’ve been kicked in the butt. Thanks!!!
Best regards,
David”
Nice response from Dr. Ainely. But I get the impression he just intends to omit the emperor penguin story and sweep it under the rug altogether, not correct the record and admit climate change had nothing to do with the emperor penguin situation.
Update by Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
Suggest:
Update by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
While comparing factual and alarmists’ graphs, pointing out alarmists’ lies and calculating the damage caused by the monstrous, useless wind farms are all very commendable activities, almost nobody seems to focus on the real and horrible wars and conflicts caused by the “green mafia.” For example, the bloody war in Chechnya and the current conflict in Ukraine are direct consequences of the “green mentality.”
If European countries would use rational approach and develop clean nuclear energy as much as possible, oil and gas pipelines would lose their strategic importance. But no, they prefer to rely on Putin’s oil and gas, and Putin kills thousands of people and devastates whole regions because of his passion for pipeline hegemony. All these lost lives and all this gigantic damage are the green activists’ achievement.
Reading between the lines here — always a tough job, but made even tougher by the spirited defense posted by Dr. Ainley — it appears that every single one of Jim Steele’s points was dead on the mark.
Tooth gnashing will induce a visit to the dentist and put plastic encumbrances into your mouth at bed-time, Dr Ainley. Avoid that at all costs. Do the only thing a scientist can do: tell the unvarnished scientific truth. The penguins are doing just great, “climate change” isn’t bothering them at all, and they just need to be free of wing bands, pesky conservation biologists, and French dynamite.
Alexander Feht says:
July 4, 2014 at 12:27 am
Shale oil and gas would keep the pipelines more local. Electricity is good. But it can’t yet be used for everything. An of course there is coal.
July 4, 2014 at 12:18 am | Katherine says:
Certainly reads like that, Katherine. A proper retraction should be made to correct the disinformation already spread.
Im thinking the Emperor penguins might be better off with global warming since it would make that long trek to open water that much shorter in time and distance for the colony. I know I would want to balance an egg on my feet untilmy mate returned for as short as possible.
New hypothesis: “The breeding success of endangered species is inversely proportional to the number of naturalists studying them.”
You find the explanation here somewhere?
http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/3/3/299/pdf
?
When a well-packaged web of lies has been sold gradually to the masses over generations, the truth will seem utterly preposterous and its speaker a raving lunatic.. ¯\ (ツ) /¯
Happy Independence Day to all in the colonies.
“Currently, when I do get the revision uploaded — and you’ve shamed me to do it sooner than later — I’m thinking that it won’t include emperor penguins at all.”
Good to see that debating the fact can lead somewhere, but my reaction to reading this was exactly what I read in the first comment, by Katherine.
Rather than retract and correct his previous errors, he seems to prefer not to talk about it.
So his work will stand as published and continue to mislead people who have not read Jim Steele’s article and Dr. Ainely acceptance of it here.
He’s still writing his blog update and preparing his address the Natl Science Teachers annual meeting, so we should not judge before he decides how to present this.
Hopefully he will fess up and correct the earlier error which is still out there misleading everyone ( except WUWT readers).
Well at least his admitted the problem, of course those so quick to run with the first claims has unquestionable ‘proof’ will not cover it and if this nonsense has entered AGW dogma you can bet your bottom dollar its will be defended endlessly , has all the dogma must be , despite the authors own words .
No science her , rather a hard core religion that demands nothing but certainty and unquestioning loyalty.
Alexander Feht….you would go for nuclear to replace oil? How much uranium do you think is left? Why do you think Japan switched off all its other nukes? Because had the wind been blowing onshore, large swathes of land, including Tokyo, would be uninhabitable. Greens are people who think it is not worth the risk – and that is why Germany opted to close its nukes. Unfortunately, the greens get climate wrong – but that is because they were misled by Hansen and Co into thinking it a global threat to mankind.
It seems that the good doctor was more on the horns of a MORAL dilemma than a Technical one. Here is to hoping that he instructs his science teachers about the scientific process rather than further indoctrinate about global warming / climate change.
For sure, respect is the key to credibility. It’s an issue of dignity.
May-bee they are sensitive to CO2 content in the air, a content that is rising like the false temperature-curve.
Dr. Ainely,
Perhaps a talk about how hype and alarmism are ill-suited to the advancement of science?
Santa Baby says:
July 4, 2014 at 1:38 am
_____________________
That’s a fascinating read. Thanks for the link.
speaking of “blinded by beliefs”, how’s this from a Bishop in the Anglican Church in Australia!
4 July: Guardian: Melissa Davey: Anglican church synod urges Coalition to respect science on climate change
Bishop Tom Wilmot says the government has worked to ‘denigrate science in general and environmental science in particular’
The Anglican Church general synod has unanimously passed a motion urging the federal government to respect the science on climate change.
Speaking at the gathering of Anglican diocese representatives in Adelaide, Bishop Tom Wilmot, of Perth, said the dismantling of the Climate Commission proved the Abbott government was not interested in the truth about climate science….
The motion states “with deep regret that it is future generations and other forms of life who will bear the real cost of our heavy dependence on carbon-based energy”…
But it appears the passing of the motion has done little to sway the environment minister, Greg Hunt.
A spokesman told Guardian Australia: “We do fully accept the science. The problem with the carbon tax is that it has an adverse impact on families, whilst failing to significantly reduce emissions.
“We therefore hope the Anglican church will agree that the Coalition’s approach of taking pressure off electricity prices and actually achieving a significant reduction in emissions is a far better policy.”
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/04/anglican-church-synod-urges-coalition-to-respect-science-on-climate-change
how to debate the Bishop?
29 April: Australian: Bjorn Lomborg: Renewables pave path to poverty
THE Australian government recently released an issues paper for the review of the renewable energy target. What everyone engaged in this debate should recognise is that policies such as the carbon tax and the RET have contributed to household electricity costs rising 110 per cent in the past five years, hitting the poor the hardest.
A Salvation Army report from last year found 58 per cent of low-income households were unable to pay their electricity bills on time. Lynne Chester of the University of Sydney estimated last year that 20 per cent of households are now energy poor: “Parents are going without food, families are sitting around the kitchen table using one light, putting extra clothes on and sleeping in one room to keep warm, and this is Australia 2013.”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/renewables-pave-path-to-poverty/story-fni1hfs5-1226898730123?nk=b87523c7b34d534d032de8d98da81d2c
and that,in a nutshell ,is how the process should work.
At 1:01 AM on 4 July, Flydlbee proposed:
I endorse the strength of this conjecture and suggest that we get up a grant proposal to fund the research. All we have to do is tie the phenomenon in some way to “global climate change,” possibly by averring that with a warming environment, naturalists are less inclined to stay sheltered from the weather, and therefore more likely to be out-of-doors pestering the critters.
He hasn’t changed it yet, plus “As countries continue to rely on fossil fuels, the Earth will most certainly continue to warm. Places like Antarctica will change the fastest, as more and more sea ice disappears. For a while Adélie and Emperor penguins find new locations to make colonies.. But, as they relocate farther and farther south they will eventually run out of room. By the time this happens sea level will also have risen and eliminated even more of their habitat. New York, London, Amsterdam, Calcutta and many other human cities will be under water, too.”
Penguinscience.com, twinned with Globalwarmingbandwagon.com.
Where exactly is the science at PenguinScience.com?
At 3:24 AM on 4 July, Peter Taylor had criticized Alexander Feht with:
Happily, that’s not relevant. In the early years of the post-World War II “atomic age,” the general thought was that the thorium fuel cycle would be used for nuclear power generation in preference to the rarer uranium fuel.
Among the reasons why the uranium fuel cycle had been preferred in government-regulated “civilian” electricity generation has been the fact that capital investment in uranium enrichment for the creation of fuel elements can be readily turned (and in the Soviet Union designedly was turned) to the creation of “bomb-grade” fissile materials.
The nuclear power industry became a strategic component in governments’ war-waging capabilities. This is the great reason why the current Iranian pursuit of “nuclear power” by way of the uranium fuel cycle scares the living hell out of the Israelis and all the Arab polities west of the Persian Gulf. Were the mullahcracy in Tehran working on thorium-fueled reactor technology, nobody would be upset at all because the thorium fuel cycle can’t produce stuff that goes boom.
And fissile thorium is far more abundant than uranium. Heck, it’s the reason why coal ash is so commonly radioactive.
Alexander Feht says:
July 4, 2014 at 12:27 am
/////////////
I agree with the thrust of your comment that it would be wise for the West to concentrate on gaining energy security, and that that security will not be achieved by the pursuit of renewables. It will only be achieved by concentrating on extracting its own fossil fuel reserves, and to exploit these for all that they are worth, and/or to expand the nuclear programme.
The fact that the US has beeen exploiting its shale reserves can be seen in the recent change to middle east policy. The US is no longer so beholden to the middle east for energy, and that is why it did not take the lead in Libya and why it can enjoy being reluctant to interven in Syria or Iraq. etc.
However, you should be sceptical of western MSM. It paints only one side of the picture. The West has for years been destabilising the middle east, and other countries. It itself was destabilising Ukraine, but failed to appreciate the Russia response. Now the West is licking its wounds on that front.
Only a few months ago, MSM and Western governments were crying out for intervention in Syria supporting the insurgents and arming them. The Russians were stating that many of the insurgence were Al Quaeda or groups affiliated to, and some cases even more extreme. It appears that the Russians were right, and that the insurgences in North East Syria that Western MSM were clamouring to support, are now seen to be ISIS. If we had acted as MSM was pressing we would have armed ISIS.
Russia was also weary about intervention in Libya. Much of what they said also now appears to have a ring of truth about it. Large areas of Libya appear lawless, there have been many examples of dessicration of WW war graves, and the example of the American Embassy.
I am not supporting Russia, merely cautioning that in all issues there are 2 sides to every story (and then there is the truth), and one gets a very distorted view of the world, if one is only guided by MSM (whether this be Western MSM, or Russian/Communist block controlled MSM). We are lucky that our press is free, but there are influencing forces which restrain it from acting in a free and objective manner. The reporting of Climate Change is illustrative. There are so many good stories for an investigative journalist to get their teeth into, so just ask yourself why you do not see these stories in MSM.
Regretfully, Governments of any ilk, simply cannot be trusted, they lie to their citizens every day, such that they should be better regarded as snake oil salesmen..