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”
The reality is that all species have endured in the past much more significant climate change than we are seeing today, and have survived to tell the tale.
Indeed, climate change is one of the drivers of evolution. There is no reason to believe (and I deliberately use that word) that Penguins, or Polar Bears or others of their ilk, will not survive a warming world. Heck during the Holocene Optimum, the Arctic was probably largely ice free, and the Polar Bears survived that; they are still here today.
Nature is far more resilient than we give it credit.,
richard verney says:
July 4, 2014 at 6:02 am
There is no reason to believe (and I deliberately use that word) that Penguins, or Polar Bears or others of their ilk, will not survive a warming world.
Yes, but can they survive a world that has had no statistically significant temperature change in over 17 years?
/grin
Been gnashing my teeth, when thinking about what to say, about the emperor penguin story.
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why not stick to the facts? your assumptions about global warming misled you into conclusions that were not supported by the evidence.
why not make that the meat of your presentation? that assumptions blind us to reality.
why not make that the meat of your presentation? that assumptions blind us to reality.
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re-examine your paper and eliminate every assumption. what you have left is science. the part you removed is a fairy tale.
“Sorry to see that I should have deleted that EMPE stuff from our website back when you and I were discussing it and you were convincing me that stuff wasn’t adding up”
What exactly do you get paid for, by the way?
tell the unvarnished scientific truth. The penguins are doing just great, “climate change” isn’t bothering them at all
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there is a much more important story. it is the story of how the conclusions about the emperor penguin went wrong. what was the mechanism that led an expert in the field to get things so wrong. this is the important point – and of course whether the good Dr talks to the issue as a lesson for other scientists. because this is indeed the lesson to be learned. not how the penguins are doing – but rather how an expert could have gotten it so wrong.
Peter Taylor It might interest you to compare the statistics of deaths caused by nuclear power plants in the United States compared to those in the fosil fuel production of energy. The Japanese disaster was caused by poor planning in designing sea wall construction.
maybe Willis and Leif should read this about respectful debate.
There is no reason to believe (and I deliberately use that word) that Penguins, or Polar Bears or others of their ilk, will not survive a warming world.
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every major extinction event has been followed by an explosion of new species, rather than a regrowth of the previously existing species. this suggests that life is always waiting in the wings for opportunity, and that change is engine that drives opportunity.
for you to get an opportunity in life, that implies that something has changed. prior to the change you didn’t have an opportunity. maybe the person in line ahead of you died or move to a new job, or the gal you’ve had your eye on just left her husband. Thus, opportunity is itself represented by change. if this holds for you, why not for other life forms? change is opportunity, and without opportunity how does life evolve and prosper?
richard verney says:
July 4, 2014 at 5:51 am
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..
That’s a harsh insult to hard-working snake oil salesmen
maybe Willis and Leif should read this about respectful debate.
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more like compare/contrast Dr. Ainely’s response to Michael Mann’s.
Want a good topic for science teachers? I would talk about type 1 and 2 error in research. Which is ubiquitous in the published literature. Most of it is because raw data turned out to be incorrect (references to TSI and SSN data here). Some of it is because of human bias (too many to list regarding climate studies). Both types of errors cause prim rose path journeys and a few of these error-filled tomes cause damage to human life (have we not learned anything since autism was first thought to be caused by cold mothering?).
I am a teacher and I get the impression from science teachers that their field is all about facts. So when I ask them about type 1 and 2 errors, I get a blank stare. These teachers seem convinced that their field is immune to such things. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I actually like this response. Very human, and honest about shortcomings. Just because scientists tend to to be very exact about details in the field they are focused on doesn’t mean they remember where they put their car keys, or don’t resemble air-headed artists in other ways.
Also it seems friendly. I cannot imagine Michael Mann responding is this way to any criticism of any sort, and even among his peers you sense people are a little gun-shy and reluctant to approach him. Dr. Ainely seems far more approachable.
It will be interesting to see if he merely deletes the information about Emperor Penguins, or revises it.
A more charitable interpretation of Dr. Ainely’s response: he doesn’t have time to write it up properly, so he’s skipping it in the immediate future. The test of sincerity would be whether he does correct the record when time is available.
ferdberple (at 7:09 am) said: “…there is a much more important story. it is the story of how the conclusions about the emperor penguin went wrong. what was the mechanism that led an expert in the field to get things so wrong. this is the important point – and of course whether the good Dr talks to the issue as a lesson for other scientists. because this is indeed the lesson to be learned. not how the penguins are doing – but rather how an expert could have gotten it so wrong.”
You are quite right. Dr. Ainely’s talk to the National Science Teachers annual meeting is the perfect opportunity to show how approaching problems from an emotional rather than a strictly logical sense can lead to grossly invalid conclusions. Confirmation bias is an easy ‘sin’ for any of us to fall into… and an extremely hard one to recognize in one’s self.
“The test of sincerity would be whether he does correct the record when time is available”
No, the test of sincerity will be if her owns up to being wrong, and why, at the conference. Failure to do so would condemn more children to a wrong concept. He is trash imo if he does not care enough about our kids to own up.
JohnWho says:
July 4, 2014 at 6:20 am
Yes, but can they survive a world that has had no statistically significant temperature change in over 17 years?
They may… Weren’t it for the continuous ridiculous claims by warmists that keep us busy debunking them, we could have died from climate boredom 😀
I’ve always had this feeling that people who count penguins or polar bears, or age-date moss etc are considered experts only by the virtue of the fact that they are the only ones doing it and not because they are adding real scientific knowledge – with a few great exceptions like Dian Fossey.
Richard Verney says:
7/4/2014 5:51 am
“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..”
Indeed. Democracies, in theory anyway, are supposed to serve the people which I would think should not include brainwashing. Unfortunately, as I have been saying for some time now, democracies are just as capable of pulling off brainwashing campaigns of propaganda as are totalitarian police states and dictatorships like North Korea with Kim Jong Un, his father and grandfather. In their efforts to make the campaign successful, democracies can garner the support and cooperation of science, academia and the MSM by making it financially profitable to participate and with political agendas that the MSM leadership (that has lost respect for objective, unbiased journalism) can sympathize with. We are obviously seeing this today with the campaign of climate alarmism. In such a situation, an unregulated, uncontrolled Internet can serve as the propagandist’s worst enemy.
Those in democratic govts that are responsible for such campaigns may feel as though they have some moral and ethical right to these propaganda efforts when they see the ends as justifying the means. What they fail to understand however is that there is a right way and a wrong way to do many things…if not everything. Will climate alarmist campaigns, along with CO2 taxes, cap-and trade schemes, and other such things provide us with the advanced energy-generating technology that with enable us to put a foot in a post-fossil fuels era someday? Somehow, I doubt it. I know that nuclear science can. A careful study of human history shows us that it is technological improvements and advances (among other things) that usher in new eras. We didn’t usher in the space age and put a man on the Moon in this country with a propaganda campaign. We did it by developing a technology called the rocket engine.
I continue to wait patiently for the day when this CAGW alarmist campaign will be fully exposed as the fraud that it is. Only then will the American people fully understand how much even democracies can subvert and distort the truth in a very perverse way to control our minds.
This response is no better than the scruffy and errant school kid saying ‘the dog ate my homework’.
Pitiful excuse after pitiful excuse, and no apology whatsoever.
Dr. Ainely’s response is rare indeed. He’s not defending the fort no matter what. Good show Dr. you have my greatest respect.
We are watching. 😉 Save your teeth, don’t make assumptions and just say what you see. No need to spice it up my friend. See Antarctic’s sea ice extent and you will realise it ain’t the lack of sea ice. Investigate whether there is TOO MUCH sea ice. Now that would be a departure.
Maybe in future you should send any new claims to Steele for ‘review’. Watcha say?
Dr. Ainely, might I respectfully suggest that you update your website NOT by deleting the Emperor penguin stuff, but by correcting it, and headlining this good news for all people who study and otherwise love biodiversity and who may otherwise have been unnecessarily alarmed by previous predictions of climate change. You could add a dire caution to your readers, warning that speculations of both biological responses to, and the overall effect of climate change, are very difficult, uncertain things, NEVER to be confused with scientific fact? And you might add science works by exactly this type of skepticism, correction, and the replication of previously published work in order to build upon it. If you’re really brave, you could save the original article, properly framed, and link to it in the new article that exposes the exact nature of what has been learned from this episode?
Peter Taylor says:
July 4, 2014 at 3:24 am
“Alexander Feht….you would go for nuclear to replace oil?”
Peter check how many people have been killed by nuclear energy accidents. You will be surprised that in 60yrs or so of nuclear energy, they don’t number even a hundred. Sixty-eight have been killed since 1957, 56 of which were killed at Chernobyl – a terribly cheaply designed Soviet era plant with no safety features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_and_radiation_accidents_and_incidents#Nuclear_power_plant_accidents
Of course, the UN and green parrots will say that untold thousands die from indirect effects particularly because of the embarrassingly low reported deaths. As a comparison, `4,000 die a year in China’s coal mines.
Note that only 3 died in the US in one accident and this was at testing facility, and 1 only in France (the world’s only country-wide national electrification with nuclear) in an accident melting nuclear waste in a furnace. This is more than have been killed by solar installations in California.
Stop reading the lefty agenda B.S. You are reading stuff here, the number one scientific, skeptical blog in the world. You should at least have learned to be questioning of the fluff turned out on nuclear. Also, it will ultimately be the source of the world’s energy. Don’t be a member of the man-was-never-meant-to-fly crowd. Their descendants are flying rather well, don’t you think?
Perhaps Dr Ainely can inform the the usual propaganda suspect, such as the BBC,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-28089988?ocid=socialflow_twitter
and the Guardian,
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jun/29/emperor-penguins-at-risk-of-extinction-scientists-warn
On second thoughts why bother, they will only keep re-hashing it as more “peer reviewed evidence” of climate doom.
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If I remember Anthony’s story correctly, it was the “skeptical voice” of his mentor that made the difference for him. (Maybe I have that wrong.)
But I’m sure his personal “climate change” wasn’t an overnight 180° change.
Give people that are willing to listen the time to connect the dots.
Those who aren’t willing? As Captain America said, “Hulk, smash!”