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”
I had a comment on the recent thread on the launch of the CO2 satellite in response to Moshe’s contempt for many sceptics’ concerns that data might be bent to fit the expectations. My point was that after climategate, finding of a plethora of zombie weather stations pumping out warming, using one tree to make at thousand year record of no warming until post 1950, when the trees themselves didn’t match the thermo record since 1960, using proxy’s upside down and the need for McIntyre to smote horribly incompetent and fraudulent published pal-reviewed papers, etc. etc., that a surplus of scepticism is to be expected and can do no harm.
Science can’t be corrected without scepticism but scepticism can be brought back to reality by solid, replicable science and scientific defense of theory if it gets too far out like it did when the 100 scientists against Einstein were straightened out. Running around trying to patch up a failed hypothesis is a magnet for skepticism. Dr. Steele’s articles have challenged the shoddiness of ecologists reporting on unscientific evidence of alarming extinctions. And Willis’s paper on extinctions – basically where are the bodies? And the drowning polar bears fiasco…
Yes considered skeptical voices do make a difference. No! More than that! Skeptical voices make real science. Impoverishment and destruction of civilization would be the price of silent skeptical voices in the inbred, somewhat-science of climatology. Since the main players will not let go of failed hypotheses for over a quarter century, but rather will be patching it up as long as they can decently (in their reckoning) get away with it. The self-correcting mechanism under these conditions doesn’t work. I think skeptics will have to broaden their activity to taking up this science as practitioners if there is going to be a solution to this metastasized disease.
When there is no disposal income, there is no income to spend on items outside of daily survival needs. Countries with starving people, little income, high unemployment etc focus their resources on the people and its survival.
The design of our structure is such that people must be working for government to have its disposable income. We have reached and surpassed our tipping point.
I cringe week to week buying groceries.
I wince at the job rejections.
I detest the 1st of the month and the arrival of the new and higher utility bill.
I have grown to connect my suffering directly to the lies supporting their continued misappropriations and destruction. Yes, it is personal.
Run any google bing search of emperor penguins and articles chortling glee in their demise abound.
I think this is what is known as a “logical disconnect” (or, in some parts of climate science “proof”). We have one current post at WUWT reporting a real and consistent increase in Antarctic ice over the last 30 years, and especially over the last few:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/02/another-antarctic-sea-ice-record-set-but-excuses-abound/#more-112348
And another from a local (Australian) science digest (original in Nature Climate Change) reporting that Emperor Penguins will be threatened due to disappearing Antarctic ice:
http://lifescientist.com.au/content/life-sciences/article/the-fall-of-emperor-penguins-1166352108?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=als_1407_1&utm_content=als_1407_1+CID_f9ddfbb6b66b0a851e69ac87499d96a4&utm_source=Campaign%20Monitor&utm_term=The%20fall%20of%20emperor%20penguins
The header and key paragraph implication couldn’t be clearer – the birds are under threat now and ice is disappearing now: “The fall of emperor penguins Disappearing sea ice could result in a significant decline in the Antarctic population of emperor penguins (Aptenodytes forsteri) by the end of the 21st century”.
However, the ACTUAL science reported is predictive quicksand. The receding ice is MODELLED, not based on current data. IF the model is correct, the penguins are MODELLED to decline….but only after 2040, before which they are modelled to INCREASE!
“The findings are based on projected changes in Antarctic sea-ice concentration under climate change…” and “A detailed analysis of the effects of climate change on this colony, which has been studied for five decades, projected a pronounced decline by the end of this century.
The researchers found that although year-to-year colony population growth rates are mostly positive until 2040, all colonies will begin to experience negative growth by 2080.”
Clearly, there is no current evidence of a threat, and there is no current evidence of Antarctic ice decline. It’s models all the way down, as others have noted with other studies.
Re: electricity can’t be used for everything. Correct but it can satisfy your IMMEDIATE needs for heat, light even transportation. Thats when leveraging pipeline products is most effective.Putin can’t hold a gun to your head when you don,t need his product right now. We can make plastic out of oil later.
>Tucci78 says:
>July 4, 2014 at 5:36 am
You recite the myth that we use uranium reactors because of their ability to produce plutonium for nuclear bombs. This is generally not true. The plutonium generated from nuclear power reactors contains relatively large amounts of Pu-240, which make it unsuitable for bombs without doing is isotope seapration to remove the Pu-240. This is amore difficult separation that separation U-235 from U-238 (whichis pretty difficult itself) and as far as I know, no on does this separation.
Pu-239 for bombs is produced in specially designed reactors using a very different operating protocol froma power reactor. The while thing is designed to prevent ti creation of Pu-240 in the first place.
Now, the Pu from power reactors, while it can’t make bombs, can be mixed back into the nuclar fuel cycle and burned as fuel in power reactors.
As for thorium, the reason we started with uranium reactors is that you cam make a uranium reactor by making a pile of slightly enriched uranium, as was done for the first reactor under the stadium in Chicago. You can make a reactor by piling up a bunch of thorium metal because thorium is not fissile. It needs an external neutron source to start the reaction. In practical terms, any thorium reactor needs a small uranium reactor to supply the neutrons to get it started and keep it operating.
As for bombs, the thorium fuel cycle produced U-233, which is easy to separate chemically and which produced a fine bomb.
Now, none of this means that thorium isn’t a workable fuel cycle, it is. I suspect it will be a decade or two before the liquid fluoride molten salt reactors is work out (molten fluoride salts a really nasty stuff to deal with) but the problem will be solved when the money prople want them solved. But the advantages of the throium cycle are nowhee near as large and the exponents paint them to be.
Alexander Feht says:
July 4, 2014 at 12:27 am
… and Putin kills thousands of people and…
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Really? When did that happen?
I realize that this is OT, but that baseless accusation cannot be allowed to pass unchallenged. The writer’s view must be a result of swallowing the US State Dept’s relentless slandering of Russia re. the Ukraine situation or else is a deliberate slander in itself. Russia is playing no part in the bloodshed of today’s Ukraine, whereas the US is deeply involved. Indeed, it’s absurd that the US is heavily involved in the Ukraine coup d’etat but warns Russia that it has no business in the situation. Consider this scenario: http://rt.com/op-edge/160168-imagine-russia-us-double-standards/
The Anglican Church in Canada has become very environmentalist, with a neo-Marxist view of economics.
(It is struggling in western Canada, due declining membership and the financial aftermath of recent recognition of the “residential schools” tyranny.)
[The “residential schools” were boarding schools in BC, where many children from tribes were sent. Some by their parents who could see value in the education they offered, some probably forced by authorities. While there probably were many good operations, some were abusive. I suppose on top of that was the dislike many children have for structure, and the separation from their families.]
{Of course travelling to get to school was common in the hinterlands. I was in a dormitory for the first two years of high school, and university. In the 1940s some children boarded with families near the school in the Tomslake/Swan Lake/Tupper Creek area at the BC/AB border (many people trying to farm many miles out of town – I had it easy, only a three mile walk.)
Something is wrong with your email summary reports. They comprise an attached .bin file that is who knows watt. Regards: Ian Macmillan
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