Wanted: A Few Flat-Earth Scientists To Support Alaskan Oil Drilling
The state Legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon — researchers just have to fill in the science part.
A $2 million program funded with little debate by the Legislature last month calls for using state money to fund an “academic based” conference that highlights contrarian scientific research on global warming. Legislators hope to undermine the public perception of a widespread consensus among polar bear researchers that warming global temperatures and melting Arctic ice threaten the polar bears’ survival.
Republican legislative leaders say a federal decision to declare the polar bears “threatened” by climate change would have troubling effects on Arctic oil development and the state’s economic future.
Last week a federal judge ordered the Bush administration to release its already-tardy decision under the Endangered Species Act by May 15. By law, such a decision must be based strictly on science, not on possible economic consequences.
Legislative leaders said they are frustrated that researchers skeptical of the doomsday scenario get marginalized as crackpots or industry shills by the media and scientific agencies.
“We want to have the money to hire scientists to answer the Interior (Department) scientists,” House Speaker John Harris, R-Valdez, said last week.
The $2 million is also to be used for a national public relations campaign to promote the findings of the conference.
Critics say it’s a waste of state money because all the hard scientific research points in the other direction.
“This truly is the conference to nowhere,” said University of Alaska researcher Rick Steiner, who has pressed the Palin administration unsuccessfully for five months to release any scientific backup for its position opposing the federal polar bear listing.
The time for debate is over, especially when the opposition is using “junk science,” said Melanie Duchin with Greenpeace in Alaska. “This is clearly the same sort of ‘question, deny and delay’ tactic used by Exxon Mobil and the Bush administration to confuse the public over the severity of global warming and stall any meaningful action to deal with the problem.”
POLAR BEAR QUESTION ‘TRICKY’
Nothing is scheduled yet. The $2 million expenditure must still get past the veto pen of Gov. Sarah Palin, who has until May 26 to approve items in the capital budget.
Such a conference would seem to be in line with the state’s official comments, which argued that government scientists went too far using climate models to predict the polar bears’ demise. But Harris and others say they are not confident Palin will go along with their plan.
Palin’s office had no comment last week, saying review of the budget is continuing.
The $2 million was sought jointly by Harris and Senate President Lyda Green, R-Wasilla. It would go to the Legislative Council, a panel of elected leaders who can administer programs between legislative sessions.
The federal government has been considering the evidence for listing the polar bear for several years, initiating a formal proceeding in December 2006. Studies generated by the federal government concluded the summer sea ice is disappearing and predicted polar bears in Alaska could be gone by 2050.
Even if an endangered-species decision is made in the coming weeks, such a conference will be useful because the issue isn’t going away, Harris said.
The polar bear question is a tricky one for the state.
Both the Palin administration and the Legislature have made efforts lately to show they take climate change seriously. They are putting money into protecting threatened coastal villages and have issued reports outlining other threats to the state’s infrastructure. Studies are being made of Alaska’s energy consumption and carbon “footprint.”
But when it comes to polar bears, skepticism about warming trends is the order of the day.
A “threatened” listing could have real consequences for Alaska, depending on the management plan drawn up to protect the bears. Foremost on legislators’ minds was the potential for new obstacles to oil development.
Opponents of the listing say it could also affect gas-emitting developments around the country, since those emissions are credited with heating the atmosphere. The Bush administration recently referred to such a use of the Endangered Species Act as a “regulatory train wreck.”
FLAT EARTH SOCIETY?
Environmental groups say they do indeed hope to use the law as a greenhouse-gas tool, especially given the lack of effort from the Bush administration to support new emission-control efforts.
The state-funded conference will focus on science, according to a budget justification introduced with the original request. “Research shall be non-biased to specific groups’ opinion and shall present scientifically fact based outcomes,” the statement said.
But the point is not to seek some non-biased measure of scientific truth. The point, said Harris, is to provide a forum for scientists whose views back Alaska’s interests.
“You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers,” Harris said.
Such a conference and public relations effort would push the state deeper into a national debate over the science of global warming — one in which most scientific opinion is on the other side. Indeed, many climate scientists contend there is no longer serious disagreement on the main points. Environmentalists accuse opponents of trying to create the illusion of a debate to slow new regulatory action.
Alaska officials may feel boosted, however, by the decision last week of a Canadian scientific panel to recommend the polar bear remain a “special concern species” — rather than elevate it to the more drastic designations of threatened or endangered. The committee chose not to consider climate change effects in its population projections, though it expressed “considerable concern” about the bears’ future. U.S. law does not provide for the lesser “special concern” option.
Even so, a high-profile conference of climate skeptics held recently in New York by a privately funded free-market group called the Heartland Institute demonstrated the difficult task in front of the state.
The March conference received little press coverage. Outside of ideologically conservative news outlets, the scant coverage was also fairly acid, noting the small number of real scientists and their paid positions with industry-funded groups. Stories prominently quoted critics who likened participants to the Flat Earth Society.
‘STUNNINGLY HYPOCRITICAL’
The state’s own polar bear science is already being assailed.
Steiner, the University of Alaska professor, has been trying since December to find out if the state’s own marine mammal experts supported the state’s endangered-species stance, which Palin said publicly was based on sound science. On Friday, Steiner released a long chain of e-mail correspondence, saying the state first promised to send internal documents and then refused. The state Department of Law is now reviewing the internal memos from scientists to see if they can be released under the state’s open records laws.
“It is stunningly hypocritical that the state will spend $2 million to convene a scientific conference on this issue, but they will not release their own scientific analysis,” Steiner said.
Deputy Fish and Game Commissioner Ken Taylor said Friday he erred when he first promised the documents to Steiner, not realizing they were subject to legal review.
One legislator who opposed the polar bear appropriation dismissed it as a “$2 million sound bite” ginned up by legislators for the campaign year. Rep. Les Gara, D-Anchorage, predicted the money would have no impact on the larger polar bear policy debate.
Gara raised the issue nevertheless on the House floor in April, saying it was ironic that the state would resist polar bear protections to hasten offshore oil leasing in federal waters of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. He said the state does not currently share in federal offshore-oil revenues like other coastal states, and said it made more sense to slow down the process until Congress can assure a royalty share for the state.
© 2008 The Anchorage Daily News
Wildlife is just in the way of money and control. Oil is destroying the planet through war, pollution and Globe warming. Wow how much of this insane madness would slow or stop if they just sold us a few solar panels and an electric car or AIR car.
Every barrel of oil that gets extracted from a peaceful region of the earth represents the theft of over $500 from the military industrial complex.
Hollow point, I’ve read a bit about these air cars… Tell us more, lest folks think you’re speaking of something from the Jetsons…
With no political party looking seriously to the future for alternative sources of energy, (I don’t consider corn byproduct as serious) it seems that they want to wait until the oil is either completly used up or costs more than people can afford before they begin a serious alternative search.
“Managment by Crisis” is a form of incompetence. It appears that for the past several decades no political party has changed this form of managment.
“You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers,” Harris said.
I’ve wondered how lawyers can do a good job of defending someone who is guilty and evil, and still sleep at night. I figure they’re just doing their job.
Science is like religion, or a kitchen knife. It’s meant to be a good thing, but has no mechanism to prevent it from being perverted by some evil gang of SOBs.
So the only reason Rep. Gara wants to “slow down” the process is because Alsaka “does not currently share in federal offshore-oil revenues like other coastal states”, yet every resident in Alaska receives a yearly “oil revenue” check! Talk about being hypocritcal and greedy. Every American should receive an oil stipend check. The Oil in Alaska is just as much ours, as theirs!
“….a high-profile conference of climate skeptics held recently in New York by a privately funded free-market group called the Heartland Institute…” Heartland is funded by EXXON. They are blanketing Canada with phony information suggesting there is still a debate about global warming . For those of you who weren’t listening, the top climate scientist are in agreement; their report (which won a Nobel Prize) stated clearly global warming is ‘unequivocal’ and that they were 90% certain it was caused by human activity, namely fossil fuel burning. Anyone who says otherwise is a lying shill and should be summarily shat upon. I mean, what do you say about someone who pretends their is no fire in a burning theatre and urges everyone to stay in their seats?
The US EPA wants to hire scientists to promote the Bushco version of environmentalism.
This from the same administration that has muzzled pro Climate Change scientific debate within the EPA.
… this way to the Emperor’s New Clothes Closet…
Big money:
Been reading about them for a while now. It is being tested in Europe and working fine. www.theaircar.com Got the web site off another posting a while back.
Maplefudge:
wait and see if Harper gets in with a majority and the CBC is gone. Then it is US style news that is no news at all
“You know as well as I do that scientists are like lawyers,” [the right wing] Harris said.
If any of you have any doubts that US conservative promote a return to pre-renaissance/dark age thinking - where reality itself is whatever the king thinks it should be, the above quote should dispel them.
I can see the headline now - “Better diet solves obesity among Polar Bears.” Seriously, they will focus on the increased spotting of polar bears in populated areas as the bears move south in search of food. Then there will be a focus and the increased hardiness of the grolar bear (the half blood offspring of polar bears and grizzlies) - and how this represents an evolutionary breakthrough.
Surprised that you have heard about the ducks yet! I guess that the ducks are also not unlimited …
(earlier stories to the right)
Oil-soaked ducks may be returned to wild
“Because we have coots and mallards, there’s a very good chance they can recover. Different species have different levels of hardiness, these two species are fairly hardy birds, so we feel they have a very good prognosis.” …
About 500 birds died after landing on a toxic wastewater pond near Fort McMurray, Alta. last week.
Noise-making cannons are usually in place to deter flocks of migratory birds from landing on the toxic ponds, but Syncrude officials have said that due to a heavy winter snowstorm last month, company employees couldn’t properly deploy them.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080505/ducks_wild_080505/20080505?hub=SciTech
Harper promises to investigate dead ducks in northern Alberta
Incident raising concerns for people who live in Alberta’s northeast
The federal government will investigate the deaths of about 500 ducks at a northern Alberta oilsands plant, Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged Thursday.
The birds landed on a pond at a Syncrude oilsands plant north of Fort McMurray. Only five birds were rescued; one has since died, and wildlife rehabilitation workers say it is too early to tell whether the rest will survive.
Harper, who was in Edmonton for the opening of a new heart treatment centre, said he was concerned about what had happened. …
People in the region trust that the oil companies are following the rules and not polluting the environment, she said, but her confidence has been shaken by the news that Syncrude did not report the duck incident. …
First Nations people in Fort Chipewyan have worried for years about the impact of the upstream oilsands development on the health of their wildlife and water supply. …
The dead ducks are not the only environmental issue emergency officials were dealing with Thursday.
Late Wednesday they were notified of a pipeline rupture that spewed more than a hundred barrels of oil into the Otauwau River near Smith, Alta., about 200 kilometres north of Edmonton.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/05/01/ducks-thursfollo.html
I love science. Show me a study that says coffee is good, and someone else will show one that says coffee is bad.
Common sense says polar bears like ice. So less ice is bad for polar bears.
Wow!
I didnt even need a test tube to figure that out.
Think of the research grant money I just saved.
ANWAR is not some vast oil reserve waiting to be tapped. The people who will make the most money out of ANWAR are the companies that make a profit from the exploratory process of drilling for oil (can you say “Halliburton”?). It’s really just another grab by the worst of the worst administrations bent on profiteering for their friends and allies.
And still it melts.
Halliburton only had 10% of the well logging business. Schlumbger had the other 90%. It was not until Iraq and all those lucrative no big contracts awarded to them by the former Halliburton exec Cheney and his friends that their stock took off.
It’s good to hear someone is working with the air car again. Back in the mid 1970s I knew a guy who’d developed one. Named it the Eagle Air Car, and hired me to paint a flying eagle on both sides. He had it on display, with reps from Japan and other countries coming to see it. The trunk was filled with big batteries that he said was what made the car go.
Have no idea what became of it, although he believed someone was out to do him in. He’d had several close calls, both on the road, and walking along a sidewalk.
Before we know it the scientific community will be populated in the same way the legal community has been - to reflect the wishes of a small portion of the country.
Another article on the ‘air car’:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/7000/
What’s the big worry? The Intelligent Designer surely included some sort of Fail Safe measure that will make everything turn out okay… eventually…
The pundit deniers are still full strength. Hannity ridicules Gore. Deroy Murdock claims the world is actually getting colder, and Cal Thomas calls climatologists and people concerned about warming something like “secular fundamentalists that would make a jihadist proud”. He claims NASA has reversed itself on the blah, blah blah 7 of 10 hottest years thing, and I guess that allegedly makes James Hansen incompetent or a con man. There is some old guy from Princeton they trot out once in a while, too.
Maybe they can use that goofy Bjorn Lomborg. He’s all over the place. And those Canadian statisticians who tried to discredit the “Hockey Stick Graph”.
They don’t realize we aren’t debating Iraq, or capital punishment or abortion or evolution… Those are important issues but they don’t stop the world. There is no room for “spin”. Most of the deniers will die of old age, smug in their beliefs, while our grandchildren will some day be going through hell.
How well I remember when Nixon was promoting the Drilling
for oil in Alaska, he was our saviour..Where is the Alaska oil going? Try Japan…
F-ck the bears, and the whales, and anything else in the way for oil. EVEN IRAC, Thats why were there. The republicans are un f-cking real.
If the scene was 1400’s Europe, refuters of the proposal that it is possible to circumnavigate the planet would be in vogue.
If the scene was 1600’s Italy, the Papacy would be looking for astronomers to refute Galileo.
If the scene was 1860’s England (and the Bible Belt now), various rich conservatives would be looking for scientists to refute evolution.
The forces of reaction generally hate science because a side effect of it is social progress.
In Alaska, there is merely a greedy state legislature.
Should we be surprised that the party that maintains that the universe is 6000 years old, was created in its present form in 6 days, that dinosaurs and humans coexisted and that God scooped out the Grand Canyon with his finger would disrespect scientists and try to find a handful of unprincipled ones to rent their voices for a contrarian view?
Save a polar bear.
Shoot a business exec.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9frmZcFUgdA
“Some evil gang of SOB’s” wants 2 million dollars in an attempt to “pervert science.” It’s just like a knife, it’s just like religion, the polar bears are melting the ice themselves!
The pipeline has outlived it’s life cycle and is leaking constantly; let’s destroy the artic wildlife refuge to pump an insignificant amount of oil through the leaky pipes.
When it’s all gone we can release some bears from the zoo. We can make them and the caribou clean up our mess too.
What good is a healthy Earth we can leave to our great-grandchildren is they can’t get filthy rich stealing non-renewable resources and polluting?
The place where they want to drill for oil in Alaska borders the Yukon Territories and a wild life reserve.
The melting ice is seen as beneficial to oil companies because it makes drilling for oil in the arctic easier. But right now, you get most of your oil, not from the North, but Alberta.
Save the polar bear and the ducks.
Ms. Joyce Murray (Vancouver Quadra, Lib.): Mr. Speaker, Canadians were horrified by the gruesome deaths of 500 ducks at Syncrude tailings pond. This type of ecological disaster will only happen more often as Alberta’s oil sands develop beyond control.
The president of Syncrude describes the Prime Minister as a very good supporter of the oil sands.
Will the Prime Minister become a very good supporter of the planet and commit today to using his government’s authority under the Migratory Birds Convention Act to immediately prosecute this crime and any future incidents of this kind?
Hon. John Baird (Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we take this issue tremendously seriously. Officials from Environment Canada and the Canadian Wildlife Service were on the scene to provide support. An investigation is going forward to investigate any illegal offences which may have occurred.
Thanks to this government, we have brought in more financial resources to support environmental enforcement, something that was lacking.
While I am on my feet I could ask the member opposite a question. Does she not agree that it is unacceptable to dump raw sewage into the Pacific Ocean like she did when she was minister of the environment in British Columbia?
That was yesterday’s. This is Friday’s:
Mr. Dennis Bevington (Western Arctic, NDP): Mr. Speaker, last week, it was reinforced just what an environmental disaster the tar sands are. At least 500 ducks were killed when they landed in the toxic sludge of a Syncrude tailing pond.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister said that he would look into the killing of these ducks. More study was the answer people along the Athabasca-Mackenzie watershed heard from the Liberals. Action to deal with all the environmental damage caused by the tar sands is needed now.
When will the Conservative government take action to prevent more damage from the out of control development of the tar sands?
Hon. John Baird (Minister of the Environment, CPC): Mr. Speaker, we are tremendously concerned about the effect on wildlife and the incident that took place outside of Fort McMurray.
Environment Canada officials and enforcement officers, together with the representatives from the Canadian Wildlife Service, are on the scene and are conducting an investigation. If charges are to be laid they will lay them.
We will bring those responsible for environmental crimes to justice. That is why we got such a big increase in the budget for environmental enforcement, an increase, I would remind the member, that he voted against.
Mr. Dennis Bevington (Western Arctic, NDP): Mr. Speaker, we are not just talking about the death of 100 ducks, but the damage being done to the water, air and earth of northern Alberta, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories from this out of control development.
Thousands of people, many aboriginal, who call this part of Canada home are suffering because of the environmental damage of the tar sands. The welfare of aboriginal people and transboundary pollution are federal responsibilities.
The government’s plan has been to let the companies police themselves, a plan for disaster if I have ever heard of one.
When will the Conservatives shoulder their responsibility—
We white western capitalist humans now need to be spending most of our science money on figuring out why so many of us have life destructive brain wirings.
There’s obviously some kind of fatal sub-specie flaw in our soft-wired survival circuitry that goes beyond a vulnerability to be fooled by bad ideas. Native Americans, after all, never collectively embodied such mass-suicidal denial systems about the planet’s life support system, no matter how many fools spoke among them.
North American natives lived in harmony with their biosphere for 10,000 years before our deinstinctualized cultural sub-species came on the scene and in a mere 200 years caused Nature to turn against both us and them.
If our western sciences are now used to support our species survival by examining our sick culture’s crazily inflated individual egos, it will have finally done something useful.
The impartiality of the scientific community, like the public broadcast system, has already been severely weakened by dependence on grants and funds from industry. University research, which is thought to be more objective than work by industry R&D, relies on grants from biotech, medical, pharma, petroleum, aerospace etc. Universities put a lot of pressure on science departments to get and retain the grants. These grants pick and choose what will be investigated and what will not. They often have stipulations that give them control of what results will be released and what will be suppressed.
We need to revitalizethe NSF and NIH or something similar and protect their autonomy so we can have good research on environmental, energy and health matters. I know there are a lot of scientists out there who would welcome an opportunity to work for a place that is looking for true answers to human needs.
Unfortunately, environmental groups are going to regret using the polar as their “poster child” for global warming, because, firstly, there are vastly more catastrophic effects from global warming than polar bear extinction. And secondly, the polar bears may be sufficiently smart and adaptable creatures that the species will survive as some of the bears simply revert to typical bear foraging behavior that doesn’t require hunting and swimming from sea ice.
ANWR would bring us maybe 2% of our usage in 10 years for 20 years. So, 30 years out we would be back in the same fix. We can conserve through behavior and technology much more than that and do it more quickly. Cellulose biomass can bring us 20% of our fuel in 10 years and do it forever. Cellulose biomass will produce as long as the sun shines, not the 20-30 years of an oil field’s life span.
You are absolutely correct ~USAn~.
This two minute read says it all.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
BTW, if they’re looking for Flat Earth scientists, I’d
recommend our very own Common Dreams “Doctor Lizard”.
Wow, this polar bear is so lovely! But less ice is bad for polar bears.
off topic a bit but I just planted those 200 trees on my farm i ordered. Hope it helps