The onset of the Obama administration was supposed to mean a lot of things, including an end to the Bush-era war on science, especially when it came to climate change and endangered species. No agency needed these changes more than the Department of the Interior, which among other things was responsible for the faulty oversight that led to the BP oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico last year.
Unfortunately, an ugly episode involving drowned polar bears, a distinguished scientist and the misguided drive to drill for oil in the Arctic has turned that hope on its head.
Dr. Charles Monnett is a respected Interior Department scientist with a particular expertise in marine mammals. The roots of his current troubles go back to 2004, when he and another scientist spotted drowned polar bears in Alaska's Beaufort Sea. Those observations were published -- after being thoroughly reviewed by his scientific peers -- in 2006 in the publication Polar Biology.
Monnett's observations received considerable media attention when they were presented because it was the first (but not the last) recorded instance of polar bears drowning as the sea ice retreated, a phenomenon that's intricately connected with global climate change. His paper was ultimately just one of hundreds of studies reviewed by the Fish and Wildlife Service when it listed the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act due to global warming.
Late last year, the government protected 187,000 square miles of "critical habitat" for the polar bear. That designation didn't sit well with the oil industry and the state of Alaska, both of which are pushing hard to drill for oil in the same Arctic habitat that the polar bear relies upon.
Just a few months later, on Feb. 23, 2011, criminal investigators came calling to Dr. Monnett. These two investigators, neither with scientific training, grilled him about "potential scientific misconduct" relating to those drowned polar bears and his 2006 paper. (The transcript of the interview is a fascinating and disturbing read as it shows the heavy-handed and decidedly unscientific nature of the inquisition.) His computer and notes were seized and, on July 18, he was put on administrative leave by his employer, the federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE), the Interior Department agency in charge of approving oil development in Alaska. BOEMRE was created last year from the ashes of its predecessor, the Minerals Management Service, in the wake of the Gulf disaster.
In July, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility filed a complaint against the agency for violating its scientific integrity policy. Investigators required Dr. Monnett to attend a second interview on Aug. 9, again questioning him about the polar bear paper and an agency contract for polar bear research.
Since Dr. Monnett published his paper, bears have continued to starve, drown, and even resort to cannibalism as the Arctic sea ice melt has accelerated, and many more papers documenting these impacts have been published. Some, like Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, have jumped on the investigation to attack protection for the polar bear and the science of global warming. But even were there some credible complaint regarding Dr. Monnett's paper, which there is not, that paper is but one drop in the tsunami of evidence showing that unchecked global warming will drive polar bears to extinction.
So what is going on here? At the end of his February interview, according to the transcript, Dr. Monnett told the investigators exactly what he thinks this is about:
My management have been trying to kill this study for a while, ever since really the polar bear thing came out... they don't want any impediment to... what they view as their mission which is to...put those areas into [oil] production... They basically blew everybody out of here that showed any, uh, desire to be a conscientious scientist.
The investigators, uninterested in that line of inquiry, abruptly ended the interview.
The episode is unnerving and infuriating on several fronts, including that the government would marshal its criminal investigation unit to mount an absurd challenge to scientific findings that had already cleared all of the time-tested hurdles of scientific publishing.
Further still, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and BOEMRE director Michael Bromwich seem intent on ignoring Dr. Monnett's allegations that his agency higher-ups wanted to stifle his scientific findings in the interest of ramping up Arctic drilling, even at the expense of the imperiled polar bear (and, indeed, an oil spill in Alaska's Polar Bear Seas would be disastrous and impossible to clean up).
Life is all about timing and so, apparently is political meddling: On Aug. 4, while Dr. Monnett remained locked out of his office, the Interior Department approved Shell Oil's plans to drill in the heart of polar bear habitat in Alaska's Beaufort Sea.
John Stanley and David Loy: Why the Buddha Touched the Earth
AlaskaDispatch.com: Climate Change: Dead Polar Bears and Political Storms
Kieran Suckling: Latest ESA Success: The Return of a Once-rare Snake
Senator Inhofe Has Questions About Polar Bear Researcher Charles Monnett
Scientist suspension is about project's management
Report on Dead Polar Bears Gets a Biologist Suspended
University of Alberta distances itself from polar bear researcher
Icy Questions for an Arctic Scientist
Environmentalists demand answers about polar bear biologist's suspension
BOEMRE: Director says offshore oil agency not on 'witch hunt'
Vote for the CPC progressive caucus folks in the primaries and the Dems in the general.
Notice that conservatives say the love "america" but they hate the USA, the Republic, they love money.
Hemp BIO-ENERGY
Hemp 6X more BTUS than Corn
Hemp uses less water no herbicides and little pesticides and fertilizer.
Subbituminous coal is common in the US. It has an energy content of about 18 million Btu per ton, and is used mostly in coal-fired power plants
Coal generates about half of the electricity used in the United States. ... Each person in the United States uses 3.8 tons of coal each year.
Some 965 million tons of coal were consumed for the generation of electricity. This amounted to 86% of total U.S. coal production
U.S. soybeans 76.6 million acres
U.S. corn 90 million acres
Half of the acres 83.3 million acres
Hemp yields an average of nine dry tons per acre
(more in southern areas)
749 million tons hemp fiber
Bio-diesel Hempoline can be made from leaves and stalks.
You would also have the hemp seeds as a food source too.
U.S. annual anhydrous ammonia 22.90 million tons used.
U.S. ROUND-UP use100 million pounds
Contaminated with 1,4 dioxane
HERO-INSECTIDE SYNGENTA INSECTICIDE Soybeans and corn
http://aircrap.org/category/chemtrail-evidence/
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http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/ncnu02/v5-284.html
http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php
http://www.safeaccessnow.org/article.php?id=748
It seems especially telling that while this "investigation" (read intimidation) is taking place under Obama to benefit big-oil & denigrate science & wildlife biologists, no one responsible for the "economic downturn" crime has been named, or prosecuted, by Obama’s “Justice” Dept. Obama. Instead of changing the direction of Wall St/investment banker excesses, fraud & de-regulation, Obama appointed the same Robert Rubin protégés responsible for de-regulation (rescinding the Glass-Steagall Act under Clinton, who used the same Rubinite crowd) who profited from, or were directly involved in the bailouts and decision-making that made some people very, very rich while screwing millions of Americans through their irresponsible, greed-driven gambling with America’s future.
Read Matt Taibbi’s excellent piece, “Obama’s Big Sellout”.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/12/13-8
The U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center researchers Anthony Pagano, Kristin Simac, George Durner and Geoff confirm the theory of bears swimming longer and longer due to less floating ice. This is not news. They've been studying the problem for several years now and confirm that polar bears are indeed having problems. I suppose it will soon be their turn to be accused of wrong doing.
They put collars on 68 bears over a 6 year period and found that 11 bears that swam that had cubs when the collars were deployed 5 cubs were lost during the study period, a 45% mortalilty rate. Among cubs not compleled to swim long distance, the mortality rate was 18%.
The biologist studying the bears found that when cubs are forced to go on marathon swims with their moms due to loss of sea ice, nearly halp of them don't survice to become yearlings.
This sure sounds political and stinks of big oil influence and interference.
This investigation smells of the right wing. The Tea Party has a stated goal to investigate climate scientists. Major funders Have fossil fuel interests, the Koch brothers.
One investigation for 'civil fraud' commenced as soon as the current Attorney General of Virginia, a Tea Party favorite, took office. He's investigating Dr. Mann, who published the first "hockey stick" curve in 1999, for his work at UVa in the early 2000's. Prominent in the AG's legal filings is the "Wegman report", statistical work that has been debunked. Dr. Wegman is at George Mason University, which has substantial funding from the Koch brothers. GM is investigating Wegman, interminably.
The IGs questioning Monnett and his co-author Dr. Gleason, cite findings of error by "statisticians". Who were these accusers? What was their complaint? Why didn't they submit their critique to the journal who published Monnett & Gleason's paper published in 2006?
I'm guessing this is an ambush by the Tea Party and its associates. It smells like the whiffs from the people behind the Mann investigation.
The unanswered questions are: Who suggested this investigation? Who provided the 'scientific' criticism of the paper? Who did the 'statistics'?
Is it a coincidence that the first two scientists investigated had published papers dramatized in Al Gore's movie?
Not to state the obvious, but wouldn't it be a lot smarter to starve that Big Energy beast instead of handing it billions more of our hard-earned dollars and millions of acres of our beautiful, healthy land so it can dominate us even more in a renewable era, right when we are ideally situated for energy independence? Shouldn't we be a lot more focused on getting panels on roofs than on getting Chevron (Solar) yet another check and pretending that mulching 3000 endangered tortoises is a GREAT plan?
Killing the desert will speed up the deaths of the polar bears because industrial power emits huge amounts of GHGs in a lifecycle analysis, and diverts money from faster, cheaper, cleaner solutions in the built environment that would SAVE polar bears AND tortoises. Unforgiveable.
Monnett was on the plane and saw the bears. The plane circled to observe the dead bears. It is not at all uncommon to give papers to friends, family, and colleagues to review before officially submitting them. Monnett's wife was only one of about a dozen reviewers... including management at MMS and anonymous reviewers chosen by the journal which published the report.
Killing ecosystems and their biological diversity for whatever the reasons insures a far less life giving world and danger in the long run, whether it is for oil fields raping virgin ecosystems, the extinctions of polar bears and desert tortoises or dead solar panel fields. All ecosystems and their biological diversity, altogether, create the very life zone of the Earth or the biosphere; this is science, not politicians and an election campaign or the money changers or grasping at straws.
If there's any 'fraud' going on, it's being committed by people like Joe Bastardi, Rush Limbaugh and James Inhofe, who feed folks like you misleading or even blatantly false information.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm.
The office designated the department of interior as at "high risk" of fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement in a report (PDF) to Congress in February 2011.
"Interior does not have reasonable assurance that it is collecting its share of billions of dollars of revenue from oil and gas produced on federal lands and it continues to experience problems in hiring, training, and retaining sufficient staff to provide oversight and management of oil and gas operations on federal lands and waters," the GAO wrote.
The report went on to say that the interior department had consistently failed to monitor production of oil and gas production, which made it impossible for the government to collect a full share of the royalties it was owed.
It is unclear how many billions the government failed to collect, it added. However, it noted in a 2008 report from the Government Accountability Office which estimated the losses in the four years from 1996-2000 to be as high as $53bn.
The report also noted that the government had collected less than it was owed from 93 of 104 oil and gas operators."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/08/02-10
I find it hard to believe that only the American polar bears are lousy swimmers.
That study has been extraordinarily successful, producing invaluable data that will be used by polar bear managers for many years to come. The Canadian provided approximately $800,000 toward the cost of the $2,000,000 study. The study provided a chance to track bears beyond political boundaries and in so doing found a dramatic expansion of polar bear's home ranges as they cope with diminished sea ice.
You don't have to worry, American bears are the only lousy swimmers. These joint U.S.-Canadian efforts have proved valuable. This entire episode appears to be more about the 187,000 square miles protected than scientific integrity, or the results described in a very short paper several years ago.
But challenges to bear populations are best documented, if I recall correctly, for the western Hudson Bay population, which is Canadian. They've seen declining reproductive success and body weight. And it's worth noting that this is the most Southerly population of polar bears, and also that the sea ice in Hudson Bay has been strongly declining.
Too bad.
http://www2.ucar.edu/news/5124/arctic-ice-melt-could-pause-near-future-then-resume-again
That doesn't affect the longer term, though--and it's just one statistical interpretation.
Another recent study proposed that the rate of decline projected by most models is up to 4 times too low because those models haven't incorporated the effect of mechanical degradation of the ice--floes cracking and shattering--as the ice thickness continues to decline.
I'm no expert, but as a layman, that latter study sure sounds like what you see happening if you follow sites like Cryosphere Today (which provide visualizations of the ice satellite data.)