Brilliant news! It's reported by CBS News that in Juneau, Alaska, the wildlife biologist whose observation in 2004 of presumably drowned polar bears in the Arctic helped to galvanize the global warming movement has been placed on administrative leave and is being investigated for scientific misconduct, possibly over the veracity of that article.
Charles Monnett is an Anchorage-based scientist with the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement. Monnett was told on July 18th that he was being put on leave, pending results of an investigation into "integrity issues", but according to his “union rep” he hasn't been informed what the charges or questions related to the scientific integrity of his work are.
Fox News reports that “Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement. Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.
The federal agency where he works told him he was on leave pending the results of an investigation into "integrity issues." A watchdog group believes it has to do with the 2006 journal article about the bear”.
Investors.com put it rather less delicately: “The scientist who claimed that global warming threatens polar bears is under investigation. There's a hole in Earth's greenhouse. A cooler era lies ahead. That hiss is the hot air coming out of alarmists' balloon. The global warming fraud is coming apart faster than the alarmists can repackage and rebrand their fairy tale. Their elaborately constructed yarn can't hold together much longer. There are just too many loose ends.”
Nicely put, we thought.
At Peer.org there's a transcript of an interview between Monnett and Special Agent Eric May of the Department of Interior, Office 6 of the Inspector General. Here are some of the juicy bits ...
ERIC MAY: ... I'm a little confused of how many dead or drowned polar bears you did observe, because in the manuscript, you indicate three, and in the poster presentation –
CHARLES MONNETT: No.
ERIC MAY: – you mentioned four.
CHARLES MONNETT: No, now you're confusing the, um, the estimator with the, uh, the sightings. There were four drowned bears seen.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: Three of which were on transects.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: And so for the purpose of that little ratio estimator, we only looked at what we were seeing on transects, because that's a – you know, we couldn't be very rigorous, but the least we could do is look at the random transects. And so we based, uh, our extrapolation to only bears on transects, because we're saying that the transects, the, the swaths we flew, represented I think it was 11 percent of the entire habitat that, you know, that could have had dead polar bears in it.
ERIC MAY: Um-hm.
CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, so by limiting it to the transect bears, then, you know, we could do that ratio estimator and say three is to, um, uh, “x” as, uh, 11 is to 100. I mean, it's that kind of thing. You, you've, you're nodding like you understand.
LYNN GIBSON: Yeah.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, that's pretty simple, isn't confusing. I mean, it's –
ERIC MAY: So, so, so you observed four dead polar bears during MMS –
CHARLES MONNETT: One of which was not on transect.
ERIC MAY: Okay, so that's what –
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. ...
ERIC MAY: So I highlighted under here, and we've got the four, and that's what –
CHARLES MONNETT: Oh, here you go. Yeah. Well, I'm pretty confident that it was four. I mean, that's, um – uh, look, look what is in the paper. I mean, it should have the – probably the same information that, you know –
ERIC MAY: Well, it –
CHARLES MONNETT: There's a table in there, but does it – it has the dead ones in it, doesn't it?
ERIC MAY: Well, and I think you, you explain, so this is the portion where you're talking about the 25 percent survival rate.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: And you're talking about four swimming bears and three drowned or dead polar bears.
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. Yeah, but that's because those are on transects.
ERIC MAY: On part of this 11 percent?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, it says that right in here and, 11 and –
ERIC MAY: Right, right, but that's what you're talking about ...
CHARLES MONNETT: The paragraph in the left-hand column. Um, God, I've got people here who are second-guessing my calculations. Um, well, um, we flew transects. That was our basic methodology. They were partially randomized. And we, uh, we looked at a, a map. I think we probably used GIS to do it, and we said that our survey area, if you bound it, is so big.
ERIC MAY: Um-hm.
CHARLES MONNETT: And then we made some assumptions about our swath width, and I think we assumed we could see a, a bear out to a kilometre with any reliability, which means you're looking down like that. And, uh, sometimes you might see more; sometimes you wouldn't. Sometimes you can't see a whale out that far, so it depends on the water conditions. And so we just said that, um, if you add up, we had 34 north/south transects provide 11 percent coverage of the 630 kilometre-wide study area, and that was just to get our ratio of coverage. And then the area we really were concerned about was just the area where the bears were, so we could ignore the area at that point and just go with a ratio, because we assume that's the same, because these things are pretty, uh, they're pretty standardised. They were designed to be standardised, so in each bloc – have you seen the blocs? Have you seen our design? It's in here.
ERIC MAY: I took – yeah, in, in your study.
CHARLES MONNETT: It's right at the beginning here. Um, every map in here has got it on it. Um, there, those are our blocs. And so, uh, this one would have four pairs. This one would have probably three pairs. I don't know, there will be later maps. Um, and there, you can see the flights. Uh, well, yeah, they're in here. Um, so we're flying these transects, and we're assuming we can see a certain percentage or a certain, certain distance. Therefore, we can total up the length and the width and come up with an area. And so we calculated that our coverage was 11 percent, plus or minus a little bit.
ERIC MAY: Okay. And I believe you rounded up, too. It was 10.8 and you rounded up to 11?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. Well, that's nothing. Um, yeah, 10.8. And then we said, um, four dead – four swimming polar bears were encountered on these transects, in addition to three.
ERIC MAY: Three dead polar bears?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, three dead.
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: But the four swimming were a week earlier.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: And, um, then we said if they accurately reflect 11 percent of the bears present so, in other words, they're just distributed randomly, so we looked at 11 percent of the area.
ERIC MAY: In that transect?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah.
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: In, in our, in our area there, um –
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: – and, therefore, we should have seen 11 percent of the bears. Then you just invert that, and you come up with, um, nine times as many. So that's where you get the 27, nine times three.
ERIC MAY: Where does the nine come from?
CHARLES MONNETT: Uh, well 11 percent is one-ninth of 100 percent. Nine times 11 is 99 percent. Is that, is that clear? ...
LYNN GIBSON: I think what he's saying is since there's four swimming and three dead, that makes –
ERIC MAY: And three dead.
CHARLES MONNETT: Well, you don't count them all together. That doesn't have anything to do. You can't – that doesn't even –
LYNN GIBSON: So you're not saying that the seven represent 11 percent of the population.
CHARLES MONNETT: They're different events.
ERIC MAY: Well, that's what you try – we're trying to –
LYNN GIBSON: You're talking about they're separate?
CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah, they're different events.
ERIC MAY: Right, so explain to us how –
CHARLES MONNETT: On one day – well, let me draw. I, I, I don't have confidence that you're understanding me here, so let me ... it makes me feel more professorial if I write it on the blackboard ... I mean, look right here. So here's our coastline right here, this red thing.
ERIC MAY: Okay, yep.
CHARLES MONNETT: And here's our, um, our study area. We go out to whatever it was. I don't remember, 70, 71 degrees or something like that. And, um, around each of these things, we survey a tenth of the distance between, basically.
ERIC MAY: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: And so if you draw these lines here, and this is – you're just going to have to pretend like I did this for all of them. And you calculate the area in here.
LYNN GIBSON: Um-hm.
CHARLES MONNETT: And you total them all, and then you calculate the whole area. This – the area inside here was 11 percent.
LYNN GIBSON: Okay.
CHARLES MONNETT: Okay? Now what we said is that we saw three, three bears in 11 percent.
ERIC MAY: Three dead bears?
CHARLES MONNETT: Three dead, yeah, dead –
ERIC MAY: Right.
CHARLES MONNETT: – in the 11 percent of the habitat. And so you could set up a, um, a ratio here, three is to “x” 25 equals 11 over 100, right? And so you end up with – you can cross-multiply. You know algebra?
ERIC MAY: Um-hm, yeah.
CHARLES MONNETT: You can cross-multiply. Okay, so you end up with 300 equals 11x, and I am sure that that's – equals 27, okay?
ERIC MAY: Right, right, got that.
CHARLES MONNETT: And if you stick four in here instead, you end up with –
ERIC MAY: Thirty-six.
CHARLES MONNETT: – whatever that number was, yeah, 36. Now, um, those numbers aren't related, except we made the further assumption, which is implicit to the analysis. Seems obvious to me. We went out there one week, and we saw four swimming on the transect, which we estimated could have been as many as 36.
LYNN GIBSON: Correct.
CHARLES MONNETT: If we correct for the area. And we went out there later, a week to two weeks later, and then we saw the dead ones, the three dead ones in the same area, which could have been 27. And then we said let's make the further assumption that – and this, this isn't in the paper, but it's implicit to this argument –
ERIC MAY: Um-hm.
CHARLES MONNETT: – that right after we saw these bears swimming, this storm came in and caught them offshore, all right? And so if, um, if you assume that the, the, the 36 all were exposed to the storm, and then we went back and we saw potentially 27 of them, that gives you your 25 percent survival rate. Now that's, um, statistically, um, irrelevant. I mean, it, it's not statistical. It's just an argument. It's for, it's for the sake of discussion. See, right here, “Discussion.”
ERIC MAY: Um-hm.
CHARLES MONNETT: That's what you do in discussions is you throw things out, um, for people to think about. And so what we said is, look, uh, we saw four. We saw a whole bunch swimming, but if you want to compare them, then let's do this little ratio estimator and correct for the percentage of the area surveyed. And just doing that, then there might have been as many as 27 bears out there that were dead. There might have been as many as 36, plus or minus. There could have been 50. I don't know. But the way we were posing it was that it's serious, because it's not just four. It's probably a lot more. And then we said that with the further assumption, you know, that the bears were exposed or, you know, the ones we're measuring later that are carcasses out there, it looks like a lot of them, you know, didn't survive, so – but it's, it's discussion, guys. I mean, it's not in the results ...
ERIC MAY: So combining the three dead polar bears and the four alive bears is a mistake?
CHARLES MONNETT: No, it's not a mistake. It's just not a, a, a real, uh, rigorous analysis ...
OK, stop, stop! Our sides are hurting from the laughter, we can't read any more. This is the “scientific method” that our politicians rely on to ruin our lives and convince us that we're destroying the planet?
In another choice little news item, the Daily Telegraph recently reported that our weather men have just realised that they've been wrong all these years about major storms. Their basic understanding of how low pressure systems behave has been flawed for more than 90 years. But of course they're right about global warming ...
You can read the Telegraph article here.
Yahoo news last week reported that “NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth's atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted. A new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.
Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA's Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA's Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.
"The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show," Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. "There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans."
In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted. The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.
Scientists on all sides of the global warming debate are in general agreement about how much heat is being directly trapped by human emissions of carbon dioxide (the answer is "not much"). However, the single most important issue in the global warming debate is whether carbon dioxide emissions will indirectly trap far more heat by causing large increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds. Alarmist computer models assume human carbon dioxide emissions indirectly cause substantial increases in atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds (each of which are very effective at trapping heat), but real-world data have long shown that carbon dioxide emissions are not causing as much atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds as the alarmist computer models have predicted.
The new NASA Terra satellite data are consistent with long-term NOAA and NASA data indicating atmospheric humidity and cirrus clouds are not increasing in the manner predicted by alarmist computer models. The Terra satellite data also support data collected by NASA's ERBS satellite showing far more longwave radiation (and thus, heat) escaped into space between 1985 and 1999 than alarmist computer models had predicted. Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.
In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth's atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth's atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.
When objective NASA satellite data, reported in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, show a "huge discrepancy" between alarmist climate models and real-world facts, climate scientists, the media and our elected officials would be wise to take notice. Whether or not they do so will tell us a great deal about how honest the purveyors of global warming alarmism truly are.”
Hmm ... “how honest” ...? I think we all know the answer to that. But why, exactly, do these scientists and campaigners do it? What is it that makes them think it's OK to manipulate the facts to whip up hysteria as they have been doing for the last twenty years? Here are quotes from some of them that may provide a clue ...
“We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest” — Professor Stephen Schneider, Stanford Professor of Climatology, lead author of many IPCC reports
“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy” — Timothy Wirth, President of the UN Foundation
“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony, climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world” — Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment
“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models” — Professor Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research
“The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful” — Dr.David Frame, climate modeller, Oxford University
“I believe it is appropriate to have an ‘over-representation’ of the facts on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience” — Al Gore, climate change activist and profiteer
“It doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what people believe is true” — Paul Watson, co-founder of Greenpeace
“The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe” — Emeritus Professor Daniel Botkin
“We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis” — David Rockefeller, Club of Rome executive member
“The concept of national sovereignty has been immutable, indeed a sacred principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation” — UN Commission on Global Governance report
“In my view, after fifty years of service in the United Nations system, I perceive the utmost urgency and absolute necessity for proper Earth government. There is no shadow of a doubt that the present political and economic systems are no longer appropriate and will lead to the end of life evolution on this planet. We must therefore absolutely and urgently look for new ways” — Dr.Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
“Nations are in effect ceding portions of their sovereignty to the international community and beginning to create a new system of international environmental governance as a means of solving otherwise unmanageable crises” — Lester Brown, WorldWatch Institute
“Regionalism must precede globalism. We foresee a seamless system of governance from local communities, individual states, regional unions and up through to the United Nations itself” — UN Commission on Global Governance
“We require a central organizing principle — one agreed to voluntarily. Minor shifts in policy, moderate improvement in laws and regulations, rhetoric offered in lieu of genuine change — these are all forms of appeasement, designed to satisfy the public’s desire to believe that sacrifice, struggle and a wrenching transformation of society will not be necessary” — Al Gore
“Adopting a central organizing principle means embarking on an all-out effort to use every policy and program, every law and institution to halt the destruction of the environment” — Al Gore
“Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced; a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level” — UN Agenda 21
“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society, which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope” — David Brower, founder of Friends of the Earth
“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have an ecologically sound society under socialism. I don’t think it is possible under capitalism” — Judi Bari, principal organiser of Earth First!
“Isn't the only hope for the earth that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” — Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme
“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation” — Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies
“The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can’t let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are” — Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund
“Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control” — Professor Maurice King
“The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet” — Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation
“Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun” — Professor Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
“The big threat to the planet is people: there are too many, doing too well economically and burning too much oil” — Sir James Lovelock, BBC interview
“My three main goals would be to reduce human population to about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure and see wilderness, with its full complement of species, returning throughout the world” — Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!
“The fate of mankind, as well as of religion, depends upon the emergence of a new faith in the future. Armed with such a faith, we might find it possible to re-sanctify the earth” — Al Gore
“It is the responsibility of each human being today to choose between the force of darkness and the force of light. We must therefore transform our attitudes, and adopt a renewed respect for the superior laws of Divine Nature” — Maurice Strong, first Secretary General of UNEP
“Little by little a planetary prayer book is thus being composed by an increasingly united humanity seeking its oneness. Once again, but this time on a universal scale, humankind is seeking no less than its reunion with ‘divine,’ its transcendence into higher forms of life. Hindus call our earth Brahma, or God, for they rightly see no difference between our earth and the divine. This ancient simple truth is slowly dawning again upon humanity, as we are about to enter our cosmic age and become what we were always meant to be: the planet of god” — Robert Muller, UN Assistant Secretary General
Well, there you have it. Some are power-hungry. Some want to destroy modern society and replace it with a sort of noble-savage sylvan utopia. Some are communists. Some are just plain dishonest and self-seeking. Others are just plain dotty. But I think we knew that, didn't we?
These quotes were taken from a very long and rather confusing article sent to us by Peter Darley a few weeks back. It's not suitable to be reproduced here, but if anyone wants to read it – and we do recommend it to those that have the patience – we've posted it here. Go on, we dare you.
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