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| Also if you don't care about these guys there is something very wrong with you. Via National Wildlife Federation. |
This one is the fault of the folks at LGM and specifically Erik Loomis, who was mocking a somewhat confused conservative a couple of days ago:
Because of new findings deemphasizing the connection between cholesterol and eggs, all science is really politically motivated liberals undermining our freedom and therefore we should log all old-growth forests and send the spotted owl into extinction. Or something.So I went and looked at the stupid thing and left a comment and one thing led to another. You don't have to read it, except if you've been wondering how the old spotted owls are doing and want to follow up the links. I'm depositing it here (with all the Disqus formatting removed because I don't think I can make it work right) for the record
Yastreblyansky (1 upvote): What are your sources on the Northern Spotted Owl population? The only estimate I can find for California is 1200 nesting pairs (several 2014 sources such as herehttp://naturalresourcesmgmt.ne... ), and all sources agree the population continues to be in decline. A petition went out in December to relist it as threatened or endangered. FWS seems to think NSO are not harmed by logging burned areas, and others disagree, but no source says they thrive more on private land, what does that even mean?
blowingoffgodot (4 upvotes): He doesn't have a source. He's just lying to serve his agenda. Ironic, I know.
Yastreblyansky: Why am I not more surprised ;-)
DCM7: Even if the specific example of the Northern Spotted Owl were inaccurate here, the article's general point holds true.
Yastreblyansky: it's not "inaccurate", it's completely fraudulent.
The other thing about the eggs is also totally distorted: decline in egg consumption hasn't affected small farmers as much as the development of huge factory farms has been putting them out of business.http://www.humanesociety.org/n... The decline has also completely reversed since around 1998 and egg consumption in US is at the highest point in years. http://www.unitedegg.org/Gener... The health food movement effect on the egg market has been great for small farmers producing organic and free-range eggs.
The "general point" of the article seems to be that climate science must be wrong because eating eggs isn't harmful? (A) Scientists never said you should stop eating eggs, only that you should eat them in moderation (especially if it involves bacon and or butter with their high levels of saturated fat) and that's still true. The people who panicked and stopped eating eggs forever were idiots. (B) What kind of logic is that? You're condemning all science on the basis of almost nothing. If science is totally unsettled how come your computer and your car and your cholesterol medication all work?
Bob Ellis (Moderator):Talk about fraudulent, that is precisely what the whole anthropogenic global warming hysteria movement is. Even before we knew about the "fudged" computer models and all the deliberate and direct attempts to deceive people, the holes in this nutty hypothesis make swiss cheese look rock solid.
And as for owls, owls will make their home where ever they can. They've been spotted making nests in K-Mart signs, for pete's sake. Animals are very adaptable. And ultimately, will the planet plunge into a black hole if there are no more spotted owls? It's nice to preserve various species, but not at the expense of humanity. The ESA is yet another example of a reasonable goal taken to vastly extreme and insane lengths.
The point the author is making is that, like all the hype and hysteria surrounding eggs a number of years ago proved to be so much BS, so the same is true of anthropogenic global warming hysteria.
"Scientists" make a mockery of science when they go off the rails based on a sliver of subjective data, and especially so when they do so in pursuit of the Marxist agenda behind the AGP hoax.
Yastreblyansky (1 upvote): Links to your other blog? If every "fact" in this post is false and you can't answer my questions about where you got the data, why should I bother to look at what you put there?
Bob Ellis: Of course you shouldn't look at any information that contradicts your fantasies. You won't look anything up for yourself (unless it harmonizes with your fantasy), and even when it's spoon-fed to you, you won't accept it either.
I learned a long, long time ago in dealing with Leftists that all a reasonable person can do is put the information out there. Reasonable people will consider it, dig deeper and inform themselves. Unreasonable people will reject any amount of facts, logic and reason. You can lead a horse to water, but it's up to the horse whether he's going to drink or not.
Yastreblyansky (1 upvote): And yet you still haven't answered the simple question I started off with, where did you get your information on California spotted owls? Or any other specific issue I've raised.
I look at things that contradict my beliefs all the time, that's how I got here. I check out information for myself constantly, as you can see from my comments here, or from a post on my own blog analyzing the "unsettled science" nonsense as presented by Charles Krauthammer, from a year ago. You haven't given me any facts, logic, or reason yet.
Bob Ellis: I am not the author of the article. But I'd bet you could look it up...if you wanted to. But you don't want to. You don't want to learn anything. You want to cling to your Marxist agenda, and that is much easier if you remain deliberately ignorant.
Sadly, you're a typical liberal, unwilling to recognize any amount of facts, logic or reason, thus unworthy of wasting any more time on. A horse, dying of thirst on the shore of a vast fresh-water lake.
Yastreblyansky: Sorry. As editor you should make some effort to determine whether the claims made by authors are true or not. In any case it's Rick Manning's obligation to document his claims, not mine. I worked pretty hard to find it, without success. That's how I found all the information discussed (and linked) above suggesting it must be false. Certainly not borne out by the numbers cited in Manning's 2013 article, which links to a report of owl sightings ON WELL-MANAGED PRIVATE FORESTS OBEYING FEDERAL REGULATION of 1,700 individual birds OVER A 23-YEAR PERIOD. Which is not even slightly related to the claims made in this article.
Bob Ellis: Unlike the Left, Mr. Manning has a great record of accuracy. When you find proof that his statements are false, let me know.
Meanwhile, I'm curious if you believe there will be some great cataclysm if the spotted owls were to die out. After all, scientists state that vast numbers of species have gone extinct in the past...and here we are, thriving.
Yastreblyansky: I've given you my evidence above. In more detail, Manning says that there are 3,000 nesting pairs of spotted owls on private lands alone, but the only recent published estimate (from December 2014), after several pages of dense argumentation, concludes that in all of California and Mexico:
As of the Service’s 2006 finding, a total of 2,306 California spotted owl territories had been documented, 1,865 (81 percent) of which were in the Sierras (Service 2006). Because, as discussed above, approximately 53–77 percent of potential territories are actually occupied at any point in time, an approximate population estimate for the subspecies is 1,222 to 1,776 pairs or resident individuals as of several years ago. However, populations have declined further since then (generally 10–15 percent), as discussed above and below. Therefore, the current population is likely to be 10–15 percent lower than the 1,222 to 1,776 pairs or resident individuals noted above.
One of these estimates is wrong. I can't "prove" Manning is wrong, since I cannot find out what reasoning he uses or where he gets his numbers from--though I'm a pretty good Googler. I have to conclude he's making it up.
No, I don't think the extinction of the spotted owls will cause a cataclysm. They are, however, an indicator species, whose state is a measure of the health of the ecology as a whole, so that when they're gone it will be a sign Northern California is in pretty bad shape.
I'm personally much more worried about general global warming. Vast numbers of species have indeed gone extinct in the past, but they cluster together in enormous mass extinction events, and the human-caused mass extinction event now underway is the worst one in 65 million years, since the one that killed the dinosaurs, 64-odd million years before humans existed, and this one has a better than even chance of killing us, or our grandchildren.
DCM7 (with reference to the comment above beginning "It's not 'inaccurate'...): Your post is such a labored exercise in point-missing, complete with easily categorized fallacies, that it's downright amusing.
The article's examples are just that, examples. Whether or not they're even true examples of supposed "scientific consensus" being wrong, the fact remains that supposed "scientific consensus" often IS wrong. AGW is a prime example, and your blatant strawmen ("condemning ALL science" -- classic!) don't even come close to challenging those to who recognize that fact.
Yastreblyansky: Oh please. Manning says the egg and owl examples are examples of why the global warming hypothesis may be wrong:
it would be wise for policy makers to remember the previously-fought wars on eggs and timber and the mistaken science that led to destructive decisions before proceeding with actions that will have catastrophic impacts on the American economySince they have no relation to the specific science of climate change, he must be using them as a warning about science in general, that's why I mentioned "all science". Then again if the egg and owl cases are wrong themselves, there isn't any argument at all. It's just you asserting without evidence that "supposed scientific consensus often is wrong" so maybe this one case is an example. Maybe it is but neither Manning nor you give me any reason to think so.
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In the end, Bob really wanted the last word:
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