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ANIMALS FORCED INLAND
Alaskan sea otters are starving! Why? Because there’s too much ice:
An unbudging sheath of sea ice has blocked off the waters where the Alaska Peninsula’s sea otters forage, forcing the starving animals inland on a search for food and making them easy prey for wolves and humans.
Some otters have waddled or slid on their bellies for several miles onto the tundra near Port Heiden, where they have been attacked by dogs, killed for their pelts or have died of malnourishment ...
Similar freeze-outs have been documented since the early 1970s.
Poor little guys; if only that ice could be melted somehow.
This little fellow is much cuter than any grown polar bear. Jack up those CO2 emissions and melt that damned ice - do it for the sea otters!
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 04 11 at 11:45 AM • permalinkI wonder if the 1970’s freeze-overs were used as proof of the impending manmade Ice Age?
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 11 at 11:45 AM • permalinkGlobal Warming theory predicted this. It predicts everything.
Posted by tim maguire on 2007 04 11 at 11:49 AM • permalinkHow’s this for irony. A friend of mine has had an otter bumpersticker on each of the last few cars he owns. The latest is a Prius.
I’d hate to break it to him. Could someone else do it for me?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 04 11 at 12:00 PM • permalinkI love otters, too. Let’s crank up the warmening and get that frickin’ ice melted!
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 04 11 at 12:05 PM • permalinkErnie, it’s surprisingly easy.
The Peninsula of Alaska Corporation for Otter Preservation have developed a brand new initiative. They have created helmets for otters remarkably similar to those worn by miners, but instead of a torch, it has a squeak-activated hair dryer. All the otters need to do is squeak, and all their problems will just melt away.
Obviously Blerp & ErnieG didn’t read the instructions that came with their hair dryers. Either that or they’ve come up with a diabolically clever plan to rid the planet of all those pesky otters thereby eliminating the need to melt the ice.
Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2007 04 11 at 01:50 PM • permalinkSuggestion. Scotch. Doesn’t have to be the good stuff, unless the otters complain of course.
Scotch will help melt the ice, the melting ice and water will dilute the scotch, worst that can happen, sea otters with a slight buzz.
Like who knows, the Polar Bear Union, just may demand scotch, in their next negotiations. I can just hear it now…Polars of both sexes saying…‘did you see who I had to bang, last time around…Man, thank God for the scotch’.
Dave, I have compiled a list of threatened animals.
Animal One
Animal Two
Animal Three
Animal Four
Animal Five
Animal Six
Animal SevenWhat did the mollusk say to the otter? “You crack me up.”
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 11 at 03:08 PM • permalink#4 andycanuck
Hmm - this is very true. To compete against the formidable cuteness powers of Knut that have been so diabolically unleashed on us by the goreball warmeningerers, we’re going to have to break out the piles of baby sea otters.
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 04 11 at 03:10 PM • permalinkThis reminds me of the novel I was supposed to read for my HSC, “Ring of Bright Water”.
I didn’t.
Come the day of my HSC, sure enough, the paper asked for an essay.
I made up my own story about a bunch of eskimos, cutting holes in the ice to fish.
Best. essay. ever. I was sure.
Was later horrified to discover the marker didn’t credit me for creative writing.Save the otters!
More global warming!J. M. Heinrichs,
I forgot several. Like these:
Condemned to Die
Too cute for Global Warming to not threaten
It’s too attached to humans. Kill it, or leave it for Global Warming to kill. You know, like Knut.
Only one of these will survive Global Warming
It’s going to drown! Global Warming must have done it!
All sad because his owner owns a 4WD and didn’t buy carbon credits. Condemned to death now.
Not all cute animals are furry or have feathers.(given the opportunity, my dogs would eat these nasty little disease vectors like popcorn)
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 04 11 at 03:39 PM • permalinkI’m guessing if someone had been in a position to do the documentation that similar freeze-outs could also be documented not just from the early 1970s but from the early 1870s and the early 1770s and so on. Do people not realize that Gaia is a harsh, harsh mistress? She’s been killing off animals in great numbers via winter weather for thousands of years. She might have her good side, but she can also be a bitch from hell. Never forget that.
Also, otters are quite dextrous. They should have no problem wielding a hair dryer and manipulating the controls.
So, basically, what I’ve learned from this thread is that if humans had bigger eyes we’d be victims of Global Warming rather than perpetrators. That’s some rigorous fuckin’ science right there. Note to Do-Gooders: if you can’t do the math, you don’t know the science. And nobody can do the math on climate change.
Some people wonder how a religion named “Scientology” can grow at a torrid pace. I think of the warmening crowd and go: “oh”.
Bob Heinlein’s probably still paying on losing that bet. Maybe he has to read Hubbard’s SciFi for the first half of eternity.
Slightly OT:
Phatty attacks ABC stablemate Duffy over AGWHope this dinosaur goes the way of Terry Lane ...
#17 ID
Tks for the link.Oz Geologists such as Plimer must be exasperated by the likes of Tim Flummery.
Got Plimer’s book A Short History of Planet Earth#19 Suggestion. Scotch. Doesn’t have to be the good stuff, unless the otters complain of course.
Scotch will help melt the ice, the melting ice and water will dilute the scotch, worst that can happen, sea otters with a slight buzz.
A better idea—let’s chip the ice and use it for our scotch, which does have to be good. We’ll save the salty ice for margaritas. I’m certain that PACO Enterprises has been working on the licensing rights.
Just a smidge O/T, the climate of fear.
FFS.#43
Dr Mohamad Abdalla was born in Libya from Palestinian parents and grew up in Jordan and Australia where he is now a citizen.The reverse discrimination test?
An Aussie emigrates to Turkey and then views the Turks’ anniversary of Gallipoli as culturally insensitive.
When in Rome, FFS.From Ian’s link at #17, that only 0.1% of CO2 is man-made.
That’s a bit less than the figures I’ve been reading (up to 5%), but hey, I’ll take it!
Whatever your number, the fraction is incredibly small. From another of my (completely ignored) links from that minimalist post:
Imagine 100 cases each contain 24 one-litre bottles (ie: 2,400 bottles in total) representing all the Earth’s gases.
One case only contains greenhouse gases (99% are nitrogen and oxygen).
One bottle only contains CO2 (the others mainly water vapour).
Somewhere between 1 and 50mls of that bottle is man-made CO2. Call it 30ml - one shot of CO2 in 2,400 litres of other stuff. Yep, sounds real dangerous, enough to trigger catastrophic, self-sustaining climate change; right on. Seriously potent, this CO2.
Also, otters are quite dextrous. They should have no problem wielding a hair dryer and manipulating the controls.
Yeah, but wouldn’t they just get electrocuted trying to use a hair dryer in the water?
Posted by Rob Crawford on 2007 04 11 at 07:39 PM • permalinkO/T
And shallow.
Can Tim run a “Babe of the ALP Conference 2007” contest?
Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 04 11 at 07:58 PM • permalinkOtters’ closest relatives are the badger and the wolvering. Or as one wag put it: God took the cutest face in the world and put it on the meanest animal he could find…
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 04 11 at 08:04 PM • permalink#56 He can and he should. Babe rights and indeed, righteous babes, have been in the shadows for too long in the ALP.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 11 at 08:06 PM • permalinkSort of O/T
A relevant quote from a few centuries ago
Thomas Carlyle (1795 - 1881)
I don’t pretend to understand the universe - it’s a great deal bigger than I am…people ought to be modester
There must have been people around then who were into Earth Control
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 04 11 at 08:23 PM • permalink#57 richard
Otters’ closest relatives are the badger and the wolvering. Or as one wag put it: God took the cutest face in the world and put it on the meanest animal he could find…
Posted by Spiny Norman on 2007 04 11 at 08:30 PM • permalink#34 Ash_
The sentimental fools at my bank would call it “Whiskers” after their mascot. Me, I’d rather call it “vile little Lyme-disease-carrying, house-invading beast.”
Actually, the little buggers have an appreciation for Gaia-raping vehicles, or so I’ve come to believe after seeing numerous mouse nests built in air cleaners, glove compartments, car seats, and, most memorably, on top of a truck fan (this last was only discovered after said truck was started up after sitting for several months, and bits of fluff, leaves, and mousies flew everywhere).
Posted by Blue State Sil on 2007 04 11 at 08:48 PM • permalinkIf the Crisis Coalition Team are right then those poor little otters can be expecting about 20 metres of relief in one decade.
” The Greenland, Alaskan and West Antarctic ice sheets together hold about 25% of the fresh water on the planet. The effects of the collapse of either ice sheet would be huge. Once you lost one of these ice sheets, there’s no putting it back for thousands of years, if ever.
If they disintegrate, sea level could rise nearly 20 meters, possibly in only one decade.”
Posted by Hank Reardon on 2007 04 11 at 08:57 PM • permalinkSpiny Norman—Ooooookaaaaay… avoids eye contact
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 04 11 at 09:32 PM • permalinkOT But I have noted a certain questioning attitude - call it even cynicism - at this place about the happiness of the loyal subjects of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea.
Well how do you like dese sweet potatoes, huh?
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 11 at 10:53 PM • permalink#67. Sweet potatoes would go nicely with a giant rabbit steak.
Posted by Hank Reardon on 2007 04 11 at 11:17 PM • permalink“Can you believe his book is published by ABC Books. Someone was asleep.”
Sorry they’ve woken up - I just tried to buy it at the ABC shop and received this reply:
“Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately, these items have now been deleted and are no longer available through the ABC.
Thanks for contacting http://www.abcshop.com.au
Kind regards,
Jase
ABC Shop Online
Ph: 1300 360 111 [+61 2 8333 5666]
Fax: 1300 360 150 [+61 2 8333 5622]”So the good Professor has been DELETED !!!
#69
Never fear. The good Perfesser Flannery and his dogma are still getting spruiked harder than a titty show in Kings Cross.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 11 at 11:36 PM • permalinkVia bolta, Sky news is running a poll (top right)
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 11 at 11:38 PM • permalinkFor discussion purposes I thought you would all like to hear about Grist - how to talk to climate skeptics Appearing in today’s Crikey newsletter:
(no link available to non subscribers)
“Enter Daily Tele columnist Piers Akerman, who writes today:
What Al Gore, the EU, the UN, Garrett and Rudd all choose to ignore is the science which shows that the Earth’s climate has always been variable and that climate change can be attributed to many things, but that among the least likely to have had any influence is human activity.
Akerman continues:
Professor Ian Plimer of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide says the current theory of human-induced global warming is not in accord with history, archaeology, geology or astronomy and must be rejected.
Further, he says, the current promotion of this theory as science is fraudulent and the current alarmism on climate change is not science.
Some 96% of the greenhouse effect is due to water vapour, the rest is due to CO2, methane and other gases, he says.Grist says:
Objection: H2O accounts for 95% of the greenhouse effect; CO2 is insignificant.
Answer: According to the scientific literature and climate experts, CO2 contributes anywhere from 9% to 30% to the overall greenhouse effect. The 95% number does not appear to come from any scientific source, though it gets tossed around a lot.
Please see this paper (PDF), the textbook referenced here, and this article at RealClimate….Read more here.
Akerman continues:
Of the CO2, 95% is due to natural processes (volcanoes, plants, bacteria etc) with the remainder (about 0.1%) resulting from human activities.Grist says:
Objection: It’s clear from ice cores and other geological history that CO2 fluctuates naturally. It is bogus to assume today’s rise is caused by humans.
Answer: We emit billions of tons of CO2 into the air and, lo and behold, there is more CO2 in the air. Surely it is not so difficult to believe that the CO2 rise is our fault. But if simple common sense is not enough, there is more to the case. (It is worth noting that investigation of this issue by the climate science community is a good indication that they are not taking things for granted or making any assumptions—not even the reasonable ones!)
It is true that CO2 has gone up on its own in the past, most notably during the glacial-interglacial cycles. During this time, CO2 rose and fell by over 100 ppm, ranging between around 180 to 300ppm. But these rises, though they look steep over a 400Kyr timeframe, took 5K to 20Kyrs, depending on the glacial cycle…(read more here.)
And on the Volcano point, Grist says:
Objection: One decent-sized volcanic eruption puts more CO2 in the atmosphere than a decade of human emissions. It’s ridiculous to think reducing human CO2 emissions will have any effect.
Answer: Not only is this false, it couldn’t possibly be true given the CO2 record from any of the dozens of sampling stations around the globe. If it were true that individual volcanic eruptions dominated human emissions and were causing the rise in CO2 concentrations, then these CO2 records would be full of spikes—one for each eruption. Instead, such records show a smooth and regular trend.
Read more here.
But wait, says Akerman:
Even if humans stopped producing CO2 now, it would not make the slightest difference to atmospheric CO2, as natural sources swamp the human sources. Even so, the atmosphere is almost at the lowest level of CO2 content of the past 4550 million years, and the role of the greatest biomass on Earth bacteria and CO2 is an unknown.
Grist says:
Objection: According to the IPCC, 150 billion tonnes of carbon go into the atmosphere from natural processes every year. This is almost 30 times the amount of carbon humans emit. What difference can we make?
Answer: It’s true that natural fluxes in the carbon cycle are much larger than anthropogenic emissions. But for roughly the last 10,000 years, until the industrial revolution, every gigatonne of carbon going into the atmosphere was balanced by one coming out.
What humans have done is alter one side of this cycle. We put approximately 6 gigatonnes of carbon into the air but, unlike nature, we are not taking any out.
Read more here.
We’re happy for you to prove Grist wrong on this—so send your objections to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Allan:
Any chance you could fit these in:
Objection: The “Hockey Stick Graph” omits data from the MWP and Little Ice Age, thus exaggerating 20th-century temperature changes.
Objection: Judeo-Christian civilization has a history of imminent-apocalypse scenarios dating back at least 2000 years, from predictions of Christ’s end-times return to Earth a few years after his death to predictions of mass famine and oil depletion by the year 2000. None has come true. Why is skepticism so hard to understand?
Objection: Global-Warming believers claim to be scientific, yet make statements such as “Hurricane Katrina was severe because of global warming.” Additionally, they engage in unscientific reasoning such as post hoc, ergo propter hoc (“Global temperatures have increased in correlation with the Industrial Revolution and increased CO2, therefore industrial CO2 causes global warming”)
There’s just a few off the top of my head.
Few more:
Objection: If global warming is such an apocalyptic threat, why do its most prominent spokespersons live such extravagant lifestyles?
Objection: If global warming is such an apocalyptic threat, why do the vast majority of environmentalists oppose ameliorative (and non-apocalyptic) efforts such as nuclear power plants?
Objection: If the evidence is so convincing, why do believers proffer false evidence such as the reduction of polar bear populations (when polar bear are, in fact, thriving.)
Objection: Crikey publishes pretty much any old crap.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 12 at 12:21 AM • permalink#73 - Don’t feed the arseholes at Crickey.
Posted by boxofmatches on 2007 04 12 at 12:21 AM • permalinkA little more seriously, Plimer says about 0.1% of CO2 results from human activities.
I can’t see any refutation of that in Grist’s response.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 12 at 12:33 AM • permalinkI think it is time for George W and John Howard to call the bluff on the global warming consensus. I’m thinking something along the lines of this type of press conference.
Bush: Thank you for coming. I’m here today to announce that after years of vigourous testimony from environmentalists and internet inventors, I have been swayed by the arguments which say there is a global consensus on climate change being the result of human activity.
And you know what, there is a consensus saying it is going to be big and bad.
So effective immediately, I am cutting off all government funding to researchers who are investigating global warming. What’s the point in spending billions of dollars on research everyone agrees on?
NY Times Journalist: Won’t that ruin entire careers, close down university research labs?
Bush: You’re not telling me these people are in it for money are you? I thought they cared about the planet, not their wallet or their energy guzzling house and SUV. Besides, there is a consensus. I mean do we still have scientists researching whether the sky is blue, or whether Al Gore’s weight has as much influence on the tides as the moon. These are accepted scientific facts and we must live by them.
NYT Journo: But how will we irresponsibly headline grab on new dangers that have an improbable chance of happening in the future?
Bush: Here’s a headline for you - Bush cuts off hot air. Thank you.
OT Excellent jobs growth figures.
Leading economists agree that many of Australia’s economic problems have disappeared.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 12 at 12:58 AM • permalink#73 ....But if simple common sense is not enough, there is more to the case…..
Yup. When the science doesn’t fit your intended outcome, go with good ole common sense. Is this the same good ole common sense the left uses to conclude that 9/11 was a Bush conspiracy? That David Hicks is a hero? That the abolishment of gun ownership is a great idea? That EVERYTHING can be solved through government programs? Or is this some other good ole lefty common sense?
Take your good ole lefty common sense and shove it right up your ass. You brain-dead talking amoebas are a bigger threat to the western civilization than the frickin Islamists. Please do go fuck yourself and drop dead at the earliest opportunity. And take your friends with you.
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Forget the food shortage and wolves and humans, what about the polar bears that will surely invade this sea otter colony soon?