Hey, Let’s All Hunt Some Otter!
This is one of those stories that should get you thinking. It seems that sea otters in Alaska's Port Heiden bay have had to move onto the land recently. There, they are easy prey for various predators and for human hunters (native Alaskans are allowed to take the animals even though they are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act.) Why are they moving to the dangerous land from the relatively safe waters in the bay? Well, it's because the otters are starving. They can't hunt in the bay.
Because the bay is completely frozen over. The first time that has happened since 2000. And it is frozen very, very hard. A recent thaw has done nothing to clear the ice on the bay as yet.
Some of the starving animals — with ribs showing — have waddled or belly-slid several miles inland, residents said. Others have been attacked by dogs near houses, killed by villagers for their hides, or died on sea ice where eagles and foxes pick at their remains.
No one knows how many have come ashore in the unusual exodus, said Mark Kosbruk, village fire chief. Natives have skinned at least 17 to make hats, gloves and blankets from the luxurious pelts.
They've clubbed some with 2-by-4s or axe handles, shot others and collected a couple of frozen carcasses, he said. Several rotted before they could be gathered or died on the sea ice where people won't travel.
"When it first froze over, they were everywhere," said Kosbruk, 34, who is teaching younger hunters how to skin and salt the hides for tanning.
The sea otters are probably on land looking for water where they might find food, said Douglas Burn, head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Alaska sea otter program. They usually scour sea bottoms for clams or sea urchins, but the ice froze them out.
Similar die-offs have been documented before, but biologists are worried and keeping an eye on the situation, he said.
Does this prove anything? In and of itself, no it does not. But if the weather somewhere is hotter than normal, it is trotted out for some major tub-thumping that the warm spell is proof positive that global warming is occurring. You do not see the same tub-thumping when it is colder than usual. Maybe just a report like this one. But between kids bundled up in heavy winter clothing in Washington, DC to hunt for Easter eggs, record-breaking cold all across the country and turtle-sicles in Texas (along with concurrent warming on Mars that almost exactly mirrors the warming on this planet) you should begin to wonder what is going on, exactly. Because something is not quite adding up. Is there a warming trend on this planet? Sure. But is it out of the ordinary? Maybe not so much. Is it caused by human activity? Despite the screeching, there is no way to say that with certainty.
If we want to have an intelligent discussion about the need to stop using fossil fuels, that is worthwhile. But to gut the Western economies and do absolutely nothing whatsoever to actually reduce global carbon emissions (because China ain't gonna get on board, no matter how much Al Gore talks) is the height of self-centered arrogance. And to tub-thump about any warm spell, pontificate that global warming is causing gingerbread house collapses in Sweden and forecasting ginormously overweight moose while ignoring the turtle-bergs bobbing in one bay and the starving, ice-bound otters in another shows that there is disinformation being spread as Truth®.
UPDATE: Others: NewsBusters, Clayton Cramer, Scared Monkeys,
Environment, Insanity, Junk Science, Media | Gaius April 9, 2007
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The Mahablog » Global Idiots — April 9, 2007 @ 5:50 pm
By syn, April 9, 2007 @ 7:25 pm
All this stuff reminds me of the 1991 sci-fi novel “Fallen Angels” (Niven, Pournelle & Flynn), “the government dictated to saving the environment from the evils of technology, had been voted into power because everybody knew that the Green House Effect had to be controlled, whatever the cost. But who would have thought that the cost of ending pollution would include not only total government control of day-to-day life, but the onset of the new Ice Age?”
By Gaius, April 9, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
Ah yes, no attempt at a rational discussion, just more name calling. Nice job, Maha.
By petefrt, April 9, 2007 @ 9:29 pm
Al Gore may have invented the internet and started the global warming craze, but I wouldn’t trust his weather forecasts any more than I’d call him to fix my computer.