Filed under: Environment, Freedom, Global Warming, Junk Science, Science/Technology | Tags: A Yearly Phenomenon, They Gather in the Fall, Walrus "Haulouts"
Biologists spotted a huge gathering of walruses on an Alaskan beach near Point Lay. OMG. There’s no sea ice for them to gather on, must be global warming. Biologists flew over the area in a plane contracted by NOAA. They estimated the numbers at 35,000 walruses, one of the biggest onshore gatherings of the animals documented in Northwest Alaska, said one walrus expert. Maybe 35,000, not biggest gatherings.
“Walruses tend to use floating ice as platforms for resting and caring for their young in between swims to find clams, worms and other food sources on the sea floor. But as has been the case in recent years — all remnants of floating summer ice in the region have melted away by mid-September, forcing the walruses to head to shore to rest.” Well, yes, the Arctic ice melts in the summer and grows in the winter.
These gatherings are called “haulouts”and are not a new phenomenon for this region over the last 45 years and cannot be due to low levels of sea ice. Some deaths are always caused by stampedes within these herds which are composed largely of females and their young, as a brief search of the literature reveals. “The attempts by the World Wildlife Fund and others to link this event to global warming are self-serving nonsense that has nothing to do with science.” Here’s how the WWF is attempting to spin this recent gathering at Point Lay.
“We are witnessing a slow-motion catastrophe in the Arctic,” said Lou Leonard, WWF’s vice president for climate change.”
Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford says that “mass haulouts of Pacific walrus and stampede deaths are not new, and not due to low ice cover. The Pacific walrus remains abundant, numbering at least 200,000 by some accounts, double the number in the 1950s. Dating back to 1604 there have been reports of large walrus gatherings or haulouts. They are not unusual and have long been recognized and islands have been set aside for such gatherings. They are known to migrate away from ice in late summer and fall, and form massive aggregations of tens of thousands of individuals on rocky beaches or outcrops. Just seven years ago the AP reported 40,000 walruses in a haulout in a single location.”
Satellite images show that the Arctic ice cap has grown by an area twice the size of Alaska in just the last two years. The AP’s reported haulouts of 50,000 and 100,000 walruses in recent years. There’s even a Walrus Islands State Game Sanctuary which protects a group of seven small craggy islands and their adjacent waters in northern Bristol Bay. It was established to protect one of the largest haulout sites for Pacific walrus.
Well, they’re getting desperate as belief in alarmist global warming wanes. They are trying to blame Ebola on global warming too. And by the way, the number of hurricanes has decreased, as has the numbers of tornadoes. Eighteen years with no warming at all.
Filed under: Capitalism, Domestic Policy, Economy, Freedom, Humor, Law, Regulation, Taxes, The United States | Tags: Essential Reading, Philip K. Howard, Restoring the American Dream
This is Philip K. Howard, who has been a practicing attorney in Manhattan for many years, and who has been thinking deeply about the law and writing about it for twenty years. His first book, The Death of Common Sense: How Law is Suffocating America, was a direct hit on the body of law and regulation that dictates impossible rules that make no sense. But he doesn’t stop there, he offers solutions.
He followed that up with The Lost Art of Drawing the Line: How Fairness Went Too Far. Politically correct law has become the enemy of freedom and of the common good. Legal anxiety trumps right and wrong. What if most of us grew up with seesaws in playgrounds and want our kids to have that experience as well.
Sorry, the legal consequences of an accident are too great. The result is playgrounds that are so excruciatingly boring that the kids aren’t interested. Demanding that we be “fair” to everyone is an impossible goal. As your mother probably used to tell you — life isn’t fair.
Life Without Lawyers: Restoring Responsibility in America: was about restoring the can-do spirit that made America great. We are losing the freedom to make sense of daily choices — teachers can’t maintain order in the classroom, managers are trained to avoid candor, schools ban tag, and companies plaster inane warnings on everything: “Remove Baby Before Folding Stroller.” Why is our economy not recovering more rapidly? Where are the entrepreneurs? Facing a body of law that destroys initiative. What is at issue is the vitality of American culture.
His newest book is The Rule of Nobody: Saving America from Dead Laws and Broken Government, just out. He says that underneath the double-dealing, the polarization, the self-serving is a broken government system that produces rising debt, failing schools, overly expensive health care and economic hardship. Rules, inflexible rules, have replaced leadership, and everyone looks to the rules to know what to do or not do. Philip Howard argues for a return to the framers’ vision of public law — setting goals and boundaries instead of dictating daily choices. This is not a situation to be easily defeated. Congress turns newly passed laws over to federal agencies to draw the lines and devise the regulations that will enhance and grow the bureaucracy and guarantee their jobs. Our hero Trey Gowdy speaks of the House’s job of making law — yet does not mention the job of reforming, eliminating, or repealing bad laws — a task seldom mentioned and even less often accomplished.
Each of these books is only about 200 pages, and invaluable. This is not dry lawyer talk, but real, living examples of how Law has taken over our lives, sapped our creativity, destroyed our freedom. No one is free to make choices, including government officials. An important reason why it is so difficult and expensive to start a business, and why innovation has slowed to a crawl.
Highly recommended. Great reads. And essential to understanding just what has gone wrong in our government and how we can fight back. Nobody said it was easy.
Filed under: Energy, Science/Technology, YouTube | Tags: Icelandic Volcanos, Spying on Mother Nature, The Usefulness of Drones
We wrote about a month ago about the Bardarbunga volcano in Iceland that was erupting beneath the 1300 foot deep ice, and wondering how long it would take for the lava to break through.
This video demonstrates that a guy with a quadcopter managed to get very, very close to an erupting Icelandic volcano — close enough to melt the face of the camera that shot the video. Eric Cheng, director of aerial imaging for drone maker DJI joined photographer Ragnar Th Sigurdsson to send a drone over the eruption. It took proper permits and connections with the local authorities to get close enough to send a drone, and Sigurdsson had the permits and connections.
“Iceland is the only place on the globe where a mid-ocean ridge — the seams in the Earth’s crust that pull apart, bringing molten magma to the surface to produce more crust — rises onto dry land. It’s an incredible view of one of the most important and impressive geologic processes on the planet.”
And how exciting to be able to sit with your computer and be able to watch that geologic process — safely at home, thanks to Wired. Here’s the drone:
American Elephants 