What A Vice President Palin Would Mean For Birds

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• 1 - jamminsue

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:27 am

  Along with environmental damage, Exxon Valdez destroyed a number of fishing -boat businesses, including my daughter's best friend's Dad...he now is assisting his wife in a day-care business, and they get food stamps every month to survive instead of paying about $45K in income taxes...
  
  That sucks!
  
  No financial award ever tricked down to him.....and he was never allowed to go back
  
  

• 2 - jamminsue

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:28 am

  Books by Lyn Hancock, including "There's a Seal in my Jacket" are good references

• 3 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:58 am

  Polar Bear info:
  
  

  Legates finds that their claims of an impending, human-induced Arctic meltdown are not supported by the evidence. For example, the Arctic Assessment proclaimed that Arctic air temperature trends provide an early and strong indication that global warming is causing polar ice caps and glaciers to melt. However, current research suggests that coastal stations in Greenland are instead experiencing a cooling trend, and average summer air temperatures at the summit of the Greenland Ice Sheet have decreased at the rate of 4°F per decade since measurements began in 1987.
  
  In addition, the Arctic Assessment ignored a relatively recent long-term analysis of records from coastal stations in Russia. Russian coastal-station records of both the extent of sea ice and the thickness of fast ice (ice fixed to the shoreline or seafloor) extending back 125 years show significant variability over 60- to 80-year periods. Moreover, the maximum air temperature reported for the 20th century was in 1938, when it was nearly 0.4°F warmer than in 2000. The Russian study concludes that actual temperature measurements do not show the increased warming predicted by computer climate models.
  
  However, even if warming is occurring, it has happened before, as ice cores from Baffin Island and sea core sediments from the Chukchi Sea show. For example, in Alaska, the onset of a warming in 1976-1977 ended the multi-decade cold trend in the mid-20th century and simply returned temperatures to those experienced in the early 20th century. Sharp, substantial fluctuations are typical of the historic pattern of natural climate variability extending back several centuries. And, as expected in response to natural variability, Alaskan ecosystems have responded rapidly and visibly to this recent warmth. By contrast, if the recent warmth were human-induced by constant additions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, responses in the Arctic region would be expected to be gradual and modest when viewed within any short time period.
  
  ...
  
  Though polar bears are uniquely adapted to the Arctic region, they are not wedded solely to its coldest parts nor are they restricted to a specific Arctic diet. Aside from a variety of seals, they eat fish, kelp, caribou, ducks, sea birds and scavenged whale and walrus carcasses. In addition, as discussed above, Arctic air temperatures were as high as present temperatures in the 1930s and polar bears survived.
  
  Interestingly, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), an international organization that has worked for 50 years to protect endangered species, has also written on the threats posed to polar bears from global warming. However, their own research seems to undermine their fears. According to the WWF, about 20 distinct polar bear populations exist, accounting for approximately 22,000 polar bears worldwide. As the figure shows, population patterns do not show a temperature-linked decline:
  
  * Only two of the distinct population groups, accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total population, are decreasing.
  * Ten populations, approximately 45.4 percent of the total number, are stable.
  * Another two populations �" about 13.6 percent of the total number of polar bears �" are increasing.
  
  The status of the remaining six populations (whether they are stable, increasing or decreasing in size) is unknown.
  
  Moreover, when the WWF report is compared with the Arctic air temperature trend studies discussed earlier, there is a strong positive (instead of negative) correlation between air temperature and polar bear populations. Polar bear populations are declining in regions (like Baffin Bay) that have experienced a decrease in air temperature, while areas where polar bear populations are increasing (near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea) are associated with increasing air temperatures. Thus it is difficult to argue that rising air temperatures will necessarily and directly lead to a decrease in polar bear populations.
  
  Conclusion. Are human activities causing a warming in the Arctic, affecting the sea ice extent, longevity and thickness? Contradictory data exists. What seems clear is that polar bears have survived for thousands of years, including both colder and warmer periods. There may be threats to the future survival of the polar bear, but global warming is not primary among them.

  
  

• 4 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:01 am

  More:
  
  

  Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.
  
  ...
  
  Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, “To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.
  
  “These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.”

  
  

• 5 - Lance Morrison

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:02 am

  Gee, one moment she's an inexperienced smalltown mayor, and in another, she's death to birds...
  
  Try my original Sarah Palin tune if you love America @ www.conservativemusiconline.com

• 6 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:05 am

  MORE:
  
  

  First there came the computer-generated polar bear in Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth; then that heartrending photo, syndicated everywhere, of the bears apparently stranded on a melting ice floe; then the story of those four polar bears drowned by global warming (actually, they’d perished in a storm).
  
  Now, in a new cinema release called Earth �" a magnificent, feature-length nature documentary from the makers of the BBC’s Planet Earth series �" comes the most sob-inducing “evidence” of all: a poor male polar bear filmed starving to death as a result, the quaveringly emotional Patrick Stewart voiceover suggests, of global warming.
  
  Never mind that what actually happens is that the bear stupidly has a go at a colony of walruses and ends up being gored to death.
  
  ...
  
  Having been up to the bears’ habitat in Svalbard, I do have a certain amount of sympathy with these concerns. To claim, however, that they are facing imminent doom is stretching the truth. In 1950, let us not forget, there were about 5,000 polar bears. Now there are 25,000.
  
  ...
  
  But never let the facts get in the way of a good story. The doom-mongers certainly won’t. Despite evidence from organisations such as the US National Biological Service that in most places polar bear populations are either stable or increasing, Ursus maritimus will continue to top the eco-hysterics’ list of animals in danger because it’s so fluffy and white and photogenic.
  
  If you’re really that worried about their demise, I’d book yourself a ticket to Churchill, Manitoba, where the evil buggers (about the only creature, incidentally, that actively preys on humans) are so rife they’re almost vermin.
  
  And if things get really bad, we can always ship the survivors off to Antarctica where, unlike the North Pole, the ice shelf appears to be growing.

  
  

• 7 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:18 am

  Here's something the leftist greenies don't want you to know:
  
  

  President Bush on Thursday created the world's largest marine protected area �" a group of remote Hawaiian islands that cover 84 million acres and are home to 7,000 species of birds, fish and marine mammals, at least a quarter of which are unique to Hawaii.
  
  At a White House ceremony, the president designated the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands the United States’ 75th national monument. The islands have been described as “America’s Galapagos” and as the most intact tropical marine region under U.S. jurisdiction.
  
  “To put this area in context, this national monument is more than 100 times larger than Yosemite National Park,” Bush said. “It’s larger than 46 of our 50 states, and more than seven times larger than all our national marine sanctuaries combined. This is a big deal.”
  
  ...
  
  The decision immediately sets aside 139,000 square miles of largely uninhabited islands, atolls, coral reef colonies and underwater peaks known as seamounts to be managed by federal and state agencies.
  
  Conrad Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which will manage nearly all of it, said the new protected area would dwarf all others.
  
  “It’s the single-largest act of ocean conservation in history. It’s a large milestone,” Lautenbacher said. “It is a place to maintain biodiversity and to maintain basically the nurseries of the Pacific. It spawns a lot of the life that permeates the middle of the Pacific Ocean.”
  
  ...
  
  The national monument, about the size of California, is larger even than Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
  
  Roger Rufe, president of The Ocean Conservancy, agreed the area was on par with Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon. “Teddy Roosevelt is largely considered the father of our national park system,” he added. With this national monument, “President Bush may be securing a similar legacy in our oceans.”

  
  
  
  

• 8 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:24 am

  There's been ZERO "Global Warming" over the last decade. All the scare-mongering models are broken. GI-GO.

• 9 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:37 am

  Now, having cited all that, what the hell does Sarah Palin have to do with protected birds?
  
  Your article never actually connected any dots. You just implied that, because she was opposed to listing polar bears as "endangered" (and for good reason), that she necessarily must want to butcher protected birds en masse, and that she must be opposed to all aspects of the Endangered Species Act. That, of course, is inaccurate.
  
  And you further suggest that because she (rightly) is suspect of the whole "human beings are causing Global Warming - ZOMG WE'RE ALL GONNA FUCKIN' DIE!!!" hysteria, that she must hate nature, and seeks to turn the entire planet into a giant landfill. Again, that's obviously not the case.
  
  Color me a greenish shade of "unimpressed."

• 10 - RJ Elliott

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:41 am

  Oh, and any drilling in ANWR (which McCain still opposes) would occur on a few hundred acres in a National Park of 19 million lichen-infested acres of permafrost tundra wasteland.

• 11 - Cindy D

  Sep 15, 2008 at 2:44 am

  Sarah Palin Supports the Aerial Hunting of Wolves
  
  Aerial hunting involves a slow (non-clean) kill and a painful, brutally slow death as the terrified animal bites at itself where it been shot and attempts to flee. It involves multiple shots, over time, while chasing the animal to exhaustion.
  
  Palin provided a bounty of $150 for the forelegs of dead wolves to encourage this practice.
  
  She thinks this is a fine way to kill bears as well.

• 12 - Ruvy

  Sep 15, 2008 at 5:04 am

  The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. United States Constitution, Article I, Sec. 3, in part.
  
  If you riffle through the entire constitution of the United States, those are all the powers you find granted to the vice president.
  
  So, a dumb question for all the geniuses (and progressive intellectuals) out there who think they know it all.
  
  Unless a bill is before the senate where there is a tie, how does the power of a vice president affect policy? How does Sarah Palin get to affect anything? If McCain dies or gets a stroke, that is one thing. But other than that?....
  
  This entire article is nonsense based on the assumption that McCain will die in office. In other words, no matter how objectionable Palin may be, unless McCain is unable to serve, it makes no difference what she thinks.
  
  Just a reminder. McCain has a pretty wife who will be keeping a sharp eye on him. And Todd Palin will be keeping a close eye on his wife. So the relationship between McCain and Palin is unlikely to descend to vice, in spite of the title she would hold. Advice would have to be platonically rendered.

• 13 - Arch Conservative

  Sep 15, 2008 at 6:44 am

  You want to kill thousands of babies in the womb each new day in America? Well OK, as long as you don't mess with those polar bears, wolves and birds.
  
  It's truly sickening to observe where the priorities of some in this nation lie.

• 14 - Joanne Huspek

  Sep 15, 2008 at 8:58 am

  Ruvy: "Just a reminder. McCain has a pretty wife who will be keeping a sharp eye on him. And Todd Palin will be keeping a close eye on his wife. So the relationship between McCain and Palin is unlikely to descend to vice, in spite of the title she would hold. Advice would have to be platonically rendered."
  
  Eww... Please... I would have thrown up my breakfast, had I had any.

• 15 - Dave Nalle

  Sep 15, 2008 at 9:11 am

  Ok, folks, You seem not to get the whole Polar Bear and Wolf dynamic. Despite whatever silly shit you hear from the NRDC, these species are overpopulated and not underpopulated and they are infringing on human settlements in truly alarming ways. Polar Bears are more aggressive than other bear species and more dangerous. Only their low level of contact with humans keeps the death count from Polar Bears lower than from Black Bears. And because of decades of hunting restrictions wolves are now overpopulated, having trouble finding food and moving into human communities looking for it. Wolf packs have attacked animals and children in Anchorage. Years of not being hunted have resulted in a loss of their fear of humans.
  
  IMO Palin should be commended for promoting responsible management of dangerous and overpopulated species.
  
  Dave

• 16 - Deano

  Sep 15, 2008 at 10:10 am

  FYI, there is only one recorded fatal wolf attack in the wild on a person in North America - Kenton Joel Carnegie in Saskatchewan in 2005.
  
  The only other fatalities recorded in North America were wolves in captivity or wolves being kept as pets.
  
  For the most part wolves are not prone to predation on human beings, although it does happen, generally when the animals have become habituated to people through humans feeding them, or access to garbage. These type of wolves - in proximity to urban environments - are probably a significant issue. Wolves in the wild are much less of an issue and the biggest reason they are often cheerfully culled is predation on livestock and straight-out fear.
  

• 17 - troll

  Sep 15, 2008 at 10:35 am

  there is only one recorded fatal wolf attack in the wild on a person in North America
  
  all wolves must be shot for failure to do their job...
  
  500000000 or bust - !

• 18 - Cindy D

  Sep 15, 2008 at 11:20 am

  Dave,
  
  Nice try, but as usual, just because something sounds plausible to you, doesn't mean you should just put it out there as fact.
  
  Even Palin isn't claiming aerial wolf hunting is used to prevent predator attacks on humans.
  
  172 Scientists Protest Alaska's Aerial Wolf Hunting
  
  It's brutal Dave. There's no reason for it other than "sport" (vomit). Watch the video.
  
  If wolves were attacking people because they became familiar with humans, then I could see shooting the wolves that were causing the problem. But, aerial hunting wouldn't be the method used for close contact wolves.
  
  You're proposing that flying out to the wilderness and hunting down wolves (in a particularly savage way), who aren't likely to even come into contact with people, is done to control wolf attacks?
  
  You need to give a little more thought to your imaginary justifications.
  
  More on the letter from scientists:
  
  A letter sent today to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin from nearly 200 scientists states, “We urge the State of Alaska to consider the ecological role that large predators play in preventing eruptions and crashes [of prey populations], and to consider conservation and preservation of predators on an equal basis with the goal of producing more ungulates for hunters.”
  
  What really shocks me Dave, is that I would have thought that as a Libertarian or Liberty Republican, you would have gone with what the people of Alaska want rather than what the state wants.
  
  For more than a decade, the citizens of Alaska have voiced opposition to much aerial wildlife hunting and have twice voted to put an end to the state’s use of aircraft to kill wolves. But each time, the legislature has overturned the will of the people. [emphasis mine]
  
  “The intent of Alaska’s citizens is clear,” said Joel Bennett, former member of the Alaska Board of Game. “We have voted against the practice of private hunters using aircraft to hunt wolves twice now, only to have our vote overturned both times. It is obvious we need the support of Congress to close this loophole.”
  
  Come on Dave! Stand up for the will of the people!
  
  Quotes from here.

• 19 - Ruvy

  Sep 15, 2008 at 11:32 am

  Cindy,
  
  The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. United States Constitution, Article I, Sec. 3, in part.
  
  So, a dumb question for all the geniuses (and progressive intellectuals) out there who think they know it all. Unless a bill is before the senate where there is a tie, how does the power of a vice president affect policy? How does Sarah Palin get to affect anything? If McCain dies or gets a stroke, that is one thing. But other than that?....
  
  Can we get a simple answer to a high school civics question from your highness and the other "progressive intellectuals" pontificating here?
  
  

• 20 - Dr Dreadful

  Sep 15, 2008 at 12:55 pm

  Elliott:
  
  Why exactly wouldn't the 'leftist greenies' want us to know about the new marine reserve? Do you have a source for that? You seem to have no difficulty finding and citing sources, as comments 3 through 13,000,009 demonstrate...
  
  Archie:
  
  What about Drew's article gave you the impression that he's pro-choice?
  
  Sure do love your strawmen, don't you, lads?

• 21 - Ruvy

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:02 pm

  Still waiting for the "progressive intellectuals" to answer my high school civics question. I'll repeat for them, in case they have so exercised themselves in their passion for birds, seals, whales, bears, snails and the other of G-d's creations, that it has slipped their brilliant minds....
  
  The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no vote, unless they be equally divided. United States Constitution, Article I, Sec. 3, in part.
  
  So, a dumb question for all the geniuses (and progressive intellectuals) out there who think they know it all. Unless a bill is before the senate where there is a tie, how does the power of a vice president affect policy? How does Sarah Palin get to affect anything? If McCain dies or gets a stroke, that is one thing. But other than that?
  
  The cat must have their tongues. Are cats on the endangered species list - along with pontificating progressive intellectuals who can't answer simple high school civics questions?

• 22 - Dr Dreadful

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:05 pm

  Ruvy:
  
  Two words.
  
  Dick Cheney.
  
  If that doesn't help you, I think you answered your own question.

• 23 - Christopher Rose

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:08 pm

  Maybe "progressive intellectuals", whatever the fuck they are, aren't reading your words, Ruvy.
  
  As to pontificating, which, outside of Catholic circles most commonly means "express one's position as if it is absolutely correct", isn't that your strong suit?

• 24 - troll

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:44 pm

  (happy belated birthday Chris)

• 25 - troll

  Sep 15, 2008 at 1:45 pm

  (or would that be: belated happy birthday...)

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