Exposing the Big Game

Forget Hunters' Feeble Rationalizations and Trust Your Gut Feelings: Making Sport of Killing Is Not Healthy Human Behavior

Exposing the Big Game

Monthly Archives: September 2016

Bear mauling on Admiralty Island injures Kentucky hunter

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A Kentucky hunter was taken to a Juneau hospital early Friday morning after being mauled by a brown bear in Southeast Alaska, according to Alaska State Troopers.

The U.S. Coast Guard transported Douglas Adkins, 57, of Jenkins, Kentucky, Friday morning from Admiralty Island, south of Angoon, troopers wrote in a dispatch.

His injuries are not life-threatening, according to troopers.

Around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, a Juneau-based big game guide and Adkins, whom troopers described as a client, were returning from a brown bear hunt to the beach at Chaik Bay when they came across a brown bear a short distance away. The two were using headlamps, troopers wrote.

The brown bear was startled and attacked Adkins. After a short while, the bear backed off and left the area, troopers said.

It was dark and the incident happened quickly, wrote Alaska State Trooper spokeswoman Megan Peters.

A crewmember from their vessel, Sultana, notified the Coast Guard Sector Juneau command center at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday that a bear had mauled a member of their hunting party and that the man had “multiple puncture wounds,” the Coast Guard wrote in a release.

The Coast Guard arrived around 2 a.m. Friday and took the injured man to a Juneau hospital, where he remained Friday, said Ryan Scott, regional supervisor for the Department of Fish and Game’s wildlife conservation division in Douglas.

Scott said the two people were armed but didn’t fire any shots at the bear.

Few additional details were available Friday afternoon. Fish and Game had yet to speak with the mauling victim, Scott said.

The department will only attempt to locate and kill a bear if a mauling was not defensive, Scott said.

World’s Biggest Sockeye Run Shut Down as Wild Pacific Salmon Fight for Survival

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     Climate Sep. 21, 2016 11:28AM EST

 Salmon have been swimming in Pacific Northwest waters for at least 7 million years, as indicated by fossils of large saber-tooth salmon found in the area. During that time, they’ve been a key species in intricate, interconnected coastal ecosystems, bringing nitrogen and other nutrients from the ocean and up streams and rivers to spawning grounds, feeding whales, bears and eagles and fertilizing the magnificent coastal rainforests along the way.

Salmon have been swimming in Pacific Northwest waters for at least seven million years.iStockFor as long as people have lived in the area, salmon have been an important food source and have helped shape cultural identities. But something is happening to Pacific coast salmon.

This year, British Columbia’s sockeye salmon run was the lowest in recorded history. Commercial and First Nations fisheries on the world’s biggest sockeye run on British Columbia’s longest river, the Fraser, closed. Fewer than 900,000 sockeye out of a projected 2.2 million returned to the Fraser to spawn. Areas once teeming with salmon are all but empty.

Salmon define West Coast communities, especially Indigenous ones. The West Coast is a Pacific salmon forest. Today, salmon provide food and contribute to sustainable economies built on fishing and ecotourism. West Coast children learn about the salmon life cycle early in their studies.

Salmon migrations, stretching up to 3,000 kilometers, are among the world’s most awe-inspiring. After spending adult lives in the ocean, salmon make the arduous trip up rivers against the current, returning to spawn and die where they hatched. Only one out of every thousand salmon manages to survive and return to its freshwater birthplace.

So what’s going wrong? Climate change is amplifying a long list of stressors salmon already face. Sockeye salmon are sensitive to temperature changes, so higher ocean and river temperatures can have serious impacts. Even small degrees of warming can kill them. Low river flows from unusually small snowpacks linked to climate change make a tough journey even harder.

Oceans absorb the brunt of our climate pollution—more than 90 percent of emissions-trapped heat since the 1970s. Most warming takes place near the surface, where salmon travel, with the upper 75 meters warming 0.11 C per decade between 1971 and 2010. Although ocean temperatures have always fluctuated, climate change is lengthening those fluctuations. A giant mass of warmer-than-average water in the Pacific, known as “the blob,” made ocean conditions even warmer, with El Niño adding to increased temperatures. Salmon have less food and face new predators migrating north to beat the heat.

Beyond creating poor environmental conditions for salmon, climate change increases disease risks. Warm conditions have led to sea lice outbreaks in farmed and wild salmon, and a heart and muscle inflammatory disease has been found in at least one farm. Scientists researching salmon movement through areas with farms are finding wild fish, especially young ones, with elevated parasite levels. Diseases that cause even slight deficiencies in swimming speed or feeding ability could make these marathon swimmers easy prey.

More: http://www.ecowatch.com/wild-salmon-climate-change-2011395747.html

President Trump? There’s only one way to stop it happening

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/23/president-trump-only-one-way-stop-it-happening-hillary-clinton

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I hate to be an alarmist, but Donald Trump could be on course to be elected president of the United States – and the decisive moment may well come on Monday night. That’s when he faces Hillary Clinton in what is expected to be one of the most watched events in television history. The TV debates are perhaps the last chance for her to persuade the American people that this man is unqualified for, and unworthy of, the presidency and poses a genuine threat to the republic.

If that sounds like panic, then I’m not the only one. Sweaty-palmed nausea has become a leading symptom among those who tremble at the prospect of a Trump presidency. The latest Slate Political Gabfest podcast is called The Time to Panic Edition. Number cruncher Nate Silver, who gives Trump a 40% probability of winning, triggered another round of liberal angst this week when he tweeted that he had “Never seen otherwise smart people in so much denial about something as they are about Trump’s chances. Same mistake as primaries, Brexit.”

The source of the alarm is not so much the national polls, where Clinton is a few points ahead, but surveys from those battleground states where the presidency will be decided. In the last week, polls have put Trump in front in Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina and, most neuralgic of all, Florida.

So low are expectations for his performance on Monday – where it is assumed that his opponent, a seasoned debater, will wipe the floor with him – that if Trump manages to speak in vaguely coherent sentences and not deliver a misogynist insult to Clinton’s face, his advocates will declare that he looked “presidential” and anoint him the winner. If he can somehow persuade wavering voters that he is not so ridiculous as to merit automatic disqualification, he will have cleared a crucial hurdle.

And for all her experience, Clinton heads towards this first, and therefore most important, debate facing some serious obstacles. She’s been advised that she mustn’t interrupt too much or talk over Trump: apparently voters react badly to seeing a woman act that way.

More: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/23/president-trump-only-one-way-stop-it-happening-hillary-clinton

Japan: Queen guitarist condemns dolphin hunting

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http://www.thenational.scot/world/japan-queen-guitarist-condemns-dolphin-hunting.22762

BRIAN May has condemned Japan’s dolphin hunting, saying the slaughter of animals should end in the same way society has turned against slavery or witch-burning.

The Queen guitarist and animal rights campaigner said: “Every species, and every individual of every species, is worthy of respect.”

May, in Tokyo for Queen’s sell-out concerts at Budokan arena, added: “This is not about countries. It’s about a section of humanity that doesn’t yet understand that animals have feelings too.”

Protesting against the dolphin hunt in the small Japanese town of Taiji, documented in Oscar-winning film The Cove, has become a cause for celebrities including Sting and Daryl Hannah.

Taylor McKeown, a silver medalist swimmer in the Rio Olympics, who has long been fascinated with dolphins, is now in Taiji to monitor the hunts.

Ric O’Barry, the dolphin trainer for the Flipper TV series and who stars in The Cove, started the protests against the Taiji dolphin kill, which depicts a pod of dolphins being herded into an inlet and getting bludgeoned to death, turning the water red with blood.

The hunters in Taiji and their supporters defend the custom as tradition, although eating dolphin is extremely rare in Japan. The Tokyo government also defends whaling as research.

May, who founded the Save Me Trust in 2009 to lobby governments on wildlife policy, said he opposes cruelty against all animals, including foxhunting and bullfighting. Both are also defended as tradition, but that is just an excuse, he said.

“I know Japanese people, so many. They’re decent, they’re kind, they’re compassionate, but they don’t know this is going on,” he said of the dolphin killing. “These are mammals, highly intelligent, sensitive creatures, bringing up their children like we do, and they are being slaughtered and tortured.”

Climate Change’s ‘Blob’ Heats Up In Northeast Pacific

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robertscribbler's avatarrobertscribbler

They call it The Blob. No, it’s not some campy 1950s horror flick featuring a gelatinous monstrosity from space aimed at devouring all life in its path. This Blob is a pool of much hotter than normal water that has become increasingly entrenched in the North-East Pacific. A surface zone of record ocean warmth that has persisted and intensified in the same region for the better part of two years.

Though it’s not the sci-fi movie Blob, this particular climate change monstrosity could well be described as stranger than fiction. It’s an ocean feature of the Ridiculously Resilient Ridge which has warded storms off the North American West Coast over the past couple of years. A likely upshot of an ongoing Arctic heating — setting off weather conditions that sparked both this year’s massive Northwest Territory Wildfires and the worst drought the California region has seen in at least 1,000…

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La Nina Fizzles, Pacific Hot Blob Returns, Record Global Heat Likely to Remain

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robertscribbler's avatarrobertscribbler

A change of three degrees [Celsius] is an “extraordinary deviation — something you would expect to happen once in a millennium.” — Richard Dewey, www.SkepticalScience.com, on ocean warming in the northeastern Pacific

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Four degrees Celsius. That’s the current deviation from the 1981 to 2010 average for sea-surface temperatures over a broad region of the northeastern Pacific, a deviation you typically wouldn’t see once in a thousand years.

During 2013 to 2015 a similar warm-up over this same region of water occurred. Such extreme heat at the ocean surface generated mass loss of sea life. Numerous species from plankton to krill to copepods to starfish and many more on up the food chain were impacted. This great ocean warming also sparked losses of ocean oxygen off Oregon and Washington, pushing waters there into low-oxygen and anoxic states. These states, though they do not support advanced ocean life, tend to…

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Oil executive on Trump’s short list for Interior Secretary

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http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/forrest-lucas-trump-interior-secretary-228364
By HELENA BOTTEMILLER EVICH and ANDREW RESTUCCIA 09/19/16
An oil industry executive who has spoken out against animal rights is a leading contender for Interior secretary should Donald Trump win the White House, two sources familiar with the campaign’s deliberations told POLITICO on Monday — a prospect that drew immediate condemnation from environmental activists.
Forrest Lucas, the 74-year-old co-founder of oil products company Lucas Oil, is well-known in his native Indiana, where in 2006 he won the naming rights to Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Indianapolis Colts football team, for a reported $121.5 million over 20 years. He and his wife have given a combined $50,000 to the gubernatorial campaigns of Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, according to Indiana state records.
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Lucas’ company, California-based Lucas Oil, is a fast-growing manufacturer of automotive oils, lubricants and other additives used in everything from cars to heavy-duty trucks.
One person briefed by the Trump campaign said Lucas is a “front-runner” for the Interior secretary job. The person, who was granted anonymity to talk about private discussions, added that Trump wants a “more business-friendly and business experience-heavy cabinet.”
But environmentalists quickly excoriated the idea of an oil industry executive leading the department that oversees national parks and wildlife refuges, along with decisions about offshore drilling, fracking regulations and protections for endangered species.

“Putting an oil executive in charge of our public lands and precious coasts in places like North Carolina, Virginia and Florida is a virtual guarantee that Trump’s promise to throw open season on drilling in our special places will come true if he’s elected,” said Khalid Pitts, the Sierra Club’s national political director.
David Turnbull, the campaigns director at anti-fossil-fuels group Oil Change USA, worried that Trump’s Cabinet could be full of people with ties to the oil industry. They include Harold Hamm, the CEO of Oklahoma oil company Continental Resources, who has emerged as a possible pick for Trump’s energy secretary.
“Catering to an industry dead-set on continued expansion of oil and gas drilling is not only totally out of step with climate science, but it’s also out of step with the majority of Americans who are calling for a swift transition to clean energy and robust action on climate change,” Turnbull said in an email.
It would be nearly unprecedented for major oil executive to get the top job in the Interior Department. Current Secretary Sally Jewell was an engineer for Mobil Oil early in her career and often touts her experience fracking wells, although she is best known as a conservationist and former outdoor retail executive.
Lucas’ nomination would be a coup for the oil and gas industry, which has battled President Barack Obama’s Interior Department for years over everything from Endangered Species Act listings to access to federal lands for drilling. Trump has cultivated close ties to the oil industry, which was once skeptical of his campaign for president.
“In a lot of ways, having an oil and gas friendly person in the Interior Department is more important to the oil and gas industry than having someone friendly at the Energy Department,” one industry official said.

Nominating Lucas would also break with the long-standing tradition of Interior secretaries coming from Western states.
It would also likely draw rebukes from animal rights groups. Lucas, who owns a ranch and serves on Trump’s agriculture advisory committee, is one of the biggest donors to groups that attack the Humane Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and defend animal agriculture, hunting, meat consumption, rodeos and circuses.
Another source with knowledge of the transition operation said Lucas was on a short list of about five names that are under consideration for the post, which has started to attract considerable interest from prominent “anti-conservation zealots.” Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter, has also publicly expressed interest in the job.
Earlier this year, Lucas financed and produced a feature film called “The Dog Lover,” which portrays dog breeders and puppy mills as being unfairly targeted by animal rights groups. The movie was backed by Protect the Harvest, a nonprofit founded and chaired by Lucas, that says it’s “Keeping America Free, Fed & Fun!” In 2014, Lucas gave $250,000 to the Protect the Harvest PAC, records show.
Roger Ebert’s website called the movie “shamelessly manipulative” and “a pretty bald piece of anti-[Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals] and/or PETA propaganda,” noting that the movie ends with a call to moviegoers to look into animal welfare groups before donating to them.
Animal rights supporters were quick to point out Monday that Lucas had put up hundreds of thousands of dollars into fighting an “anti-puppy mill” ballot measure in Missouri that was approved by voters in 2010.

“Forrest Lucas is a peevish advocate of trophy hunting, puppy mills and big agribusiness, and has never met a case of animal exploitation he wouldn’t defend,” said Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, which backed the measure in Missouri.
Lucas’ wife, Charlotte, who co-founded Lucas Oil, came under fire in 2014 for a Facebook post that criticized Muslims and atheists. “I’m sick and tired of minorities running our country!” she wrote, according to news reports at the time.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/09/forrest-lucas-trump-interior-secretary-228364#ixzz4L6NViTXm
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Human Extinction By 2030 ? -The Crisis of Civilization!

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Kevin Hester's avatarKevin Hester

Climate scientists have been warning us of the tipping point issue and that we can’t see them coming but we do see them in the rear view mirror.
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Remembering that there is a 10 to 20 year lag in the cause and effect between when we emit carbon and when we see the effects.

This blogger believes we have crossed sufficient tipping points for us to now be in Runaway Global Warming.

The Collapse of Industrial civilisation is imminent:  “China manufactured more cement from 2010-13 than the US had produced over the entire 20th century. It could not last and so it is proving.”  All this is allowed by the owners and controllers of capital without any consideration being given to the collapse of our biosphere, which is progressing contemporaneously.
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Excellent Guardian article here: The World Economic Order is Collapsing and This Time There…

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Mass Extinction: It’s the End of the World as We Know It

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Dahr Jamail | Mass Extinction: It’s the End of the World as We Know It Monday, 06 July 2015 00:00
Written by
Dahr Jamail By Dahr Jamail, Truthout | Interview 

Mass Exctinction(Image: Death valley, ghostly visage via Shutterstock; Edited: JR/TO)

Guy McPherson is a professor emeritus of evolutionary biology, natural resources and ecology at the University of Arizona, and has been a climate change expert for 30 years. He has also become a controversial figure, due to the fact that he does not shy away from talking about the possibility of near-term human extinction.

To see more stories like this, visit “Planet or Profit?”

While McPherson’s perspective might sound like the stuff of science fiction, there is historical precedent for his predictions. Fifty-five million years ago, a 5-degree Celsius rise in average global temperatures seems to have occurred in just 13 years, according to a study published in the October 2013 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A report in the August 2013 issue of Science revealed that in the near term, earth’s climate will change 10 times faster than during any other moment in the last 65 million years.

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Truthout caught up with McPherson in Washington State, where he was recently on a lecture tour, sharing his dire analysis of how far along we already are regarding ACD.

Dahr Jamail: How many positive feedback loops have you identified up until now, and what does this ever-increasing number of them indicate?

Guy McPherson: I can’t quite wrap my mind around the ever-increasing number of self-reinforcing feedback loops. A long time ago, when there were about 20 of them, I believed evidence would accumulate in support of existing loops, but we couldn’t possibly identify any more. Ditto for when we hit 30. And 40. There are more than 50 now, and the hits keep coming. And the evidence for existing feedback loops continues to grow.

In addition to these positive feedback loops “feeding” within themselves, they also interact among each other. Methane released from the Arctic Ocean is exacerbated and contributes to reduced albedo [reflectivity of solar radiation by the ice] as the Arctic ice declines. Tack on the methane released from permafrost and it’s obvious we’re facing a shaky future for humanity.

You talk often about how when major industrial economic systems collapse, this will actually cause a temperature spike. Please explain, in layperson’s terms, how this occurs.

Industrial activity continually adds reflective particles into earth’s atmosphere. Particularly well known are sulfates produced by burning coal (“clean coal” has a lower concentration of sulfates than “dirty coal”). These particles reflect incoming sunlight, thus artificially cooling the planet.

These reflective particles constantly fall out of the atmosphere, but industrial activity continuously adds them, too. When industrial activity ceases, all the particles will fall out within a few days. As a result, earth will lose its “umbrella” and rapid warming of the planet will ensue. According to a 2011 paper by James Hansen and colleagues, the warming will add 1.2 plus or minus 0.2 degrees Celsius. Subsequent research indicates the conservative nature of this paper, suggesting termination of industrial activity will add a minimum of 1.4 degrees Celsius to the global average temperature.

What indicators are you seeing that show the possibility of major economic collapses in the near future?

We cannot sustain the unsustainable forever, and this version of civilization is the least sustainable of them all. It teeters on the brink, and many conservative voices have predicted economic collapse this year or next. According to a June 2012 report by David Korowicz for the Feasta group, a disruption of supply will trigger collapse of the world’s industrial economy in as little as three weeks.

The supply disruptions to which Korowicz refers include water, food and oil. We can add financial credit to the list. In other words, credit could dry up as it nearly did in late 2008. Or the bond markets could trigger hyperinflation. California could have insufficient water to grow enough food to support much of the US, and not long from now. The list goes on.

Go into detail about what you’re seeing as far as indications of abrupt climate change.

When I’m in the midst of a speaking tour, as I am now, I deliver a presentation approximately every day. Lately, I include a [different] indication of abrupt climate change [in] each presentation. In other words, I’ve been coming across evidence every day.

Recent examples include the June 19, 2015, paper in Science Advances: We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction. According to the abstract, the “sixth mass extinction is already under way.” The lead author, in an interview, said, “life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on.”

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What are other factors you feel people should be aware of?

We’re in serious human-population overshoot. We’re driving to extinction at least 150 species each day. Nuclear power plants require grid-tied electricity, cooling water and people getting paychecks. Without all these, they melt down, thus immersing all life on earth in ionizing radiation.

There’s more. Much more. But all the evidence points toward our individual deaths and the extinction of our species in the near future.

But most importantly, we get to live now.

More: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/31661-mass-extinction-it-s-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it

also:

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-climate-geological-instant.html

Farmer charged with shooting grizzly sow with cubs

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A B.C. dairy farmer is charged with killing four grizzly bears after a sow with cubs was allegedly shot.
Now, Arlan Harry Baer is facing six charges under the Wildlife Act, including killing wildlife out of season, unlawful possession of dead wildlife, failure to report killing wildlife, failure to state location of wildlife killed, and resisting or obstructing an officer from exercising their duty.
Baer runs a family farm, with both Holstein dairy and beef cows, about 300 km east of Prince George. He’s also principal of the McBride Christian Day School, according to a B.C. government website.
Baer is scheduled to make his next court appearance in October.
Few details have been released about what happened.
But Smith, the conservation officer, said there are provisions in the Wildlife Act for ranchers and farmers to protect livestock. In this case, Smith said, crown counsel decided to approve charges against Baer.
4 dead bears could limit grizzly hunt
Smith said limited entry hunting for grizzly bears in the region may now be imposed.
“If four bears are taken, and you don’t know the sex, you have to default and assume they are all females,” said Smith.
B.C. grizzly bear expert Lana Ciarniello isn’t familiar with this case.
Still, she said the prospect of losing four female grizzly bears is serious.
‘We do not want to be losing …females’
“They are very, very slow reproducing, especially as you get into the interior of the province and off the salmon streams. We do not want to be losing or killing adult females,” said Ciarniello.
“Anytime we have a large number of females killed, we would absolutely need to  … reassess hunting quotas,” said Ciarniello, noting that would be a government call.
Ultimately, she believes the grizzly population in the Dunster region is fairly healthy. “I don’t think it’s going to have too much overall impact to the population.”
Ciarniello said conflicts with grizzly bears are “unfortunately common” in agricultural areas.
She said some bear advocates are working at mitigating conflict between farmers and bears.
Furthermore, she said preventative measures including moving calves closer to farm houses during calving, building barriers, securely storing grain, and keeping livestock from the edge of forests can help.