Charles Monnett is thought of as a scientist by the federal government and even other scientists. Unfortunately for Chuck when people think of you as a scientist they also expect you to act like one. It appears Chuck may have liked people referring to him as a scientist so much that he forgot the part about actually using scientific methods to do research. I’m sure some people think it’s a minor point but there are those in the scientific community who get a little testy when scientists write papers based on their imagination rather than a study they conducted using scientific methods. Charles Monnett is now in a little hot water with the federal government for writing a paper using too much imagination and not enough science.
It all started in 2004. Chuck and a fellow scientist Jeffrey Gleason were conducting an aerial survey of bowhead whales.
It was then that Chuck and his fellow scientist observed four polar bears floating in the water after a storm. In an article that Chuck published in 2006 he and fellow scientist reported that to the best of their knowledge this was the first observations of bears floating dead and they presumed they had drowned by swimming long distances. Then the article goes on to suggest the bears drowned in rough seas and high winds. It also suggested that the drowning of the polar bears may increase in the future if the trends of a decrease in pack ice and open water periods continue. Huh?
Maybe it’s me but I don’t think flying around looking for whales and seeing four dead polar bears floating in the water means we’re all going to die from global warming. Was Al Gore on this 2004 flight with Chuck? (WARNING: The following is sarcasm and not intended to be used for any scientific purpose.)
Since the only thing Chuck and his friend did was see four polar bears floating in the water I would suggest they probably didn’t know what they saw. Maybe the bears were playing around to see who could hold their breath the longest under water. The bears may have died because they had eaten a seal that was a smoker. How do we know they weren’t part of a polar bear suicide cult and believed they had to kill themselves in order to join the mother ice pack orbiting the planet? Maybe after Chuck and his friend left the polar bears jumped up out of the water, gave each other claw bump and said “Those scientists probably thought we were dead. They’re so fun to mess with.”
Now when Chuck wrote his paper in 2006 about the four dead polar bears and their connection to climate change it was actually peer reviewed. What this means is that other scientists read Chuck’s work and saw nothing wrong with four polar bears floating in the water making the case for global warming. Where do they get these guys, Obtuse University?
It gets even better. This peer reviewed scientific article was used by people who don’t like the oil companies. These are people who use products made from oil on a daily basis but need to hate something and the oil companies are an easy target. Armed with Chuck’s article they were able to convince the Senate committee on Environmental and Public Works to declare the polar bear as an endangered species. This meant the oil companies now had about 145,000 new regulations to follow in order to explore Alaska for oil and natural gas. Stuff like this leads to less drilling, less oil production and oil companies donating less to political campaigns.
Now Chuck is the focus of a federal investigation for “scientific misconduct” and has been suspended from his job at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy.
If Chuck is being investigated why aren’t the people who reviewed his work also being investigated? Why aren’t the people on the Senate committee who used his article being investigated? The federal government is using criminal investigators to do the investigation. (I’ll admit the following is more sarcasm so no need for the federal government to investigate this.)That makes sense because they need to find out how those four polar bears died. I wonder if CSI will make a trip to Alaska to investigate the crime scene. Maybe they could interview a few bowhead whales who were in the area at the time of the polar bears deaths.
I’m sure this all got started when some big wig Washington DC oil company lobbyist screamed at some elected official that they couldn’t drill in Alaska because two guys saw four polar bears floating in the water. He probably let the elected official know how stupid it appeared and if he wanted any chance to get election money he better see how stupid it is. The elected official probably then called the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy and said because of a stupid paper one of their scientists wrote he may not be able to get enough money for reelection and somebody there is responsible. The top guy at the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy probably felt Chuck wasn’t wealthy and had no strong political connection so he would be perfect to investigate for scientific misconduct. It’s probably a typical Washington DC play where nobody involved is responsible for anything except the guy whose work they failed to actually read and understand. It’s a shame that today the only way to survive as a scientist is if you have a complete and total understanding of political science.
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