Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Partying like it's 2005

The Houston Audubon Society website currently contains some remarkable Ivory-bill "information".

Check it out here, here, here (1.5 MB PDF) and here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fitzpatrick showed us the famous David Luneau video and analyzed it, answering the criticism of those who don't believe it shows an Ivory-bill.

He's going down swinging.

Anonymous said...

The PDF at the third link is especially depressing. Continous parallels between the Bald Eagle and IBWO, and how the latter can come back in the same way as the former. Ignores the reasons for both the decrease and increase in eagles. Even mentions the Whooping Crane revival as a reason for hope for IBWO.

It ends with "Dare we document the truth?" which if you are a True Believer means documenting what you believe and not documenting reality. How long can the IBWO fiasco keep providing evidence of human irrationality? Can't they just accept that no good evidence currently exists. It is always important for people to have dreams and hopes but it is just as important for people to be able to separate both of those from what they know to be true.

Anonymous said...

Is it just coincidence that Houston was home to Enron?

Anonymous said...

From the first linked article:

"Fitzpatrick showed us the famous David Luneau video and analyzed it, answering the criticism of those who don't believe it shows an Ivory-bill. First he showed it at real-time speed: a flash of white in the distance between trees, out of focus and over the oar and knee of the man sitting in the front of the canoe. Then he slowed it down by half, then 1/4th. There was no doubt in my mind and I think the audience's also, that it was an Ivory-bill: the white wing patches in the right places, the white on the back of the neck, etc. The white on the dorsal surface of the wing was extensive, not little as on the Pileated. Also the wingbeats were fast, its rate was much faster than the Pileated's. He showed Pileated footage to establish the contrast. Then he played us the recordings of sounds in the Big Woods; the double knocks were quite evocative. Eighty percent of the Big Woods remains to be searched; the Lab is concentrating now on finding all tree holes big enough to be Ivory-bill roost holes, and has mounted 40 cameras near them."

Anonymous said...

I believe that intelligent design may be at work here. Obviously, IBWOs have become too complex to have evolved through natural processes. They can't be documented but we should just go ahead and assume that they exist..... Makes sense.