Tuesday, September 12, 2006

More pullback?

I've noticed that there is now no prominent mention of the Ivory-bill on the World Wildlife Fund website.

In addition, the World Wildlife Fund no longer seems to be paying for a sponsored link on a Google search for "ivory-billed woodpecker".

At one time, if I remember correctly, a World Wildlife Fund ad appeared first in Google's list of sponsored links for "ivory-billed woodpecker".

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, WWF was among the first to fundraise on the back of this "rediscovery" and the last to stop fundraising. It is telling that they have finally stopped.

I never could figure out why WWF could ever claim donor monies for the IBWO. As I have said before on this blog, they are perhaps the most useless NGO out there. There signature species, the Panda, habitat is still disappearing!

Anonymous said...

There will soon be an announcement that an ornithologist has found Ivory-billed Woodpeckers in Florida. This will make three populations of this species that have been located by scientists working completely independently of each other at three widely separated sites (the others being the Big Woods in Arkansas and the Pearl River in Louisiana). There have been multiple sightings of this unmistakeable species at all three sites. After the Florida find is announced, it should become clear that these scientists are not incompetents or frauds.

Fishcrow seems to have jumped the gun on Cyberthrush and leaked the big news at Birdforum dot Net.

So now we are all going to Florida soon, folks. At least, metaphorically. Get your shorts on. It's still hot down there!

This story just gets better and better. Truely, a gift that just keeps giving.

Anonymous said...

Tom, do you expect this story to ever appear in the MSM again?

Do you think that NYT/Gorman will run the story?

What would the news "hook" be? The release of the report that your recent post lamented being late?

I'm grateful for your dogged blogging of the events, and also of your clear presentation of the evidence - but I'd be interested in your thoughts on the future of the story.

It has been a while since anything in the MSM on this - Is this in your opinion a story that news rooms see as no longer news worthy - buried and filed as a "sibley said, fitzcrow said" tale of scientifc dispute, or do yout think the media will embrace your assertion of "deliberate deception" or "road to fraud" ...

The carpinterio would be interested in your, or other skeptico's editorial on this question.

regards,

the carpinterio

Anonymous said...

Go re-read Gorman's pre sibley pub "debate" piece ... note how Gorman gets shreded by Fitzcrow ...

1. Fitz "agrees with skeptics that evidence is important"
2. Fitz believes that the video "CLEARLY" shows an IBWO.
3. Then Fitz pulls a rhetorical whammy on Gorman who scribes it all down nice nice ...

"if a FEW PEOPLE say it isn't definative then by definition it isn't definiative" ... Fitz turns Sibley into "a FEW PEOPLE" and walks away from all responsibility for his 7 fold bogus paper, by saying in effect there will always be doubters ... you can't hold me to the standard of pleasing every tom dick and sibley ... and Gorman just sort of lets him go because the details are "talmudic" ... Jesus James, the details aren't talmudic ...

from the march 16th NYT:


Dr. John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said that he could not agree more about the importance of scientific evidence ... and that he continued to believe the video clearly showed an ivory bill. He and his colleagues have a rebuttal to the critique in the same issue of Science. Although the critique is "carefully reasoned," it has "technical errors," he elaborated in an interview, adding, " "Their description of how a bird flies is incorrect."

"Really what they're doing is declaring that their view of the video is that it is not definitive," Dr. Fitzpatrick said. "And that's almost by definition true. If there are a few people who say I don't know if I can tell what that is, then it's not definitive."

Anonymous said...

Maybe an Anderson Cooper 360 "Keeping them honest" segment when he gets back from Afghanistan?

Anonymous said...

Maybe an Anderson Cooper 360 "Keeping them honest" segment when he gets back from Afghanistan?

LOL!

Even funnier would be that hack Stossel. If he smelled environmentalist blood, he probably could be encouraged to jump all over this.

Anonymous said...

Some of you seem to be taking pleasure in this debacle - its not funny, its pathetic, and its bad for conservation which means its bad for birds. Throwing Fishcrow to right-wing anti-environmentalists does no real good at all.

Anonymous said...

How did environmentalism become right or left wing?

This is ridiculous, we are all environmentalists; whether we be libertarian, republican, socialist or liberal.

Can we leave the partisanship out of it.

There are just as many left wing hacks on Public Radio and MSNBC.

Anonymous said...

Environmentalists became left-wing or at least anti-Republican no later than the Reagan administration and the notorious tenure of James G. Watt as secretary of the interior. Most birders and environmentalists remain partisan for good reason.

Anonymous said...

"Environmentalists became left-wing or at least anti-Republican no later than the Reagan administration and the notorious tenure of James G. Watt as secretary of the interior. Most birders and environmentalists remain partisan for good reason."

Yes, there is some truth to that. But overall, the environment is largely a non-partisan issue. Even the 1994 republicans who were swept into power were largely supportive of environmental issues. A truth that eludes many enviros to this day.

That's why enviro issues are relatively quiet in this Republican congress. And those opposed to the environment issues are both Democrat and Republican, but largely outnumbered.

Pray that it stays that way.