I'm a climate scientist

Thanks to Mark W for the link!

Canada failing badly at animal protection

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

-Mahatma Gandhi

I received this action alert from the WSPA today, regarding Canada's failure in making and upholding animal cruelty laws. This is not just about livestock. This is about puppy mills, dog fights, your angry neighbour beating his "pets" and the guy who "doesn't know he has to provide water to his horse". Less that 0.25% of people tried for animal cruelty are convicted; if a law is even in place to try them at all.

I have almost always been proud of the country that welcomed my Italian grandparents and East European father, treated them as equal citizens and allowed them to prosper. I loved that I grew up pretty much colourblind and with a strong sense of equality and human rights. I was always encouraged to speak up when I disagreed with the system and never feared that my voice would be silenced. These are the values that Canadian society instilled in me.

More and more though, Canada is garnering a poor international reputation for its wildlife and environmental policies (I am thinking the seal hunt and our attitude at the recent climate meetings off the top of my head). Since I live in Europe at the moment, i get to know pretty quickly how the world feels about my homeland, and I find myself defending, or feeling ashamed of, Canada more and more. Canada is so good at so many things and is a model for how a society should work. But everytime we take a step backward, in this case with regards to blatant animal cruelty, it becomes harder to highlight all the progress our nation has made and to lead other nations by example in the hopes that fairness prevails across the globe. In this video, you will see that Canada is behind all EU countries (plus Switzerland and Sweden) and even the US when it comes to animal rights. You will even hear Europeans speaking about Canada's good reputation and that they are astounded that we are treating our animals worse than they do. We can't rest on the laurels of past greatness, if we don't step up, Canada's good reputation will be lost.

I also think that unless we get our own national legislation in order regarding treating animals as sentient beings and not property, it will be difficult to convince other nations to take the first steps to do the same. This relates to the wild animal pet trade, the bushmeat crisis and other conservation issues.

One thing I have been thinking a lot about is banning pet stores from selling dogs and cats, yesterday it was revealed that San Francisco is putting forth legislation to do just that (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jul/10/san-francisco-hits-nerve-with-pet-sale-ban-idea/). In Germany, it is already illegal to sell cats and dogs in stores, as a consequence there are no puppy mills and their animal shelters are by and far, no kill. Banning the sale of animals in pet stores would not destroy pet stores either. more than 70% of North American homes have a dog or a cat and these people spend more and more on perchadise and pet care every year. A slight switch from pet sales to pet merch sales would not be a big deal for pet stores. Tax payers would also save money since less animals would need to be euthanized, spayed, neutered and housed at pounds too.

You don't have to be an animal lover to see how he way Canada is treating it's animals is wrong. Please watch the video and if you agree that animals should not be treated this way, go to the WSPA website that will generate a letter (which you can personalize) to contact the MP for your riding. Thank You-MA

From the WSPA:

On Wednesday, Global TV aired an investigative documentary called "Revealed: No Country for Animals" which provides more evidence that Canada falls behind other countries in protecting animals from cruelty and abuse. The documentary was heart-wrenching for me to watch, but I believe it provides us with a great opportunity. If we can get politicians to watch it, they won't be able to turn a blind eye - they will have to do something about the many issues facing Canada's animals.

As someone who is passionate about animal welfare, I'm asking for your help. Contact your MP now: ask them to watch the documentary and encourage them to stand up against animal cruelty. Visit our website http://www.wspa.ca/curbthecruelty to take action now.

Update: meat eating gorillas???

The new paper "Vertebrate DNA in Fecal Samples from Bonobos and Gorillas: Evidence for Meat Consumption or Artefact?" by Hofreiter et al. (2010) started getting a lot of press today, see here, here and here (and a very nice addendum to this last post here)

First of all, its really interesting that the main point of the paper, which was to test whether or not prey DNA could be amplified from BONOBO feaces was possible, was omitted or barely reported on, in any of the media outlets.

Even more interesting is how eagerly journalists have been to jump on this new discovery even though the authors admit (in the title even!) that it may be an artefact. In fact, one blogger even goes on to attack Grit Schubert (who is an excellent scientist, woman and an author on the very paper that put the meat eating gorilla hypothesis forth) for suggesting that gorillas do not eat meat and accusing her of being a scientist all too ready to cover up "the facts". There is over 20 years of consistent, behavioural data from field researchers from multiple sites across the western gorilla range who have been painstakingly following gorillas EVERY DAY and have never observed them to consume meat. Relying on some inconclusive genetic results over mountains of behavioural data is not biased, it's rational.

I think Linda Vigilant puts it best in her PLosOne comment:
Did we learn anything from this study?

It is interesting that a study can be published in a peer-reviewed journal even though the title admits that the results may all be artefacts. It would not be hard to do a controlled study on this topic. There are groups of well-habituated chimpanzees where one could collect fecal samples after they have been observed to consume meat, and conversely there are well-studied wild gorillas that have never been observed to consume vertebrate prey. And to control for contamination of the fecal samples in the field, once could try amplifications from soil samples. Then it might be possible to actually say whether molecular analysis of primate diets using feces is useful or not, and perhaps even produce some believable results.

Full disclosure, Linda Vigilant and Grit Schubert are colleagues of mine at the MPI-EVA - MA

British scientists deny existence of Gspot - world pities British women...

from The Guardian.co.uk
French hit back after British attack on G-spot touches nerve
by Lizzy Davies
After scientists in London declared the G-spot may be a myth, gynaecologists gather in Paris to launch counterattack

There are a handful of subjects - among them cricket, the weather and the art of downing pints through a funnel - on which the French deign to allow the English a degree of authority. Sex, however, is not one of them.

Today, just three weeks after scientists at King's College London declared that the elusive G-spot may be a myth, a group of gynaecologists gathered in Paris to launch a counter-attack on what they called a "totalitarian" approach to female sexuality.

Denouncing the study carried out last year by British researchers as fundamentally flawed, the French scientists insisted the fabled erogenous zone did exist in many women – around 60% according to Sylvain Mimoun, the organiser of the conference.

But, they said, it had fallen victim to an Anglo-Saxon tendency to reduce the mysteries of sexuality to absolutes. This attempt to set clear parameters on something variable and ambiguous, they said, was characteristic of British scientific attitudes to sex.

"The King's College study ... shows a lack of respect for what women say," said Pierre Foldès, a leading French surgeon. "The conclusions were completely erroneous because they were based solely on genetic observations and it is clear that in female sexuality there is a variability ... It cannot be reduced to a 'yes' or 'no', or an 'on' or an 'off'."

The British study – the largest ever carried out on the body part that bears the initial of its discoverer, German gynaecologist Ernst Gräfenberg – involved 1,800 female twins being asked whether or not they thought they had a G-spot. Researchers concluded earlier this month that there was no proof to suggest it existed.

Odile Buisson, a gynaecologist, said the study was a demonstration of a cultural difference in attitudes to sex, with Gallic acceptance of ambiguity sitting uneasily beside an Anglo-Saxon need to explain everything. "I don't want to stigmatise at all but I think the Protestant, liberal, Anglo-Saxon character means you are very pragmatic. There has to be a cause for everything, a gene for everything," she said, adding: "I think it's totalitarian."

Foldès, who pioneered a globally renowned technique to restore the clitorises to women who have been circumcised, said the questions in the King's College study started from the false premise that all G-spots are alike. In fact, he says, the highly sensitive area bears little resemblance to the famed magic button guaranteed to generate immediate pleasure.

Moreover, said Mimoun, it will only be felt by a woman who knows it is there and takes steps to cultivate it. "In discovering the sensitive parts of her own body, this sensitive zone [the G-spot] will become more and more functional," he said "But if she has never touched it and no one else has ever touched it ... it won't exist for her as a consequence."

Thanks to Andrew F. for the link!
I think Wayne Marshall would have much to say about this outrage:

Dr. Brian Hare stands up against chimps in entertainment

Brian Hare and Alan Alda taping "the human spark"

From PBS.org
Hollywood Chimps - The Debate
By Maggie Villiger
Most of the scientists who work closely with chimpanzees in their research are also sensitive to the species’ endangered status. A number of factors contribute to chimps’ precarious position in their native Africa: habitat loss, the bushmeat trade, and the pet trade. And some chimp experts also have concerns about how media portrayals here could affect chimpanzee survival abroad. Read on to learn about The Human Spark’s interaction with evolutionary anthropologist Brian Hare and why he says it’s problematic to have chimps in the pet and entertainment industries.

Part of my job as Associate Producer for The Human Spark is getting each person who appears on camera to sign our release form, which gives us permission to use what we film with them. To be honest, it’s usually the easiest part of my job! But when we filmed with Duke University’s Brian Hare at the North Carolina Zoo, he resisted.

Brian wanted to wait to grant his permission to air the footage we shot with him until we could guarantee that we’d used no “Hollywood” chimpanzees in our show. He’d recently had a bad experience with another film crew that did include Hollywood chimps in their program about human cognition, and he was adamant that he wouldn’t sign until he could know for sure that The Human Spark had not done the same.

So our crew left North Carolina with footage of a fantastic exchange between Brian Hare and Alan Alda – but with the release form unsigned. At the time, it just seemed like a speed bump, not a brick wall. The Human Spark had no intention of turning to stunt trainers to get footage – our interest is in the behavioral studies that respected scientists do with chimps, not tricks they can be trained to perform. We continued on our travels around the world, filming as we went.

One of our most important scenes was the open of the second program, So Human, So Chimp. Each Human Spark episode begins with Alan Alda setting up the hour’s theme by speaking directly to camera. In this case, the theme is that chimps and human beings share a lot of characteristics, but are also 6 million years of evolution apart. After hearing about a docile, home-raised chimp from another one of our experts, Series Producer Graham Chedd had an idea; he decided the most effective way to get this theme across was to have Alan introduce it while sitting with a young chimp and a young child. Filming with Noah, this young pet chimp who was well-accustomed to being around people, seemed like the safest and most responsible way to create this kind of compelling scene.

Cut forward several months. We needed to get that appearance release signed by Brian once and for all in order to broadcast the footage of him. But through email exchanges, it quickly became apparent we hadn’t fully understood Brian’s objections. He was OK with the material we had shot at zoos, sanctuaries and research centers because they are regulated by tough animal welfare standards. But featuring ANY privately owned chimp in the program would be enough for him to refuse to participate. And so we came to an impasse.

Brian patiently explained his ethical objections to us. He believes that filming pet or entertainer chimps helps contribute to the illegal international trade in infant chimpanzees – a trade that is helping push this endangered species closer to extinction. Brian worried viewers would get the mistaken impression that chimps make good pets; in fact, once they mature into strong and unmanageable adult chimps, virtually all of these animals are given up by their owners. Brian says some are even killed. There’s simply not enough space or resources to rehabilitate the hundreds of pet chimpanzees that are kept across the United States. Brian is troubled by the overall effect on the chimp species in the wild as well as by the suffering endured by individual privately owned chimps. Others agree, and in fact, major scientific, welfare and health organizations have policies against using privately owned primates in films.

Brian’s arguments were thoughtful and reasonable to The Human Spark team though he did concede that there is little scientific evidence that links TV portrayals of animals to the illegal pet trade. His group is currently conducting research into just this question so in future the debate can be informed by empirical evidence in addition to compassion for our primate relatives.

On the other hand, Graham pointed out how important the opening scene was to the film. Alan’s narration clearly included the facts that the differences between the child and the chimp would increase as they each grow up, and that the native habitats of chimps and their continued survival in the wild is in jeopardy. Graham also explained that the shot that follows this introduction is of Hondo, a full-grown alpha male at the North Carolina Zoo, lunging at his glass enclosure and scaring Alan. Graham felt the contrast between the cute baby chimp reaching up to Alan and the aggressive adult chimp trying to hit him, would powerfully transmit the idea that keeping chimps as pets is a very bad idea. He also added a line of narration that explains how Hondo was captured illegally in Africa as an infant, and shipped to the United States as a pet before he was rescued and eventually brought to the zoo.

We needed to come up with a compromise. Since all of us involved in this debate are in possession of our own human sparks, we called upon our sociability and ability to work together to move toward a solution. First, Graham made sure that Alan’s narration clearly explains the threats to chimpanzee survival posed by the bushmeat business and the illegal international trade in baby chimps. Graham also took out a portion of the opening scene where the baby chimp climbed up unbidden to hug Alan – it was undeniably cute, but in light of the points Brian had raised, Graham agreed that it might give the wrong impression.

Then The Human Spark production team arranged for Brian to take part in an ethics panel at a major nature film festival. Panelists discussed the use and abuse of animals in documentary films, and Brian was able to educate a vast group of filmmakers about the dangers of filming with privately-owned chimps. He even had a pamphlet [.RTF] ready for festival participants. So, as a result of our experience on The Human Spark, filmmakers are now better informed about the controversy surrounding the use of Hollywood chimps, and more aware of the possibility of unintended consequences.

Finally, we all eagerly agreed to post an explanation of this issue on the Human Spark website. By exploring the controversy and explaining our case study, we hope to get our viewers thinking about the issues as well, something that wouldn’t have happened if we had simply cut the problematic scene and moved on.

Read an article Brian Hare wrote for The Human Spark about why chimpanzees are not pets.

Thanks to Steve R for the link

updated: In the comments section of this post on the PBS website the following great exchange occurred as well:

Carol -- January 20th, 2010 at 9:51 pm

“He (Brian) was OK with the material we had shot at zoos, sanctuaries and research centers because they are regulated by tough animal welfare standards.”

What silly nonsense. Not only is 2 year old Noah not a ‘pet’, but his owner is by law permitted by the USDA and must meet the same ‘tough animal welfare standards’ as all other permittees. She also did not ask for or receive any compensation for Noah’s participation in The Human Spark.

Brian Hare -- January 22nd, 2010 at 12:46 am

Dear Carol,

If the private owner of Noah had to follow the same standards followed by accredited zoos, labs and sanctuaries Noah would never have been in a room with a young child. The U.S. needs a federal law against private ownership of chimpanzees (and other primates). This will help protect the public and these endangered animals in their native habitat countries. Otherwise – if U.S. citizens can have pet chimpanzees…then why shouldn’t Africans be allowed to take wild chimpanzees as pets? There is thriving (illegal) international trade in primates. If we want chimpanzees and other endangered primates to make it into the next century we must do everything to discourage this trade. I hope Noah’s owner and Carol will join the International Primatological Society, the Humane Society, and the AZA in trying to end the primate pet trade in this country and in Africa. There is nothing silly about extinction.

Thanks to Carol R (a very different Carol ;)) for bringing it to my attention

The Climate Change "Controversy"

Article from RealClimate.org (the CRU hack)

As many of you will be aware, a large number of emails from the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently (Despite some confusion generated by Anthony Watts, this has absolutely nothing to do with the Hadley Centre which is a completely separate institution). As people are also no doubt aware the breaking into of computers and releasing private information is illegal, and regardless of how they were obtained, posting private correspondence without permission is unethical. We therefore aren’t going to post any of the emails here. We were made aware of the existence of this archive last Tuesday morning when the hackers attempted to upload it to RealClimate, and we notified CRU of their possible security breach later that day.
Nonetheless, these emails (a presumably careful selection of (possibly edited?) correspondence dating back to 1996 and as recently as Nov 12) are being widely circulated, and therefore require some comment. Some of them involve people here (and the archive includes the first RealClimate email we ever sent out to colleagues) and include discussions we’ve had with the CRU folk on topics related to the surface temperature record and some paleo-related issues, mainly to ensure that posting were accurate.

Since emails are normally intended to be private, people writing them are, shall we say, somewhat freer in expressing themselves than they would in a public statement. For instance, we are sure it comes as no shock to know that many scientists do not hold Steve McIntyre in high regard. Nor that a large group of them thought that the Soon and Baliunas (2003), Douglass et al (2008) or McClean et al (2009) papers were not very good (to say the least) and should not have been published. These sentiments have been made abundantly clear in the literature (though possibly less bluntly).
More interesting is what is not contained in the emails. There is no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research, no grand plan to ‘get rid of the MWP’, no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords. The truly paranoid will put this down to the hackers also being in on the plot though.
Instead, there is a peek into how scientists actually interact and the conflicts show that the community is a far cry from the monolith that is sometimes imagined. People working constructively to improve joint publications; scientists who are friendly and agree on many of the big picture issues, disagreeing at times about details and engaging in ‘robust’ discussions; Scientists expressing frustration at the misrepresentation of their work in politicized arenas and complaining when media reports get it wrong; Scientists resenting the time they have to take out of their research to deal with over-hyped nonsense. None of this should be shocking.
It’s obvious that the noise-generating components of the blogosphere will generate a lot of noise about this. but it’s important to remember that science doesn’t work because people are polite at all times. Gravity isn’t a useful theory because Newton was a nice person. QED isn’t powerful because Feynman was respectful of other people around him. Science works because different groups go about trying to find the best approximations of the truth, and are generally very competitive about that. That the same scientists can still all agree on the wording of an IPCC chapter for instance is thus even more remarkable.
No doubt, instances of cherry-picked and poorly-worded “gotcha” phrases will be pulled out of context. One example is worth mentioning quickly. Phil Jones in discussing the presentation of temperature reconstructions stated that “I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.” The paper in question is the Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1998) Nature paper on the original multiproxy temperature reconstruction, and the ‘trick’ is just to plot the instrumental records along with reconstruction so that the context of the recent warming is clear. Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”, rather than something that is “secret”, and so there is nothing problematic in this at all. As for the ‘decline’, it is well known that Keith Briffa’s maximum latewood tree ring density proxy diverges from the temperature records after 1960 (this is more commonly known as the “divergence problem”–see e.g. the recent discussion in this paper) and has been discussed in the literature since Briffa et al in Nature in 1998 (Nature, 391, 678-682). Those authors have always recommend not using the post 1960 part of their reconstruction, and so while ‘hiding’ is probably a poor choice of words (since it is ‘hidden’ in plain sight), not using the data in the plot is completely appropriate, as is further research to understand why this happens.
The timing of this particular episode is probably not coincidental. But if cherry-picked out-of-context phrases from stolen personal emails is the only response to the weight of the scientific evidence for the human influence on climate change, then there probably isn’t much to it.
There are of course lessons to be learned. Clearly no-one would have gone to this trouble if the academic object of study was the mating habits of European butterflies. That community’s internal discussions are probably safe from the public eye. But it is important to remember that emails do seem to exist forever, and that there is always a chance that they will be inadvertently released. Most people do not act as if this is true, but they probably should.
It is tempting to point fingers and declare that people should not have been so open with their thoughts, but who amongst us would really be happy to have all of their email made public?
Let he who is without PIN cast the the first stone.
Update: The official UEA statement is as follows:

“We are aware that information from a server used for research information
in one area of the university has been made available on public websites,”
the spokesman stated.
“Because of the volume of this information we cannot currently confirm
that all of this material is genuine.”
“This information has been obtained and published without our permission
and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from
operation.”
“We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and we have involved
the police in this enquiry.”

from CNN: chimps are not pets!

As a follow-up to my previous rant, I am posting this CNN "debate" on why chimpanzees (or any wild animals) should not be kept as pets. The piece also mentions that legislation against the primate pet trade is now being debated in the US government - good news!

Rant of the Week - captive chimpanzee attacks

Maybe you have heard about the chimp attack victim who is sitting down with Oprah this week to show her face and tell her story. Here is a link from ABC news on her story.

Eventhough I sympathize with the victim, the issue i find incredibly irritating about all this is that her mauling is not teaching anyone anything about how to prevent such things in the future. At the end of the ABC article, like any article about such attacks, are statements such as this:

• "Herold [the owner] said Travis [the chimpanzee] was acting strangely earlier in the day of the attack so she gave him the anti-anxiety drug Xanax, but later retracted that statement."

• "Police at the time of the attack speculated that a previous bout with Lyme disease may have accounted for the animal's reported mood swings."
  

But Travis' "moodiness" simply is not the issue.

First of all, chimpanzees are territorial animals that naturally undertake border patrols and inter-community attacks, where chimps from neighbouring groups are essentially torn apart, much in the same way that the victim in this chimp attack was.
Second, wild animals kept in captivity are like humans kept in workcamps or otherwise unjustly imprisoned; behavioural problems are bound to be observed in these indivduals (one could argue that this does not hold true in zoos with plenty of enrichment and socialization, but that is clearly not the case when owners are privately housing chimpanzees).

This is not in anyway to condone these attacks, this is to say, you can not take non-domesticated animals* and put them in your home and have any expectations other than that they will act according to their natural behavioural repertoire.

Keeping big cats, primates or other wild animal as pets or to use as entertainment is utterly pointless. The animals live sub standard lives (and often shot dead as with Travis) and people end up mauled.

*even if animals has been bred for a few generations in captivity, this is FAR from domesticated and although not wild-born, they are still wild animals.