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Why is a scientist at an offshore oil agency under investigation?A respected government scientist was barred from his job and banned from talking to his his co-workers earlier this month and the question no one seems to be able -- or willing -- to answer is why. And perhaps more importantly: why now? Charles Monnett, an Alaskan who has been a key participant in many studies on Arctic wildlife and ecology for the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement since 1999, returned from vacation on July 18 to find he had been suspended pending an investigation by the Interior Department's inspector general. He was banned from his Anchorage office, told he couldn’t go in any Interior Department office and that he couldn’t talk to his colleagues or any of myriad contractors who were working for him. Friends say he'd had no warning of the action although he'd been interviewed by inspector general investigators in February and questioned about an "observational note" that had been published in 2006 -- five years earlier. That note -- his supporters say it's important to make clear it was just a record of his observations and not a formal scientific study -- related how Monnett and fellow scientist, Jeffrey Gleason, had seen four dead polar bears floating in the Beaufort Sea following a major storm. The scientists, who were part of an aerial survey of bowhead whales at the time, hypothesized the bears had drowned due to diminishing sea ice forcing them to swim much longer distance than they were used to. That turned out to be a tough task in stormy weather, they said. That note, or article, co-authored by both scientists and published two years later in a little-known scientific journal, was picked up by the Wall Street Journal and quickly became the public's touch point for climate change and the devastating effects it was having in the Arctic. "The reason the note received so much attention is that it made climate change in the Arctic understandable to the average layman and, in doing so, made the polar bear an icon of the climate change debate," wrote Jeff Ruch, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, in a complaint filed Thursday with Interior Department on Monnett's behalf. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, is a nonprofit group that protects government employees who work in environmental agencies. In an interview Thursday, Ruch said the inspector general's office told Monnett and PEER lawyers who accompanied him to an interview earlier this year that a complaint had been filed in 2010, but they won't say who filed it. "We're wondering what happened in the middle of July that caused his agency to cite this ongoing investigation and only Dr. Monnett and not Dr. Gleason," Ruch said. John Callahan, a spokesman for BOEMRE in Alaska, said his agency won’t discuss the matter. "It's an ongoing investigation and we just can't talk about it," he said Thursday. Are actions against Monnett politically motivated?Ruch and others say Interior's actions against Monnett, coming as Shell Oil and other companies are trying to get permits from BOEMRE to drill in the Arctic next summer, are politically motivated. They say not only does the harsh treatment undermine Monnett's work but sends a message to other scientists that it could happen to them too if they question whether industry should be allowed to work offshore. "The question is why are they going after him in the first place," said longtime Alaska marine biologist Rick Steiner who counts himself as a friend of Monnett's. "But why now? Nobody knows." According to a narrative set out in the PEER complaint, Monnett and Gleason were called on the carpet for the observational note soon after it drew international attention through the Journal and other media accounts. But the article had been carefully reviewed by BOEMRE (then called the Minerals Management Service) and was approved by the Alaska regional director before it was submitted for publication, the complaint said. Gleason soon left the agency and took a lower-grade position with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He is not being investigated or questioned, Ruch said. Hello? The entire federal government is a corporation headquartered in the District of Columbia (since 1982 renamed the state of New Columbia) so yes, the corporations definitely have their irons in this fire no matter how you look at it. The point here is that this man falsified findings that the EPA and other government agencies relied upon. Period. Just like at Hadley CRU, we have our very own case of a "scientist" providing false information that has led to false assumptions about the polar bear population and equally wrong-headed public policy decisions made because of that false information. And it was purposefully false information. I think this guy should (1) lose his job, (2) be indicted to fraud, and (3) be fined and forced to spend a couple years in jail. If it costs us a few bucks to prosecute this maniac, so be it. If it costs us some research money to find out what is really happening with the polar bears, so be that, too. In any event, we should not base public policy on false statements and we should not encourage or allow "scientists" to breach the public trust like this without personal risk. PEER seems to be very “selective” in their defense of Monett. They cite transcripts of an Interview that he had with Two Criminal Investigators from the Department Of Interior’s Inspector General’s Office but are careful to only discuss Select pages. They discuss PARTS of twelve pages from a transcript that according to the page numbers that they provide is at least ninety-five pages long. That’s a total of eighty three pages of interview that they neglect to address, amounting to an awful lot of missing information, enough to cause the information they do discuss to be disjointed and have no context or setting. So what is on those eighty-three pages that PEER would rather not have us see? Here is the link to the portions of the transcript provided by PEER: Sounds suspiciously like the attack dogs who went after the female Department of Agriculture worker, ACORN, or any other employee who dares to dissent from the approved dogma, scientific legitimacy notwithstanding. Another example of the collusion between government regulatory agencies to do the bidding and further the interests of the very operations they are supposed to be regulating. The Minerals Management Agency was revealed to be completely controlled by Corporate agents operating within the agency in Denver a few years ago. The government regulatory agencies for all businesses have been infiltrated through Republican/Democrat political appointments for the last 40 years. These appointed agents move back and forth from business to government while carrying out the wishes of the self-same businesses. The usual method is to bring the hammer down on one individual to create fear within the government workplace in all employees who fail to blindly follow the dictated dogma despite all intelligence and scientific revelations to the contrary. The Obama administration continues its fealty to all CONservative, Republican policies by bowing to the demands of the Oil Monopoly at every turn. Criminal corruption creating the method for maximizing profits over any environmental concerns to ensure adding to the overflowing accounts of the most criminally corrupt industry in the history of the world. Sounds to me like all you guys work for the oil industry. Where in the transcript you quote is there apparent lying, Alec? Hearing transcript shows Polar Bear scientist lying to investigators... ERIC MAY: Um, and I‟ll, I‟ll quote to make this – you indicate that “No polar” – and I‟ll quote, “No polar bear carcasses, carcasses were observed, and no dead and floating polar bears were observed during aerial surveys conducted in September 1987 through 2003.” CHARLES MONNETT: That‟s what the database told us, yeah. ERIC MAY: Okay. What database are you talking about? CHARLES MONNETT: Well, the BWASP database. CHARLES MONNETT: The, the big one that, that, um, did not have a way to record the dead ones in it, but we checked with, um, (inaudible/mixed voices). ERIC MAY: Okay, because in, in, uh, referencing the BWASP studies – ERIC MAY: – in the studies that we reviewed, I‟ll quote, um, “1987 to 2003, BWASP aerial survey reports state, „Sightings of dead marine mammals were not included in summary analysis or maps.‟” CHARLES MONNETT: Yeah. ERIC MAY: So how could you make the statement that no dead polar bears were observed during 1987 to 2- – CHARLES MONNETT: Because we talked to the people that had flown the flights, and they would remember whether they had seen any dead polar bears. ERIC MAY: So you talked to each individual from ‟87 to – CHARLES MONNETT: No, no, we talked to the team leaders.... Read more: http://nation.foxnews.com/global-warming/2011/07/29/global-warming-industry-rocked-polar-bear-fraud#ixzz1TVWFbljb Scientists are people. Just because someone is a scientist doesn't mean they are incapable of knowingly doing the wrong thing or letting passion or economics influence actions. Moreover, there is this crazy notion by the likes of Al Gore that once some scientists have put forth studies supporting your position, then the science is settled. (Note: recently Mr. Gore did admit what everyone knew all along, which was his advocacy of ethanol was a sham: http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/gore-annoys-corn-ethanol-lobby/ ) One inconconvient truth is that clever lawyers working for environmental organizations have succeeded in exporting environmental impacts to countries that have lesser standards than ours. Must be missing something but I am unclear how that helps the polar bears or the planet. Does anyone really think if Shell ever does drill in the Chukchi that the approved permit will result in a material difference to polar bears or the planet relative to the permits that were previously deemed inadequate? Dollars to donuts this is not about an observational note, but about a scientist cooking the books. Perhaps the truth is that Dr. Monnet has given the Inspector General’s office reason to believe that he may be guilty of a significant ethics violation. Now that would be an inconvenient truth. On the other hand, perhaps the Obama administration is under such pressure to actually do something about the countries energy problems that in response it has started to eat its young. Now that’s even more inconvenient. |
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