Friday, August 26, 2011

Boemreang

The Rat brings word: PEER sums up BOEMRE gate (Eli has not pride)

“By assigning clueless criminal investigators to paw through the scientific peer review process, the Inspector General is generating heat but shedding no light,” added Ruch, pointing out that after nearly a year-long probe the IG still refuses to specify just what it is investigating and why. “Unfortunately, this fishing expedition appears to be as expertly guided as the boat trip to Gilligan’s Island.”
It's clear that the IG, the Department of Interior and the Bureau of Ocean Energy, Management, Regulation and Enforcement something or other is having to walk this back, but they got hit by their own pie, and others in the IG Office are now auditing the auditors.
  • Fellow BOEM colleagues of Dr. Monnett have come forward to state that his handling of the Canadian study was completely proper and conducted under standard agency procedure;
  • As the IG begins to examine other research contracts, the hard drive of a key BOEM manager was found to have been wiped clean after the IG asked to examine his files; and
  • The IG inquiry into the peer review publication of a paper by Dr. Monnett and a colleague on sightings of drowned polar bears following a storm is drawing outrage from scientists in both the U.S. and abroad and undermining the Obama administration’s posture on climate change.

39 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dr. Jay Cadbury, phd.

Eli, let's leave out all of this political nonsense so I can ask you a simple question. This is a yes or no question, frequently called a "gotcha" question which I think is stupid. Anyway,

Are the polar bears an endangered species right now? Yes or no. I'm just asking your opinion, there will be no follow up post unless I get a smart alec answer from the likes of a one J. Bowers.

Marlowe Johnson said...

Professor Chocolat,


Allow me to answer your question with a question -- what is the air speed velocity of a laden swallow?

davey said...

Wow, the pressure's really on J. Bowers now.

Anonymous said...

It turns out that some of the Monnett investigation was secretly videotaped, and one of the tapes was just leaked by an anonymous source -- it can be viewed here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQAMvmi1Zwk

Anonymous said...

Dear Cadbury:

Your question ,to me ( a bear with a very small brain) presuposses that only the USA has either polar bears or laws. Thoughts like these are often the result of teabags between the ears.

Polar bears wander about Greenland, Norway, Russia, Canada and Alaska. International organization also get a kick at the can. Labels attached include: endangered, threatened, at risk, in trouble, special concern and vulnerable. I must have left some out but you get the idea; keep it up and no more bears.

Your question about endangered is answered by listing the cute little white guys as threatened under the endangered species act. Sounds like endangered may be right.

I hope Mr. Nut-clusters that you can cope with the information about other countries having things( like bears and laws). If you accept foreigners having rights the listing of polar bears across northern countries , while using different words, as in big trouble maybe endangered should come as no surprise.

J . Bowers;sarcasm please . I love it when you are a smartass.

John McManus

Anonymous said...

@John McSeamus

See, I'm trying desperately to separate this question from global warming politics and you're all screwing it up! You're all basically saying at a future point they will be endangered. I'm talking about right now, as of today. The Bowers watch continues.

@Eli

Will the good doctor be taken more seriously when Perry wins the election?

Anonymous said...

Obama has a position on Climate Change? What is it, promotion?

(Have you thanked your Pipeline Protester today?)

Jeffrey Davis

Horatio Algeranon said...

the agency was informed that its top officials, including Bromwich, are now under investigation by Interior’s Scientific Integrity Officer for breaking new departmental scientific integrity rules"

What a boemre.

As they say, "what goes aground comes aground."

Stearin' the Exxon Valdez ain't easy..and once you get er turnin one way, it's hard to turn er back t'other.

Anonymous said...

"What a boemre."

You might says it's a boemreang.

Jeffrey Davis

Anonymous said...

English Confectioner:

“Are the polar bears an endangered species right now?”

The most recent test of the issue, to my knowledge, was in the US District Court for the District of Columbia. In a summary judgment filed on June 30, 2011 the court upheld the listing of Polar Bears under the US Endangered Species Act as threatened, not endangered in the agency determination made in 2008.

My personal opinion is the bears will likely be down to a rump wild population numbering between a few hundred to possibly a couple of thousand animals, within 50 to 75 years, located in the northern Canadian Arctic Archipelago - northern Greenland portion of their current habitat.

Keep in mind what Yogi the Catcher said, though.

WhiteBeard

David B. Benson said...

There aren't any polar bears.

Those are brown bears wot fell in the bleach.

Anonymous said...

To see what can happen to polar bears check out Les Barker on you tube do you have any news from the iceburg.

Cadbury was a pacifist and a Quaker with a social conscience. His progressism made him a rich man.

Anonymous ( probably a candy bar) : there is a difference between extinct and endangered. Endangered animals in time become extint. Please adjust your time space continuum.

John McManus

J Bowers said...

Hmmmmmmmm...... do I spy a broken word in Anonymous disguise?

David B. Benson said...

I don't follow As the IG begins to examine other research contracts, the hard drive of a key BOEM manager was found to have been wiped clean after the IG asked to examine his files...

Did the IG types wipe his files?

Anonymous said...

I hope Eli changed the title after I posted my joke rather than it being a case of me just blanking on it. I was so proud of it, too.

Now, it just looks like More Senility on my part. And I don't need anymore.

Jeffrey Davis

Anonymous said...

And, after posting on the precise Polar Bear legal status, a story today.

http://www.adn.com/2011/08/26/2033396/alaska-joins-appeal-of-polar-bear.html

WhiteBeard

EliRabett said...

Well yes, Eli adopts all excellent suggestions.

As for the hard drive thing, to be charitable, just removing them without dismounting does tend to corrupt them on the occasion when you need them. Sometimes you can recover. . but sometimes not. It's a hard earned lesson that you should always back them up.

Anonymous said...

Oh , this will be fum.

The very BMM managers so anxious to sacrifice polar bears to oils spill corporations will be forced to testify. Wiggle room will be limited by their foolish persecution of Monnett, all on the public record.

" Did you investigate Dr. Monnettes paper, spreadsheets, co-workers, emails , notebooks etc? Yes.

At the end of the investigation was any action taken against Dr. Monnett? No.

Was he in fact reinstated after a paid holiday? Yes.

Were Dr. Monnett'sdata all accurate? Yes.

What was that noise? Did someone just choke on a chocolate bar?

John McManus

Anonymous said...

There is , of course , a newer study out about the mortality of cubs swimming long distances.

Shell may have been able to get away with killing polar bears if the BOMMistas had their way, but cubs are cute.

As a bonus, this study makes Monnett look like a visionary. And Al Gore may be fat but he is right.

John McManus

John McManus

Horatio Algeranon said...

makes Monnett look like a visionary

He was seeing double in his later years, but other than that, was his visionary status ever in question?

Martin Vermeer said...

Eli, corrupted is not "wiped"; the stuff is still mostly there on the drive, and can be recovered the hard way if you know how to. "Wiped" is forever, and can be done by reformatting.

I take it from the language used that the person whose hard drive it was, chose rather to destroy evidence than explain it. Big, big mistake.

EliRabett said...

Martin, Eli knows, but he just lost ~16 gig to the there is nothing here elves. Something is going on with the flash memories, they are much less reliable than they used to be.

David B. Benson said...

Now I'm more lost than eveer, if that is possible.

Who did what to whom?

John said...

Here's a helpful computer tip to avoid lost computer data.

(1) What to do if you use a Mac: buy an external hard drive, and use the TimeMachine function, which is built into the Mac OS. Then your data is automatically backed up. You don't have to think about it.

(2) What to do if you use a Windows machine: confess your sins, repent, switch to Mac. Then see point #1 above.

J Bowers said...

John -- "(2) What to do if you use a Windows machine: confess your sins, repent, switch to Mac. Then see point #1 above."

(2a) Or buy an external hard drive and use any one of a plethora of auto-backup software to keep your data safe, via ethernet or even USB. You can even use RAID drives on Windows these days. Honest ;)

David B. Benson said...

J Bowers --- Blue screen of death is a thing of the past?

Rattus Norvegicus said...

BSOD has been dead for about a decade, basically since XP came out, longer if you used NT. Crappy drivers will still crash the system, but they will on the Mac also :).

And the bastards what broke into my apt. stole the computer and the external drive, so no backups... Of course the cloud is impractical for backing up ~100Gb of photos music and docs. Time to rescan all those slides, if I can find a driver for my slide scanner...

David B. Benson said...

I feel as if I'm living in Kafka's worst nightmares...

Brian said...

" As the IG begins to examine other research contracts, the hard drive of a key BOEM manager was found to have been wiped clean after the IG asked to examine his files;"

I presume this refers to the IG followup investigation of its own actions.

joe said...

Today, $200 gets you a 2 TB external hard drive (store it somewhere other than beside your computer!) and rsync is your best reason to switch to linux.

J Bowers said...

@ David Benson. Never had BSOD on Win7 (been using it for over a year now on four workstations), and my workstations can be max'd out on all their 8 threads for days on end. Even my older Vista box rarely had BSOD.

David B. Benson said...

Brian --- But I still don't know prezactly who did what to whom.

Nebbermine, it just a nightmare. Maybe I'll wake up...

Brian said...

David - I dunno either, but here's a scenario: BOEM manager is a bad guy, in cahoots with bad guys in the IG office (or just manipulating gullible types) to persecute Monnet. Smoking gun was on computer. In walks someone new from the IG office, not part of the fraternity, and asks for the hard drive. Manager panics.

Option B: porn downloads.

Anonymous said...

Brian’s last meets the razor test. PEER filed a complaint, which I understood should force an investigation of the investigation, on Monnett’s behalf and a FOI request for the investigation paper work more than 3 weeks ago. The details on the procurement of the bear recruitment study with Derocher - the stated reason for BOEMRE issuing the suspension - were posted anonymously here in another thread (in an apparent and AFAIK exclusive scoop) that seemed creditable to me. Eli posts from the PEER press release, and they haven’t seemed to be wrong, so far.

The BOEMRE press release when the agency called Monnett back in, as Eli notes, has a strong taint of exposed nether region, and, despite the huff and puff in the release, if any substance to the whole deal existed, would Monnett be back?

What I’m a wondering - will Monnett want to keep rooting. He wanted reinstatement and an apology when this first hit. Perhaps that’s just “language” but there’s a cost to keep an investigation going that close to himself.

WhiteBeard

David B. Benson said...

Still stuck in Kafka's nightmares...

Marion Delgado said...

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/may/15/local/me-polar15 .

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080514175045.htm

Also: never reply to the Mabus-like trolls. This includes "Cadbury"/ "Shooshmon"

Even the other orcs in Mordor shun them - you should, too.

J Bowers said...

Brian -- "Option B: porn downloads. "

Not so implausible, MMS now being known as BOEMRE, of course.

Holly Stick said...

There's got to be a joke in there somewhere about 3 or 4 polar bears being mistaken for Six White BOEMRES, snow white BOEMRES, racing Santa Claus 'neath the blazing sun.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FdVXca9hys

Paul said...

Brian’s last meets the razor test. PEER filed a complaint, which I understood should force an investigation of the investigation, on Monnett’s behalf and a FOI request for the investigation paper work more than 3 weeks ago. The details on the procurement of the bear recruitment study with Derocher - the stated reason for BOEMRE issuing the suspension - were posted anonymously here in another thread (in an apparent and AFAIK exclusive scoop) that seemed creditable to me. Eli posts from the PEER press release, and they haven’t seemed to be wrong, so far. The BOEMRE press release when the agency called Monnett back in, as Eli notes, has a strong taint of exposed nether region, and, despite the huff and puff in the release, if any substance to the whole deal existed, would Monnett be back? What I’m a wondering - will Monnett want to keep rooting. He wanted reinstatement and an apology when this first hit. Perhaps that’s just “language” but there’s a cost to keep an investigation going that close to himself. WhiteBeard