A reader (Russ G.) sent me some of his own research he dug up after watching some of the news media frenzy and built-in schadenfreude amongst liberal-leftists that took place (still happening, actually—this could take a week or three) over the flock of ducks that died in the Alberta oil sands pond this week as the PTBC abortion counter slipped past 33,000 for the year but still isn’t even remotely on the radar of liberals or their media.
The liberal media goes totally ape-poo whenever an Alberta duck died due to corporate slip-up story like this crops up. They love ‘em. The stories are like serendipitous little launching pads that pop up from which to impulsively launch their usual knee-jerk weapons of mass distortion, perspective bashing, and manifestly, their anti-corporate messaging (all gift-wrapped in their “man-made global warming” mantra).
Hey Joel,
Found this interesting—my brother an avid hunter and Ducks Unlimited member, mentioned the fuss about the 500 ducks caught in an oil sands tailing pond. I took his advice and googled “ducks, oil sands” and had numerous hits- the first search page containing all major news agencies in Canada. He told me to try “ducks, botulism, Alberta” (since we’re talking the same province) and here’s what I found:
National Wildlife Health Center
…advancing wildlife and ecosystem health for a better tomorrowQuarterly Mortality Reports
The following highlights wildlife mortality reported to the National Wildlife Health Center (NWHC) from July to September 1995. Seventy two epizootics were reported this quarter; botulism accounted for 63% with losses of more than 249,000 birds.
The Canadian Province of Alberta’s Natural Resource Service reported that an estimated 200,000 ducks, shorebirds, raptors, herons and gulls, died from botulism type C on Pakowki Lake (native for “bad water”) in southeast Alberta. Botulism caused the death of 31,000 waterfowl on this shallow lake in 1994. This is the largest reported loss of waterfowl in Alberta. It is speculated that blue-green algae poisoning may have been a contributing factor. Despite regular carcass pickup, mortality remained very high (5,000 birds/day) throughout August. A task force is being set up to examine options for management to attempt to deter such losses in future years. …
Of course I know it isn’t as sensational, and harder for a bunch of environmental protesters to fly in and protest at the office of CEO Bot U. Lism!
The thing is the 1st search page that comes up when you “google” this, is how few news outlets carried this story.
Even if they didn’t carry the story back then, it’s hard to believe that just for a sense of perspective in reporting the current Alberta oil sands pond story, the media chose to totally ignore that far bigger—and totally natural (darn the luck)—story (and many others like it) this week. They choose instead to be as alarmist as possible, secure Greenpeace activists disguised as unremarkable, common “experts” to offer their utterly predictable perspective; and generally casting Alberta and its energy research and development projects in the most dour light possible.
A small Calgary Herald news item in 2007 reported the same thing occurring last year on a smaller scale.
… “It’s (avian botulism) been occurring forever. Some years it crops up, some years it does not,” said Brunen.
During bad years, hundreds of thousands of birds succumb to the toxin, said Brunen. …
Perspective is everything. Which is why the anti-corporate liberal-left media finds it so pernicious.
(…And then after work the reporters all blithely fill up their car or SUV gas tank on the drive home from, say, CBC HQ… and my abortion counter now reads 33,556…)
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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