For many, "science" is only valued as a powerful word by which an agenda can be sold to the public.

Exactly!

No truer words. And it has been thus for over 40 years.

What are your sources on the Northern Spotted Owl population? The only estimate I can find for California is 1200 nesting pairs (several 2014 sources such as here http://naturalresourcesmgmt... ), and all sources agree the population continues to be in decline. A petition went out in December to relist it as threatened or endangered. FWS seems to think NSO are not harmed by logging burned areas, and others disagree, but no source says they thrive more on private land, what does that even mean?

He doesn't have a source. He's just lying to serve his agenda. Ironic, I know.

Why am I not more surprised ;-)

Even if the specific example of the Northern Spotted Owl were inaccurate here, the article's general point holds true.

it's not "inaccurate", it's completely fraudulent.

The other thing about the eggs is also totally distorted: decline in egg consumption hasn't affected small farmers as much as the development of huge factory farms has been putting them out of business. http://www.humanesociety.or... The decline has also completely reversed since around 1998 and egg consumption in US is at the highest point in years. http://www.unitedegg.org/Ge... The health food movement effect on the egg market has been great for small farmers producing organic and free-range eggs.

The "general point" of the article seems to be that climate science must be wrong because eating eggs isn't harmful? (A) Scientists never said you should stop eating eggs, only that you should eat them in moderation (especially if it involves bacon and or butter with their high levels of saturated fat) and that's still true. The people who panicked and stopped eating eggs forever were idiots. (B) What kind of logic is that? You're condemning all science on the basis of almost nothing. If science is totally unsettled how come your computer and your car and your cholesterol medication all work?

Talk about fraudulent, that is precisely what the whole anthropogenic global warming hysteria movement is. Even before we knew about the "fudged" computer models and all the deliberate and direct attempts to deceive people, the holes in this nutty hypothesis make swiss cheese look rock solid.

And as for owls, owls will make their home where ever they can. They've been spotted making nests in K-Mart signs, for pete's sake. Animals are very adaptable. And ultimately, will the planet plunge into a black hole if there are no more spotted owls? It's nice to preserve various species, but not at the expense of humanity. The ESA is yet another example of a reasonable goal taken to vastly extreme and insane lengths.

The point the author is making is that, like all the hype and hysteria surrounding eggs a number of years ago proved to be so much BS, so the same is true of anthropogenic global warming hysteria.

"Scientists" make a mockery of science when they go off the rails based on a sliver of subjective data, and especially so when they do so in pursuit of the Marxist agenda behind the AGP hoax.

Links to your other blog? If every "fact" in this post is false and you can't answer my questions about where you got the data, why should I bother to look at what you put there?

Of course you shouldn't look at any information that contradicts your fantasies. You won't look anything up for yourself (unless it harmonizes with your fantasy), and even when it's spoon-fed to you, you won't accept it either.

I learned a long, long time ago in dealing with Leftists that all a reasonable person can do is put the information out there. Reasonable people will consider it, dig deeper and inform themselves. Unreasonable people will reject any amount of facts, logic and reason. You can lead a horse to water, but it's up to the horse whether he's going to drink or not.

And yet you still haven't answered the simple question I started off with, where did you get your information on California spotted owls? Or any other specific issue I've raised.

I look at things that contradict my beliefs all the time, that's how I got here. I check out information for myself constantly, as you can see from my comments here, or from a post on my own blog analyzing the "unsettled science" nonsense as presented by Charles Krauthammer, from a year ago. You haven't given me any facts, logic, or reason yet.

I am not the author of the article. But I'd bet you could look it up...if you wanted to. But you don't want to. You don't want to learn anything. You want to cling to your Marxist agenda, and that is much easier if you remain deliberately ignorant.

Sadly, you're a typical liberal, unwilling to recognize any amount of facts, logic or reason, thus unworthy of wasting any more time on. A horse, dying of thirst on the shore of a vast fresh-water lake.

Sorry. As editor you should make some effort to determine whether the claims made by authors are true or not. In any case it's Rick Manning's obligation to document his claims, not mine. I worked pretty hard to find it, without success. That's how I found all the information discussed (and linked) above suggesting it must be false. Certainly not borne out by the numbers cited in Manning's 2013 article, which links to a report of owl sightings ON WELL-MANAGED PRIVATE FORESTS OBEYING FEDERAL REGULATION of 1,700 individual birds OVER A 23-YEAR PERIOD. Which is not even slightly related to the claims made in this article.

Unlike the Left, Mr. Manning has a great record of accuracy. When you find proof that his statements are false, let me know.

Meanwhile, I'm curious if you believe there will be some great cataclysm if the spotted owls were to die out. After all, scientists state that vast numbers of species have gone extinct in the past...and here we are, thriving.

I've given you my evidence above. In more detail, Manning says that there are 3,000 nesting pairs of spotted owls on private lands alone, but the only published estimate, after several pages of dense argumentation, concludes that in all of California and Mexico:

As of the Service’s 2006 finding, a total of 2,306 California spotted owl territories had been
documented, 1,865 (81 percent) of which were in the Sierras (Service 2006). Because, as
discussed above, approximately 53–77 percent of potential territories are actually occupied at
any point in time, an approximate population estimate for the subspecies is 1,222 to 1,776 pairs
or resident individuals as of several years ago. However, populations have declined further since
then (generally 10–15 percent), as discussed above and below. Therefore, the current population
is likely to be 10–15 percent lower than the 1,222 to 1,776 pairs or resident individuals noted
above.

One of these estimates is wrong. I can't "prove" Manning is wrong, since I cannot find out what reasoning he uses or where he gets his numbers from--though I'm a pretty good Googler. I have to conclude he's making it up.

No, I don't think the extinction of the spotted owls will cause a cataclysm. They are, however, an indicator species, whose state is a measure of the health of the ecology as a whole, so that when they're gone it will be a sign Northern California is in pretty bad shape.

I'm personally much more worried about general global warming. Vast numbers of species have indeed gone extinct in the past, but they cluster together in enormous mass extinction events, and the human-caused mass extinction event now underway is the worst one in 65 million years, since the one that killed the dinosaurs, 64-odd million years before humans existed, and this one has a better than even chance of killing us, or our grandchildren.

Is there any chance the situation might have changed in the nine years since your cited report came out...and possibly changed for the better? And is there any chance a report detailing such a change might not have come up in your Google search?

I'm a pretty good Googler myself, and I can tell you that sometimes until you have precisely the right search string, you won't find what you're looking for. And there is a LOT of information out there that, even in this day and age, isn't on the internet and indexed. Kudos to you for looking...but I'd be real cautious about trying to build a case for a crazy climate theory that doesn't even pass the smell test, based on your inability to find in Google the documentary source for an assertion about owls.

If you're that concerned about it, I suggest you contact Mr. Manning about his source. His track record is very good, and the sum total of information available out there is not even close to all being included in Google.

And as I alluded to earlier, if as scientists claim some 99% of species have already gone extinct, and we're still doing just fine, somehow I don't think the spotted owl (potentially) going extinct is going to cause the planet to explode or something.

Leftists have a demonstrable track record of "making it up," with anthropogenic global warming hysteria being one of the most blatant examples. We've been through a couple of deadlines now where coastal cities were supposed to be under water or some such blather by now...yet the reality isn't even close. In fact, global warming (whatever it's cause) has leveled off for the past 15 years or so, blowing a huge hole in the credibility of the hoaxers.

And that's without even getting into the fact that science shows this planet has experienced much greater cooling and warming cycles going back for thousands of years (long before SUVs, power plants and other evil capitalists ever came along) than seen in recent years.

Leftists really need to get a grip (though I know embracing sanity would be anathema to the pursuit of the Leftist Marxist agenda--you NEED hysteria to scare people into embracing your nutty ideas). If you knew the creator of the universe, you might have a little more faith that everything is going to be alright and that stepping on a bug isn't going to bring on an apocalypse.

As the point of the article goes, what humanity THINKS it knows about "science" is pretty unsettled, because we see yesterday's confident theories go flying out the door on a weekly if not daily basis.

No need to sacrifice people's freedom and prosperity on the altar of hysterical ideas that (even if they truly were well-intended) are at least as likely to be proven false tomorrow.

You're not reading carefully, the report is from 2014 referring back to the 2006 finding and adding on a 10-15% decline in the eight years since.

Sounds like a lot of (typical) guesswork to me. "approximately" followed by a one-quarter variation of "potential" territories with "general" declines (that it isn't clear how well are actually documented) and "likely" estimates. It appears they used 2006 as the last solid baseline for concrete (being generous here) data, and did a whole lot of guessing from there.

And let's not forget that every so often, we find living organisms that supposedly went extinct at some point in the past.

Sorry, color me "not impressed" with the "science" here.

This report strikes me as the all-too-typical assumption and guesswork that gets passed off as "science" these days.

I'd be curious to know Mr. Manning's source myself, but this report you cited doesn't fill me with great confidence about the accuracy of its assertions (even seeing it in black and white).

Of course it's guesswork. What part of "estimate" did you not understand?

This report strikes me as the all-too-typical assumption and guesswork that gets passed off as "science" these days.

Guesswork--hypothesis and test--is how all science proceeds and has done since Eratosthenes measured the circumference of the earth in the third century B.C.E. Did you think he walked around it with a pedometer?

Perhaps that is your problem then, in believing in fantasies like anthropogenic global warming. You put too much faith in estimates and guesswork...and when those estimates and guesswork are driven by Marxist ideology, their distance from reality grows exponentially.

A rational people don't trample freedom and prosperity based on estimates and guesswork. If you're going to confiscate someone'es freedom and prosperity, it had better be on the basis of 100% certainty in serious harm.

Your post is such a labored exercise in point-missing, complete with easily categorized fallacies, that it's downright amusing.
The article's examples are just that, examples. Whether or not they're even true examples of supposed "scientific consensus" being wrong, the fact remains that supposed "scientific consensus" often IS wrong. AGW is a prime example, and your blatant strawmen ("condemning ALL science" -- classic!) don't even come close to challenging those to who recognize that fact.

Oh please. Manning says the egg and owl examples are examples of why the global warming hypothesis may be wrong:

it would be wise for policy makers to remember the previously-fought wars on eggs and timber and the mistaken science that led to destructive decisions before proceeding with actions that will have catastrophic impacts on the American economy

Since they have no relation to the specific science of climate change, he must be using them as a warning about science in general, that's why I mentioned "all science". Then again if the egg and owl cases are wrong themselves, there isn't any argument at all. It's just you asserting without evidence that "supposed scientific consensus often is wrong" so maybe this one case is an example. Maybe it is but neither Manning nor you give me any reason to think so.

Just because scientific consensus changes in light of new evidence does not mean that scientists are always wrong. The evidence in support of climate change is pretty convincing, it's silly to continue to kill the planet on the faint hope that it's wrong.

Nobody has said "scientists are always wrong." What we have said is that there are a lot of false things being sold in the name of "science." And such things are usually opposed by many scientists, regardless of what picture may be painted for the general public. There is definitely no "scientific consensus" on AGW, and it makes you look silly to even imply that there is.
"The evidence in support of climate change is pretty convincing"
There are a lot of intelligent and informed people who would disagree with that. They have much more than some "faint hope that it's wrong."

Science can be just another stick for govt. to beat the people with in order to control them.