Nobody Loves Whales

Captain Dave Carey has it out for white whales, but unlike Ahab, Dave doesn't have issues with a big sperm, but rather he has a thing for the baby belugas.  Darn it, they might mess up Carey's vision of an industrial and polluted Kenai Peninsula and surroundings.  Dave has been a big time promoter of the Chuitna and Pebble Mine proposals and it could be that it's not a good idea that poisonous mine tailings and coal dust get released in the Chuit drainage and into the Inlet. That might just be unhealthy for whales and other living things.

Now that Cook Inlet has NOAA's National Marine Service critical habitat designation, it is likely that the water quality in the inlet gets back to its normal silty self and not laced with toxins and human waste.  Anchorage might have to actually begin fully treating the almost-raw sewage it pumps into Cook Inlet.  Maybe Kenai and Nikiski are more SOL than those of us in SOLdotna as they get to see all of the floaters come down from Anchor town.

Dave and Pat Porter are already wringing their hands and making like the sky is falling.  Mike Chenault has jumped to conclusions and has declared that it's the end of the world as we know it.  Here's the story in the ADN and the PC.

It's curious that Sean Parnell and the State of Alaska is suing the feds about this designation and the polar bear one up north.  But they have nothing but arbitrary and uncertain figures about how many new jobs might be lost to controlling future gas and oil development.  The Alaska Department of Fish and Game is run by a political apparatchik, just like in the days of the USSR.  The state's own biologists are not allowed to release their own studies, well, because they are contrary to the political agenda of the Alaskan Republican Party, AKA the union for the oil companies.  DoF&G is not the only department operating under a gag order, but so is the AK Dep't of Health.  Political appointees won't let officials and scientists talk to the media. Period.  Nada.  Can't let facts get in the way of decisions.

BTW, what ever did happen to the couple hundred thousand the KPB received to study the white whales.  Did anyone learn anything? Any report ever filed?  Was the $ actually spent on the whales?

Call me Ishmael,
Whenever the hypocrites get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off - then, I account it high time to get to blog as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball. With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the internet. There is nothing surprising in this. If they but knew it, almost all men in their degree, some time or other, cherish very nearly the same feelings towards SOL in Soldotna with me. 

apologies to Herman Melville