You can view the page at http://metabunk.org/content/134-Dead...Prompting-Bunk
You can view the page at http://metabunk.org/content/134-Dead...Prompting-Bunk
Here's a more level headed article from CNN that quite simply gives the three alternatives.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/01/03...he-sky/?hpt=T2
Much Better.
Another useful update:
http://www.todaysthv.com/news/local/...4&provider=top
Arkansas State Veterinarian Dr. George Badley tells Today's THV that preliminary test results show thousands of birds died mid-air due to multiple blunt trauma to their vital organs.
...
It's not the first time birds have dropped from the Arkansas sky. Lightning killed ducks at Hot Springs in 2001 and hail knocked birds from the sky at Stuttgart in 1973 on the day before hunting season.
And another. Looks like the weather is now the leading theory.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40885546...s-environment/
The director of Cornell University's ornithology lab in Ithaca, N.Y., said the most likely suspect is violent weather. It's probable that thousands of birds were asleep, roosting in a single tree, when a "washing machine-type thunderstorm" sucked them up into the air, disoriented them, and even fatally soaked and chilled them.
"Bad weather can occasionally catch flocks off guard, blow them off a roost, and they get hurled up suddenly into this thundercloud," lab director John Fitzpatrick said.
Rough weather had hit the state earlier Friday, but the worst of it was already well east of Beebe by the time the birds started falling, said Chris Buonanno, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in North Little Rock.
If weather was the cause, the birds could have died in several ways, Fitzpatrick said. They could easily become disoriented — with no lights to tell them up and down — and smack into the ground. Or they could have died from exposure.
The birds' feathers keep them at a toasty 103 degrees, but "once that coat gets unnaturally wet, it's only a matter of minutes before they're done for," Fitzpatrick said.
In the story that you say makes the Arkansas bird drop out as uncommon, when it shouldn't, it's actually the official ornithologist that is making it out to be a "very unusual case." The reporter is including information from scientists and officials on the matter and while this article didn't say that this kind of thing happens from time to time, plenty of other articles - even the early ones -do. This report is on an occasion when there are crews walking around in hazmat suits - even when you exclude those residents who worried about out-there possibilities (if they really were even saying that seriously), it's reasonable for residents to be cautious or concerned given the hazmat troupe and -for their town- unusual incident. That behavior is generally selective for survival. Most media reports I've seen on the bird/fish/whatever issue have been reputable. (You go on to cite some fringe sites in your posting.)
Much assuming going on about what an average person's take (or average news reporter's take) on such incidents must be, such as at the very end of this article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70534T20110106
As you've no doubt seen over the past few days information is reported sparsely, more information comes out, and reports are updated to fill in the picture. The initial report about this whole thing was, I believe, a press release from the state wildlife commission or similar.
Last edited by Unregistered; January 6th, 2011 at 07:32 PM.
Here it is - fish and game commission
http://www.agfc.com/Pages/newsDetails.aspx?show=146
I understand why the media reported it in the scary way it did, and why it reported the fears of the townspeople. It's just unfortunate they could not have done a bit more research beforehand to put it in perspective. There have been much bigger bird kills in the past.
I suppose though I'm hoping for too much. The media has eventually set the record straight for the most part (that Reuters article is pretty good) - but we are still getting every single mass death anywhere in the world reported as if it's major news. That's still reinforcing the idea that this is something unusual on an "end-times" scale, rather than a decade scale. It's now embedded in the canon of the fringe.
I think also we have to look at the difference between the time-critical reporting, and the more leisurely journalism of days later. They are really entirely different animals, and the criticism of them needs to be different.
Scary? I found mostly plain facts, and view reports of other incidents as part of the process of getting to the bottom of it all. I haven't seen anyone outside of fringe elements viewing it all with more than a raised eyebrow awaiting toxicology reports etc., just "oh hey kind of interesting there are these other incidents, let's see." Or with some humor.
It concerns me that some "experts" may be severely misinformed on what an average person's reasoning capacity is. It is sad to see some of the derisive comments that have appeared in various places characterizing the public as rather prone to hysteria, or worse. That's where I see unsubstantiated info.
Glenn Beck seems to be saying the poor media response is part of a plot to instill uncertainty into the American public, or something.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/fact...cur-regularly/
It's scary in that it scares people. Particularly the headlines. "Scientists are baffled", "mysterious deaths of thousands of birds all over the country". Sounds like scary stuff. Should be "an unusually, but not implausibly high, natural die-off, and some fairly normal ones, all probably due to the weather."
The unwillingness of scientists to commit to one answer is too often portrayed as "they have NO IDEA!!!!"
FACT CHECK: Mass bird, fish deaths occur regularly
Found this interesting article, the voice of reason. An excerpt:
First, the blackbirds fell out of the sky on New Year's Eve in Arkansas. In recent days, wildlife have mysteriously died in big numbers: 2 million fish in the Chesapeake Bay, 150 tons of red tilapia in Vietnam, 40,000 crabs in Britain and other places across the world. Blogs connected the deadly dots, joking about the "aflockalypse" while others saw real signs of something sinister, either biblical or environmental.
The reality, say biologists, is that these mass die-offs happen all the time and usually are unrelated.
Federal records show they happen on average every other day somewhere in North America. Usually, we don't notice them and don't try to link them to each other.
"They generally fly under the radar," said ornithologist John Wiens, chief scientist at the California research institution PRBO Conservation Science.
A Clemson university biologist that specializes in radar bird tracking has established an accurate timeline for two flights taking off presumably after being startled.
"The highest reflectivity from the roost was 45-50 dBZ equivalent to approximately 20,000 birds per cubic km!"
The ABC news link has a loop of the radar images:
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/radar-i...ry?id=12781951
The same event happened again, one year later, basically confirming the original hypothesis that it was the roosting birds spooked by fireworks. This time it seems like it was someone trying to deliberately recreate last year's event.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/0...n_1178421.html
BEEBE, Ark. — Authorities in a central Arkansas town say about 100 blackbirds died on New Year's Eve after being spooked by fireworks, far less than the thousands that perished there a year ago.
Beebe police Lt. Brian Duke said Sunday that officials asked local residents who were celebrating the year's end to stop setting off fireworks after blackbirds again started flying into objects and each other.
The state Game and Fish Commission says someone appears to have targeted a blackbird roost this year and that there was evidence of fireworks at the roost.
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