From the BBC, a video report so absurd, you wonder if it is an April fools joke. The premise? Noise from excessive ice calving and cracking due to “climate change” would affect the bear’s hearing. I wonder what agency was gullible enough to provide a grant for this load of rubbish? Like polar bears have never heard ice floes cracking and calving before? Give me a break. Plus, the polar bear they are using for a test subject isn’t in it’s natural environment, it’s at a zoo and who’s to say this bear establishes a credible baseline hearing test? This is just unbelievable stupidity in the guise of bad science. What next? Hearing aids for polar bears? A hat tip to Tony B in the UK for alerting me to this story. – Anthony
Click preview image above for link to video story
Scientists in California are testing the hearing of polar bears to try to find out whether the noises associated with melting Arctic ice could affect their ability to survive.
The BBC’s Peter Bowes goes to SeaWorld in San Diego to meet Charly, a 12-year-old polar bear taking part in the experiment – and his trainer Mike Price.
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Cannibalism and now this! I guess they will have to rely on smell alone to find their counterparts to eat.
This could be the end of Polar bears!! If they can no longer hear the ice breaking up they may well be crushed or drowned. What about the glare from all the open ocean at the north pole, it could blind them. They would be unable to see or hear their mate. They could become extinct. They need hearing aids. They need dark glasses
I will be happy to make the supreme sacrifice and take on the project for a measly 2 or 3 Billion. A year that is.
It would appear that Lewis Pugh’s hearing was also affected by the grinding of the ice against his kayak. Or at least his ability to listen.
The article on the BBC news website goes from statements like “noise generated by human activity, such as construction or shipping, could be audible to the bear over a wide area” (well yes, common sense would say that’s possible) to phrases like “This is about looking at the collapse of an entire ecosystem” (whoah there, mighty leap of illogic!) Good old BBC, as incorrigible as ever.
“Noise from excessive ice calving ”
I am not sure but isn’t calving due to glaciers growing?
Wow… those AGW scaremongers are really something else… more pork barrel raiding.
I knew there was a reason for my hearing loss. Now I just have to figure out who to sue.
Deaf cannibalistic starving polar bears. Good grief. In The Department of Absurd Things, Anthony, you have outdone yourself.
This reminds me of the joke about the scientist and a frog. The one where the scientist concludes that cutting off the frogs rear legs makes it go deaf.
When I worked in the arctic, I never worried about the polar bear’s hearing.
I always worried about NOT hearing the polar bear.
But wait if you liked that BS wait till you read this one! That’s right CO2 now makes the oceans “noisy”
http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/09/30/noise.html
It’s stupidity at its finest.
Global Warming: The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.
Global warming: Is there nothing it can’t do?
With apologies to H. Simpson
I believe the term “BS Alert” should be corrected to “AlGore Alert” since they both mean the same thing.
REPLY: In this case, BS meant “bad science” as indicated in the text of the story. -Anthony
Just as goofy is the latest report from “Food Climate Research Network”, a UK institution brought to us by the University Of Surrey —
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/30/food.ethicalliving
Save the planet, eat less.
What fits is something that P.T. Barnum is alleged to have said:
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Now the BBC, Gore, Hansen et al, and every politician is proving that point.
This sounds very serious to me. Perhaps the bears other four senses are also being affected. I await the scientific proof coming shortly I am sure.
Because of global warming the bears cannot hear, so they eat each other. And this causes dead penguines to wash up on shore in South America.
Now I undersatnd the AGW scare,
Icebergs calfing? Does this increase the methane in the arctic?
I hope the dishonest flawed rubbish phenomenon this polar bear story is isn’t one which only occurs where there is a common lie of disaster that drives conformity and a fascism to stop freedom, like freedom of speech.
More a bit offtopic:
In Sweden there recently was a threat from a “green” organisation against a conference which had invited a person critical to the GW hysteria; that person couldn’t participate:
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newsdesk.se%2Fpressroom%2Fhgg%2Fpressrelease%2Fview%2Fgroena-bilister-hotar-energi-och-klimatforum-i-haernoesand-239243&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&sl=sv&tl=en )
I just saw this Green Jugend propaganda clip, which scientifically has the lies, presented as science (in a strange presentation) and says that the earth (apparently from 4-5 percent extra CO2 in the atmosphere) right now face a bigger threat than it has ever faced in 50 million years. (Nazism or Ahmadinejad is just nothing!)
The kids like it and the schools encourage this crap so don’t be surpriced if there are more eco terrorism in the future.
What can we do to stop this? Inform politicians in campaigns, and hope they say there isn’t a global warming disaster waiting for us? I think politicians with different opinion has not courage enough to have a different opinion.
Blogs may be extremely important, but can we afford a stupid Kyoto 2?
So little time………………. (Where is Exxon? Probably also in it for the lie.)
Re: “an April fool’s joke”
Well, it’s not April, John, so this must be serious. I’m pretty sure I know the cause of the problem, and it’s got nothing to do with ice calving. The deafness is a temporary problem caused by all that extra time in the water swimming. I had a bad case of swimmer’s ear once and couldn’t hear a darned thing out of that side til the water drained out.
Tom in Florida. You’re right, so this *cough-cough* “research” should have target _less_ CO2 and _no warming_ as a problem for the polar bears’ hearing.
I look at this and think “what a load of BS” (bad science). I sure that many AGWers will look a this and also think “What a load of BS”. Many ordinary people, whose only exposure to all of this is what they read in the newspaper and see on TV, will look at this and think “What a load of BS”. Hopefully some of these ordinary people will start questioning what other BS they have been fed over the years. I hope they do a report like this every week.
Maybe we should keep a list of these claims and when somebody shouts “OIL COMPANY SHILL” in an attempt to discredit a paper we can shout back “DEAFENS THE POLAR BEARS” as an example of AGW science.
RX / Swimmer’s Ear:
Ah, after viewing the video, I know just what to do. They need to train the bears to roll onto their opposite side, which allows the water run out. If this doesn’t work, just have the bears eat two trainers and call Al Gore in the morning.
Jim B (13:38:44) :
“…CO2 now makes the oceans “noisy.”
The noise, plop-plop fizz-fizz, is caused by Polar Bear Alka-Seltzer.
“This is about looking at the collapse of an entire ecosystem” How much noise would that create?
Polar bears, like all bears orient their prey primarily by smell, then by sight. They seem to rely very little on sound. Every year hikers, berry pickers, mushroom pickers get caught up with black bears and grizzlies because the bears don’t rely on sound as an alert mechanism. If you come at a bear from downwind, even if you’re making noise, you can get a nasty surprise. If come from upwind, so your scent gets there first, it will know you are coming. I read some research a while back that estimated that a bear (black bear in this case) could smell a rotting animal from about 5 miles away.
A Sea World article indicates that: “Polar bears have the ability to smell their prey more than 32 kilometres away, so when our Polar bears are looking for their food, you’ll notice they point their nose to the sky to find the different scents.” As for hearing, probably about as good as a human, although they do seem to have good high frequency hearing more like a dog. Eyesight is comparable to humans as well.
All that aside, they evolved in an environment where the sound of cracking ice is common.
And another bit of useless knowledge, polar bear hair is not white, it is clear like a fibre optic strand. This helps the bear channel sunlight to its skin to aid in vitamin D production.
Jim B, thanks for the link.
I don’t understand why the good folks at the Monterey Bay Aquarium are upset; if AT&T expanded my local calling area by 70%, I’d be happy.
BTW, at least they say the oceans are becoming “less alkaline”, not “more acidic”.