UPDATE BELOW: Peer reviewed science supports the title!
By Steve Goddard
In part two of Dr. Meier’s post , he mentioned :
“Examination of several proxy records (e.g., sediment cores) of sea ice indicate ice-free or near ice-free summer conditions for at least some time during the period of 15,000 to 5,000 years ago”
WUWT Reader David Penny astutely noted the implication that Polar Bears must have already survived an ice free Arctic in the not too distant past. According to Wikipedia :
…the polar bear diverged from the brown bear, Ursus arctos, roughly 150,000 years ago
That must mean it is OK to take Polar Bears of the endangered species list. But the decision to put them on the list never had anything to do with science anyway.
The other implication of Dr. Meier’s statement is that a warmer, ice free Arctic occurred when CO2 levels were less than 290 ppm. This implies that there is no long term correlation between CO2 and Arctic temperatures.
Conversely, there was an ice age during the Ordovician 450 million years ago, when CO2 levels were 10X higher than today
http://ff.org/centers/csspp/library/co2weekly/2005-08-18/dioxide_files/image002.gif
Conclusion: There is no evidence that Arctic warming over the last 30 years has anything to do with CO2. If it were CO2 causing it, we would see warming at both poles.
UPDATE:
An ancient jawbone has led scientists to believe that polar bears survived a period thousands of years ago that was warmer than today.
Sandra Talbot of the U.S. Geological Survey Alaska Science Center in Anchorage was one of 14 scientists who teamed to write a paper based on a polar bear jawbone found amid rocks on a frigid island of the Svalbard Archipelago. The scientists determined the bear was an adult male that lived and died somewhere between 130,000 to 110,000 years ago, and that bear was similar to polar bears today. Charlotte Lindqvist of the University at Buffalo in New York was the lead author on the paper, published in the March 2010 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Details here and here (source)
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Surprise, surprise! Who’d a thunk it?
That is a wonderful graph illustrating things perfectly in my view, although I don’t like suppressed zeros at any position. The (lack 0f) common sense, logic, & contradictions of AGW are truly depressing.
OT, on yet another BBC prog about wildlife they had a member of the RSPB talking about Falcons. He couldn’t resist weighing in with the clearly well rehearsed FACT about DDT causing eggshell thinning thus reducing the birds ability to reproduce, explaining the low numbers in the 20th century! However he omitted to point out to the largely ill informed public that numbers were in substantial decline from the mid 19th century, long before DDT was produced for mass agricultural use, but hey, never let a real fact get in the way of a good eco story! Now, where have I heard that claim before???? Are yes, Ms R. Carson I believe, & the RSPB has been “on message” right from the start.
AtB
Don’t be silly, Anthony. Everyone knows CO2 is attracted toward the northern lights and, in particular, to the cute polar bears. (CO2 has a hate-on for polar bears.)
Thus global warming is a northern problem. This explains why the Antarctic isn’t warming and saves the AGW theory from oblivion. That and controlling the committees that investigate the scientists doing the science, when they’re caught admitting to grievous fraud and intimidation of non-conforming peer reviewed scientific journals.
See how that all works?
I think we should coin a new phrase – ‘the Penny Drops’ [sometimes called an ah ah moment in psychology]. It sums up the essential essence of a sceptic. We just ask a simple, straightforward, obvious question which can’t be answered and demolishes a whole area of policy or research. I do it all the time with young researchers at work. 🙂
cheers David
Polar bears are not on the endangered species list. This is a common misconception in the alarmist hysteria. For any species to be on the endangered species list, there is a strict criteria of statistical checks pertaining to numbers, breeding pairs, habitat etc…
Some of the strict items which must be checked is that numbers are low, are declining and that breeding is happening at an insufficient rate to increase the numbers without additional protection for the species.
In the case of the Polar bear, this is not happening as their numbers, far from declining, have increased five fold over 60 years.
Another interesting fact is that peoples are allowed to hunt Polar bears, and there is no way in hell that this would be allowed to happen to any species listed on the endangered species list.
The polar bear IS listed on the “threatened” species list. This is a totally different list with a far looser set of criteria. The ONLY reason that the polar bear managed to become included on the threatened species list, is because this list did not take into account current conditions, but accepted the potential, predicted conditions that the Polar bear MIGHT encounter, according to climate alarmists, in future years.
This means that the entire biosphere and all individual species should be on the list too.
Recent study looking at Climate and culture in China suggest things get worse when things get cold!
“It is very probable that cool temperature may be the driving force in causing high frequencies of meteorological, agricultural disasters and then man-made disasters
(wars) in ancient China. In our previous study we found cool temperature significantly increased frequencies of drought and flood, and then locust plagues
(Zhang et al. 2009).”
Links can be found via http://abcnewswatch.blogspot.com/2010/07/chinese-study-global-cooling-can-lead.html
Meanwhile, over at the Independent today we have …
Hudson Bay polar bears ‘could soon be extinct’
But hey, some of the comments offer good entertainment value …
Hudson bay Polar bears are in decline due to receding Arctic sea ice extent,
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2293 so the proposal that Polar bears are threatened by a decline in Arctic ice has been supported.
As for what happened thousands of years ago, maybe not all sea ice disappeared or the population became very small then flourished when Ice returned, who really knows and is somewhat irrelevant when there is concrete evidence of Polar Bear reliance of Arctic sea ice now.
I know it must be summer because the “Polar Bears Are Dying Out” scare stories are appearing in the British press, supplied, as always, by some AGW “research” outfit or other. If you ever wondered how these idiotic articles keep being picked up by the media, here is a classic example. This one started here…
The University of Alberta http://www.ualberta.ca/
Motto: “Serving Through Knowlege”.
Concern for polar bears heightened by math
By Brian Murphy May 26, 2010
Contact Brian Murphy: bm1@ualberta.ca
Public Affairs Associate T: 780-492-6041
http://www.expressnews.ualberta.ca/en/NewsArticles/2010/05/Concernforpolarbearsheightenedbymath.aspx
“Ongoing concerns about the plight of polar bears becoming victims of climate change are now heightened with the release of a paper that has three University of Alberta researchers among its authors. Peter Molnar, of the U of A’s Centre for Mathematical Biology, and university professors Andrew Derocher and Mark Lewis, used mathematical modeling to show polar bear populations could plummet if ice-free periods in the Arctic continue to increase. “Mathematical modeling is a quantum leap forward in our understanding of how climate change will affect these animals,” said Derocher. The research team assigned numerical values to study how long male polar bears located on land near Churchill, Manitoba can go without food when they’re cut off from their hunting grounds on the sea ice of Hudson Bay.
“Thanks to previous studies researchers know the weight and energy storing capacity of polar bears and the warming trend in the North is well documented. “We know climate change has increased the ice-free period in Hudson Bay by three weeks over the last three decades,” said Derocher.
“Records also show that since 1990 ice-free periods in Hudson Bay vary from 90 to 135 days and that the current polar bear mortality rate is around three per cent. With climate change, predictions indicate that the ice-free period will increase.
“Derocher has real concerns for the 900 polar bears in the study area. “If the ice-free period extends to 180 days our modeling shows upward of half of those animals will die.” An important finding is that the changes could happen very quickly and this contrasts with the slow decline in polar populations that have been found to date.
“Derocher says long ice-free periods raise real concerns for the town of Churchill, which already has problems with landlocked and hungry polar bears wandering its streets. “They see a lot of bears now,” said Derocher, “but they are not really prepared to deal with several hundred bears stuck in their town for weeks and weeks.”
“The mathematical-modeling study also includes the polar bear mating process and birth rates. Derocher says that when the sea ice is in place, male polar bears set out across Hudson Bay to hunt and search for a female to mate with. Derocher says the male’s age-old system of finding a mate is quite simple. The male heads out on the ice and walks a fairly straight line until it crosses the tracks of a female. If the tracks “smell right” and indicate the female is ready to mate, the male simply follows her tracks. “But when the sea ice breaks into pieces, the female can wind up on a drifting floe and the male will never find her,” said Derocher. “The ice becomes a jigsaw puzzle but there’s no way to put the tracks back together.”
“Accounting for the changing efficiency of males finding females, Derocher says the team concluded the pregnancy rate could drop by 30 per cent.
“Derocher says this research gives Ottawa a longitudinal window into the effects of climate change on an Arctic species and he’s hoping something will be done. “We have two thirds of the world’s polar bears and collectively scientists around the world and people are looking to Canada for leadership but we’ve been very slow to recognize polar bears as a threatened species,” said Derocher. “That has to change.”
“The work of Molnar, Derocher and their colleagues is published in the recent issue of Biological Conservation.”
**************************************************
It’s rubbish like this that ends up in the British press as scare stories, such as in today’s Independent:
(a rehashed article from May) which quotes directly this “research” and adds its own spin:
Hudson Bay polar bears ‘could soon be extinct’
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Online editor: m.king@Independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/hudson-bay-polar-bears-could-soon-be-extinct-2026755.html
“…The Arctic sea ice as a whole reached its lowest-ever recorded extent in September, 2007. In the last two years it has recovered, but it is once again declining rapidly this year…
“…The significance of the new study is that it is based on a mathematical model which matches the weight and energy-storing capacity of the bears, which are known – the west Hudson Bay animals are the most closely observed of all polar bear populations – against the annual ice shrinkage and the time they have to spend on land without food.
“Carried out by Professors Andrew Derocher and Mark Lewis, with graduate student Peter Molnar, it has been published in the journal Biological Conservation, and Professor Derocher talks about it at length in the current issue of Environment 360, the online environmental journal of Yale University in the US.”
“…”There’s been a gradual decline in [the bears’] body condition that dates to the 1980s and we can now correlate that very nicely with the loss of sea ice in this ecosystem. And one of the things we found was that the changes that could come in this population could happen very dramatically, and a lot of the change could come within a single year, if you just ended up with an earlier melt of sea ice.”
Do they think we’re stupid? “changes that COULD come…COULD happen very dramatically…the change COULD come within a single year, IF you just ended up with an earlier melt of sea ice.”
And by the way, COULD the Canadian taxpayers please send us some more of that lovely global warming money which COULD be running out because, IF our mathematical models are correct, we COULD be completely cash-free by the end of this financial year.
————————-
I also can’t help noticing that the The University of Alberta is proud of it’s “Energy and Environment” research: http://www.research.ualberta.ca/ResearchStrengths/EnergyandEnvironment.aspx
“…Alberta is often best known for its energy resources, and U of A faculty and alumni have played key roles in developing Alberta’s black gold.
“Key contributions include Karl Clark’s hot water extraction process for separating bitumen from oilsands, and geology professor Charlie Stelck’s idea to search for oil and gas near ancient coral reefs, leading to the discovery of Leduc No. 1 and Alberta’s Pembina Oil Field…”
*********************
AGW research thinking is completely cracked. They accept money from their enemies and their supporters at the same time. They also say nature is all-powerful, and then go on to produce a headline such as “Michael McCarthy: The symbol of nature’s battle with climate change” http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-mccarthy-the-symbol-of-natures-battle-with-climate-change-2026756.html which must be one of the stupidest headlines I’ve seen this year. Nature is nature, it’s natural, that’s the point; it doesn’t “battle” with anything.
Bears, however, battle each other, and the loser gets eaten:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1234066/Is-global-warming-causing-hungry-polar-bears-resort-cannibalism.html
“…But this [global warming] theory is disputed by Inuit leaders in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, who claim it is wrong to connect the bears’ behaviour with starvation. Kivalliqu Inuit Association president Jose Kusugak said: “It makes the south – southern people – look so ignorant. A male polar bear eating a cub becomes a big story and they try to marry it with climate change and so on, it becomes absurd when it’s a normal, normal occurrence.”
“Although infanticide can occur in all species of bear, it can be accentuated among polar bears when they run low on fat reserves and become hungry enough to resort to cannibalism, according to conservation group Polar Bears International.”
I find it rather interesting that there has been no worry about the fate of Alaska’s Kodiak bears — the largest brown bears in the world. Of course, these animals have fully demonstrated that they can take care of themselves.
I am planning to point my students to this website – and this thread in particular – as an excellent example of a logical fallacy ‘in the wild’. You can all help out by not mentioning what the fallacy is in the comments, otherwise you will give the game away, so to speak.
Much obliged.
TheGoodProfessor
@Alan the Brit says: July 15, 2010 at 1:14 am
Unfortunately the RSPB is now just another fraudulent cAGW alarmist group. They get a £10 kickback from Big Wind every time they get one of their bird spotter members to sign up to one of the “Green Energy” electricity suppliers. And (of course) say nothing about the thousands of birds per year that get shredded by wind generators.
So the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds doesn’t give a sh*t about birds when it suits them. And they still haven’t been able to point to one species of bird anywhere that has gone extinct because of Global Warming. (And as the little blighters fly around, it’s a challenge to see why they should. They can always go somewhere cooler.)
And then you get another mainstream UK Charity (OXFAM), set up to combat famine, spending tens of thousands before Copenhagen 2009 with highly alarmist billboards all over the UK. And, if you check, yes they are in favour of biofuels that have increased famine in the third world.
Morally bankrupt crooks!
Alan the Brit,
Spot on the DDT scare story. Rachael Carson did everyone a big disservice by misrepresenting the science of DDT.
Talked about in the wonderful book Kicking the Sacred Cow. A must read for everyone interested in the interplay of science and politics. Modern science is not the popular image of geeky types sacrificing normal social lives to pursue the ‘truth’. It has become a bureaucracy with funding and status issues. Sometimes it works the way it is supposed to, but mostly it is about people trying to hold onto jobs in a culture of groupthink and government funding, with all the strings attached.
See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743488288/sr=1-1/qid=1279189486/ref=dp_proddesc_1?ie=UTF8&n=283155&qid=1279189486&sr=1-1
See also http://www.webscription.net/chapters/0743488288/0743488288.htm
Try this http://reason.com/archives/2002/06/12/silent-spring-at-40
Rachel Carson is one of the primary saints of environmentalism. How appropriate the so-called science underlying her assertions are false. The ban on DDT is a glaring example of government ignoring the science due to an ill informed public pressuring their representatives to ‘do something’.
Which brings us to
Ken Hall says:
July 15, 2010 at 1:41 am
Don’t give them any ideas.
Kate says:
July 15, 2010 at 2:28 am
When money speaks, no one minds the accent.
I got the chance to talk with a hunting guide from the Hudson Bay area a couple of years ago. I asked if he had noticed anything about the climate and its effect on polar bears.
He said the rivers do experience an earlier thaw and later freeze. He also said many polar bears go inland to eat caribou.
Makes sense. Bears are bears. If one source of food dries up, they go after another.
One of the wolf packs in the Lamar Valley region of the Yellowstone specializes in bringing down buffalo. They eat well, they also leave a big pile of table scraps. Or more accurately, they can’t eat the carcass fast enough to prevent its theft by a grizzly bear. As a result, grizzly bears are better fed than in times past.
One nature photographer captured a picture of over ten bears sharing a buffalo carcass. Unheard of a few years ago. Not enough food to share. But there they were, wrapping up a shared meal courtesy of the Lamar Valley wolf pack.
These are good times for the grizzly in Yellowstone.
Good for them.
Amazing what happens to animals and ecosystems when we leave them alone.
jcrabb says:
July 15, 2010 at 2:18 am
“Hudson bay Polar bears are in decline due to receding Arctic sea ice extent,…..”
Well, that’s half right. If that were a true statement, then we’d see a decline on the rest of the Polar bear population. We don’t. Or maybe Hudson Bay Polar bears are a special type unique unto themselves and don’t behave like the rest of the Polar bear population. It’s not like the Hudson Bay bears are a substantial portion of the total polar bear population.
Here’s what has been proven. We have a decline of the Polar bear population in the Hudson Bay area. We have receding Arctic ice extent, but not confined to the Hudson bay area.
That’s not even a true correlation, and no where is causation proven.
Currently we have a population drain in western Kansas. Is anyone postulating that recent global temp rise is killing western Kansans? I don’t know why not, it is the same rationale.
Actually the virtual extermination of peregrines (and many other birds) in parts of Europe and North America in the 1960’s by pesticide poisoning (DDT and mercury compounds) is very well documented and the physiological mechanisms are well understood. I was present when it happened and you could find droves of dying birds during sowing where mercury doped seeds were scattered about. Any number of birds and eggs were analysed and the connection between high quantities of DDE and/or organomercury compounds and the characteristic symptoms was verified by feeding experiments.
[snip]
Polar bears…Mmmphh…mummmphhh!
There is no doubt that polar bears have survived, but what they had to “go through” to survive isnt clear. Obviously there is no point in extrapolating to the whole population from a few recent observations in one place about them “being affected” by reduction in ice, and I tend to agree with our Inuit friends mentioned above in the comments “It makes the south – southern people – look so ignorant”.
Since this post is about “ice-free” conditions in the Arctic I draw attention to a recent scientific publication covering this (naturally using the current jargon of proxies and forcing). It amounts to a warmist co-opting/rewrite of palaeoclimate evidence as support for the position that were are in a completely new, unprecedented, situation.
But it cannot be avoided that (see abtract below) “Early Holocene summer sea ice limits were substantially smaller than their 20th century average”.
DFM
Abstract/reference below (full article protected by copyright limitations).
Quaternary Science Reviews 29 (2010) 1679-1715
G.H.Miller et al (23 authors)
Temperature and precipitation history of the Arctic
Abstract
As the planet cooled from peak warmth in the early Cenozoic, extensive Northern Hemisphere ice sheets developed by 2.6 Ma ago, leading to changes in the circulation of both the atmosphere and oceans. From ca 2.6 to ca 1.0 Ma ago, ice sheets came and went about every 41 ka, in pace with cycles in the tilt of Earth’s axis, but for the past 700 ka, glacial cycles have been longer, lasting ca 100 ka, separated by brief, warm interglaciations, when sea level and ice volumes were close to present. The cause of the shift from 41 ka to 100 ka glacial cycles is still debated. During the penultimate interglaciation, ca 130 to ca 120 ka ago, solar energy in summer in the Arctic was greater than at any time subsequently. As a consequence, Arctic summers were ca 5°C warmer than at present, and almost all glaciers melted completely except for
the Greenland Ice Sheet, and even it was reduced in size substantially from its present extent. With the loss of land ice, sea level was about 5 m higher than present, with the extra melt coming from both Greenland and Antarctica as well as small glaciers. The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) peaked ca 21 ka ago, when mean annual temperatures over parts of the Arctic were as much as 20°C lower than at present.
Ice recession was well underway 16 ka ago, and most of the Northern Hemisphere ice sheets had melted by 6 ka ago. Solar energy reached a summer maximum (9% higher than at present) ca 11 ka ago and has been decreasing since then, primarily in response to the precession of the equinoxes. The extra energy elevated early Holocene summer temperatures throughout the Arctic 1-3° C above 20th century averages, enough to completely melt many small glaciers throughout the Arctic, although the Greenland Ice Sheet was only slightly smaller than at present. Early Holocene summer sea ice limits were substantially smaller than their 20th century average, and the flow of Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean was substantially greater. As summer solar energy decreased in the second half of the Holocene, glaciers reestablished or advanced, sea ice expanded, and the flow of warm Atlantic water into the Arctic Ocean diminished. Late Holocene cooling reached its nadir during the Little Ice Age (about 1250-1850 AD), when sun-blocking volcanic eruptions and perhaps other causes added to the orbital cooling, allowing most Arctic glaciers to reach their maximum Holocene extent. During the warming of the past century, glaciers have receded throughout the Arctic, terrestrial ecosystems have advanced northward, and perennial Arctic Ocean sea ice has diminished.
Here we review the proxies that allow reconstruction of Quaternary climates and the feedbacks that amplify climate change across the Arctic. We provide an overview of the evolution of climate from the hot-house of the early Cenozoic through its transition to the ice-house of the Quaternary, with special emphasis on the anomalous warmth of the middle Pliocene, early Quaternary warm times, the Mid
Pleistocene transition, warm interglaciations of marine isotope stages 11, 5e, and 1, the stage 3 interstadial, and the peak cold of the last glacial maximum.
jcrabb: July 15, 2010 at 2:18 am
Hudson bay Polar bears are in decline due to receding Arctic sea ice extent,
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2293 so the proposal that Polar bears are threatened by a decline in Arctic ice has been supported.
Hudson Bay polar bears are only a fraction of the global population, and they’re declining because communities are restricting their access to *garbage*. They eat it — which is why the Hudson Bay population grew as large as it did, as fast as it did.
BTW, in Canada, polar bears aren’t considered threatened, they’re considered big game. Canada issues about 800 polar bear permits each year.
As for what happened thousands of years ago, maybe not all sea ice disappeared or the population became very small then flourished when Ice returned, who really knows and is somewhat irrelevant when there is concrete evidence of Polar Bear reliance of Arctic sea ice now.
Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe maybe. Polar bears hunt on the ice, but they’re not *reliant* on it, because they do quite well on dry land, too — they just change their hunting tactics. Polar bears are *not* stupid animals, or they wouldn’t have survived in the Arctic in the first place.
If the Polar Bears are declining, I would be more inclined to look in the freezers of the native hunters living in the area.
If not then where are the dead carcasses? Oh ya, they sunk in the open water.
If they are near extinction, let Canadia know. It is my understanding they still sell hunting permits.
Rare bird species suffered declines in population due to egg theft/collectors and gamekeepers guns. (Either that or the French ate them!)
With regard to polar bear numbers – last time I checked no one knew how many there were. Seems a useful start point?
TheGoodProfessor says:
July 15, 2010 at 2:36 am
I am planning to point my students to this website – and this thread in particular – as an excellent example of a logical fallacy ‘in the wild’. You can all help out by not mentioning what the fallacy is in the comments, otherwise you will give the game away, so to speak.
Much obliged.
TheGoodProfessor
I see it clearly too. It is however not a different logical fallacy then the one in the AGW theory itself. I do hope I haven’t given it away with that.
Hi Anthony,
Just wanted to let you know that the polar bear image doesn’t link to a story on the faked image.
Jack Simmons says:
“…they can’t eat the carcass fast enough to prevent its theft by a grizzly bear. As a result, grizzly bears are better fed than in times past…”
Grizzly bears are now so well-fed, many are getting fat and lazy. It’s been noted that they can barely be bothered to catch fish like they used to. Salmon practically have to swim or leap into the Bear’s open mouth to be caught. Half-chewed salmon litter the riverbanks, which never used to happen. (Though they’ve always left scraps behind.)
Wait a minute.. 15,000 years ago, were we not still in an ice age? Why would the arctic be ice free?