Dr. Susan Crockford writes:
Regarding: Science self-corrects: bogus study claiming Roundup tolerant GMO corn causes cancer to be retracted
This ratty story reminds me of the polar bear incident I just posted about
this morning at PolarBearScience.
Canadian polar bear researchers Ian Stirling and Nick Lunn gave Suzanne
Goldenberg at The Guardian the results of their new Western Hudson Bay
population estimate, from a study that has not been published anywhere.
There is not even a government report available! This is the first mention
of this new estimate, anywhere, and it’s in The Guardian. Folks have been
waiting for it for years, and it’s reported in The Guardian.
Forget no raw data available – in this case there is no data available
period. How can science self-correct behaviour like this?
Goldenberg’s headline (from Nov. 27): “Polar bear numbers in Hudson Bay of
Canada on verge of collapse.”
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/nov/27/polar-bears-climate-change-canada-hudson-bay
See the post here:
http://polarbearscience.com/2013/11/28/polar-bear-researchers-still-withholding-hudson-bay-data/
All the best,
Susan
Susan J. Crockford, Ph.D. (Zoology/Evolutionary Biology/Archaeozoology)
Adjunct Professor (Anthropology/Graduate Studies)
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
AND Pacific Identifications Inc. (www.pacificid.com)
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[cough]……
I recommend submitting this to be reproduced in the Journal of Irreproducible Results and for a potential Ignoble Award.
It is worse than we thought.
This study competes for those irreproducibility awards with Steven McIntyre’s observations on The Zen of Population (N=0) where:
The study appears to be in need of Raising the bar on statistical significance
h/t WUWT
They really are desperate to make polar bears a symbol for the climatist cause.
The alarmists are getting very sloppy in their desperation – and more visible in their motives.
From 5,000 in the late 60s to 25,000 now and the difference was what again? Oh yea we stopped shooting so many. Restrictions on killing the critters worked like a charm.
Climate doesn’t kill polar bears, guns’n’ammo do!! – NRA (National Realists Association)
🙂
Data? We don’t need no stinking data…
/dripping with sarc
In 1987, when the first reliable estimates of polar bear population were made, using a technique known as mark and recapture, there were about 1,200 bears in the western Hudson Bay area; by 2004, the figure had dropped to 935.
Nothing like cherry picking your end date. Let’s just ignore the “pause” in polar bear decline after 2004. The 2012 estimate for the same area was 1,013. Hmmm…almost 10% increase in less than a decade. We should be able to extrapolate from there and figure out in what year the polar bear population will exceed the human population world wide.
Davis Straight in the 1970’s had less than a thousand bears, now the estimate is more than double that. I recollect that Foxe Basin has also grown about 10% in the last few years.
“”There is no way a population can remain stable, if the young aren’t surviving,” said Stirling. “If the climate continues to warm, slowly and steadily, they are on the way out.””
As it hasn’t warmed for 17 years, what is that person talking about? Does he know how to compute a correlation? Does he know that a causation is rather unlikely if there is not even a correlation?
As it hasn’t warmed for 17 years, what is that person talking about?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dirk, Dirk, Dirk. Haven’t you been paying attention? The heat is hiding in the places where we can’t measure it, right along with the polar bears we can’t count.
The UK Guardian invests the same level of scientific objectivity into its articles as it displays fairness in its moderation of public comment within the Comment Is Free sections.
For those fortunate enough to be unaware of the reality of how a once respected newspaper treats those who display dissension, however respectfully, to that of warmistadorial and accreditated travellers can be neatly summed up by the phrase – deleted ‘cos it broke our rules and it was horrible ‘cos it made me want to scream and scream until I was sick (I may be less than word for word here but won’t give an inch about the spirit)
The UK Guardian has transformed itself in less than a decade from a high point of journalism to a level that, notwithstanding hi-faluting faux-intellectualism, displays the worst of the gutter press it deigns to despise
It used to be “liar, liar, pants on fire”.
Now it is, “here’s a Phd and a Research Chair”.
I don’t know, short of getting the funding cut-off, what are we to do except keep repeating the same old saying.
Get the funding cut-off by getting the message to the funding decision-makers that incorrect findings are being funded by their decisions.
Time for a “Golden Toady” award?
While always referring to published results showing western Hudson Bay polar bears were suffering decreasing body condition (BCI) Stirling and Lunn never published their latest dta showing since that time the body condition had been improving.
http://landscapesandcycles.net/image/78275869.jpg
The area which I shaded gray represent data that Stirling has claimed is unreliable and thus are not included in population estimates. If population data from 1980s is included then the population has doubled. There mark and recapture study also contradicts the recent aerial survey and mark and recapture studies are notorious for subjectivity as reported here http://landscapesandcycles.net/how-science-counts-bears.html
Striling also contradicts [his] own published accounts that less ice is beneficial to ringed seals and polar bears as referenced here http://landscapesandcycles.net/less-arctic-ice-can-be-beneficial.html
Here is one example of Stirling’s hypocrisy blaming warming for low bear populations, while in other published reports he reported it was heavy ice that was detrimental. As a co author of “Temporal variations in Hudson Bay ringed seal (Phoca hispida) life-history parameters in relation to environment” he wrote “We propose that the decline of ringed seal reproductive parameters and pup survival in the 1990s could have been triggered by unusually cold winters and heavy ice conditions that prevailed in Hudson Bay in the early 1990s, through nutritional stress and increased predation pressure. The recovery in the 2000s may have been augmented by immigration of pups, juveniles, and young adult ringed seals into the study area.”
Read abstract here http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1644/10-mamm-a-253.1
This parting shot from an entry at the Polar Bear Alley blog demonstrates a similar contempt for the claims of some.
“So, as usual, its a complicated reality with polar bears… Either way, we have some glitches and all that but its better to focus on the good news this year: the bears for the most part are out on the ice. For the most part, the bears were in good condition (Manitoba Conservation reported that many of their larger bears were around 150lbs heavier than last year). Of course, others did not fare as well including Dancer and a radio-collared female who was reported to have lost her cub this fall. She was disoriented and wandering down the road, her hormones probably all out of whack. Its tough to see but this is part of nature.
Still, these last two season have really put an exclamation mark on what all of the local polar bear guys believe up here: we have not reached a ‘tipping point’ with Churchill’s polar bears, they are not starving, the numbers are not crashing and it is not necessary to remove them from the wild and place them in captivity. So yeah, if I have an ‘agenda’… well, that’s it.
One more note, its funny that over all these years, I have never come across a study that has shown with statistical significance that freezeup is occurring later and later or with any real trend at all, it must be out there somewhere I suppose – it seems to get quoted a lot.”
http://www.polarbearalley.com/blog/index.php/polar-bear-blog-the-complicated-world-of-freeze-up/
Boy, no one mention to them that the Manitoba government took three bears from the Churchill area (from the western HB population) to populate the new zoo exhibit in Winnipeg. There’s four bears now, when the exhibit it full there will be about a dozen bears there.
Gee, now they can’t publish in peer-reviewed journals which will require data and stuff, because they’ve published it in The Guardian. How unfortunate that there are all these rules against republication.
(Yes, I know rules differ at various publications…)
Another comical wackjob from the Guardians of Marxist Orthodoxy
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/article/2013/11/29/science-environment/carbon-mapping-and-why-climate-policy-only-can-stop-bo
With this seasons Ice recovery the bears are back in favour as they cannot use the Ice extent for funding purposes.
If I may draw an analogy.
In Pattaya there are Tshirts proclaiming..No Money, No Honey.
Same with Climate ‘science’ No Honey ie desired proclamations, No Funding.
Easy.
regards
davidmhoffer says:
November 28, 2013 at 5:12 pm
As it hasn’t warmed for 17 years, what is that person talking about?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dirk, Dirk, Dirk. Haven’t you been paying attention? The heat is hiding in the places where we can’t measure it, right along with the polar bears we can’t count.
It has warmed a lot in Eastern Canada over the last 17 years … if you lived here you would know that. Question is … how long will this last … this years ice looks like its forming faster!
A strategic move to spike a logical looking export plan for Alberta oil sands product?
Bypass the American blockade with a short 1200Km pipeline to Churchill?
Enquiring minds want to know.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2013/11/27/oil-via-hudson-bay/
RoyFOMR says:
November 28, 2013 at 5:14 pm
The UK Guardian has transformed itself in less than a decade from a high point of journalism to a level that, notwithstanding hi-faluting faux-intellectualism, displays the worst of the gutter press it deigns to despise
——————————————————————
I feel the same about The Guardian and a couple of other formerly more or less trusted news sources – but then I remember how long I have been seriously viewing a broader range of news sources on the internet. It’s pretty much the same period.
Is it that my original news sources have got worse or is it that I now have regular access to information which shows them up as being often egregiously flawed, trivial and/or biased?
Of course, it is probably a bit of both.
Sounds like a variant of science by press release.
Sales pitch science. Marketed for the masses!