Bear down! – Send an ambulance and a lawyer!
The big green machine has finally successfully lobbied enough FUD to get the thriving polar bear listed as a threatened species. Never mind the fact that the arctic sea ice has melted before in the last 100 years. See the news release from the Department of the Interior here:
http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears.html
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced on May 14, 2008 that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.
So what happens if sea ice grows? Let’s see how well that “best available science” holds up. According to the full DOI press release, computer model scenarios figured heavily into the decision.
Now come the lawsuits for everything under the sun that may potentially affect sea ice and those poor bears. Yep, fire up that big lawsuit engine, let’s get ready to ruuummmmble!
(h/t MattN)
Update: The Sierra Club is not happy about this, because the “decision is riddled with loopholes, caveats, and backhanded language that could actually undermine protections for the polar bear and other species”. You just can’t please some people.
Update 2: If you really want to see green stupidity in action, try the Polar Bear Brainwashing Parking game:
http://www.gamesfree.ca/other_games/810/Polar_Bear_Parking.html
Play the game and watch the “education” at the end. Note to intellectually challenged game designers: Penguins don’t inhabit the arctic.
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Lawsuits may not be in the Greens’ best interest.
One possible outcome could be removal of the polar bear from the list.
Another could be a protected discovery, leading to witnesses who may be called upon to publicly defend their junk science – not exactly what they may want.
The whole scheme could end up exposed as a fraud.
Amicus curiae?
The thing with lawsuits are they are very expensive and the law is no friend to common sense or good science.
You never know what a judge or jury may decide. It’s easy to shop around and find a judge who’s going to support you — get the proper jurisdiction and the outcome is almost a a forgone conclusion.
Those of us who are “State of Fear” enthusiasts remember how the lawsuit over rising ocean levels in that novel wasn’t doing well because lack of actual evidence. That was one of the motivations behind the conspirators.
On the other hand, a British court ruled on 9 factual errors in Gore’s infomercial , so it’s possible that going to court might actually be productive.
One thing’s for sure — the lawyers are going to make a killing.
Now that the USFW Service has their “threatened” designation accepted it will be almost impossible to get it removed. We in Florida have been dealing with the scrub jay issue that hampers building on YOUR OWN land. The regulations are ridiculous. They consider scrub jay territory any place that has the type of tree or shrub that a scrub jay MAY use for nesting. At one point they were going to expand the definition of scrub jay territory to include any land that was capable of growing any type of tree or shrub a scrub jay MAY use. Because scrub jay habitat grows in sandy soil, that would put all of Florida in a scrub jay zone which would give the USFW jurisdiction over all building in the State. I do not know if this is still being considered or what, I just know they never give up any of their power and they are impossible to deal with.
I just heard the official explain himself on the radio. He used the term ‘the computer models tell us….’ about 6 times. This is insane. It would not be so bad if the computer modellers were capable of acknowledging the limitations of their models however experience tells us otherwise.
I can see it now: 5 years from now the ice will still be at current levels or slightly higher yet it will be impossible to get the polar bears off the list because the modellers argue that increasing sea is ‘consistent’ with their models predicting the disapperance of the sea ice.
There are so many ramifications from this activist judge’s decision they could boggle the imagination.
Never mind the polar bear population has increased from 5,000 to over 25,000; never mind the underpinnings of the Pogies has been exposed on many fronts; never mind the Nation is in dire straits for adequate oil, the Bush Administration has allowed this travesty to occur in the hopes it can salvage (or create) his legacy.
And please, don’t tell me bush is not at fault: he hired all the dimwits in his cabinet. I seriously doubt if Osama can do worse than what bush has already done.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
I think everyone who is in favor of this listing should be required to give up anything remotely responsible, in their eyes, for AGW. So no cars, nothing that requires manufacturing, use of chemicals, no computers, no air conditioning, no TV, nothing. They should be required to return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles. If they don’t, they obviously don’t really believe the tripe they toss at the rest of us.
By the way, I think that bear in the photo is laughing his a** off!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
May 14, 2008. The day that science died. R.I.P. I agree with McGrats, I’ve given the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt too many times. He does indeed now rank with Jimmy Carter as one of the worst presidents in the last 100 years. What a sad day. $6 a gallon gas here we come, plus with the cold winter coming next year, the economy hasn’t even begun to feel its true pain.
Bears have quintupled and now are “threatened”?
The madmen in charge of the asylum. And these are the Republican madmen.
Wait til the other madmen are put in charge.
– * –
True that Bush’s Sec. of Interior put in place a bunch of caveats, with the clear intent of sopping the enviros. Many conservatives have tried such strategies in many areas of government. These usually don’t work. Once you have cracked the door open, once there are bureaucrats whose livelihood depends on having mandates, the bureaucrats will never relent.
If those white cute bears are threatened, why do we shoot several hundred per year to keep their numbers down?
If they are threatened now at a population of ~25,000, what were they 40 years ago when there were only ~5,000 of them?
This decision completely defies any and all logic.
A California law firm known for its conservative advocacy is poised to join the political melee over the fate of the polar bear, vowing to sue the government if it cites global warming as a threat to the species. — KYPost
Yeah, good luck with that one, guys. All I see is a landslide of wealth redistribution and a drop in our standard of living on the near horizon.
Nickelodeon is also exploiting the polar bear issue to brainwash everyone’s kids. Friday, June 6th, 8PM EST, the “Naked Brothers Band” will be enlightened by “An Inconvenient Truth” and set out on a quest to save the polar bears.
In the words of C3PO, “This is madness.”
(looks around)
“Nope, don’t see any white bears on the white snow. Fire the charges!”
Incidentally, the polar bears will appreciate the lunch provided by the “Naked Brothers Band”. Or does a man-made meal violate the Act?
I expect California to pass the first CO2 restriction law. I expect lawsuits to be filed the same day.
It’s an absolute travshamockery of science.
As I said in the open thread (didn’t know where else to put this and I knew Anthony read every entry so he’d see it anyway, thanks Anthony!) the door has been kicked in…
What I have a problem with is the way “if global warming melts the Arctic ice … ” is portrayed. The ice only melts for a month or two at the height of the melt season.
Right now, some ice melts around the fringes of the Arctic in August and September and promptly refeezes back in October (after the six months of darkness sets in on September 21st each year.)
Even in an accelerated global warming scenario, the bears just have to leave the ice for a month or two – nothing unusual for polar bears as the polar bears on Hudson Bay are off the ice for 4 or 5 months.
Even if global warming and the models are accurate, it will not threaten the species.
All of you that have posted before me made your points well.
This Polar Bear thing is so disturbing, I hardly know what to say. Seems, though, that any of us that drive autos, turn an electric light on in the evening or even draw a breath of air are harming the Bear’s habitat.
This is far reaching stuff, folks.
Based on what I read over at ICECAP, it appears that the decision was written to try to please everybody, which means it will please no one.
I tell you, up here in Canada, we eat Polar Bears. Ummm yummmy. We’d also eat Penguins if they’d only migrate from the South Pole.
As an aside, I just went to the WordPress dashboard, and under the science section they have 4 posts listed. Three are for this blog.
Sheesh, ya big bully… 😉
90 percent of the Arctic thaw is due to soot. As a thermal equivalent, it’s 20 percent of all global warming of the past century. If these enviros gave a flip about the polar bears, they’d address the soot problem first. Instead they’d rather martyr the bears on their holy cross of environmentalism and socialism.
I wrote this to to Andy Rivkin & John Tierney of the NY Times. No response.
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“…With (no dis)respect to the polar bears, their threatened status and the Arctic thaw, I strongly suggest a review of the studies of V. Ramanathan & Charlie Zender on the effects of soot on snow & ice in the Arctic meltdown. It’s nothing short of astonishing, even James Hansen has commented on it. Up to ninety (yes 90.0) percent of the centennial Arctic thaw appears to be due to soot, with the Arctic ice loss constituting nearly 25 PERCENT of ALL global warming since 1880 (Zender, Hansen, Ramanathan).
A NASA & NOAA team are current surveying the Arctic haze situation as well, getting real field data on how much air-heating effects can be attributed to aerosol soot. And for what it’s worth, shipping through the northern passages is probably compounding the soot deposition trend – ships use very heavy crude.
One other angle to investigate is the potential of partial Arctic recovery due to the new emissivity of the open water. The annual emissivity-to-insolation ratio is somewhere around 2:1 from open waters in the Arctic. That is, without the winter jacket of ice over the open waters, the Arctic may be losing more heat at this point than it is taking in.
The Bush administration is essentially correct in saying that the polar bear’s situation is unrelated to CO2. The Democrats know this. Zender & Ramanathan have already spoken before Rep. Henry Waxman’s committee. It’s all there:
(http://www.google.com/search?q=henry+waxman+ramanathan+zender)
If just *ONE* prominent journalist would lead the way in broadly disseminating Zender’s soot findings, the information will cascade toward a new consensus for a feasible and inexpensive near-term fix, and not a pointless and divisive long-term fight about CO2 that won’t make a lick of difference in saving the bears in the next twenty years.
I’m a moderate liberal, but I would like everyone to think about this: What has Bush done to mitigate soot? Answer: More than Clinton ever did.
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My post is #9. No response. CO2 is the agenda. Repeat the mantra.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/administration-polar-bear-threatened-but-co2-not-relevant/#comments
Threatened is not endangered. We’ll just have to wait to see Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne’s “administrative guidance and…rule that defines the scope of impact…in order to protect the polar bear while limiting the unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States.” Under the threatened classification, they can actually do nothing, which sounds like their intent. A lot of time and money wasted for nothing.
Will this law cover only those Ursus Maritimus which come under US jurisdiction in Alaska, or are those which infest Canadian and Russian soil excluded? They’ll have to sort that one out first. That’ll be
profitablefun, said the lawyer, rubbing his hands with glee.Currently the increase in SH sea ice is more than 5 times larger than the decrease in NH sea ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Increases in SH sea ice adversely affects penguins trying to each their nesting sites on land (and this well documented, unlike the effect of ice decreases on polar bears). What’s needed is a lawsuit to make one or more species of penguin a protected species for this reason.
All this means is that the polar bear bodies will be hidden after they are shot and there will be no way to track how many have been killed and populations REALLY WILL begin to decrease.