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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Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Friedrich Nietzsche
German philosopher (1844 – 1900)
[…] here: BS Alert: Polar bear hearing affected to due global warming? Tags: ability, Climate Change, global-warming, green, hurricanes, polar, politics, problem, space, […]
Good heavens. To think I am forced to pay a TV licence fee that funds the BBC and assists them with this sort of rubbish punting makes me really annoyed.
As for Bill P’s
“If this doesn’t work, just have the bears eat two trainers and call Al Gore in the morning.”
Surely the other way around would be a better result?
Since a polar bear’s hearing is somewhere between that of a human and that of a dog, I did a definitive experiment on this.
I sat down in a quiet place with both of my dogs and put a tray of ice cubes on the table next to us to see if the sound of melting ice would cause damage to our ears. After we all woke up, the ice cubes had melted and I can say that no animals were harmed in the progress of this research. We are all unscathed.
Can I get paid for this please?
At least the cannibal polar bears won’t have to hear the moaning ans screams of the starving polar bears as they eat them alive.
Sorry, John, wrong results=no money
Wondering what low flying helicopters full of mad scientists and eco tourists dose to there hearing.
One scientist proudly reported on discovery channel that he tranquilized, weight and measured 1000 bears in three seasons.
Makes for tough hunting seals when you walk half stoned around on the ice with a helicopter buzzing around your head, cannibalism is the next best thing I guess.
Linked to from the Drudge Report, here’s yet another TYPICAL example of the Green movement’s ideology. If people won’t volunteer, force them to do it. Who cares if it goes against every idea of freedom and human dignity ever developed in the Western world. We’re trying to save the planet! Absurd.
It reads:
“Tara Garnett, the report’s author, warned that campaigns encouraging people to change their habits voluntarily were doomed to fail and urged the government to use caps on greenhouse gas emissions and carbon pricing to ensure changes were made. “Food is important to us in a great many cultural and symbolic ways, and our food choices are affected by cost, time, habit and other influences,” the report says. “Study upon study has shown that awareness-raising campaigns alone are unlikely to work, particularly when it comes to more difficult changes.”
Oh the reason I didn’t put a link myself is because David Walton (14th comment down) already did. I forgot to add that bit in.
I live in the Northeast USA and am generally well informed. The carbon trading scheme that 10 of the NE states have agreed to just snuck right by me. FYI, here’s the press release for the 1st auction; http://www.rggi.org/docs/rggi_press_9_29_2008.pdf
They obtained $38M ($3.07 per ton) that gets distributed to the 6 states that participated: Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Lets say the states get 2/3 and admin eats up the rest, that means each states budget gets an average of about $4M . The state bureaucrats can taste it now. This program is now locked in.
Delaware, New Hampshire, New Jersey, and New York didn’t participate. (???)
Mike
I corrected the data and the dogs and I are all stone deaf. Now can I get paid?
I have to inform you this report is quite true!
When I turn my hearing aid volume up the noise from
the ice in my glass of scotch is deafening!!
[…] http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/09/30/bs-alert-polar-bear-hearing-affected-to-due-global-warming […]
Only the BBC would be gullible (stupid?) enough to run this story.
I despair of the BBC. This stupid story was shown every 60 minutes on the News 24. The Food Climate Research Network rubbish was also briefly on the Daily Telegraph website and the editor asked for comments. Funny, but no comments were shown and after I posted one the article was withdrawn.
Just how loud can the calving of sea ice get? We are not talking about glaciers here.
John,
If you and the dogs are stone deaf, how did you hear Mike’s post?
Or this one for that matter?
Yes, you can get paid now.
Did anyone take a sound level meter up there and actually measure some of this? I suspect the noise of a researcher being eaten by a starving polar bear would be much louder.
With a severe hearing loss already, I guess I’ll have to avoid mexed drinks and stick to beer. The bubbles don’t make as much noise.
Don’t despair of the BBC. The Front Page News has no mention of polar bear deafness, but doe point to this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7643883.stm
Which has some interesting observations, particularly:
[…] This is a joke, right? Oh, wait a minute, this is science, as practiced in the state of West Wing-Nut. BTW, still no sunspots. And Chaitén is still erupting. Posted at 10:31 AM | | […]
I’ve also heard a crazy rumor that ice is really cold. Perhaps there should be a study commissioned on the incidence of frostbite on polar bears’ paws. I can’t think of a more effective use of grant money and scientists’ time.
Well, you got me on that one Mark. Actually, one of the dogs smells all the new posts, rejecting any from trolls and miscreants, so I was sure not to miss Mike’s or yours.
Seriously, polar bears have been around for somewhere between 400,000 and 800,000 years (however, some contend that its only 200,000.) They are an offshoot of the grizzly side of the family that adapted/evolved to live in cold environments. Whatever amount of noise is made by melting sea ice, it is something that they have heard (or not heard, depending on the noise levels) throughout their evolution.
This new “research” reminds me of a “study” done in Alberta in the 80’s to determine why elk urinate on grass. At a cost of $45,000 it was determined that elk urinate on grass because they stand on grass most of the time. Luckily, a follow-up study was not done to determine why elk urinate on snow in the winter. Had that study been done today, it would have included the effects of climate change and the elk’s prefernce for urinating on grass. But I digress.
[…] Watts Up With That?, a BS alert: Noise from excessive ice calving and cracking due to “climate change” would affect […]
“Just how loud can the calving of sea ice get? We are not talking about glaciers here.”
Having a bunch of hearing-impaired polar bears aimlessly roaming the Arctic wastes has captured my imagination, and frankly unnerved me something awful, so that I had to go pour myself a double scotch on the rocks.
Imagine my consternation! The ice cubes splitting and clinking in my glass were so deafeningly loud I couldn’t be summoned to take out the trash. I’ve had to (try to) read my wife’s lips ever since.