From the UK Telegraph 26 June 2009
Christopher Booker
POLAR BEAR EXPERT BARRED BY WARMISTS
Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group, set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission, will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.
This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN’s major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world’s leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week’s meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with the views of the rest of the group.
Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching into the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.
Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming in the past 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.
He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists’ agenda as their most iconic single cause.
The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the ‘wind-sculpted ice’ they were standing on made such a striking image.
[Added by Anthony: Please follow this link to the original photographer. See the bottom right photo.
She just wanted a photograph more of the “wind-sculpted ice” than of the bears. Byrd writes:
“[You] have to keep in mind that the bears aren’t in danger at all. It was, if you will, their playground for 15 minutes. You know what I mean? This is a perfect picture for climate change, in a way, because you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die with a coke in their hands. But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim.”
]
Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week’s meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor’s, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: ‘it was the position you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition’.
Dr Taylor was told that his views running ‘counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful’. His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as the radiation of the sun and changing ocean currents – was ‘inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG’.
So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of ‘ scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice’. But check out also on Anthony Watt’s Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. Average temperatures at midsummer were still below zero – the latest date this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping – and after last year’s recovery from its September 2007 low, this year’’s ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time, The bears are doing fine.
(Note – this was sent to me via email as an advance copy. Also I should add that the photo was not originally part of the story sent to me, I added the photo since I know the reference. – Anthony)
Related WUWT story here
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If I was a polar bear, You would find me where there’s food.
Unless the seals decide to go on vacation in southern France, I’ll be just fine. Although I may go on vacation in Washington DC. I hear there are some stupid crittiers down that way.
FatBigot:
“The amplification process is, as far as I can tell, purely speculative; certainly no one has been able to identify it occurring at any time in the history of the planet.”
Let’s try an experiment in positive feedback. Just hold the microphone to the loudspeaker and listen to it howl; that’s runaway positive feedback (the only sort there is).
Now turn off the mains supply to the amplifier. What happens to the positive feedback when there is no extra power fed into the system to drive it? It stops.
This so called process is not speculative; it is utter drivel. It is nothing but a perpetual motion machine. But it is convenient for speading panic.
Gary Strand points us all to Arrhenius for advice. But this will not do.
Arrhenius was not a climatologist, he was a chemist. He was therefore not qualified to speak on this matter. (ironosarc off.)
I think this is appropriate to this discussion. 🙂
The Cremation of Sam Mcgee, by Robert Service
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.
Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.
He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;
Though he’d often say in his homely way that he’d “sooner live in hell”.
On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail.
Talk of your cold! through the parka’s fold it stabbed like a driven nail.
If our eyes we’d close, then the lashes froze till sometimes we couldn’t see;
It wasn’t much fun, but the only one to whimper was Sam McGee.
And that very night, as we lay packed tight in our robes beneath the snow,
And the dogs were fed, and the stars o’erhead were dancing heel and toe,
He turned to me, and “Cap,” says he, “I’ll cash in this trip, I guess;
And if I do, I’m asking that you won’t refuse my last request.”
Well, he seemed so low that I couldn’t say no; then he says with a sort of moan:
“It’s the cursed cold, and it’s got right hold till I’m chilled clean through to the bone.
Yet ’tain’t being dead — it’s my awful dread of the icy grave that pains;
So I want you to swear that, foul or fair, you’ll cremate my last remains.”
A pal’s last need is a thing to heed, so I swore I would not fail;
And we started on at the streak of dawn; but God! he looked ghastly pale.
He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee;
And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee.
There wasn’t a breath in that land of death, and I hurried, horror-driven,
With a corpse half hid that I couldn’t get rid, because of a promise given;
It was lashed to the sleigh, and it seemed to say: “You may tax your brawn and brains,
But you promised true, and it’s up to you to cremate those last remains.”
Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code.
In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.
In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring,
Howled out their woes to the homeless snows — O God! how I loathed the thing.
And every day that quiet clay seemed to heavy and heavier grow;
And on I went, though the dogs were spent and the grub was getting low;
The trail was bad, and I felt half mad, but I swore I would not give in;
And I’d often sing to the hateful thing, and it hearkened with a grin.
Till I came to the marge of Lake Lebarge, and a derelict there lay;
It was jammed in the ice, but I saw in a trice it was called the “Alice May”.
And I looked at it, and I thought a bit, and I looked at my frozen chum;
Then “Here”, said I, with a sudden cry, “is my cre-ma-tor-eum.”
Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire;
Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher;
The flames just soared, and the furnace roared — such a blaze you seldom see;
And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee.
Then I made a hike, for I didn’t like to hear him sizzle so;
And the heavens scowled, and the huskies howled, and the wind began to blow.
It was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled down my cheeks, and I don’t know why;
And the greasy smoke in an inky cloak went streaking down the sky.
I do not know how long in the snow I wrestled with grisly fear;
But the stars came out and they danced about ere again I ventured near;
I was sick with dread, but I bravely said: “I’ll just take a peep inside.
I guess he’s cooked, and it’s time I looked”;. . . then the door I opened wide.
And there sat Sam, looking cool and calm, in the heart of the furnace roar;
And he wore a smile you could see a mile, and he said: “Please close that door.
It’s fine in here, but I greatly fear you’ll let in the cold and storm —
Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it’s the first time I’ve been warm.”
There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold;
The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,
But the queerest they ever did see
Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge
I cremated Sam McGee.
In the end, a competent scientist is discriminated against because he knows the AGW propaganda is a lie. In Canada. period. Totalitarism is coming to a municipality near you…
Keep digging your hole, Gary. But watch that global warming on the way down. High levels of subsurface CO2 = intense heating of the mantel. Temperatures are now averaging 5400F at the core and expect to increase to 5403 by the end of the century. The earth will have more frequent and intense volcanos. The science is settled. But keep digging if you must.
bill (13:08:42) :
Interesting that you may have acredited the image to the wrong person:
The WUWT faithful know that Amanda Byrd took the photo. WUWT2009/05/09.
For the rest of the story –
http://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/transcripts/0706_byrd.pdf
Interesting last interview question –
9. How did the media obtain the image?
Dan Crosbie gave the image to the Canadian Ice Service, who gave the image to Environment Canada, who distributed the image to 7 media agencies including AP.
10. Will you seek compensation for the use of your image?
Yes.
Gary Strand (15:21:41) :
Ri-i-i-i-i-ght..
Either Mr Strand really believes that, in which case he’s just making an insufferable comment and hoping no one will dispute it, or he’s completely lost it.
Let’s go with the former for the time being. Rather than try to counter the science in Monckton’s statement, Strand does an ad hominem attack on Monckton [who has an extensive C.V. in the hard sciences], by stating: “…citing Monckton? Give me a break. He’s a joke.” That’s Strand’s answer? This isn’t realclimate or climateprogress. This is the “Best Science” site, and Strand can not get a free pass with a baseless ad hominem attack like that.
How does that personal attack answer Monckton’s assertion that Arrhenius corrected his *wrong* 1896 paper, with a corrected [and never falsified] peer-reviewed paper ten years later?? Either Strand is completely unaware of the 1906 Arrhenius correction… or he’s deliberately cherry-picking only the information that he wants people to see.
Unless Mr Strand can claim ignorance of the Arrhenius correction, it appears that the comment @15:07:42 wasn’t a miss at all. Avoiding answering my question… [“Since this information has been commented on many times here and elsewhere, please explain why you only cite the 1896 paper”] …shows that it hit the bulls-eye, and Mr Strand is just hoping it will quietly go away if he simply ignores it.
Nope. The question that hit the bulls-eye is still unanswered. So please answer my question, Strand. Were you ignorant of the Arrhenius situation of 1906, which falsified his 1896 excessively high climate sensitivity number? Or were you just being mendacious by citing only the incorrect 1896 paper, and hoping that no one who was aware of the 1906 paper would notice your omission? Or is it something else? Like trolling at the Best Science site, for instance.
RE Bill Ellis 14:32:10 on Amanda Byrd’s striking photo, do PBs ever attack seals in the water, or only on ice? Could these bears be peering into the water for prey to pounce upon from on high? At a flat angle, water reflects light, so the higher one’s vantage point, the more water one can see down into.
In any event, the PBSG has totally discredited itself as a scientific organization by barring Taylor for his un-PC views on AGW.
Dr. Taylor has become an inconvenient truth. Over the past couple of years I have had several exchanges with Congressman Inslee about polar bears while citing Dr. Taylor’s work. It was to no avail as he continued to insist that the bears were declining and imperiled. Congressman Inslee voted “yea” on cap and trade.
Is Smokey denying that increasing CO2 increases temperature, *ceterus paribus*? If so, then it’s flying in the face of over 100 years of science.
What are you going to tell us next? That the earth is 6000 years old, give or take a week?
Ooops – misspelled *ceteris paribus*. My bad.
Oh, and Monckton is still a joke. Why he has any cred whatsoever is a mystery.
Gary Strand: You wrote, “Lots of shots at me, and all misses. I didn’t say that warming was caused only by CO2, or by basic radiative properties.”
Agreed, you wrote, “Warming caused by CO2 increase…” was “…’DICTATED’ by basic radiative PRINCIPALS.” [My caps] But, to tell you the truth, I find your word games boring.
Since this post and the comments on this thread pertain to Arctic temperatures, sea ice loss, Polar Bear habitat loss, etc., let me offer this. Many us who comment here at WUWT and those of us who contribute posts understand that the recent bout of elevated Arctic temperatures is a result of natural poleward heat transport from the 1997/98 El Nino and the subsequent El Nino events in 2002/03, 2004/05, and 2006/07. This can be seen very plainly in the MSU TLT Time-Latitude Plot available from RSS. Just so happens that I combined a Time-Latitude Plot with a Time-Series graph in a post here. The combination provides a great visual indication of the source of the recent rise in mid-to-high latitude Northern Hemisphere TLT anomalies.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/06/another-look-at-polar-amplification/
A more detailed discussion can be found at my website:
http://bobtisdale.blogspot.com/2009/06/rss-msu-tlt-time-latitude-plots.html
Gary Strand,
Ah, the joy of pointing out that the site pest still hides out from answering inconvenient questions. And the ad-homs keep on a-coming:
It’s certainly easier on the old ego to do ad hominem attacks, rather than try to answer the very uncomfortable questions asked @16:51:28.
So what is it, Strand? Ignorance? Mendacity? Or just trolling?
And for anyone who thinks Monckton is a “joke,” I challenge them to put their resume up against his. Or for that matter, to credibly falsify any of Monckton’s science: click
I answered your question, “Smokey”. What I wonder is if you don’t believe that CO2 increase causes warming, then what else you might believe.
Nice Hovmöllers, Bob. You can also see the 82/83 and 97/98 El Niños in HadCRUT.
What this bill also is meant to be the start of — because a hyped lying IPCC, the stupid politicians and a completely good healthy gas which is emissions is 3% of the natural release of the gas and due to the the father of climate science Reid Bryson and thousands of relevant scientists doesn’t control our climate — is described in this good reading, from Investor’s Business Daily, March 27:
here is an interesting page of Dr. Mitchell Taylor talk in January of this year.
http://www.fcpp.org/main/publication_detail.php?PubID=2571
also, check out PDF of slides, on that page.
http://www.fcpp.org/pdf/MTaylor%20_%20Status_of_Polar_Bears011509.pdf
Gary Strand says:
Is that the best you can do Gary, trot out the old creationist jibe? Pretty sleazy, but I guess it is at the same level as the rest of your arguments.
For the record, physical systems are actually quite complex and dynamic and I have been convinced for a long while that evolution is an adequate explanation for the state of life on the Earth today and that the solar system and Universe is billions of years old.
I’m also married to someone with a different skin color, just to forestall any other labels you might seek to apply to me.
Finally, I think that it is not as simple as more CO2 linearly increasing the global temperature and that the atmosphere and hydrosphere form a complex self-stabilizing system and that ice-ages and warming are effected by the distribution of the continents and orbital parameters.
Gary Strand,
No, you never answered my question, not even close. Here it is again: Since the 1906 Arrhenius correction has been commented on many times here and elsewhere, please explain why you only cited the incorrect 1896 paper.
There. Have at it.
“Smokey”, does Arrhenius (1906) contradict Arrhenius (1896)? If not, then increasing CO2 still increases temperature, and my point stands.
Richard Sharpe (17:59:00) :
“Finally, I think that it is not as simple as more CO2 linearly increasing the global temperature and that the atmosphere and hydrosphere form a complex self-stabilizing system and that ice-ages and warming are effected by the distribution of the continents and orbital parameters.”
I never said that the climate system responds only to CO2, so your strawman died a needless death.
My whole argument is that the toss-away comment in the original article is flawed, in that the concept of increasing CO2 causing increasing temperatures is not from computer models, or the IPCC. It was basically a cheap shot.
Gary Strand: Reality check
http://arctic-roos.org/observations/satellite-data/sea-ice/observation_images/ssmi1_ice_area.png
This bill also like a cick off for what is described in this is described in this good reading, from Investor’s Business Daily, March 27:
VG (18:14:11) :
Gary Strand: Reality check
What exactly am I supposed to be checking? I’ve already talked about this year’s Arctic sea ice over on CA – am I supposed to be ashamed or dismayed about this year’s numbers, so far?
Explain.