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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Gary Strand (18:08:49) :
Well yes, as a matter of fact, it does. That’s the reason he corrected the record with a new peer-reviewed paper. The climate sensitivity number used in his earlier paper was wrong.
And you still won’t answer my question. That’s because you can’t — without admitting that you only cherry-picked the earlier, incorrect Arrhenius paper…
…but thanx for playing, and Vanna has some lovely parting gifts for you on your way out.
Smokey (18:26:48) :
“Well yes, as a matter of fact, it does. That’s the reason he corrected the record with a new peer-reviewed paper. The climate sensitivity number used in his earlier paper was wrong.”
Does it have opposite sign? If not, then 1906 doesn’t contradict 1896. A decrease in magnitude still allows increasing T from increasing CO2.
You’ve been gonged.
Gary Strand: You wrote, “Nice Hovmöllers, Bob. You can also see the 82/83 and 97/98 El Niños in HadCRUT.”
But the detail in the RSS presentation is sooo much better.
Regards
FWIW, Gary Strand’s first observation was correct. Either that was sloppy reporting or an incorrect belief on the part of Dr. Taylor.
So during this thread has anyone determined which?
Unfortunately, then the discussion seems to have degraded.
Either way, CO2 may have a warming effect, but it’s neither linear nor significant. Then again, neither is a 0.7K change over a century.
One irony is that some folks treat science as a buffet, in which they can pick and choose the items on the menu to accept. Science isn’t like that.
Directly from the wwf site:
“The largest proportion of a polar bear’s annual caloric intake occurs between late April and mid-July. Food availability during this period is critical for maintaining their proper body weight to survive the ice-free season, when prey is harder to catch for bears that remain on the sea ice and little or no food is available for bears who remain on shore.”
ie The threat for polar bears from a warming Arctic is of a longer ice-free season. However :
“When other food is unavailable, polar bears sometimes eat muskox, reindeer, small rodents, seabirds, shellfish, fish, eggs, kelp, berries, and human garbage (the garbage dump in Churchill, Canada, had to be closed and moved because of this activity).”
Which might explain why the shorter season isn’t affecting numbers. So if someone looks at the actual bear numbers and says bears are thriving there is a good explanation as to why – whether it’s politically correct or not. It’s not really enough to suppose a decline should be happening. You usually need to look for hard numbers because there is always something you just didn’t consider. If there isn’t an actual numerical decline then a lot of time, energy and money is being wasted.
Gary Strand:
Yes, that’s irony all right. But since I’m asking why you decided to ‘pick and choose’ the incorrect Arrhenius paper and never mentioned the corrected paper, I don’t think you see the real irony in your “buffet” statement. Science is not a buffet, even though you treat it that way.
True, I’ve been holding your feet to the fire on this, and it’s been interesting watching the contortions used to avoid answering a very simple question.
[BTW, the 1896 paper you cited was corrected by the author because it was wrong. Understand? The sign has nothing to do with Arhenius’ paper being right or wrong. The climate sensitivity number was completely wrong in the original 1896 paper, and the error was corrected ten years later. But you only cited the incorrect 1896 paper. Why? Is it because the factually incorrect paper fits your AGW agenda, and the later, corrected paper doesn’t? Or were you just hoping no one would notice?]
Now, are you going to answer exactly why you used the incorrect, *wrong* paper, and never mentioned the correction? Or are you going to continue answering questions that were not asked, and hope that everyone forgets what the original question to you was?
Take your time. I’ve got all night.
Gary Strand (18:11:39) :
Gary: you’ve said before you are not a climate scientist…. but as a computer guy you’re top-notch. I believe it. You built the models to the specifications. Let the master minds defend or assault those specifications. Guys like us can defend the processing… I once wrote an accounting system for a guy who needed to know the real value of his business, the value he wanted his investors to know and the value the tax authorities should know. System must have worked. Can I defend the integrity of the results? H*** no. (self-moderated snip, before Charles the fundamentalist moderator sends a minion), but they worked according to spec. I truly believe in withholding from the tax trolls whatever you can hide, but I’m not sure I’d want to defend it.
Smokey (18:26:48) :
Gary Strand (18:08:49) :
“Smokey”, does Arrhenius (1906) contradict Arrhenius (1896)?
Well yes, as a matter of fact, it does. That’s the reason he corrected the record with a new peer-reviewed paper.
I don’t think papers were ‘peer-reviewed’ back then.
Gary’s reference to Arrhenius was mainly for the purpose of showing how old the idea was… so contemporary arguments miss his point… right?
Question to Gary: Why have we not seen a linear rise in temperatures for the last century? i.e. How come we were worried about the coming ice age 30 years ago?
I don’t mean to be contentious. I am genuinely interested in Gary’s answer.
Leif,
Certainly Arrhenius and Einstein operated in a different environment than those dealing with the peer review industry of today.
Regardless of the attempt by trolls to distract from the topic, the FACT is that the world population of polar bears has INCREASED 300 to 400 percent over the last 30 years.
Is the Arctic warmer now than then? If so, it has not been a problem for polar bears.
Is the Actic warming due to Arrhenius models or ocean currents? The polar bears don’t give a rat; they’re fine with it.
Are the Copenhagen tiny minds having a cow about Dr. Taylor’s GW realist leanings? Again, the polar bears could care less. They are fat and happy, eating and breeding, and doing all those polar bear things, with SIGNIFICANT POPULATION INCREASE.
The polar bear scare is pure poppycock nonsense, another hysterical fantasy dreamed up by scaremongers with sticky fingers in your wallet.
Care to comment on polar bears, trolls? Or is the subject too REAL for your fantasy world.
Smokey (18:00:06) :
Gary Strand,
You’re wasting your time on this guy. He’s only trolling and the more responses he gets, the louder he howls.
Save your energy for someone genuinely seeking answers.
Gilbert,
Thanks, I needed that.
they’re fine with it, I meant to type.
But while we’re on the topic of Arctic wildlife, how about them narwhals and belugas. Those are whales. They are mammals. They breathe air. If the Arctic ice is too thick and the extent too great, whales suffocate. The great migrations of Arctic whales occur in the summertime, because in the winter the ice cap presents a respiratory problem.
So, the less ice the better, as far as whales are concerned.
Remember the eco battle cry, “Save the Whales”? Well, the less ice, the more whales. Arctic ice recession is the best thing that could happen to an Arctic whale. If the “Greeds” (whoops I meant “Greens”) really wanted to save the whales, they would be all in favor of melting the Arctic ice.
Warmer is Better, as far as whales and polar bears are concerned.
Jason S. gets my point – Smokey wants to wander. That’s fine, but let’s leave the hysterics and italics out of it.
Gary
Arrhenius is a total red herring. His new number didn’t presumably include positive feedbacks anyway. About 1 C rise per doubling pre-feedback is recognized by virtually everyone is it not? However Lindzen looked at the numbers of outgoing radiation – as blogged about here – and concluded that there was no positive feedback apparent in the data. This was after the data had been adjusted twice, once for drift and once to fit in better with model results. This is the real point of contention as you should know.
Dessler went on the CA blog and explained that he thought a higher value was justified on the basis of a combination of model experiments (trying to replicate paleo data) and a basic gut feeling. Which is fair enough if you are a pessimist (which most climate scientists seem to be). However the jury is still out and gut feelings need tested with real data.
But all those higher numbers come from model sims and the real numbers are not playing ball with the hypothesis even after they are all adjusted upwards (radiosondes, satellites, ocean temps, outgoing radiation) so your initial statement about the physics dictating things rather than the models was misleading, if not entirely incorrect. Would you settle for a value of 1.2 C per doubling – as dictated by the Physics and backed by data?
Also whether the particular Arctic warming is due to GHG’s, soot or winds+currents is also still mere conjecture at this stage. The mainstream view isn’t actually settled on one explanation there either as you probably also know. The only consistent theme we get time and again from those dismissive scientists that you mention is that, IF model projections are correct, then things MIGHT get worse. Again the pessimism stems mainly from believing the models. The models though as you also know, don’t have the level of credibility that is necessary to be trusted to that extent. And frankly neither do any scientists who display arrogant dogma and pretend it is real science.
Never mind to Gary…. sorry, I can see you said:
“I never said that the climate system responds only to CO2”
Smokey (17:31:15) :
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:
“Monckton is still a joke… What are you going to tell us next? That the earth is 6000 years old, give or take a week?”
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.
Well Monckton is certainly the expert on ad hominem, he seems incapable of writing a sentence without one.
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
Monckton has no scientific credentials to compare with so that would be a waste of time. Outside science where you might think he had some expertise, at the Heartland conference he couldn’t even get his Churchillian quotation right!
Jason S. (18:56:19) :
“Why have we not seen a linear rise in temperatures for the last century? i.e. How come we were worried about the coming ice age 30 years ago?”
CO2 is far from the only driver of climate change – so even though CO2 has been increasing, other factors, at different times and with different importance (even changing with time), affect temperatures. Volcanoes, changes in TSI, land-use changes, ozone changes, and so on, all can impact temperatures.
A coming ice age wasn’t taken that seriously in the 1970s, despite what the blogosphere says. Consider this:
Strand: “A coming ice age wasn’t taken that seriously in the 1970s”
Wrong-O: click
And:
source
Claim falsified.
“Dr. Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this…to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.”
No one has addressed this biologist’s alternative explanation.
Does it sound like the escalation of a likely contributing factor, to the whole? That it’d be hard to push enough heat thru a 50 degree corridor, to heat a 360 degree Arctic Ocean. That the consequences couldn’t be missed, because the surrounding land areas would be relatively cooler.
The actual warming in the Arctic is greater than the warming in the computer models. So there is room for additional ideas.
“Newsweek”?
The late 19th century?
That’s the best you got, “Smokey”?
Next you’ll be telling us that medicine can’t be trusted because they talked for centuries about black bile.
REPLY to Gary Strand 19:41:22
Gary, I don’t know how old you are, and if you were around to witness it there, but there was a lot of interest in this at NCAR in the 1970s. There were a number of people in the meteorological community that started looking at this. I saw it happen with a front row seat. To say it wasn’t taken seriously would be to deny the interest then in the scientific community.
And I’ll point out, as a member of the media then, “Newsweek” didn’t just one day decide to say “hey, there’s an ice age coming!” and start writing about it. Journalists, particularly at places like Newsweek, are really lousy at interpreting science or seeing science trends. They don’t have the skills, vision, or time.
PBS did a NOVA special on sunspots in 1977: The Sunspot Mystery” February 2, 1977 Season 4, Episode code# 0404
It was citing Jack Eddy’s work and looking into the possibility of an ice age then, comparing to the LIA. I know first hand, I did a half hour TV science special using excerpts from it, and mentioned scientists and studies cited at the time.
The point is that both Newsweek and PBS Nova were driven by scientists and the state of science at the time. They didn’t just conjur it from thin air.
Here’s an example. Today we have people like NSIDC’s loose cannon, Dr. Mark Serreze, who made a bold statement last year about the possibility of an “ice free north pole” in 2008, which of course bombed spectacularly. Similar sorts of things were said by scientists in the 1970’s about global cooling, and thus they drove the media just like Serreze did last year.
To say it “wasn’t taken seriously” is disingenuous on your part, and also, simply wrong. The “black bile” crack is simply uncalled for. Maybe you just weren’t around, or weren’t of age to see it then. Smokey was, I was, were you?
Here is another example of science driving the media. Dr. James Hansen drove the media with his address to congress in 1988 on “global warming”. It was theater, with one of the aides then making sure the a/c was not on high on that June 23rd hot day and the windows open. The psychological effect on members of the media and congressmembers present was noted.
Senator Tim Wirth talks of that day here.
The MO is the same now as it was in 1988 and in the 70’s; “We see something alarming that might happen, I have some scientific studies that support it, we need to be concerned. We need funding to study this threat to our planet.”
Same storyline, different decade. In both cases the scientifically clueless media wrote about what the scientists said without questioning it much. How could they? Wordsmiths can’t usually compete with graphs, computers, and equations. It’s a different language to them.
I suppose you’ll now cite Oreske’s study, which is fine. But Oreske has an agenda. My advice; don’t go there.
Cheers
– Anthony Watts
Here’s Gary at his office desk at UCAR, courtesy of the “StrandCam”. Looks youthful to me. Good for you.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/strandwg/campage.html
But who puts a live webcam of themselves online while typing at a computer anyway? Oh, wait, what business are you in again? 😉
A new report from the US FWS says that polar bear numbers in Alaska are declining. They go on to blame global warming – meaning sea ice melt – for the loss yet looking at the numbers it’s clear that the decline is really due solely to illegal poaching of bears by Russians.
Officials say the drop among the Chukchi and Bering bears is likely steeper than for those in the Beaufort, due to a more dramatic melt of sea ice — which the bears need to travel and forage for food — and an illegal Russian hunt believed to be killing 150 to 250 bears a year.
Here’s the important part:
The worldwide polar bear population is generally believed to be about 20,000 to 25,000, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which lists the species as “vulnerable”.
That means the illegal poaching is responsible for killing about 1% of the global population of polar bears annually! At least now we know what the real threat is!
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN18294663
Francis (19:37:59) :
The actual warming in the Arctic is greater than the warming in the computer models. So there is room for additional ideas.
I don’t think we know much about arctic temps. There aren’t a whole lot of weather stations there. Extrapolating the temps from ice extent is a circular argument. Even NASA notes that much, if not all of the loss of ice is due to changes in circulation patterns.