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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Gary Strand (19:20:56) : “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.”
I think many (most?) here would agree to that, the difference being how the pie (cherry?) was sliced:
skeptic: I don’t know yet.
luke-warmer: Yeah, man is having an effect, but we can manage it.
warmer: We’re all gonna’ die!
Gary: “A coming ice age wasn’t taken that seriously in the 1970s, despite what the blogosphere says.”
I’ve seen magazines from the 70’s (glaciers on the cover?) that sensationalized the rapidly approaching Ice Age. Wasn’t Hansen promoting cooling then?
Leif Svalgaard (18:51:56) :
I don’t think papers were ‘peer-reviewed’ back then.
Good God! Leif, please tell me you’re joking, that you really do remember!
A piece of useless information: the cross between a male grizzly and female polar is called a prizzly. Did you know that? I didn’t until a Canadian aquaintance told me. It’s true too.
And a terrible nuisance polar bears are, like all bears they are always hungry and only too keen to snack on anything they can get their paws on, including the odd human. Ingenious as well, those claws can prise open all sorts of things from dumpsters, as I think you call them, to house doors and windows. Even been known to take the roof off to get to the larder apparently: and I am assured they know just how to tear the doors and lids off fridges and freezers: as well tearing tins open.
Mind you they do like to tell tall tales up in that part of the world.
Nevertheless they really do have bear patrols, the Canadians rather than the Americans in Alaska I believe, which pick up those that wander into town and send them back. And that’s a sort of perpetual motion if you like since apparently many turn out to be serial offenders who enjoy visiting the bright lights for their regular holidays.
As for Arrhenius he did not invent the idea, it certainly goes back as far as Foure and possibly before so it is at least two hundred years old.
What he did do, when he realised that the effect of CO2 was very weak, if it exists at all, was to introduce the idea of amplification from water vapour, essentially the same concept that is promoted today. That is that warming oceans increase the amount of water vapour in the atmosphere which in its turn traps far more energy than CO2 could do by itself.
There is no evidence as to whether this actually happens, it is a simple extrapolation of elementary physical principles about evaporation without considering other basic physical principles of the partial pressures of condensible vapours in gases: and please note that all observation to date suggest that as an effect it doesn’t exist in the real world.
Also it is as I pointed out in a previous post a stunning non sequitur. If water vapour in the atmosphere does this it would not matter what the source of the initial warming might be: it could be CO2 or the stokers in the Infernal Regions working overtime. It might even be the sun.
And no his papers were not peer reviewed as we understand the term but they were, in my opinion quite rightly, fiercely criticised at the time for the utter bunkum they were, and duly forgotten. Until recently.
Kindest Regards
don’t tarp me bro (14:21:56) : Don’t steal all of someone’s text to explain a photo theft.
Gary Strand (19:20:56) :
Gary, I was well past childhood at that time and I remember. Progressively harsher winters until the year Long Island Sound froze… OK, I’m exaggerating a little… it froze out to the breakwaters outside New Haven harbor. It was also the era of Eric VonDaniken’s Chariots of the Gods, Paul Ehrlich’s Population Bomb and the rest of the neo-Malthusian excrement from the Club-of-Rome. Gary, people try to re-write history, but I knew well people with serial numbers on their arms who might, perhaps, be willing to talk of places like Berchenau, Treblinka and Auchwitz – and the improbable heroes who liberated them. I knew a few of those improbable heroes. That time was real and true. Don’t tell me I don’t remember the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s… I remember very well. I also remember in the late 50’s and early 60’s American scholars trying to blame the strange weather and extreme cooling on Soviet Atmospheric testing of their Nuclear Bombs, culminating with what, if memory serves, was the largest-yielding man made explosion ever… a 100 megaton bomb. Spasiba, Comrade Kruschev.
wattsupwiththat (20:10:31) :
Maybe you just weren’t around, or weren’t of age to see it then. Smokey was, I was, were you?
You’re absolutely right. I was around then too. Back then I regularly read mags like Science digest, Discover, Scientific American etc. All had coverage directly from the horses’ mouth. (with apologies to all horses)
Gary Strand wrote:
“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.”
That clarifies things a bit. But I believe the concept of runaway global warming, due to positive feedback effects from water vapor, does come from the sources that the IPCC relied on, not Arrhenius. In addition, Monckton has claimed that there are four factors that the IPCC has exaggerated without scientific-paper support and multiplied together to get an outlandish projection of future temperature increase. That’s what the debate is about–runaway warming, catastrophic warming.
Posts on this site have also disputed the idea that the earth’s atmosphere can be likened to, or modeled as, a greenhouse.
I don’t have all of these arguments and links and facts at my fingertips, so I’ll let others carry the ball from here.
Likewise on the cooling issue in the 1970s. I took many science classes and taught introductory earth science and based on the literature of that time I gave guest lectures about the perils of a cooler climate. I didn’t have much to say of why this might happen but traced the history of climate change as then known and the temperature time-lines at that time. It happened before and many reported it was/would happen again.
The ice age did not come. Instead we now have reports of doom from CAGW. This is based on unreliable temperature data and flimsy science. I’m not impressed with the current data, science, and alarmists mentality. Until something changes I’m questioning everything.
Maybe I should move to Missouri.
Smokey (19:32:20)
Anthony (20:10:31)
“The Myth of the 1970’s Global Cooling Consnsus” (Peterson, Conolleley, Fleck) is the definitive response. For peer reviewed articles from 1965 to 1979:
“The survey identified only 7 articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming. Those seeven cooling articles garnered just 12% of the citations.”
I never read any of these. But I did avidly read the articles in the popular press.
I never did understand the twist in some of the scenarios. How it was expected to warm up again, briefly. And it this warmth that would actually trigger the ice age.
I’m no spring chicken you can dismiss, Anthony. Since this is your blog, you can moderate away others’ comments that have analogous irrelevancy, but perhaps your own comments need some auditing for maturity.
That said, it’s a myth that in the 1970s, it was believed widely and strongly by the climate science community that we were headed for an ice age. I wouldn’t rely on “Newsweek” for anything – my guess is their current issue is all about Michael Jackson, not anything substantial.
REPLY: You’ve totally let the point blow over your head Gary. And you know, if you can’t take a little friendly ribbing, don’t say silly things yourself in the first place, such as the “black bile” comment. If you want to believe science did not drive media stories including Newsweek, in the 19070’s be my guest. I don’t care for Newsweek either, but the connection between science and driving news stories has always been there. – Anthony
I don’t rely on media stories to get the science – I go to the scientists and their articles themselves. Francis kindly provided the definitive source – I recommend a read.
Besides, the 1958 film clip I provided ought to tell you something.
REPLY: We cite scientists and papers as well here, but the media is a reflection of the current mindset of the nation, and often drives public policy in some cases. There’s also a feedback effect. Scientists see stories in the media, and think “You know, I should be studying that” and seek out more information. Everybody does this, scientists, scholars, citizens. Witness the “Cold Fusion” research explosion once it hit the CBS Evening News. Science was all agog at that, driven by two blunderers who captured media and scholarly attention. It took awhile before science realized the claim of cold fusion was hype.
You can’t simply dismiss the impact of the media and the connection to science. The simple fact is that both science and the media were talking about global cooling in the 1970’s, and enough to make some waves nationally about it. – Anthony
Gary Strand said:
I see you didn’t withdraw your cheap innuendo that we are all creationists.
Pretty pathetic, really.
Oh, and Monckton is still a joke. Why he has any cred whatsoever is a mystery.
Well, he is a peer reviewer of IPCC AR4 (and therefore shares the Nobel Beauty prize). And he caught a substantial error that they had to correct, you know. So I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss him.
Guys, please be polite to Gary S. (Note Anthony’s reasonable tone.) Most of us no doubt disagree with him; he is operating in largely (though not entirely) hostile territory. I have a certain amount of respect for that. Therefore we can afford him a certain degree of noblesse oblige.
BTW, Gary, FYI, you won’t find many (if any) creationists here. Waving red flags does not strengthen your position. Besides, Newton was an alchemist (he considered his alchemy a more important contribution than fluxion), astrologer, and end-of-the-world “Biblical decodist”. Nonetheless, his work in physics and mathematics is hardly to be ignored.
Gary Strand (13:23:50) :
I’m also not impressed by folks who post with silly handles, like “orthodoc” and “Sam the Skeptic”.
It is obvious you are jealous over the originality and creativity of those that post here. Get a real life and stop fantasizing in ours.
Now, now, chillun . . . let’s play nice.
And scientists wonder why blogs like WUWT don’t get much respect.
You have to admit that is pretty mild compared to what skeptics get called on pro-AGW blogs.
Stick around, though, and check out some of the arguments and data. You may not agree with all of it, but you may find some of it worthy of consideration.
Gary Strand (22:21:06) :
I don’t rely on media stories to get the science – I go to the scientists and their articles themselves.
————
Have you not read the main story here Gary? When the science of the best and most knowledgeable scientist in certain area (here polar bear population) has become incovenient for a certain group of the society with a global agenda, how much faith can you really have in those people you seem to prefer? Where is your analytical mind?
smallz79 (22:45:28) :
Do you have a problem with “Charles the Moderator”? ‘wink, wink’
If Gore’s “Incovenient Truth” movie would have been peer-reviewed, it would have been rejected due to major flaws and bad science. His science fiction movie is not a peer-reviewed document. Yet, it has been accepted globaly as Truth, given awards and even a Nobel Price and promoted in the education system everywhere.
The real truth is that the science in his media show has been rejected by scientists and the courts of law… yet we still hear that is is a great movie showing that global warming is caused by humanity, etc, etc…
When science has been politicized and so many people with little scientific knowledge are self-declaring themselves experts as much as the situation with global climate, you can’t rely on peer-reviewed science anylonger since, as we have seen, there tends to be a peer-revision circle… and to me this sort of paper is highly questionable.
Gary Strand (21:53:03) :
That said, it’s a myth that in the 1970s, it was believed widely and strongly by the climate science community .
There were no climate scientists in 1970. The species didn’t evolve until the late eighties.
Anthony has the pulse of it. Scientists and the media each played back and forth to the benefit of the other. Is the FIRE AND ICE article by BMI here:
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp
dismissed by some for pointing out the inconvenient founding of Earth Day due to the coming ice age?
What about this section of the article which says:
“Three months before, on January 11, The Washington Post told readers to “get a good grip on your long johns, cold weather haters – the worst may be yet to come,” in an article titled “Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age.” The article quoted climatologist Reid Bryson, who said “there’s no relief in sight” about the cooling trend.”
If someone like Al Gore can receive a “Peace Prize” for science fiction in 2007, then I suppose Fortune Magazine can get a “Science Writing Award” bestowed upon it by the American Institute of Physics in the 70’s. Does this say then that a major magazine was actually published and then “peer reviewed” by science? I always thought that “P.R.” stood for “Public Relations” when addressing the media?
As Francis pointed out,
@ur momisugly Francis (21:03:57) :
Peterson, Conolleley, and Fleck identified 7 articles indicating cooling compared to 42 indicating warming? This seems like an earnest job at arriving at a predetermined outcome, based on the need of each profession to acknowledge the other but only when it is advantageous. So before bristlecone proxies there where media proxies?
Mr. Strand apparently works for something called the University Corporation for Atmospheric Reseach. What the heck is that? I went to their website, but they seem to have no physical address. Nor do they disclose their budget or source of funding.
I think one can learn a great deal about Alarmists and Alarmist organizations by following the money. In this case, however, the money trail is obscure. I rather suspect it is public, taxpayer money that funds them, my money in other words, but that is only a suspicion.
In the interests of full disclosure, I hope Mr. Strand will enlighten us. What is the budget of your organization, where does the money come from, and what are the salaries of the people involved?
Thank you ahead of time, Mr. Strand, for your cooperation in this matter.
Mr Strand,
I’m curious.
Would it be a reasonable response to your comments to say that, because I disagree with you, you are a joke, and I refuse to consider anything you write? If not, why should it be reasonable to treat Monckton this way?
The use of the word “Climate Scientist ” is oxymoronic, there is no such thing
however much we might wish it. Its continued use by the media has devalued the credibility of all true scientists the world over.
A scientist is defined as a person who uses the Scientific Method (A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses)
In the area of climate study there are few if any testable hypotheses which give clear results. As yet we do not have a sound theoretical basis to claim the use of the word Climate Scientist.
Carl Popper would be turning in his grave at some of the rubbish which is published in the name of Climate Science !!
Dont worry when the folks at Copenhagen need some bear footage they will just send Nature out to harrass another young male bear till he starves to death for the camera. Or maybe they can drown a few more bears while they shoot them with tranquilizer darts to tag them in the middle of their morning swims.
I believe the question was first asked here almost a year ago.. if the bears are in danger due to lack of ice, where are all the dead bears? For that matter since last years lowest point of ice was above the years before.. whew! global warming solved!! Bears Safe!!
I think if you look back in time.. about every 30 years or so you will see a sky is falling theory about climate. Its hot, its cold, its hot.. some of us have been there, done that, and got a freekin drawer full of t-shirts. Please dont fault us for not buying this new climate change garbage. Maybe if records of the past weren’t discounted and we learned from HISTORY, we wouldnt have to remake this mistake every stinkin time.
Having read through these comments it seems that Gary Strand lecturing us on the existence of Arrhenius resembles somewhat a pubescent teenager who imagines they have just invented sex for the first time in human history.
Or if you want to [snip] that how about teaching his grandmother to suck eggs.
I’m trying to show solidarity. I just bought a genuine Stetson (the best I could get in the UK). But I refuse to trade in my piano for a “geetarr.”
So all you good chappies over there:
Ye.
Haa.