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
Darell C. Phillips (15:46:06)
The collusion between the media and the global warming cult is bad enough, but the bastardization of science by the government is the true travesty here.
Indeed.
‘”Have courage to use your own understanding!’–that is the motto of enlightenment.” — Immanuel Kant
Pretty much the whole basis of our civilization depends on freedom of speech and freedom of thought for every man and woman. If AGW is real and only 1% of climate scientists think it is real (and 99% think we’re headed for an ice age), then it is up to those 1% to explain in ways we can all understand rationally, and demonstrate rationally why they are right. If 99% of scientists think AGW is real, and only 1% think cooling is going on, then is is up to those 99% to explain in ways we can all rationally understand, the simple logic and evidence for why they are right. (“we’re a majority” is not a rational explanation).
Now, if you are one of the 99% who think AGW is real, but must of the public is not listening, then here is the key: what you don’t do is go off in a huff and complain that the public are morons who don’t want to understand because they are too selfishly attached to a consumerist lifestyle. What you actually do is you continue to explain in rational terms why you are right. And you keep doing that, and keep doing that, until we understand.
So that also means being prepared to listen to questions, like, how do models actually prove anything? What is your proof? What is your evidence?
You never get to say, “we’re experts, you don’t understand, so we won’t answer your questions”. That is just a power trip, that is like the Church telling me I have to believe in God because they are the theologians with the secret knowledge and divine connection, and they know better than I do.
If we need enlightening, then enlighten us.
I think the truth is in the middle on the cooling issue. That is, I’m sure the extent of the scientific support for the cooling hypothesis wasn’t as strong as we skeptics like to think. Surveys of the scientific literature on the topic that came to this conclusion, even by a partisan author like Peterson, couldn’t (or wouldn’t have dared) to have diverged so strongly from the truth if the consensus hadn’t been mostly non-cooling.
Still, there was a good deal of alarmism kicked up in popular circles by the proclamations of a few alarmist scientists, and they weren’t effectively challenged in public by scientific disbelievers, or not very often. Therefore, the points can be made that alarmism can get traction vastly disproportionate to its basis in reality, and that alarmism has a strong attraction to people with an apocalyptic mind-set, or who like to entertain a view of themselves as world-savers. These lessons should remind us to be cautious before getting swept off our feet by AGWA-ism.
I remember there being a thread here a few months ago wherein the extent of cooling alarmism among scientists was discussed in great depth. I wish someone who participated would put up a link to it. One poster stated that he’d done a bibliographic survey of scientific articles on the topic at the time, and that they are hard to track down, because their titles don’t always give clues to their treatment of the topic. He also said that there were more pro-cooling articles than is generally recognized now. Unfortunately, he discarded the box of articles he’d photocopied.
It’s important to not confuse mention of ‘cooling’ with the expectation of an ice age. The existence of cooling was excepted by scientists and generally attributed to atmospheric pollution (aerosols), extrapolation to an imminent ice age was not generally accepted (discussion of a future ice age was a different matter).
H.H. Lamb summed it up best:”Recent research……has rendered more specific the expectation that the beginnings of the next glaciation will be upon our descendants within 3000 to 7000 years. It is to be noted here that there is no necessary contradiction between forecast expectations of (a) some renewed (or continuation of) slight cooling of world climate for a few decades to come, e.g., from volcanic or solar activity variations; (b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter; and this followed in turn by (c) a glaciation lasting (like the previous ones) for many thousands of years.”
rogerkni (19:43:33) :
I think the truth is in the middle on the cooling issue.
I think the truth is not on any side, although it’s more realistic a warmhouse than an icehouse, given the behavior of the global climate in the past:
Icehouse: From ~3.5 billion years ago to ~500 million years ago.
Warmhouse: From ~500 million years ago to ~440 million years ago.
Icehouse: From ~440 million years ago to ~437 million years ago (short-term).
Warmhouse: From ~437 million years ago to ~360 million years ago.
Icehouse: From ~360 million years ago to ~291 million years ago.
Warmhouse: From ~291 million years ago to ~ 289 million years ago (short-term)
Icehouse: From ~289 million years ago to ~248 million years ago.
Warmhouse: From ~248 million years ago to ~104 million years ago.
Icehouse: From ~104 million years ago to ~65 million years ago (extinction of dinosaurs… Sorry Leif, it was cold what killed the dinosaurs, not meteorites).
Warmhouse: From ~65 million years ago to ~45 million years ago (short-term).
Icehouse: From ~45 million years ago to present…
What follows? Supposedly, the world has just emerged from an Icehouse about 5000 years ago, so we are now starting a Warmhouse, not an Icehouse.
I would like you not put too much faith on a cooling age. The point is that we are about entering to a warmhouse and I would not like to think in what AGWers would say of us if the ice age does not come and instead a warmhouse prospers.
The point is not to focus on a cooling period which advent is speculation, but on the fact that we humans are not causing any change of climate. The climate change is natural and obeys to cycles.
It is true that the Sun is the absolute donor of energy for the Earth. It is true that the Sun drives the Earth’s climate. It is also true that the small changes in the Sun output of energy originate huge changes on Earth’s climate many years after the solar event; however, there are internal/intrinsic factors on Earth which regulates those climate changes: the oceans and the subsurface materials of the ground.
There are more factors which influence on the regulation of the Earth’s climate. But… is carbon dioxide “contributing” to this climate change? HAH! Of course not!!! Carbon dioxide is not a source of energy; carbon dioxide does not “burn” and does not go into nuclear fission or fusion. Carbon dioxide only disperses the energy that it absorbs from one state to many other available microstates.
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Jim (16:51:42) :
Darell C. Phillips (15:46:06)
“. . . the bastardization of science by the government is the true travesty here.”
I respectfully beg to differ; government bastardizes & perverts science to its own ends at every opportunity – the true travesty is the debasement of Science by scientists.
Mostly, I lurk and try to learn, so it’s distressing when the WUWT community jumps at the bait and lets a troll hijack a thread (and probably a mercenary kamikaze troll at that, since he works for UCAR (on our dime)). The subject of this thread is not even Polar Bears per-se, but that a well-qualified researcher got disinvited to the Copenhagen party for resisting group-think. How about some discussion on that? Are there other qualified researchers who’ve also been snubbed? I’d certainly welcome more discussion/exploration along those lines.
Anthony – there was a food fight a few months ago regarding the Connelly, et al paper puporting to prove that the cooling scare of the 70’s was just media hype, and not representative of what researchers were thinking. I allowed myself to get dragged into it way more than is my usual wont, but at any rate, there was no resolution. It would be great if you could do a thread on it sometime – actually look at Connelly’s sources and see if his sampling was representative, or as many suspect, heavily biased in favor of the desired outcome.
Nasif Nahle (22:53:45) :
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Er, it wasn’t Phil who said that: he was quoting Lamb. And nowhere does it imply that C02 is a primary source of energy. C02 is what you get from burning the fossil fuels and Lamb is saying that CO2 will increase until fossil fuels are exhausted. HTH.
PaddikJ (23:24:24) :
Good point(s)! But most of the scientists in question do work for or are funded by the government. It’s difficult to tease apart cause and effect here.
This has been a fun thread to read through.
What the climate will do in the future in response to increasing levels of CO2 will depend on the real feedbacks operating in our planet.
I don’t think the computer models have them right. After all, these models have seriously overstated the temperature in their projections to date. Also, there is the simple fact, that while CO2 goes up, the global temperatures have certainly at least gone flat, if not down over the last ten years or so.
What upsets me the most about the current debate is the constant name calling and career threats aimed at those professional scientists who disagree with the current consensus.
Just finished reading “Kicking The Sacred Cow” by James P. Hogan. I recommend it to anyone interested in how a view catches on, and once seized by society, becomes unstoppable.
It was noted earlier how Dr. Arp has been expelled from the US astronomical society for his thoughts on Hubble’s constant. This in spite of the observational evidence he has produced calling into question the whole expanding Universe paradigm.
You’ll enjoy the chapter entitled “Rip-Out Rip-Off: The Asbestos Racket”.
Did you know the head of the EPA that banned asbestos went on to become the president of the largest asbestos abatement company in the US? Did you know, I didn’t, the asbestos ban contributed to the collapse of the WTC towers?
From the book:
Another sobering chapter is entitled “Saving the Mosquitoes: The War On DDT”.
Again from the book:
Yes, there is an unholy alliance between some scientists and the media. Once the momentum kicks in on any issue, facts and those who cite them are steamrollered out of the way. We pay a big price as a society once we are in the grips of hysteria.
Sad.
I notice Gary never answered my question, either.
Gary is good at deflection, straw man arguments and claiming personal attack whenever somebody questions him or offers counter-arguments.
The Copenhagen event has all the hallmarks of corruption and self-serving.
Surely no self-respecting scientist would want to be any closer than a bull’s roar to it. Perhaps the organisers need to erect a banner along the lines,
“Any evidence not supporting our hypothesis will be barred “
tulbobroke (04:42:49) :
Nasif Nahle (22:53:45) :
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Er, it wasn’t Phil who said that: he was quoting Lamb. And nowhere does it imply that C02 is a primary source of energy. C02 is what you get from burning the fossil fuels and Lamb is saying that CO2 will increase until fossil fuels are exhausted. HTH.
Where did I say it was Phil.? Phil. wrote the post, so I addressed my message to the writer of the post, that is, Phil. On the second assertion, this is what Lamb wrote:
“an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…
Need it more clearly?
The IPCC does not do any original science nor does it develop computer models. What it does do is aggregate studies that support it’s agenda and ignore all those that do not.
This is what politicians and lawyers do. Imagine a court of law where only one side gets to present a case. That’s what’s been going on for all these years.
John Galt (07:22:19) :
Of course it only presents one side. Look at the name, in fact, just look at the first part of the name: Intergovernmental.
IPPC is a political, not a scientific, organization. It has a political agenda.
Beautiful cover for people who want to raise taxes and control other lives.
Nasif Nahle (22:53:45) :
Phil. (22:08:34) :
(b) an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide, lasting some centuries until fossil fuels are exhausted and a while thereafter…
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne
Slighly OT.
It’s not just scientists, like Dr. Taylor, being denied access to important meetings when they don’t hold the “correct” faith, now we have Paul Krugman using the “treason” descriptor for those that don’t hold the warmist views. See: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/028558.html
Reference to the photo by Amanda Byrd:
IMO the forlorn looks on the bears’ faces were because the photographer looked mighty tasty, and they couldn’t figure out how to reach her.
Jim
Where did I say it was Phil.? Phil. wrote the post, so I addressed my message to the writer of the post, that is, Phil. On the second assertion, this is what Lamb wrote:
“an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…
Need it more clearly?
Actually yes!
Phil. (07:57:02) :
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne
The creation of energy from nothingness? Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
I wonder if these Arctic conferences about polar bears take into consideration jet stream and wind patterns during ice melt season? The animated data from 2006 on is easily available. The data for 2006, compared to years 07 and 08, demonstrates less wind heading out to lower latitudes during peak melt months. It would have been useful to have prepared a poster session of weather pattern variation during the current decade without tying it to AGW. One could justify it by saying that “knowledge of weather pattern variation will be informative and valuable to the group as a whole”. Sometimes we submarine ourselves by taking a fighting stance with our reports instead of letting the data speak for itself. People like to go to pleasant conferences. Letting the data speak for itself, such as data on what’s in polar bear poop, or data on weather pattern variation, can just live on its own, without us using fighten words and raised hackles.
” Nasif Nahle (09:53:49) :
Phil. (07:57:02) :
By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne
The creation of energy from nothingness? Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.”
Why are you being so agressive? Lamb wrote “an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…”
By “due to the effect of CO2” in that context it is clear that he is referring to an enhanced greenhouse effect. Your claim that he is calling CO2 a source of energy comes across as rather odd.
Nasif Nahle (09:53:49) :
Phil. (07:57:02) :
“By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
Where on earth do you get that idea from, try reading up on the physics of the atmosphere, I suggest: Chemistry of Atmospheres: An Introduction to the Chemistry of the Atmospheres of Earth, the Planets, and their Satellites by Richard P. Wayne”
The creation of energy from nothingness? Sorry, Phil, I didn’t… I know enough thermodynamics, climate physics and heat transfer as to say that barbarity. Warmists did.
The only person talking about the ‘creation of energy from nothingness’ is you. As you correctly point out that is scientific nonsense so I don’t know why you do so.
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
As to your ability to teach anything on this subject, you have yet to demonstrate any capability in that area.
tulbobroke (11:58:00):
Why are you being so agressive? Lamb wrote “an abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide…”
Nope, you don’t know me when I get angry… I use to crash laptops on others’ heads. 🙂
By “due to the effect of CO2″ in that context it is clear that he is referring to an enhanced greenhouse effect.
No, Lamb is not clearly referring to any enhanced greenhouse effect. Besides, the carbon dioxide is so poor in its thermal properties that it’s not capable of retaining heat for long periods, and not too much heat, besides.
Your claim that he is calling CO2 a source of energy comes across as rather odd.
It’s not my claim… He said it very clearly: abrupt warming due to the effect of increasing carbon dioxide
Let’s start the lessons:
Formula for “knowing” the change of temperature “due” to a doubling of the “standard” concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere:
ΔT = 5.35 W/m^2 [LN (2)] / 4 (5.6697 x 10^-8 W/m^2 K^4) (T) ^3 = 0.98 K
However, when considering the whole atmospheric column of air at 305.45 K of temperature, above the surface at 316.95 K, the change of temperature (not the ridiculous “warming”) is:
ΔT = 9.94 cal/1.168 kg (240.37 cal/Kg*°C) = 9.94 cal/280.75216 cal*K= 0.035 K.
Considering that the solar photon stream interacts with matter and pushes it to emit photons following the trajectory of that photon stream and that there is no other sources of energy more powerful than the Sun, the change of temperature by doubling carbon dioxide would be extremely low. The rest are AGW exaggerations.
The Sun provides the energy of the Earth. The oceans and subsurface materials of the ground keep the Earth’s warmth, not the ridiculous “greenhouse” effect of carbon dioxide. Once the solar radiation hits on the surface and it is absorbed by oceanic water and the ground surface, it is the thermostatic effect exerted by the oceans and the subsurface materials of the ground what warms the Earth, not the “greenhouse” gases. The “greenhouse” gases distribute the heat everywhere… they don’t heat up anything.
If you don’t have a source of energy which heats the carbon dioxide up, the sun for example, the carbon dioxide would be thermally inert. Point.
Phil. (12:56:11) :
“By creating energy from nothingness or something like it? When you will understand that the carbon dioxide is not a primary source of energy?
The only person talking about the ‘creation of energy from nothingness’ is you. As you correctly point out that is scientific nonsense so I don’t know why you do so.
Hah! I wrote: “By creating energy from nothingness or something like it?” Have you realized it is a question, not an assertion? Need reading classes also?
What do you wish I teach you more clearly? Just tell me.
As to your ability to teach anything on this subject, you have yet to demonstrate any capability in that area.
Hah and Hah! I am certified on every one of those disciplines… Sorry, it doesn’t work with me, Phil… 🙂