I had been avoiding this photo issue, because well, the whole thing is stupid no matter how you look at it and it’s been been heavily covered elsewhere. But when Tim Blair coined the clever headline “Ursus Bogus“, in the Daily Telegraph, I knew I had to pass it on to American readers. WUWT readers may also recall NOAA/NCDC using photoshopped pictures of a flooded house in their big whoop-de-doo climate impacts report last year. They had to pull the report. Heh.
Blair writes:
Science magazine is deeply disturbed:
We are deeply disturbed by the recent escalation of political assaults on scientists in general and on climate scientists in particular. All citizens should understand some basic scientific facts.
To illustrate its item about scientific facts, Science chose this image of a doomed poley bear:
One small problem.
As James Delingpole reveals, that poley bear image is fake. It’s been photoshopped. Science subsequently admitted:
The image associated with this article was selected by the editors. We did not realize that it was not an original photograph but a collage, and it was a mistake to have used it.
As Science says: “There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions.”
=======================================
I wonder how they missed the description here at the source of the photo?
It reads:
Stock photo description
A polar bear managed to get on one of the last ice floes floating in the Arctic sea. Due to global warming the natural environment of the polar bear in the Arctic has changed a lot. The Arctic sea has much less ice than it had some years ago. (This images is a photoshop design. Polarbear, ice floe, ocean and sky are real, they were just not together in the way they are now)
So much for peer reviewed editing. Maybe next time they’ll use the penguin version.
Why not combine the polar bear with the penguin?
http://verydemotivational.com/2009/12/21/where-did-that-penguin-get-cymbals/
“Joel Shore says:
May 12, 2010 at 6:08 pm
Well, if we are going to get so upset about this sort of thing (which I personally don’t really think we should), then Roy Spencer should get the same sort of flack from WUWT for the picture on the front cover of his latest book: http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/05/roy_spencers_great_photoshop_b.php
”
Uh, Spencer didn’t hire a nuclear submarine with some kind of crazy magic military secret supercamera to photograph a real glacier floating in the water and illuminate it from the underside somehow? It’s all a trick? I’m so disappointed…
Of all these members of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences who signed the letter, how many are employed by or receive funds from government? All of their names are there and if anything ought to be endangered it is the practice of paying them to justify their continued employment on my and your dime.
Is there any solid science out there that has actually determined the perfect conditions for polar bears? We know that most all will likely die if no ice melts at all and then there’s no place for seals to surface or for polar bears to enter the water. We also know that if all the ice melts many stand a good chance on shore because their food is in the water and they are such good swimmers. So what is the perfect ‘in-between’ environment for them? Has anyone attempted to answer that question?
BanUN Bogus.
…-
“Ban urges Canada to put environment on G20 agenda The Associated Press”
…-
“U.N. head Ban Ki-Moon refusing orders from internal personnel court
U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has refused to comply with numerous orders from a new U.N. personnel tribunal to hand over confidential documents and other sensitive information needed to resolve legal claims by U.N. employees of unfair treatment, according to court documents.
The dispute has set the stage for a power struggle between the secretary general, who is seeking to fend off court challenges to the authority of his office, and the dispute tribunal’s judges, who argue that claimants can’t prove they have been wronged without access to internal documents or confidential witnesses.
Ban’s lawyer, Susan Maddox, on Friday refused another of several orders to turn over notes from a U.N. ethics probe involving an American whistleblower. The American, James Wasserstrom, was forced from a top U.N. job in Kosovo three years ago after cooperating with an internal corruption investigation.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/12/AR2010051204868.html
http://www.smalldeadanimals.com/mt/mt-comments.cgi
Rich Matarese says:
May 12, 2010 at 11:21 pm
Well, in that case, I will make the motion to this international board of Watts Pickers that we henceforth call it Ursus bogus mataresi. Did I get that right? Lower case surname, -i on the end to make it look kinda, sorta Latinish.
Note also, that the photo was called “The Last Polar Bear”, so we can retitle it as “The Ultimate Polar Bear.” Take good care of it – there won’t be any more!
Please, it’s not “photo-shopped”. It’s post-normalised.
Science magazine:
“We did not realize that it was not an original photograph”
Priceless. ROFLMAO.
I bet they think the image of Mann’s hockey stick graph is real too. In the name of science, please do not send Science magazine your images of tooth fairies and unicorns, thhat would destroy them.
maz2,
That WaPo article was well worth reading, thanx for posting.
UN head Ban Ki-Moon is as corrupt as Mugabe, as this article shows. Since when do UN “police” have the authority to break into someone’s home?
The fact that this story is being reported by a major mainstream liberal newspaper indicates that UN corruption has become too pervasive to ignore.
I guess a requirement to call yourself a “climate science” is a knowledge of Photoshop. ;->
My Eset virus scanner is reporting a virus from this page called “HTML/ScrInject.B.Gen” originating from www(dot)hamsql(dot)com/solar2.php
It might be a false positive, but I’ll submit it to Eset.
New title for Ursus Bogus photo: “The unbearable lightbox of being.”
That Ursus is going rogue…
Jack Simmons says:
May 13, 2010 at 3:15 am
Is Science inhabited by Homo sapiens bogus?
No, pseudo science is inhabited by anthropopithecus phrenocriptorchidiuses
One is tempted to point to this image, but on the other hand….
‘Collage’ comes from the French ‘to glue’ and no way is a Photoshop image ‘glued’ together from physically cut or torn picures as in an actual collage. The invention of the technique as an artistic mode of expression is credited to a joint effort by Picaso and Georges Braque, who spent some time sharing a studio and decided to try the technique ‘for fun’. They eventually decided they were on to something they could market as ‘fine art’, then divided up their accumulated efforts into roughly half each then signed them before hitting the Art market.
It seems that the AGW movement is monstrously ignorant about just about everything it sticks its clumsy fingers into. The actual Photoshop process is a product of modern digital imaging and is a product of the ongoing march of real applied science.
Slightly OT, but the BBC website currently carries an article about the mass extinction of all kinds of creatures due to global warming then the writer coyly segues into the area of ‘too many humans’. Sadly, the brand new UK coalition government is loudly Warmist and has already appointed a senior Minister of Environment & Climate Change.
Yeah but that poley bear just looks so darned cute and fuzzy all by his lonesome on that chunk of ice…. 3 inch razor sharp claws and all.
Photoshop schmotoshop. I think he needs a big hug anyways… I nominate James Hansen to be the first one to give him big ol’ lovey huggyboo kisses.
Agree with Josualdo. It is the outlets like Science which create the demand for alarming-looking pictures and artwork in the first place. The photographer’s reply is very revealing indeed.
Mike M: May 13, 2010 at 4:47 am
We know that most all will likely die if no ice melts at all and then there’s no place for seals to surface or for polar bears to enter the water.
Not to worry. The ice cap isn’t a continuous, unbroken sheet. If a seal isn’t around open water (a lead caused by wind or currents shifting the ice) or a natural hole (a polynya), it will gnaw several breathing holes in the ice at some distance apart and keep them open by re-visiting them at random. The breathing holes are what a polar bear looks for and where it waits to ambush the seal.
You know, when something out of the blue just strikes you so funny, you just can’t stop laughing…..
“There is always some uncertainty associated with scientific conclusions.” “Polarbear, ice floe, ocean and sky are real, they were just not together in the way they are now.”
……Ursus Bogus! ………. Stop! ….. I can’t take it….. side hurting………
…………. I can’t typ
Arctic, Antarctic, wherever it is, maybe they should send those assaulted scientists there for some R&R…it’s obvious the penguins are thriving. That one’s as big as a damn bear.
Mindbuilder:
From a scientific perspective, CAGW has been debunked.
The sciences are prone to so-called “foundational errors.” When such an error is discovered in a science, this science is invalidated; to elminate the invalidation, it must be rebuilt on a solid foundation. CAGW science contains foundational errors but the science has not been rebuilt to correct them. Currently, therefore, this “science” is a pseudo-science.
There are at least the following 3 foundational errors:
* The IPCC climate models are not falsifiable, thus lying outside science ( http://icecap.us/images/uploads/SPINNING_THE_CLIMATE08.pdf ),
* It would be easy to modify the IPCC climate models for falsifiability. If this were to be done, these models would be falsified if given sufficient testing.
* The atmospheric CO2 greenshouse effects are falsified ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0707.1161v4 ).
The second of the three bulleted items follows from the fact that once made falsifiable, the models would predict the outcomes of statistical events deterministically, that is, with probability values of 0 or 1. This would amount to the assertion that information was not missing about the outcomes. As information would surely be missing, this assertion would be false. The falsity of the assertion would be discovered upon sufficient testing.
Terry Oldberg,
There is also Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which posits that if something is not testable, it isn’t science.
“Smokey says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:19 am
Terry Oldberg,
There is also Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which posits that if something is not testable, it isn’t science.”
That wouldn’t be Gödel then…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompleteness_theorem
Smokey, i think you had Popper in mind.
Godel and Popper.
Godel’s Theorem doesn’t just apply to mathematics, it applies to logic, including models. Popper was Godel’s contemporary, and they influenced each other. Falsification can result from testability. But if something is not testable, it isn’t science.
“Smokey says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:45 am
Godel and Popper.
Godel’s Theorem doesn’t just apply to mathematics, it applies to logic, including models. Popper was Godel’s contemporary, and they influenced each other.”
Well, but it doesn’t say “if something is not testable, it isn’t science.”. It says that no axiomatic system can be complete in itself. You’re of course right in pointing out (via your link) that Gödel’s theorem was the major cause for the big crisis (or maybe even the end) of logical positivism.