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.
“Smokey says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:45 am
Godel and Popper.[…]”
And thanks for the link to the Popper text, this excerpt is great: “Once your eyes were thus opened [by pseudoscientific theory X] you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it.” Reminds me very much of AGW and
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
“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:”
Joel, water magnifies.
So yes, the picture is visually accurate.
Alexander says:
May 13, 2010 at 6:27 am
‘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’.
Photomontage – composite photos – are just about as old as photography itself. Photographers started making and selling them (“fake photos”) right in the 19th century. As you mention, it’s quite a different process than collage.
Not sure why it should matter to the AGW crazies even if it is a real picture. The polar bear is classified as a marine mammal. They spend most of their lives on the ice or in the water, rarely visiting land. They are great swimmers since their forepaws are partially webbed, they have excellent underwater vision and their nostrils close under water. This is their natural environment.
Smokey says:
May 13, 2010 at 10:19 am
There is also Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which posits that if something is not testable, it isn’t science.
I’m not positive, but I sort of remember Gödel’s theorem states that no strong axiomatic system can prove all true propositions (incompleteness). And that in order to do so, the system must be “weak” and incur into self-contradiction. I find it a great sobering theorem for our deified rationality.
Falsifiability / testability is Karl Popper’s stuff.
Neo-rhetorics (eh eh eh), which basically tells that a proposition is true if you manage to convince the audience it is so, is Feyerabend’s (Against Method). So post-modern. Let’s not forget this great philosophy. Dense, though…
Venus Envy and now Ursus bogus? You do know how to build a headline Anthony.
“For want of a nail…”
Little things can mean a lot. One problem with this pathetic example of what we used to call “nature faking” is that it misses the main point about the polar ice packs. It’s the albedo that is the major climate concern – in short, ice reflects solar radiation, open water absorbs it. Of course this is a gross oversimplification of the real situation, but if you want to illustrate it, don’t fiddle with critters, just show dark water and light ice. The original (oops) and the replacement in this case don’t even accomplish this very well, in fact they display some of the inherent ambiguities of albedo with slanting rays and irregular surfaces.
One has to wonder why the eminent letter writers didn’t provide their own photographs. If they had called me, I would have been happy to submit sea ice pictures with very dark water and very bright ice, gratis, FOIA unnecessary, no PhotoShop, no so-called “collage”. (No bears though – how about a Russian icebreaker?) This is why it’s best to exhibit your own pictures – if you didn’t take them yourself you don’t know where they’ve been.
DirkH & Josualdo,
I’m going to have to concede the point re: Godel. I had a great synopsis explaining how the Incompleteness Theorem applied to the scientific method in general, but now I seem to have lost it. If I can find it I’ll post it.
I’m more familiar with Popper than Godel, and we’ve had some good threads here on Popper and the scientific method. It goes without saying that alarmists don’t much like Popper, because he holds their feet to the fire.
Gil Dewart says:
May 13, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Without a cuddly yet vicious polar bear your picture is meaningless to the semi-literate who believe in AGW.
Even if the photo wasn’t “composed”, polar bears can swim hundreds of kilometres. I am amazed at the amount of unchallenged nonsense about polar bears drowning as if they were not accustomed to the water. Why doesn’t polar bear expert jump in and give us the lowdown on this.
http://www.thebigzoo.com/Animals/Polar_Bear.asp
“A polar bear can swim 60 miles without pausing to rest. At an average speed of 6 miles per hour, that is 10 hours of constant swimming.”
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_far_can_Polar_Bears_swim
“…Have been seen swimming several hundred miles from the nearest ice or land.”
When examining the image with a zoom in a photo processer software, the evidence of the “wave” distortion from the water, disappears in the bear’s shadow.
If you are going to fake such images, you’d better understand the physics of imagry, much less the physics of the atmosphere.
You say you’re not so interested in climate change art so sorry to bother you with this. Here’s something I noticed looking at the recent EPA Climate Indicator document. It contains a picute of Muir Glacier in 1941 and 2005 that is essentially like this.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/3/3a/Muir_Glacier.jpg
The inference being they are taken from the same spot.
The individual pictures are on the USGS website with accompanying text that again suggests they are taken from the same spot. If you google Muir Glacier you realise they appear on many sites.
http://gallery.usgs.gov/photos/658
http://gallery.usgs.gov/photos/660
There is a third photo taken in 1950 which obviously is taken from the same spot as the 1941 photo. Somebody has kindly put all three photos together here.
http://gallery.usgs.gov/photos/659
http://www.sciencedaily.com/images/2008/10/081006130550.jpg
Is it me or is the modern picture taken from a completely different part of the valley? The rock outcrop on the foreground left certainly gives the impression that they are identical but everything else says not. The 2004 valley appears far wider this is apparent when the 1950 picture is included. And the background mountains look much further away in the 2004 photo. It looks to me like the 2004 picture is taken much further down the valley or is something messing with the perspective in the 2004 picture.
I know climate change art is a trivial matter but I’d be interested to know what you think especially in the context of the EPA document where it seems to be displayed as part of the supporting data for glacier retreat.
Terry Oldberg says:
May 13, 2010 at 9:22 am
“* 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.”
I have not been following this issue as closely as I should, and I don’t have the time to wade through long PDFs. But my impression is that the IPCC climate models have already been falsified. For example, they predict increased global warming when levels of CO2 and certain other GHGs increase. Since 1998, we’ve had the latter, but not the former; hence falsification. Am I missing the boat?
Joel Shore
What’s the problem? Who thinks that Spencer wants us to think that icebergs will look like that? No one, that’s who.
Who thinks the Goricals want us to think polar bears will be living on 10 sq ft of ice?
That’s the difference.
Josualdo
Put that ponce of a Vice-Chancellor there with Jones. Did you watch him at the Commons “inquiry”?
Mike M
We also know that times were warmer in teh past after the polar bear species separated from the brown bear and yet here they are, still going. Makes you think they only survived as a species so the alarmists woudl have something to get alarmed about.
Terry Oldberg
Godels’ Incompleteness Theorem does no such thing. It is actually two theorems. Wikipedia says (and it can be trusted because this has nothing to do with AGW):
The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an “effective procedure” (essentially, a computer program) is capable of proving all facts about the natural numbers. For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system.
The second incompleteness theorem shows that if such a system is also capable of proving certain basic facts about the natural numbers, then one particular arithmetic truth the system cannot prove is the consistency of the system itself.
Science mag should change it’s name to “willingly duped”. Besides the faked ursus bogus pic, I learnt in my first year of Collage…, that polar bear are a sub-species of brown bear. Saying polar bear are in danger of extinction is as silly as saying arctic fox are in danger, as both are arctic adaptations! Maybe the goose-stepping editors at “willingly duped” are mad-hatters from years of breaking CFL bulbs? What else can explain such basic dishonesty?
Jackie says:
May 13, 2010 at 5:37 am
Science magazine:
“We did not realize that it was not an original photograph”
Science magazine and the hockeystick;
“We did not realize that it was not the original temperature”
Notice that no one is actually talking about the actual science or emperical evidence here – sure, did they f&ck up on the image. You bet. Does it change the data – nope?
Oh, and an image doesn’t go through a peer review process you jack-#ss. Can’t you even get the basics right on what you are attacking?
Moderate Republican, I think that someone has just undergone a humorectomy. (I don’t know if that will be covered under Obamacare.) Under the present circumstances, I feel that a gentle reminder from Mark Twain quote is in order:
“Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.”