Guest post by Thomas Fuller
I wrote earlier that a series of symbolic images have been stamped on the professional communications sent out by those most interested in very active measures to combat global warming. I mentioned several, and I hope to take some time to analyze the status of the keynote issues that have been highlighted by environmental groups, politicians, and one or two webloggers.
Let’s start with polar bears. Pictures of polar bears standing on ice floes have been used to highlight concerns about melting Arctic ice. Arctic ice is melting, being well below the average for the past 30 years, and a parlor game has developed where we all monitor the growth or decrease of Arctic ice like we were watching a horse race at Hialeah.
That’s because I think instinctively we all recognize that it’s a good proxy for the state of global warming. Climate change theory predicted that the Arctic would warm faster than the rest of the planet, and that melting Arctic ice is not a ‘good’ sign.
But using polar bears to illustrate the dangers posed by global warming to the Arctic was nothing short of disastrous. Polar bears can swim for extended distances, and they perch on ice floes to rest or wait for an unwary seal to pop up.
But the mistake was deliberate, because it tapped into environmental concerns about the polar bears’ threatened status. There were somewhat casual estimates that the population of polar bears had declined to about 5,000 in the 1960s, and using them as a picture of what global warming put in danger guaranteed the willing and active support of many environmentalists who had already invested time, concern and money to support the polar bears revival.
But it meant that arguments against the polar bears’ approaching doom could be confused with arguments about the status of polar ice. And in fact, such arguments quickly appeared.
The polar bear has recovered strongly from the 1960s, and there are now about 25,000 of them. They congregate in subgroups geographically, and the status of those subgroups is not uniform–some are growing, some are declining some are staying the same.
But the bears are robust enough that the indigenous tribes of the North say that they have completely recovered, and want hunting restrictions lifted. Indeed, about 1,000 polar bears a year are killed by hunting, according to The Polar Bear Specialist Group.
And simple arithmetic showed that polar bears survived warmer periods than today that almost certainly included eras when Arctic ice was completely gone.
So the issue is ultimately an unfortunate distraction. The Arctic is warming. Polar bears are doing okay. And the point is?
However, the marketing gurus running campaigns for environmental causes knew that they couldn’t sell an activist agenda with a picture of a thermometer. And the more savvy amongst them also knew that accurate measurements of Arctic temperatures and ice cover dated back only to 1979 when satellites were watched. So a little distraction couldn’t hurt–at least not them.
The world is heading into a La Nina after a fairly heavy El Nino phase. Arctic ice may have bottomed out and be heading for a real recovery. Moderate global warming, on the other hand, may keep ice levels depressed. All we can say for certain is that the climate is changing.
But that’s what it does–with or without our help.
Thomas Fuller http://www.redbubble.com/people/hfuller
Polar bear cubs are real cute but I wouldn’t like to meet one of their mummys up a dark alley. I doubt that Ben Santer would either.
Off topic I was wondering if any of those who believe in AGW deliberately try to ‘increase their carbon footprint’ in an attempt to hurry things along a bit?
Cuddly????
An Arctic explorer came face to face with a polar bear. Afraid of being eaten, he fell to his knees and started praying. When the polar bear knelt down beside him and started praying too, the man shouted, “It’s a miracle!” The polar bear opened one eye and said “Don’t talk while I’m saying grace.”
P
Interesting that as polar bears continue to thrive, despite the alarming ice lose of 2007, the media focus will be turned away from this magnificent creature and another ‘icon’ of disaster will have to be found.
Perhaps the humble narwhal whale will fit the bill, or perhaps it isn’t cute enough to have the desired impact?
The illustration of Time magazine brings me to relate that I no longer could support their aggressive AGW stance by continuing my subscription. They so infuriated me with their alarmist articles and it seems they were never going to recognize perhaps there is another “take” to climate science, I finally got fed up and gleefully cancelled. I get small revenge monthly when they call and try to get me to re-subscribe offering me huge discounts. I explain I’ll re-subscribe when they are fair and balanced. Most MSM publications ( ie: LA Times) are hastening their demise in this way and I don’t think they recognize what is happening. Individually we don’t have much influence but collectively it matters.
An even better ploy is to ask an environmentalist how long polar bears have been around and where did they come from? Most common answer, forever …
REAL — Short answer, polar bears are just brown bears that moved north as the Arctic warmed, back about 250,000 years ago. Evolution dyed them white to help with the seal hunting. So if we killed them all off, couldn’t we just coax more brown bears north to fill the ecological seal eating niche. The over population of brown bears for the available food source is thought to be behind the original “go north, young brown bear” movement.
BillyV says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:42 am
“Individually we don’t have much influence but collectively it matters.”
And as we Scots say: ‘many a mickle maks a muckle!’
Arctic sea-ice as a proxy for AGW is but a crutch for assessing climate-change in context and perspective. For a definitive overview, see Girona Orssengo (B.Tech, MASc, PhD), “Predictions of Global Mean Temperature & IPCC Projections” as posted on WUWT for 04/15/2010, depicting a planetary rebound from the Little Ice Age (LIA) beginning c. 1880 with fluctuating 30-year temperature cycles extrapolated to 2100 (Fig. 3, w/Figs. 1 – 2 plus associated tabulations).
Dr. Orssengo computes Global Mean Temperature Anomalies as GMTA = .0059 x (Year – 1880) – 0.52 + 1.2 pi x Cos ((Year -1880)/60). As his article’s Figure 3, the resulting long-term chart jibes perfectly with historical records, addressing Earth’s 130-year post-LIA temperature-rise as a cyclical phenomenon bending multi-decadal oscillations around a positive linear trend. There’s nothing more to say.
Polar bears and other “charismatic mega-fauna” are naught but Cargo Cultists’ ploys to preempt objective, rational debate. Per our estimable AW, Dr. Orssengo’s chart-of-beauty is “all we know, and all we need to know.”
I always thought polar bears were sharks dressed as mamals. They’ll eat anything including you. This is one very competitive species or sub species and when the next cold phase starts, people around the Artic circle had better watch out.
Why would people be concerned about ursus maritimus running out of ice on which to stand?
As the name explains, they are marine mammals. They can swim very well.
Too much ice makes their hunting more difficult which is why they like the edge of the ice; the pack ice. Or to stalk environmental activists out to prove that the Arctic ice is disappearing.
Antarctic sea ice, overall, has gone up while the arctic has gone down. Total Sea Ice by and large is unchanged the past 30 years. The PDO turning cold, and in 10-15 years the amo going cold, and the obvious drop in the earths temps that will occur, should end this argument once and for all. In fact, it should be done now, because we are about to see a dramatic drop in global temps back to levels not seen since the late 90s, and in the extreme case, since 1993. Given the increase in co2 since then is probably around 7%, if temps are already back to where they were in the late 90s, and one can see the simple stimulus of the enso, the air warming after the nino, cooling after the nina, it doesnt take brain surgeon to understand where this is going. The forecast from this meteorologist remains unchanged, by 2030, BY OBJECTIVE SATELLITE TEMPS that we started using at the end of the last cold PDO, the earths temps will return to where they were in the late 70s. This should fold the whole house of cards, though I suspect it wont… the argument being of course that it should have been colder.
BTW, while this goes on.. southern hemisphere sea ice should decrease.. I suspect that if we could correctly measure the total energy budget, we would see no change
in the earth, but the ups and downs of global temps are a product of where the warmest and coolest pockets are..the imbalance caused by the amount of land in the northern hemisphere. It takes less energy to affect dry air than the temps of the oceans. So with a warm PDO and AMO, the continents warm, melting the ice cap in the middle, but the increase in the south is in response to the mean latitude of warmest measured temp shifting north. Reverse the PDO and AMO, it will go the other way. A grand experiment right in front of our eyes. Simple, easy to watch, and
for those reasons, very threatening to those that dont wish to see a simple answer
I feel that any present arctic warming is due to the warm equatorial waters being pushed north as a result of the 1975-1998 warming period. I think Piers Corbyn also holds this position. The Arctic warms last after the equatorial region. What about the El Nino is it persisting as NOAA seems to think, or will the La Nina take hold. Answers?
I haven’t seen any credible evidence of significant arctic warming. I believe that some warming is beneficial because it will always be easier to irrigate deserts than to heat the tundra, and that may become necessary when the worldwide population approaches 30,000,000,000.
Joe Bastardi says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:33 am
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Thanks Joe!
We usually get lost in the details and criticizing those who are but the servants/employees of the Global Warming Scam (GWS) and forget to go directly to the source of everything: Those real people who profit with it and from the UN’s world liberal revolution:
http://euro-med.dk/?p=13656
For Joe Bastardi:
In addition to the NH having more land and less water, the NH winter occurs when the earth’s annual orbit brings it closest to the sun. The reverse is true for the SH, which wetter hemisphere then has a bit less insolation. A small difference perhaps, but one that fosters the present differences.
Terri Jackson says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:41 am
See it by yourself:
http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.html
Jeremy
“If the dinosaurs still lived, and our cities were walled to keep them out, would we be trying to save them from extinction? ”
Depends on the definition of “our”.
I think it’s safe to say that the people most concerned about the decline of the Tiger population are those least likely to meet a man-eater wandering down their main road.
I still see WWF commercials with polar bears from time to time.
All they do is make me feel even more contempt for the WWF.
This article is not about polar bears; it is to sneek a premise into the minds of WUWT readers that the Artic is warming and it is because of global warming.
“Climate change theory predicted that the Arctic would warm faster than the rest of the planet, and that melting Arctic ice is not a ‘good’ sign.”
Just as the illusionist distracts us with one hand while tricking us with the other, Thomas Fuller is flattering us and using the language of the AGW realist while nonchalantly planting a more dangerous pro-AGW seed with his best hand.
Here he throws the ridiculous polar bear iconography under a bus but cleverly inserts a tenet of AGW; the artic is warming, and it’s because of us.
“So the issue is ultimately an unfortunate distraction. The Arctic is warming. Polar bears are doing okay. And the point is?”
Thomas Fuller is guilty of all the media tricks he graceously points out for us. It is the polar bears that are the distraction here also.
I lived in Alaska when I was very young and I still remember the stuffed polar bear outside the Army-Navy store. Gigantic, fierce, but not cuddly even stuffed.
Even this VERY committed CAGW activist, Jo Abbess.
(Campaign Against Climate Cjhange, supporter – Yes, CACC)
Realises the Polar Bear Poster child, is no more, as she tries to advise some puzzled activists…
Jo Abbess:
“I point out that when the environmentalists put out posters about Polar Bears, that the audience pretty quickly realised that the Polar Bears were being used as a “poster child” for Climate Change, and they started to mock the campaigning.”
http://www.joabbess.com/2010/04/14/polar-bear-poster-child/
A recent cursory survey of a local college formerly plastered with recycle bins bearing polar bear pictures disclosed that pictures of bears have become extinct. One was finally found crumpled up behind a lectern.
Oddly, it was a polar bear photo that finally caused me to object loudly to all the hype. Picture 3 in the link below is of a bear eating a cub. Male polar bears do this (they will eat anything they can kill if there is a low enough risk of injury to themselves during the inevitable fight) which is why the females go to great lengths to stay away when they have cubs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/6760103/Starving-polar-bears-turn-to-cannibalism.html
So we, mankind, caused noble bears to descend into cannibalism! How could such creatures have it in their nature to be so despicable? In fact, the despicable act was to publish the photo to create a feeling of guilt. The last sentence of the article accompanying photo says “The release of the images comes as world leaders gather in Copenhagen for the United Nations Climate Change Conference.” So the icon worked for me, but not in the way that it was intended!
@Joe Kirklin Bastardi: When the climate turns cold again, you can expect these AGW alarmists to tell us how they saved us from certain doom. Especially if they are able to enact Carbon Reduction protocols like Cap & Trade. It won’t be true, but it hasn’t stopped them before.
Everyone here knows that polar bears have survived Eemian hot period in the past when hippos lived where London and there was much, much less ice than in any period since 1979.
“Polar bear shot dead after 200-mile swim”
Polar bear numbers are up due to restrictions on hunting and this
Here are some polar bear facts