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
DesertYote,
The Polar Bear Specialty Group summarizes the location and number of polar bears in known sub-populations as well as a permissible cull (kill) number within the range of each sub-population that will allow the sub-population numbers to be sustained. However, maps of the sub-populations show that the one half of the Arctic on the Russian side is not included in the ranges, or numbers, of those sub-populations. Those areas have never been surveyed/inventoried for bears. So your speculation that there could be 50,000 polar bears could be right.
Within those sub-populations, the PBSG does estimate that about 1,000 polar bears are legally killed every year. Bjorn Lomborg has made the same point – if you want to preserve whatever the polar bear population is, stop the killing.
Also, the Greenies have seemed to have forgotten about Arctic seals. When they were railing against seal hunts by humans, the little white-furred tykes with snow on their whiskers were regular photogenic Greenie charitable fund generators. In part due to constraints on the seal hunts, the Arctic seal population has swelled from about 2-3 million in the 1960’s to about 12-15 million now. During a period where each polar bear still needed (and still needs) to chomp down about one seal every 8 days through most of the year to survive. And yet, the polar bear population appears to have grown during that time. All during global warming which is “devastating” the Arctic environment. Maybe it’s no wonder the Greenies have dumped Arctic seals as icons – they’re prey to polar bears and are increasing in numbers. And now they’ve dumped polar bears – they’re predators of the cute furry seals, and evidence shows the populations of the predators have stabilized and those of their prey are increasing. My, my, what a Greenie dilemma. So their solution is, toss these icons overboard and search for a new icon. The search is on.
“Patrick says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:27 am
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”
OMG! That’s one of the funniest jokes I’ve heard in a long time!
I’d really like to see a thread on Global Sea Ice.
According to this:
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/global.daily.ice.area.withtrend.jpg
the average Maximum Global Sea Ice Area is 22M km^2, and the minimum is 16M km^2.
The last average Max Global Sea Ice Area was reached in late 2008, and the last average Min Global Sea Ice Area was also found in early 2008. That was 2 years ago.
So, what exactly is the Death Spiral all about, and does it even exist on Planet Earth?
You don’t need fancy genetic theories to explain why brown bears turned white to become polar bears. A simple case of natural selection will do : the lightest color bears woudl have had the best success in hunting, and the darkest bears would have the least. The lighter bears get to pass on more genes, the darker ones don’t. It wouldn’t take *that* many generations of bears on the ice to give rise a bunch of white bears with black skin, as long as the initial genetic variations were there.
More puzzling is why Nordic people developed blond hair and blue eyes. Was it also hunting?
Gail Combs @ur momisugly September 9, 2010 at 12:00 pm:
…where the teenage welfare mommy holds her toddler up to pet the cute horsey in a roadside pasture…
“A person who is nice to you, but rude to the waiter is not a nice person.” – Dave Barry
Affluent thirty year old women aren’t this dumb? 😐
After all that exposure of sophistry, Mr. Fuller concludes “All we can say for certain is that the climate is changing.”
Except we can’t. I suppose it depends on how the word “climate” is defined, but if it is general weather patterns in a region, then I suspect Mr. Fuller would be hard pressed to conjure any irrefutable evidence that the “climate” has changed anywhere over the last 100 years, much less certainty.
Debunking sophistry is a worthy thing. Kudos for that. But to conclude with even more sophistry indicates the author has not really plumbed the depths of the phenomenon: misleading and unsupported arguments that sound plausible but lack evidentiary support.
Where has the “climate” allegedly “changed”? The rain in Spain still falls mainly in the plains. Etc.
Thomas needs to rember to qualify thing a bit, and distinguish, between ‘catastrophic man made climate chagne ‘ theory, and climate change – what the planet does…
EVERYONE is guilty of mixing these 2 up, it is ingrained shorthand, so good has been the propaganda…
ie
Do you believe in climate chnage – Y/N
Daily Mail and GMTV public opinion polss earlier in the year
Always say, MAN MADE climate change…. theory.
and climate change – reality.
Also, helps, if say you are sceptical to Catastrohic AGW, and that AGW MAY be real, but be completely insiginificant, Even now some green groups have started saying, (because temps stalled) that AGW is real and has held of a little ice age…. Not realising that COLD is very much worse than hot for humans…..
distinguishing between CAGW and AGW really annoys the advocates, as they can’t label you as ‘denying’ the physics of greenhouse gases.
I thought polar bears were to advertise Glacier Mints.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_T-x4i90b1hc/RsXXdVBtksI/AAAAAAAABkM/WPDQYIxF4H8/s400/fox.jpg
Polar bears can swim 100 miles at a time. They are not called the ocean bear for nothing.
I find myself using “Chicken Little” so much I’m probably making some people sick, but here goes, one more time –
Why did the barn yard explode in mayhem when Chicken Little started shouting “the sky is falling”? Because there was no one there to shout out loud, for all to hear, “he’s an idiot the sky ISN’T falling”. Of course, if there had been someone to immediately shout that line, that would have been the end of the children’s story, and the author wouldn’t have made a dime, or his point. Why does there seem to be so many Chicken Littles in our global barn yard, and so few ‘shouting’ –FOR ALL TO HEAR– ‘He’s an idiot! The sky ISN’T falling’?
When the Mann-kind Chicken Little Mob jumps up and down and says that the sky is falling, excuse me, that Anthroprogenics are creating too much CO2 and causing Unprecedented GLOBAL WARMING and we’re all DOOMED, where’s that other BOOMING VOICE in the Barn Yard shouting –for all to hear: He’s A Fool! It’s NOT WARMING IT’S FREEZING!!!?
Something’s really amiss in the old barn yard, and the world, when there isn’t someone to match the bulk and stature and incredible, moneymaking, world changing genius of Fat Albert, and to shout with a louder voice IT’S STARTING TO FREEZE!!!! Think about it! Where’s the Former Vice President who’s so contemptuous of FAT ALBERT that he’s willing to shout at the top of his lungs: “IT’S STARTING TO FREEZE!!!!? (And make a lot of $$$ on the side, and a Kinky Swedish Meatball Prize, and some fullbody massages, and a quicky divorce, and a huge energy inefficient mansion?)
Something’s really rotten in Denmark and it looks like it’s spread all the way around the world. This one sided ‘debate’ (aka barn yard riot) isn’t about science, this is about the political control and direction of a world that seems to have gone mad. Maybe that’s why Chicken Little seems to come up so often in my mind; he just seems to answer my biggest questions – WHY? HOW DID WE GET HERE?
Jerry from Boston
September 9, 2010 at 6:51 pm
I took a browse around some PBSG literature. They seem to be very intent on staying “On Message” in a highly proactive way. It appears that they are the source of most of the Polar Bear misinformation. The population studies they are doing are based on computer models. “The numbers are rising, but because of our computer models, we believe the population is in decline”, WT? The goal of this organization is to provide information supporting the belief that Polar Bears are endangered by Global Warming. Where else have we seen organizations on a AGW mission using computer models? I trust these guys less then CRU. They are in an even more rarefied atmosphere. Almost all wildlife biologists are extreme lefties. It is almost impossible to get into the field without being one.
Speaking of Time, discovered this on their website:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2017262,00.html
In it, Stephen Hawking gives an elegant and succinct definition of a good model.
“A model is a good model if it:
1. Is elegant
2. Contains few arbitrary or adjustable elements
3. Agrees with and explains all existing observations
4. Makes detailed predictions about future observations that can disprove or falsify the model if they are not borne out.”
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2017262,00.html#ixzz0z9HhtAjG
While I agree with Hawking that the criteria are subjective, nevertheless, a model which has none of these criteria, such as those used in Climate Science, cannot be said to be good. Interesting….
[3x the size? Of a grizzly? Please recheck informally the average weights of male and female polar, grizzly, Alaskan brown bears, Kodiak variety of the AK bears, and the “brown” bears common across the nation…] Robert
Robert – not exagerated, just rounded. Polar bear typical male size: 800-1500 pounds. Grizzly bear typical male size: 250-700 Pounds.
I tried to avoid the women. My wife gets jealous when I look at other women. 😉
“dated back only to 1979 when satellites were watched.”
I suspect that you meant to say… were launched.
rbateman says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:17 pm
Indeed, it’s the input to the circuit.
All we can say for certain is that the climate is changing.
If this statement is true (it’s not by the way – it’s just a very silly statement at the end of an article with absolutely no point), why have a blog dedicated to trying to decipher climate science? Why do Anthony and Steve waste their time trying to use science to put their sceptical agenda?
The rubbishing of science by conservatives because it doesn’t align with their politics has been going on for hundreds of years. This blog continues the sad tradition.
Tom Fuller said:
“That’s because I think instinctively we all recognize that it’s a good proxy for the state of global warming.”
Read a book on “Caveman Logic” and you will see that perceptual thinking with automatic instinctive knowledge is not the way of science. Rational conceptual thought with a strict adherence to logic is needed. I suppose that your caveman logic tells you what are good proxies for what it says is a state of warming or warming climate or even what a climate is. There are only local climates and averaging them will not give you any knowledge about the great god “The Climate.” It does not exist, it is just an average of somethings which are not known well.
Mike Haseler said on September 9th, at 8:08 am
==================================
Mike, your statement is wrong and carries negativity unsupported by fact. Scottish cod are not ‘endangered’, even as a commercial species. Both ICES and FRS Scotland at worst have current ‘advisories’ re TAC in both North Sea and west coast fisheries. Currently, and since 2008, ICES has not declared to comment on increasingly accurate evidence of improved recruitment. Your choice of icon was poor, based on rhetoric, not fact.