One year ago [Sept 19, 2009], WUWT reported upon the alarming problem of walrus stampedes and dead carcasses washing up on beaches. Now, exactly one-year later, the NBC Today Show in concert with environmental groups are pushing the exact same story.
From the headlines’ language, it makes you think these walruses were bumbling creatures with no chance at surviving a leisurely swim let alone the unbelievably harsh conditions in the Arctic. Even with some global warming, it gets really cold up there during the walrus migration…
NBC News’ TODAY show: Without sea ice, walruses struggle to adapt
And, from Seth Borenstein at AP:
Thousands of walruses flee melting sea ice for shore
Stampede killing females, children feared; ‘no sign of Arctic recovery,’ expert says
Loss of sea ice in the Chukchi this summer has surprised scientists because last winter lots of old established sea ice floated into the region, said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. But that has disappeared.
Although last year was a slight improvement over previous years, Serreze says there’s been a long-term decline that he blames on global warming.
“We’ll likely see more summers like this,” he said. “There is no sign of Arctic recovery.”
Billy Liar says:
September 21, 2010 at 11:37 am
Jimbo says:
September 20, 2010 at 4:55 pm
I read your comments on the Grauniad website. That ‘Muscleguy’ who claims to be a biologist knows nothing about blood chemistry, pH or anything else for that matter. If your blood becomes acidic (pH < 7) you become dead! The body maintains your blood pH in the range 7.35-7.45.
When the arterial blood pH falls below 7.35 it’s known as acidosis.
Anthony writes,
“But, that doesn’t fit your narrative, so I can see why you didn’t mention it.”
Serreze’s May 2010 observation that that a new record was quite possible was a true statement, not a wrong prediction. I have mentioned it in previous posts.
Global temperatures are rising, especially in the north. Ice extent has been on a downward trend for decades, and recently increasing. Ice volume appeared to reach record low levels. Much of the multiyear ice, more resistant to wind and weather, is gone, and some of what remained earlier this season had moved into the Beaufort or Chukchi Sea where it would not survive the summer. Ice extent fell with record speed in June, well below 2007 levels.
Conditions changed in July, including cloudy weather and reversal of the Beaufort Gyre as Gunther pointed out earlier. The circulation shifts spread out what ice remained, so extent remained relatively high even as melt continued. Extent did not set a record after all, but volume almost certainly did. We’ll learn more from Cryosat this fall.
So Serreze’s statement was simple truth. A new record was “quite possible,” and it came close to happening. Recovery to historical levels did not come close to happening.
REPLY:No it was a prediction, one made for the purpose of scoring media points. That aside, you write: “Conditions changed in July, including cloudy weather and reversal of the Beaufort Gyre as Gunther pointed out earlier. The circulation shifts spread out what ice remained, so extent remained relatively high even as melt continued. Extent did not set a record after all, but volume almost certainly did.”
Glad you’ve finally acknowledged that wind and weather is the primary factor in this Arctic sea ice extent. – Anthony
Jimbo writes,
“Christian Hass”
Have you read the article behind that research, which Christian Haas and his colleagues wrote for Geophysical Research Letters? The “Global Warming Policy Foundation” post that you linked to gives their conclusions a different spin, compared with the article itself.
Now its bears! Oops, maybe not.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8014541/ITV-embarrassed-by-report-of-polar-bear-washed-up-on-beach.html
The title of the video, “Without sea ice, walruses struggle to adapt” if it were being honest instead of Alarmist would simply say “Without sea ice, walruses adapt”. Just as they, and the “endangered” polar bears always have, throughout millennia.
Their “concern” for the walruses is, of course, a faux concern. It’s just one more way, and a last gasp effort on their part to try to breathe life into a dying belief system. Fortunately, only the brainless, and the easily-led (like young children) are taken in by this sort of codswallop.
My only thought to thousands of walrus’s overwhelming the beaches was, “who’d have guessed the walrus population was doing so well!”
Yes. If we assume that global warming is causing the walrus’s to stampede, then since it’s happened three times in the past four years (according to the AP article), then walruses seem to be adapting pretty well – if there are enough walruses in the following years to create new stampedes.