Dr. Susan Crockford writes:
Davis Strait polar bear habitat higher now than in 1979 and early 1980s
The Davis Strait polar bear subpopulation is said to be ‘vulnerable’ to the supposed effects of global warming because, like Hudson Bay, Davis Strait sea ice retreats every summer, leaving polar bears on land for several months.
However, Davis Strait bears have been upgraded to ‘stable’ status, according to the latest table (2013) issued by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (see their boundary map for Davis Strait bears below). Recent development of sea ice in the region can only improve that rating.
Yeah, all that sea ice is tragic, isn’t it?
More here: http://polarbearscience.com/2014/03/13/davis-strait-polar-bear-habitat-higher-now-than-in-1979-and-early-1980s/
See also, the WUWT Sea Ice Page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
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The graph I linked to defaults to showing the current year and 2012. Nothing I can do about that. Point is, the sea ice maximum extent this winter was among the smallest on record. Pointing out that in a few places, sea ice extended further than the 1981-2010, and then insinuating that there has been some big turnaround in the overall trend in declining sea ice at the north pole is a cherry pick because it ignores bigger picture. Sea ice extents at the north pole have been rapidly declining.
A few months ago there was wide coverage in the Brit MSM, including the BBC, featuring a photograph of a solitary dead Poly Bear…the implication left hanging was that the poor beasts are having a terible time of it, and its all our fault. Now I don’t claim to be a scientist at all but surely you can’t ignore factual evidence like that set against so called rigorous population trend studies which are obviously smoke screens put up by nasty people with an agenda to persue….come on guys!
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PeterinMD,
Let me extend your hilarious parody a little . . . . here is my attempt at extending your hilarious parody . . .
DLP: ‘Is there any further items to discuss? Cook, you look like you have something to say. Speak.’
C: ‘Your worshipfulness, this meek servant wonders . . . . well, errr, may I nominate Lewandowsky to replace you . . . ‘
DLP: ‘SILENCE! Are you nuts, Lewandowsky? Anyway, I have already consulted the supreme green ones at the UN on my replacement but they just smiled sadly and turned away and took the last train to the coast. My replacement was picked, instead, by the forces of evil who I shall not name, but you know who they are if you read Mann’s con$priacy book. They picked Skeptical Lukewarmer Curry.’
Room: ‘Oh noooooo . . . . our unscientific exaggeration and alarmism is doomed. We were hoping it would be Naomi Oreskes because her hysterical fanaticism would help make it illegal for skeptics to say anything about climate.
DLP just smiles and starts to melt away saying ‘I am taking the last train for the coast, anybody else coming?’
There is a wild stampede to the door . . . .
Not as good as your original stuff, but maybe good enough for a few chuckles.
John
Because of the increasing population of polar bears, now there are four polar bears fighting to remain on that single piece of floating ice/Sarc:-)
Alan Robertson says:
March 13, 2014 at 11:10 am (replying to)
RACookPE1978 says:
March 13, 2014 at 10:25 am
_____________________
Thank you sir.
You do have to keep all of the caveats though. Under today’s conditions of Arctic sea ice extents, during the time of actual Arctic sea ice minimums from 1 September through its next maximum around 1 April every year, (those arctic minimum that so greatly alarm such CAGW zealots as our reader below!) MORE energy is lost from the arctic ocean by radiation, convection, and evaporation when sea ice is melted into open ocean waters than is gained from the sun’s rays being absorbed.
Now, all year, every day of the year, the EXACT OPPOSITE occurs in the Antarctic. Down south, because the Antarctic sea ice is always closer to the equator every day of the year, the more Antarctic sea ice there is, the more radiation is reflected back into space.
Less Arctic sea ice at minimum extents => More heat energy is lost from the ocean.
More Antarctic sea ice any time of the year => More heat energy is lost into space.
And, again, to you this time, so what?
2012 is the lowest sea ice extents we have recorded – though it may (or may not) be the lowest ever. There is NO “arctic amplification! 2013 had more ice than 2012, and 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and 2011 had more sea ice than the previous “record low” set in 2007. If that much-feared, much advertised arctic amplification did exist as advertised in the propaganda, no such yearly increase would be possible.
To repeat, the more Arctic sea ice that is lost in September and October and November, the more heat energy is lost from the Arctic. Now, lower sea ice extents in June and July DO add a little bit of heat energy to the open waters.
But, rather than me tell you what this difference is, why don’t you tell me what you think the difference is?
Just a thought but wouldn’t it be a good idea to point out where, on the otherwise interesting chart, Davis Strait is? I know now, thanks to Mr Google, but shouldn’t we be the first to show our working, so to speak?
The first side of the CAGW coin had the image of a great die off of Polar Bears due to CAGW, now for the flip side of the CAGW coin that we can next expect.
The flip side of the CAGW coin will be the image of too many Polar Bears that will dangerously disrupt the important delicate naturally made balance of nature. Man will still be the blame because of unsupported claims of catastrophe from fossil fuel burning.
Sigh.
John
Andrew, speaking of cherry picking, Here’s the April map of 1954. The Barents Sea has a little more ice, but boy look at Baffin’s Bay!
Andrew Boada says:
March 13, 2014 at 9:59 am
“Nice cherry pick! We’ve just had one of the smallest maximum sea ice extents in recorded history this winter.”
How long is this “recorded history”??? Two decades? Maybe three? What’s the age of the Earth? [sigh…]
RACook,
Also note open water reflects solar energy as well, just look at open water when the Sun is low in front of you, they even make special sunglasses to reduce the glare. So only for the short amount of time the Sun is directly overhead does that small set of longitudinal lines absorb more energy than is lost during Summer.
Most of the year, open water losses more energy to space than it collects. Arctic melt cools the planet.
Andrew Boada says:
March 13, 2014 at 9:59 am
Nice cherry pick! We’ve just had one of the smallest maximum sea ice extents in recorded history this winter
=================
intelligent people are laughing at you……..
I recall an entertaining post about a family
of polar bears who came down into the US
where the father bear testified at some sort
of committee hearing. It would be neat if
someone who knows would repost the link.
” Latitude says: March 13, 2014 at 9:00 am
Davis Strait polar bears threatened by lack of open water habitat
3…2…..1 ”
Made me laugh. Great one. From 5,000 in the late 60s to 25,000 now this is one heck of a great conservation story. Climate doesn’t kill polar bears, guns do! More specifically it’s those little bullets. Since serious restrictions on shooting them were put in place they have rebounded nicely.
For those who might be interested in less sarcasm and more nuance in assessing trends in Arctic biodiversity, see the attached link. As climate changes there are winners and losers at species level.
Of particular interest will be when the losers become extinct and how many losers become extinct. This will happen. The only open questions are how many and how quickly.
For those interested in real discussion using real data, the spatial resolutions in the attached link are a bit better than ‘Davis Strait’.
The key interest for resource biologists will be whether and/or when a combination of acidification and climate changes knocks out keystone creatures thereby trashing ecosystems and their related fisheries. Alternatively, changes to temperatures are obviously driving significant short and/or long term increases or decreases in some resource fisheries already.
Equally clearly, better resource management action has seen the recovery of many resource species, including, IMHO, Polar Bears and several species of whales.
Polar Bears may be charismatic megavertebrates but, really, we should probably be sweating the small individual/large bomass species that require calcification.
http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/location-of-datasets-in-the-arctic-species-trend-index-asti_92eb
As you can see from this article … sea ice is causing problems off Eastern Canada this year: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/coast-guard-warns-of-bad-ice-year-for-atlantic-canada-ships-1.2569787
@cwon14
“It’s just more eco-ignorance and more “man as god” thought involved as to why these cycles happen.”
It is a variation on the ‘noble savage’ meme of Western European Protestantism which 200 years ago supposed that there were elsewhere wonderful people leading virtuous lives in harmony with perpetual Eden until it was despoiled by sinful (but enlightened and saved) men who struggled to ‘do the right thing’ to save them from their ignorant selves, but progress we must.
The noble savage meme does not consider the miserable and brutal lives perilously close to starvation, afflicted by preventable diseases, contests with savage animals and above all, dealing with the cold.
The polar bear is the new ‘noble savage’: almost sentient, at peace with his surroundings, perfectly fitted into a perfect polar Eden, now despoiled by evil civilized man: marked for life with the original sin of his carbon footprint – the spiritual dirt that stains everything he touches.
Polar bears are cute in photos and videos, but they can out-run, out-climb and out-swim any man and they will kill anything they fancy for dinner, including their own offspring. Fortunately their population is kept in check by hunting otherwise the improved conditions in the Arctic would have them expanding indefinitely. How many’s enough, eh? 100,000? 1,000,000? 10,000,000? It is not like there is a shortage of territory or food in Canada.
Thanks to Dr Susan Crockford, who has been at the forefront of beating alarmists about the chops with real data, from an expert, for many years. I’m sure it’s been a lonely and difficult road at times. Thanks also to our host for providing her with a forum on several occasions.
Oh, and at the rate cherries are being picked in the climate wars, “children won’t know what cherries are”, to paraphrase a great thinker on the subject of snow.
Yes, Dr. Crockford is a welcome antidote to such as the Rutgers Climate Institute, which is among the worst of the whiners concerning Arctic ice and the polar bear. I don’t think Jennifer Francis would want to tangle with Dr. Crockford.
“PeterinMD says: March 13, 2014 at 9:36 am”
That’s funny. If it was that way, the solution would be easy.
Disappointingly the more likely scenario is that DLP has consistently nodded to Sith Lord and his allies who finance the CO2-death star. DLP will continue to do so as long as his status remains untouched. His hiatus caused disability only feeds this bizarre symbiosis. DLP is disposable and he knows it. I’m more interested in the Sith Lord.
The symbiosis would explain why the useful fool’s pressure groups walked out from their seemingly influential sets into the press limelight in Warsaw. They finally figured out that in the CO2-death star they can as well blow into a violin.
Perfect timing, I just noticed an Arctic impacting weather change and logged on to find a spot for the thought. I was looking through the sat wv pics over the West Atlantic and they show a narrow wv stream heading NNE. I took a look at the jetstream to see what it looked like. The jetstream is moving south across the eastern part of the US, then into the top of Florida before it turns sharply to the north. It touches the tip of Greenland and from there this stream of relatively warm air heads straight into the eastern Arctic before curving into Central Europe. Iceland is in the middle of it. This is carrying a good flow of wv. It is raining in Iceland at the moment and the forecast is for 3 more days.The reason for viewing all of the above was that the NSIDC shows a shift to the downside in the sea ice over the last 5 days. This looks like the reason for the ice loss. The trend is going to dip under -2 sd if the pattern holds.
The prospects for polar bears in the Great Lakes, Niagara falls and Washington DC regions seems to have passed for this winter. Is that right?
[Jaakko Kateenkorva says:
March 13, 2014 at 5:18 pm
The prospects for polar bears in the Great Lakes, Niagara falls and Washington DC regions seems to have passed for this winter. Is that right?]
It is wrong. Unless you are thinking of feeding Polar Bears with humans and/or their waste.
goldminor says
‘This looks like the reason for the ice loss. The trend is going to dip under -2 sd if the pattern holds.’
This year’s sea ice has fairly consistently been at or near -2sd, so the trend line is not just a five day phenomenum.
The most likely cause of slow ice development this northern winter has been that temperatures over significant parts of the Arctic have been very much warmer than in recent decades.
I have seen nothing recent on Arctic sea ice volume for which very accurate data is now available.
Crispin of Waterloo
[How many’s enough, eh? 100,000? 1,000,000? 10,000,000? It is not like there is a shortage of territory or food in Canada.]
I am 100% sure that Dr Crockford would recognize this as an autecological crock.
Google Street View was in Churchill Manitoba last fall. You can see the polar bears.
http://www.google.com/maps/about/behind-the-scenes/streetview/treks/churchill-canada/