While AP’s resident alarmist Seth Borenstein reports
“The polar bear is us,” says Patricia Romero Lankao of the federally financed National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., referring to the first species to be listed as threatened by global warming due to melting sea ice.
WUWT reader “Windsong” writes:
Dr. Susan Crockford has a timely post on her site today about the International. Union for Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC) Polar Bear Species Group walking back the basis for polar bears being listed as “threatened” in the U.S.
Excerpt:
But now, in an astonishing admission, the PBSG have acknowledged that the last population survey for the SB (Regehr, Amstrup and Stirling, 2006), which appeared to register a decline in population size and reduced cub survival over time, did not take known movements of bears into account as it should have done.
In other words, that 2006 study almost certainly did not indicate bears dying due to reduced summer sea ice in the SB, as biologists said at the time — and which they presented as evidence that polar bears should be listed by the ESA as ‘threatened’ — but reflected capture of bears that were never part of the SB subpopulation and so moved out of the region.
As the PBSG said about the 2006 estimate:
“…it is important to note that there is the potential for un-modeled spatial heterogeneity in mark-recapture sampling that could bias survival and abundance estimates.” [my emphasis]
“Spatial heterogeneity” means that the sampled bears could have come from more than one population, a possibility which violates a critical requirement of the statistics used to generate the population and survival estimates. “Un-modeled” means that the ‘movement of bears’ problem was not factored into the mathematical models that generated the 2006 population size and survival estimates as it should have been.
Ecologist Jim Steele pointed some of this out in his book and his guest post last year, so it’s not news that this was done.
What’s shocking is that the PBSG have now admitted that the ‘movement of bears’ issue essentially invalidates the 2006 population estimate and the much-touted ‘reduced survival of cubs.’ The reduced survival of cubs data from that SB study was a critical component of the argument that US bears were already being negatively impacted by global warming and thus, should be listed as ‘threatened’ under the ESA (US Fish & Wildlife Service 2008).
More at http://polarbearscience.com
“Oops” is actually a major ingredient in climate change policy fraud. It back stops the obvious and inevitable mistakes along the way.
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 25, 2014 at 1:51 am
Love the photo of the polar bear doing the face palm …
w.
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LOL me too, I did a triple take on tha tone 🙂
Ooops!
Maybe the researchers have contributed to the bears ‘bad’ situation.
CLAIM
1 There are no reliability estimates for these kinds of studies.
2. When these kinds of studies turn out to be wrong, there are no consequences.
You betcha!
Someone should inform Coca-Cola that they are once again funding either corruption or downright frauud. GK
Polar bears are in great danger indeed. They will soon be extinct.
I think polar bears will be around even IF we get an ice free Arctic ocean in the summers.
It’s just not as simple as they told me. I vaguely recall that what matters most to polar bears is SPRING sea ice. Summer and Fall no so much.
talldave2 says “There are no reliability estimates for these kinds of studies.”
To constrain their models in bear mark and recapture studies they compare the model results (apparent survival) to survival of radio-collared bears (biological survival) Biological survival was high and, they reported in scattered places in different papers, that more radio collared bears were out of the study area, not dead, but they dismissed the one measure that revealed their model was unreliable.
They produce such utter garbage it’s beyond me. Right there are 2 flagrant lies that have been debunked time and again.
Ice free Arctic ocean during the Holocene [Peer reviewed papers]
Just further evidence that the AGW consensus has only served to destroy scientific credibility and has not done one bit of good for the environment it claims to care so much about. Years later this comes out as a huge revelation but they do not realize, many of us have known it all along. The “believers” are getting fewer and fewer because even a sheeple can only deny their lyin eyes for so long.
” ‘movement of bears’ problem was not factored into the mathematical models that generated the 2006 population size and survival estimates as it should have been.”
GIGO: Lately, that term pops to mind whenever I hear about modeled data even though I know it can be quite useful for real time problems like storm tracking. If I were I scientist in any field, I would be pretty ticked right now because the bad apples are spoiling the barrel. None of this will be solved until we make it perfectly clear that we will no longer tolerate sky is falling agenda based science. We need to take their funding away. PERIOD.
Does it occur to these “students” wishing they were scientists, that it is common for prey species, to modulate their breeding habits, according to their recent food experience, so that any ups and downs in apparent polar bear breeding success, could be nothing more than a reflection of that adaptive behavior.
In California for example, we have a parallel situation; although the State symbol grizzly bear is now extinct. Well NO, they aren’t extinct; there just aren’t many or any in California these days. In Yellowstone National park, I recently heard on a Nat Geo Wild program, that there are maybe 7,000 grizzly bears. Seems a lot to me, but maybe they were talking of a larger total habitat, than just the park. So if any of them want to come to California, I’m sure they can do so.
But back to the cubbing success of PBs.
In California, The mountain lion / puma / catamount / panther / whatever , is a protected predator species. In the past, they were legally hunted; great white hunter no need to go to Africa to bag a lion; could get on in California. They make really awful fur coats.
But now they are protected, but humans keep invading their habitat, to build more goof courses, bike trails, jogging paths, yoga meditation spots, and other green enterprises, and of course hunters want to shoot the deer, instead of letting the lions eat them.
So there is continuous pressure to open hunting of mountain lions again. Now I’m not against deer hunting. I don’t do it, but more power to those who do, and whatever their reasons are. In NZ they do deer hunting 365 days a year; well except for leap years, when it is 366 days a year. Problem is, no mountain lions in NZ but plenty of deer; every kind known to Noah, except moose. All nuisances, and eat grass that sheep need.
So California mountain lion encounters, with humans, have increased, and there have been some unfortunate meetings, so the subject of culling the lions a bit for human safety crops up from time to time.
Problem is, that MLs evidently regulate their breeding to the food supply. A biological expert, whose knowledge, I pay attention to, said that the problem is, that if you really need, or want to reduce lion populations, enough to reduce human encounters, you would have to kill between one quarter, and one third of the total State lion population, all in a single hunting season, because otherwise, their natural adaptation (to resources) would simply compensate, for any small reductions.
I don’t think anyone is going to slaughter one quarter of California’s mountain lions.
Personally, I’m for the lions (coyotes too), and don’t expect to get any hysterical calls from m3e, if I encounter one in my travels, I will just let it go on its way, and the squeamish, will never know it was there.
so I doubt, that it is much different for polar bears. When there is no ice, they will reduce their cubbing, for lack of seals, and when the ice returns, so will the cubs.
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😎
Or maybe Mann’s quote about being a reluctant public figure?
george e. smith says:
March 25, 2014 at 12:57 pm
…In California, The mountain lion / puma / catamount / panther / whatever , is a protected predator species. In the past, they were legally hunted; great white hunter no need to go to Africa to bag a lion; could get on in California. They make really awful fur coats.
But now they are protected, but humans keep invading their habitat, to build more goof courses, bike trails, jogging paths, yoga meditation spots, and other green enterprises, and of course hunters want to shoot the deer, instead of letting the lions eat them…
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I used to comment on the old “AOL Pet Care Forums” under the topic of “Animal Rights/Animal Welfare”. I remember seeing a story someone put up after a young mother was killed and partially eaten by a cougar that, after the ban on cougar hunting in California, another endangered species (I think it was the mountain goat) was being further endangered by increased cougar predation.
Unintended consequences.
Da Bears…. I can see a flow chart , Somehow there must be a way to chart counting white polar bears in winter during snow storms, Fudging historical climate statistics, adjusting data from collecting stations land and water, pre-determined future climate agrivated civilization failure due to global average temperature increase of 1.5 to 3 degrees C , ummm how many polar bears figure out how to play hockey, pop-corn consumption, refusal to publicly debate CAGW skeptics, oh hell you get the idea. LMAO
You mean this “Hug a Polar Bear” event inspired by that report was all for naught?
Sled observe count, fly observe count, hunt report count, sail observe count, tag moniter count and then using standard population statistics infer. It seems that even these guys are using some sort of ‘model’ to predict. I much prefer they don’t. I don’t like a model’s output to be consider ‘data’ or fact.
Their getting bigger too.
USGS (@USGS) tweeted at 0:05 PM on Tue, Mar 25, 2014:
Karyn Rode discovers Chukchi Sea #polarbears larger now than in the past http://t.co/tEkEFjxD2Q #WomeninScience http://t.co/VFN0qIWdSD
(https://twitter.com/USGS/status/448536155693133824)
D Coffin writes Karyn Rode discovers Chukchi Sea #polarbears larger now than in the past
It is well known that different populations have slightly different sizes. Rode was a lead author in a few of the same USGS studies suggesting global warming was causing smaller bears and endangering them. That she now argues AGW is causig bigger bears is just another example of how climate politics is defiling objective science
It’s like the population of Phoenix during the summer after all the “snowbirds” head back north.
“Scientists”!!! HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!