Posted on January 7, 2021 |
As well as summarizing sea ice changes, NOAA’s 2020 Arctic Report Card features two reports that document the biggest advantage of much less summer sea ice than there was before 2003: increased primary productivity. Being at the top of the Arctic food chain, polar bears have been beneficiaries of this phenomenon because the Arctic marine mammals they depend on for food – seals, walrus and bowhead whales – have been thriving despite less ice in summer.
In the sea ice chapter (Perovich et al. 2020), my favourite of all the figures published is the graph of September vs. March sea ice (above). As you can see, March ice extent has been virtually flat (no declining trend) since 2004. And as the graph below shows, September extent has been without a trend since 2007, as NSIDC ice expert Walt Meier demonstrated last year (see below): it doesn’t take much imagination to see that the value for 2020 from the graph above (the second-lowest after 2012) hasn’t changed the flat-trend line.
The chapter also included this comparison of March vs. September ice charts:
However, the real eye-opener in the report is the admission that much less summer ice has benefitted the entire Arctic food change because of increased primary productivity.
BENEFITS OF LESS SUMMAR ICE
One of the highlights emphasized in the report is this gem:
During July and August 2020, regional ocean primary productivity in the Laptev Sea was ~2 times higher for July and ~6 times higher for August compared to their respective monthly averages.
It’s nice to see an acknowledgement that the longer ice-free seasons we’ve experienced since 2007 have an up-side. In fact, less summer ice has been a net benefit to most animals in the Arctic and peripheral seas because less ice and more sunlight in most areas increases ‘primary productivity’. Primary productivity refers to phytoplankton, those single-celled plants that are the basis for life in the ocean because they turn sunlight into stored energy: sunlight is their food. Longer ice-free seasons – featuring less ice and more sunlight – provide the conditions phytoplankton need to grow exponentially, producing ‘blooms’ that can be seen by satellites. One such bloom is shown below, in the Barents Sea on 26 July 2020 (NOAA photo).
In the table presented by one set of NOAA authors (Frey et al. 2020) below, primary productivity has been up since 2003, not including data from 2020, in virtually all regions of the Arctic:
Similar results are discussed in a government report from Canada (Coupel et al. 2019), which summarizes reports of recent phytoplankton increases across the Arctic. I’ve revised a graphic I posted earlier this year to show how this works (below). More primary productivity due to a longer ice-free period benefits the entire Arctic food chain in which polar bears hold top spot: fatter seals because of more food mean fatter polar bears with improved survival.
Abundant phytoplankton → more food for single-celled animals (zooplankton), fish, and bottom-dwelling invertebrates like clams → prolific reproduction of krill, fish and clams (population increases); more fish, in turn → fatter ringed and bearded seals, who feed primarily in the ice-free season, and thus fat female seals → more fat pups the following spring (Crawford et al. 2015) for polar bears when they need it most. Unless other factors come into play that reduce prey availability, like too much ice, or snow over ice in spring (Crockford 2015, 2017), polar bears will tend to be fatter, healthier, and reproduce more successfully, resulting in at least stable, if not growing population numbers – such as we’ve seen in the Barents and Chukchi Seas, and in the Gulf of Boothia, since 2005 (Aars 2018; Dyck et al. 2020; Lippold et al. 2019; Regehr et al. 2018; Rode et al. 2014, 2018).
As well as ringed seals, bearded seals and polar bears, bowhead whales (shown below) have also benefitted from this increased primary productivity, as explained in another chapter in the Arctic Report Card by John George and colleages.
These authors (George et al. 2020) stated in their chapter about bowhead whales (see range map from their paper below):
The population size of bowheads in the Pacific Arctic has increased in the past 30 years likely due to increases in ocean primary production as well as the northward transport of the zooplankton on which they feed.
In addition, I suspect that the large recent population size and health of Pacific walrus are indicators they are another species that has been the beneficiary of less summer sea ice (Crockford 2014a,b). Walrus feed on bottow-dwelling invertebrate creatures whose population sizes would be boosted by more abundant plankton, allowing more walrus to forage without running out of food, as they have been known to do in the past during so-called ‘boom and bust’ population cycles (Fischbach et al. 2016; Lowry 1985; MacCracken et al. 2017).
REFERENCES
Aars, J. 2018. Population changes in polar bears: protected, but quickly losing habitat. Fram Forum Newsletter 2018. Fram Centre, Tromso. Download pdf here (32 mb).
Coupel, P., Michel, C. and Devred, E. 2019. Case study: The Ocean in Bloom. In State of Canada’s Arctic Seas, Niemi, A., Ferguson, S., Hedges, K., Melling, H., Michel, C., et al. 2019. Canadian Technical Report Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 3344.
Crawford, J.A., Quakenbush, L.T. and Citta, J.J. 2015. A comparison of ringed and bearded seal diet, condition and productivity between historical (1975–1984) and recent (2003–2012) periods in the Alaskan Bering and Chukchi seas. Progress in Oceanography 136:133-150.
Crockford, S. J. 2014a. On the beach: walrus haulouts are nothing new. Global Warming Policy Foundation Briefing Paper 11. Pdf here.
Crockford, S. J. 2014b.The walrus fuss: walrus haulouts are nothing new http://www.thegwpf.org/gwpftv/?tubepress_item=cwaAwsS2OOY&tubepress_page=2
Crockford, S.J. 2015. The Arctic Fallacy: Sea Ice Stability and the Polar Bear. Global Warming Policy Foundation Briefing Paper 16. London. Available at http://www.thegwpf.org/susan-crockford-the-arctic-fallacy-2/
Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 19 January 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/
Dyck, M., Regehr, E.V. and Ware, J.V. 2020. Assessment of Abundance for the Gulf of Boothia Polar Bear Subpopulation Using Genetic Mark-Recapture. Final Report, Government of Nunavut, Department of Environment, Iglulik. 12 June 2020. Pdf here.
Fischbach, A.S., Kochnev, A.A., Garlich-Miller, J.L., and Jay, C.V. 2016. Pacific walrus coastal haulout database, 1852–2016—Background report: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2016–1108. http://dx.doi.org/10.3133/ofr20161108. The online database is found here.
Frey, K.E., Comiso, J.C., Cooper, L.W., Grebmeier, J.M. and Stock, L.V. 2020. Arctic Ocean primiary productivity: the response of marine algae to climate warming and sea ice decline. 2020 Arctic Report Card. NOAA. DOI: 10.25923/vtdn-2198 https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2020/ArtMID/7975/ArticleID/900/Arctic-Ocean-Primary-Productivity-The-Response-of-Marine-Algae-to-Climate-Warming-and-Sea-Ice-Decline
George, J.C., Moore, S.E. and Thewissen, J.G.M. 2020. Bowhead whales: recent insights into their biology, status, and resilience. 2020 Arctic Report Card, NOAA. DOI: 10.25923/cppm-n265 https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2020/ArtMID/7975/ArticleID/905/Bowhead-Whales-Recent-Insights-into-Their-Biology-Status-and-Resilience
Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., Andersen, M., Polder, A., Lyche, J.L., Bytingsvik, J., Jenssen, B.M., Derocher, A.E., Welker, J.M. and Routti, H. 2019. Temporal trends of persistent organic pollutants in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to changes in feeding habits and body condition. Environmental Science and Technology 53(2):984-995.
Lowry, L. 1985. “Pacific Walrus – Boom or Bust?” Alaska Fish & Game Magazine July/August: 2-5. pdf here.
MacCracken, J.G., Beatty, W.S., Garlich-Miller, J.L., Kissling, M.L and Snyder, J.A. 2017. Final Species Status Assessment for the Pacific Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens), May 2017 (Version 1.0). US Fish & Wildlife Service, Anchorage, AK. Pdf here (8.6 mb).
Perovich, D., Meier, W., Tschudi, M., Hendricks, S., Petty, A.A., Divine, D., Farrell, S., Gerland, S., Haas, C., Kaleschke, L., Pavlova, O., Ricker, R., Tian-Kunze, X., Webster, M. and Wood, K. 2020. Sea ice. 2020 Arctic Report Card, NOAA. https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2020/ArtMID/7975/ArticleID/891/Sea-Ice Pdf of entire Arctic Report Card here (12mb).
Regehr, E.V., Hostetter, N.J., Wilson, R.R., Rode, K.D., St. Martin, M., Converse, S.J. 2018. Integrated population modeling provides the first empirical estimates of vital rates and abundance for polar bears in the Chukchi Sea. Scientific Reports 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-34824-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-34824-7
Rode, K.D., Regehr, E.V., Douglas, D., Durner, G., Derocher, A.E., Thiemann, G.W., and Budge, S. 2014. Variation in the response of an Arctic top predator experiencing habitat loss: feeding and reproductive ecology of two polar bear populations. Global Change Biology 20(1):76-88. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12339/abstract
Rode, K. D., R. R. Wilson, D. C. Douglas, V. Muhlenbruch, T.C. Atwood, E. V. Regehr, E.S. Richardson, N.W. Pilfold, A.E. Derocher, G.M Durner, I. Stirling, S.C. Amstrup, M. S. Martin, A.M. Pagano, and K. Simac. 2018. Spring fasting behavior in a marine apex predator provides an index of ecosystem productivity. Global Change Biology http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13933/full
I’ve been making this exact point in comments here at WUWT on Crockford’s reposts for at least 3 years now on primary productivity (PP) in Arctic open waters seen in August and September months.
The truth eventually wins out over the lies and deceptions from turds like Derocher and PBI hacks like Amstrup who simply play an agenda fir rent.
I’ve referenced the NASA studies that say exactly that These PP increases are seen and documented by satellite vis imagery and satellite remote sensing of ChlA sunlight induced fluorescence coming from plankton. The entire marine mammal and PB food chain and every trophic level down to krill and clams depends on Arctic water PP by phytoplankton in the few months that sunlight is able to penetrate the water column before the ice cover return in the fall. If phytoplankton PP is elevated, its like bountiful wheat and cereal crop harvests year after year for humans.
I too have written about the observed benefits of less ice for a decade, in my 2013 book and blog posts such as
Why Less Summer Ice Increases Polar Bear Populations http://landscapesandcycles.net/less-arctic-ice-can-be-beneficial.html
Another NASA studie in 2019
A 40-Y RECORD REVEALS GRADUAL ANTARCTIC SEA ICE INCREASESFollowing over 3 decades of gradual but uneven increases in sea ice coverage, the yearly average Antarctic sea ice extents reached a record high of 12.8 × 106 km2 in 2014, followed by a decline so precipitous that they reached their lowest value in the 40-y 1979–2018 satellite multichannel passive-microwave record, 10.7 × 106 km2, in 2017. In contrast, it took the Arctic sea ice cover a full 3 decades to register a loss that great in yearly average ice extents. Still, when considering the 40-y record as a whole, the Antarctic sea ice continues to have a positive overall trend in yearly average ice extents,
https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1906556116
interrupted by El Nino in 2014-2016, before it increased again. (Dont tell anyone)
It’s not declining, but if it is its beneficial. Got it. Summarily dismiss.
WRONG , yet again Loy-satte.
Dismissing SCIENCE and LIFE-GIVING REALITIES is the AGW meme.. we know that…
Its slimy and DECEITFUL.
The RECOVERY from the extreme highs of the LIA and late 1970s has stalled for about the last dozen years
That RECOVERY has been, as I have said MANY TIMES, a massive boon for all sea life, and other life in the regions.
Life cannot function in 100% frozen regions… only on the peripheries.
Not only is the land surface GREENING, but the seas are also springing BACK to life after being TOO COLD and frozen over for much of the last 500 or so years (coldest period of the Holocene)
The drop in sea ice slightly toward the pre-LIA levels has opened up the food supply for the nearly extinct Bowhead Whale, and they are returning to the waters around Svalbard.
https://partner.sciencenorway.no/arctic-ocean-forskningno-fram-centre/the-ice-retreats–whale-food-returns/1401824
The Blue Mussel is also making a return, having been absent for a few thousand years, apart from a brief stint during the MWP.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959683617715701?journalCode=hola
Many other species of whale are also returning now that the sea ice extent has dropped from the extreme highs of the LIA. Whales cannot swim on ice. !
https://blog.poseidonexpeditions.com/whales-of-svalbard/
Great thing is, that because of fossil fuels and plastics, they will no longer be hunted for whale blubber for lamps and for whale bone.
Hopefully the Arctic doesn’t re-freeze too much in the next AMO cycle, and these glorious creatures get a chance to survive and multiply
Why do the AGW cultists like you HATE Arctic life so much ???
Aye!
The ‘Bust’ side of this “Boom and bust” cycle is going to be unpleasant.
The Polar bears, as carrion eaters, will benefit for a few years and then also suffer.
It’s that kind of ignorant comment that gives alarmists such a bad reputation for junk science. Like other bears, including the Brown Bear, from which they descend, polar bears are omnivores and are extremely efficient eaters, utilizing all manner of foods to great effect. They get even fatter in ice free conditions, mainly because food is many times more abundant in warmer conditions.
Polar bears split off from brown bears between 343,000 and 479,000 years ago. They have successfully survived far worse conditions than the present, many times.
So, how did 280 ppm CO2 produce Eemian temperatures suitable for hippos in the Thames, but today at 410 ppm CO2 not? Your chart did not answer the question.
Patience grass-hopper, hippos took 5000 years to get to the Thames.
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/proxy/dG3u0Bma-dE4DTJGwXqqfSQ2hgH-tqXhZmTRhpUnkAMBtTo9_OFsls4AxImMIVLrMZA1GQ7IIw3wWiNUqGPeu0qPTqfr5VDVMzTdlTM7w1acnuqRsm7j
Your chart is still totally meaningless.
MUCH warmer with MUCH less CO2..
… like the Holocene including RWP, MWP etc etc
You have NOTHING as always.
Why is EVERYTHING you post either totally irrelevant, or just totally WRONG
Thats right Fred, 3000 years! I know you just can’t wait for dem hippos.
What a totally meaningless comment.
So glad you are ADMITTING that current temperatures are FAR COOLER than most of the last 10,000 years though.
No hippos in the Thames now, are there empty-sock. !
Reality bites, hey !
“red250
Reply to
Loydo
January 8, 2021 2:30 am
…
Why is EVERYTHING you post either totally irrelevant, or just totally WRONG”
Because, just like the scorpion …
Lolly throws in a red herring and ignores sky king’s question, entirely.
Typical alarmist, all fluff and lots of nutter.
Loydo, all that means is that is that it was warmer than today for at least 5000 years.
He can’t get used to the fact that; on a geological time scale our planet has been cooling since the Holocene Thermal Maximum. He’s convinced that the warm periods since then were only local to Europe. He knows this because, according to him; “if The Plantagenets and Thomas Aquinas didn’t write about it, it didn’t happen.” … history, see?
Your link to wherever you picked up that bit of ephemera is broken … which doesn’t surprise me. It’s a non sequitur anyway. What would you people do without your little collection of fallacies?
The question is how did hippos find a comfortable climate in the Thames at 280ppm? What is the mechanism that does not do the same at 410ppm? No more charts needed. Just in your own words: Why does 410ppm not produce that result of 280ppm? Bonus question: Why did not the water vapor positive feedback kick in during the Eemian to cause catastrophic, world ending warming?
Can someone please explain the term “apex predator” to an obvious bottom-feeder. Thanks.
Yes, an “apex predator” is one at the top of its chain. i.e. nothing eats it. Yes, that would mean that the population would increase without limit, if there were no other factors involved. However, there always are.
Yep … exactly so … and one of those limiting factors North of 60 is prolonged, extreme cold. It tends to limit the food supply. Warm weather, on the other hand …
Loydo: Your opinion is worthless, and you have nothing to contribute.
We’re still waiting to hear your explanation of the survival of Polar Bears through the Holocene, when the Arctic Ocean was ice-free in Summer.
See hippos/3000 years above
Wow , you really have a bee in your bonnet about hippos , don’t you
Fixated… much !!
Your girlfriend, or boyfriend, perhaps ?
So much COOLER now than when there were hippos.. glad you agree.
And back then it was MUCH WARMER, and FAR LESS CO2
You do KNOW that’s because CO2 doesn’t cause any warming, don’t you ?
Current warming is TOTALLY BENEFICIAL and TOTALLY NATURAL.
Not relevant in the slightest, but what the heck, when you got a reed, hang on with all your might.
Your link is worthless like your opinion … “hippos/3000” ha ha ha ha ha.
what size steak is that ??
Loydo, why do you have to be so disingenuous?
The graph is clearly marked with a 41 year downtrend and a 13 year steeper downtrend in September ice extent. It could not be any clearer.
Fine, you don’t like Summer Arctic ice melt, we get it….. but here we have a knock-on effect that seems to be beneficial to wildlife at all levels of the food chain, which is objectively a good thing no?
You pretend to be on the side of nature and all that’s green and good, but then you dismiss this with an air of disdain that shatters that obvious façade.
You’re not thinking freely.
Just saying.
P.S Don’t want to ruin your day but here’s some more good news:
https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2020/02/14/plant-regrowth-bushfires/
On the surface I agree – happy to see some species expanding their ranges. But there is a big jump from that to “seems to be beneficial to wildlife at all levels of the food chain”. I think that is premature and naive.
But c’mon, do you really think thats why this sort of stuff gets posted here? Because of the poly bears? I think the Arctic was doing fine without us and god only knows what climatic knock on effects are going to result.
More TRITE, MEANINGLESS GIBBERISH from loy-dumb…
Not a tiny bit of evidence.. ever..
Yes your comments ARE totally naive. to go along with totally IGNORANT.
ALL creatures in the Arctic BENEFIT by the recovery of Arctic sea ice levels even slightly from the EXTREMES of the LIA and 1970s
Yep, the Arctic is doing fine now that it isn’t buried under sea ice all year.
Why do you HATE that fact SO MUCH !!
Loydo
“But c’mon, do you really think thats why this sort of stuff gets posted here?”
It gets posted here because it is a reasonable analysis of science.
It does not get posted on AGW supporting sites because it is a reasonable analysis of science.
Thanks for playing along.
BINGO!
Glad to see you here….
“god only knows what climatic knock on effects are going to result”
And that’s the essence of what we rationalists rely upon for considered policy positions –
if you don’t really know or understand what’s going on, let alone what MIGHT ensue, the last thing you should do is jump on your horse and gallop off in all directions.
But that’s exactly what “renewable” power generation represents.
Just because you don’t know, do they have to be negative.
I’m wondering if Loydo simply isn’t smart enough to understand the arguments we are making.
Or if he simply isn’t honest enough to deal with the actual arguments we are making.
It’s a combination, usually encountered in “green” low to mid level council workers
Sea ice has declined since the 1970’s. Nobody denies that.
Sea ice hasn’t declined in the last 10 years. That’s also a fact.
Pointing out the second doesn’t mean you are denying the first.
It declined and now it’s still lower you complete, absolute, total, unmitigated, congenital moron.
I can’t tell you what I really think.
As long as the “greenies” can keep raising funds and contributions to “help save the starving Polar Bears, don’t expect this kind of drivel to disappear anytime soon!
does primary productivity necessarily spill over into more food for bears, considering the huge impact of low ice levels and rapid loss in melting season? This article does not demonstrate this.
Walrus are certainly impacted by loss of ice floes over shallow water and increased on land haul out.
Unjustified conclusion!
WRONG AGAIN, griff..
ALL LIFE IN THE ARCTIC BENEFITS FROM LESS EXTREME LEVELS OF SEA ICE.
Totally justified conclusion, just one your tiny life-hating mind cannot process.
So stop your childish climate change denial and hatred for Arctic life..
Walrus have “hauled-out” on land for time eternal.
They also will benefit from not having EXTREME levels of sea ice all year
They lived through the whole Holocene with FAR LESS sea ice than now, with no problems
Stop being so ignorant.
“Unjustified conclusion!”
It’s a lot more justified than yours.
Primary productivity in the Arctic seas is the bedrock of everything else. It is a major fundamental factor in the continued survival of life there come springtime, and if you’re trying to survive in the Arctic, I’d suggest that having more of what you eat around the place, or at the very least the potential to have more, would be better than not.
The Arctic is already supporting huge quantities of Polar cod which seem to find early seasonal formation of Polynyas advantageous in their struggle to survive, so producing stronger, bigger pre-winter fish more able to face the winter.
http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v355/p247-256/
Seals populations, certainly in Canada are 3x what they were in the 70’s.
There are huge populations of Walrus, haulouts of greater than 10,000 can be found in different regions, and they are not, as you suggest a forced activity due to “Global Warming™”.
PB populations are stable.
What huge impact? you’re being alarmist.
Once again, griff demonstrates that it simply isn’t capable of following a logical argument.
That and it’s insistence on believing any lie it’s masters tell it.
Griff and Lloydo remind me of a dishonest idiotic guy from the climate troll factory (Dave Petterson) whose mission was to spread lies and disrupt any valid skeptic assertions.
Griff mindlessly talks about walruses and land haulouts as a negative when large land haul outs have happened for thousands. Russian scientists reported early 20th century sea ice was bad because it block walruses from feeding grounds.
Griff read and learn some real science:
Successful Walrus Conservation
http://landscapesandcycles.net/hijacking-successful-walrus-conservation.html
or The 2015 Arctic Report Card: NOAA Failed Walrus Science!
http://landscapesandcycles.net/noaas-arctic-report-card-fails-walrus-science.html
Meanwhile as usual you post no evidence to support your assertions….
Dog ate it, Griff?
Summar = summer.
Quote:
“”It’s nice to see an acknowledgement that the longer ice-free seasons we’ve experienced since 2007 have an up-side. In fact, less summer ice has been a net benefit to most animals in the Arctic and peripheral seas because less ice and more sunlight in most areas increases ‘primary productivity’. Primary productivity refers to phytoplankton, those single-celled plants that are the basis for life in the ocean because they turn sunlight into stored energy: sunlight is their food””
Its all really in the last little bit about ‘sunlight‘ ##
a) There’s a lot of sunlight in, say, The Sahara.
Why isn’t it bursting with ‘Primary Productivity‘?
b) It also says about ‘single-celled plants’
What’s the difference between one of those and A Bacterium – as you might find up your nose, in your tummy OR, making up the majority of life on earth.
Earth with a small e, as in = ‘dirt’
Back to (a)..
Don’t those plants need more nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, sulphur, calcium, magnesium, iron and etc etc and, heaven forbid, CO2 to turn into ‘stored energy’?
Less ice means less of The Suff falling from the sky gets locked up in the ice.
i.e. More makes it into the water where it can do some good.
But, how do they survive in the hideously acidic place that The Ocean has become now.
Another But and a Wait..
Enter Henry’s Law. Isn’t The (warming) Ocean causing Positive Climate Feedback by ‘outgassing’ CO2?
Enquiring Minds may want to know who/what does the most outgassing**. Childish ignorant minds imagine it to be cows, while regarding their own gas emissions as ‘normal’ or even as a sign of ‘Good Health’
(**They don’t want to. Really)
Sorry. You’ve heard it all from me before.
Soil Erosion, Pollution, Forest Fires, Dust Storms are, in the main, what’s feeding those critters
(##) “”They use sunlight to make energy”” :-/
Lord help us, sunlight is energy. What are they using as an energy source to do this energy-to-energy conversion. More to the point, what is the point?
Why don’t we ‘eat Sunlight’
No No No, I didn’t say that :-((
Peta – we do ‘eat sunlight’ – we convert it to vitamin D which is essential at a certain level. Take it from someone with a vit D deficiency – we need it every day!
No, actually we DO NOT require vitamin D every day.
A small area of skin exposed to direct sunlight is usually sufficient to naturally generate the amount of vitamin D we require.
Right. Not actually what I said. If you reread what I posted I think you’ll find I was talking about naturally generating vitamin D from sunlight not supplements. Most people don’t require supplements.
It’s rather hard to escape what you said. Yes … it is “actually what [you] said”. Furthermore, as long as you’re being prickly; we don’t “convert it [sunlight]” to vitamin D. UVB radiation between 270 – 300 nm reacts with a compound (7-dehydrocholesterol) in the skin, synthesizing vitamin D. There are numerous factors determining the efficiency of this. We also absorb vitamin D from several animal based food sources.
So, all things being equal, you got pretty much everything wrong. A simple thank you would have served you better.
Sea ice alarmism has been an important “theater” of the CAGW war. It seemed to make sense. But now it is falling apart. I suggest that our side make an effort to characterize this theater as a microcosm of the overall cause. E.g., it features emotional and dishonest alarmists whose livlihood (mentoring PHD candidates for jobs in their field) would be hurt if the Arctic situation were not alarming. And it features efforts to shut out and beshmirch skeptics. Numerous vainglorius quotes would be a good garnish. If these parallels are well documented, it would make readers go “Hmm.”
This is a “flank attack,” which is a good strategy. (Or perhaps it is a nibble-away strategy, which is also good.) Similar flank attacks could be made on other salients of the enemy, where his position has become over-extended and hard to maintain, and where he hopes his failure will vanish down the memory hole. I.e., where he has only barely credible counter-arguments with which to befuddle observers, and where his misbehavior can be well documented. There are about 100 theaters all-told, and only 10 of them, most small in the overall scheme of things, would be candidates for what I’m proposing. (I suggest amphibian alarmism (really egregious), Kilimanjaro alarmism, swamped island alarmism, butterfly and mika alarmism, etc.) But if they could be assembled into a free ebook and/or website, it would have enough heft to hit the “schwerpunkt” hard and put the enemy on the defensive—an important strategic goal.
More important, it would weaken the enemy’s overall credibility. The key is to stress that these small “cases” are not merely his emgarrassing blunders, but are a microcosm of his deceptive tactics and deep-rooted bad faith. Once that’s been established, readers will be less likely to care whatever other claims he makes.
Most of these diagrams have no caption, which means that if I post them to Pinterest, they will mean nothing to denizons there.
Missing the point of what that graph is demonstrating. As the article says:
It would be absurd to assume that the years 2007 to 2012 where simultaneously part of the fastest declining 13 year trend and the slowest declining 13 year trend.
“have been thriving despite less ice in summer.”
Because of less ice in the summer is more probable.
I see Griff below once again providing the religious perspective, “reduced sea ice MUST eventually be bad for something, because that is what i believe.”
At what point do you start to wonder Griff?
As noted, i used to be a bit like you, but it was this sea ice and polar bear issue is what did it for me and started me looking closer.
The theory is less ice is bad for polar bears, extinction threat.
There is certainly less ice than 40 years ago, no argument.
But the bears are thriving.
Its the absolute unwillingness of the consensus to admit they might be wrong about sea ice extent and bear health that got and still gets me, every time you comment.
Its why you always will lose the argument.
I’m not a scientist, clearly, but i can clearly see that all this flora is loving less sea ice.
Get a grip Griff, there are groups that will help you break from the climate scientologists. Its like pulling off a bandaid
As has been demonstrated; generally speaking life prefers warmth over sub-zero conditions. The bears managed to survive very well during the Holocene Thermal Optimum, 8000 – 9000 years ago when the Arctic was ice free during the Summer months (unlike today). Although apex predators like bears will gorge on the easiest sources of food whenever they can, bears are omnivores and will regularly eat vast quantities of grass, ferns, sedges, berries, rodents, bird’s eggs and carrion which the Arctic has in abundance all Summer. They utilize the sea ice in the Spring and Autumn … then hibernate for months in the Winter. Less sea ice is far more of a benefit.