Earth-Day Fails! Prince EA’s Video is Full of Hot Air

(Originally Posted Apr 22, 2015 | New Audios)

I wanted to play the video in whole, then go through 6-points it makes to shed more light on them.

(I recently added to this next section)

DEFORESTATION

Prince EA’s mentioning that a future generation of people will not know what trees are is JUST LIKE people telling us kids will not know what snow is like:

Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past
Monday 20 March 2000

Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.

Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

[….]

However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

…read more…

Funny thing is, some record breaking snow-fall followed in the years after… so much so that kids wished they forgot what it was.

But in all seriousness we are seeing similar dire predictions fail about the deforestation of trees. Keep in mind this is not a polemic proving all stories of deforestation false. I merely wish to bring some balance to the issue. For instance, in the Amazon, well over 95% of deforestation comes from cattle ranching, commercial agriculture, and infrastructure improvements. Less than 5% is from legal and illegal logging. Take note as well that The New York Times makes the point that,

  • for every acre of rain forest cut down each year, more than 50 acres of new forest are growing in the tropics on land that was once farmed, logged or ravaged by natural disaster.”

I love balance.

William Shatner, Captain Kirk of Star Trek fame, mentioned in a National Geographic video that, “rainforests [are] being cleared at the rate of 20 football fields per minute.”  If this were truly the case, the forests would have been completely wiped out years ago.  In Prince EA’s video he said 40 football fields! In an interview with Dr. Evaristo Eduardo de Miranda (one of the world’s leading experts on deforestation in the Amazon, is a professor of ecology at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest institution of higher learning, and president of ECOFORCE, a private, nonprofit, environmental research/educational institution), he was asked where these numbers come from:

Q. There have been many reports by environmental groups in the U.S. claiming that the Amazon rain forest is being destroyed at a frightening pace. Many conflicting statistics are given concerning the alleged rate of destruction — 4 million hectares per year, 8 million hectares per year, 50,000 acres per day, etc. What are the facts and where are these statistics coming from?

A. A good example of this is the report released at the Earth Summit by the FAO [United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization]. FAO claims that the world tropical deforestation rate is 16.9 million hectares per year. FAO has up to the present been still using their discredited 8 million hectares per year rate for deforestation in Brazil. But when pressed at the summit they conceded to the 2.1 million hectares annually that the INPE, the Brazilian national space agency, has asserted is the real rate. This is an admission that they were inflating the deforestation rate by nearly 300 percent.

But they also said that deforestation for all of South America is 6.9 million hectares annually, which raises an obvious problem. Since Brazil has 70 percent of South America’s tropical forests, it would be incredible to suggest that other countries are deforesting at the levels necessary for the FAO figures to be valid. If you subtract the 2.1 million [Brazilian hectares] from the [FAO’s] 6.9 million, you have 4.8 million hectares being cut down annually in the 30 percent of South American tropical forests outside of Brazil. That is far greater than any data shows.

There is a similar problem with their annual 16.9 million hectares statistic for world deforestation. If you subtract Brazil’s 2.1 million, then you must ask who deforests the other 14.8 million hectares. When they were asked these questions, the FAO could not answer. They could not break the numbers down country by country or show any other means by which they arrived at this figure.

Q. No maps, no satellite photos, no national data ? Where did they conjure up these figures?Trees

A. They were put in a very bad light because they could produce nothing to substantiate these fantastic figures. This is an important example, because if the FAO cannot sustain these numbers, then you can imagine that these eco-groups — the NGOs [Non-Governmental Organizations] — could not either. They always use these big numbers to make sensational news stories, but they never can break the aggregate numbers down to show where they come from, and they never produce maps with alleged areas of deforestation specified so that they can be independently verified.

One comment from the inter-webs noted: “The Amazon is just fine, as the people are moving out of the jungle to the cities and the jungle is raging back quite nicely. It’s in Indonesia and the area that the forests are being cut down for palm oil/biofuel productions.” Yep

In fact, the co-founder and long-time director of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, said: “All these save-the-forests arguments are based on bad science….  They are quite simply wrong… [Phillip Stott and I] found that the Amazon rainforests is more than 90% intact. We flew over it and met all the environmental authorities. We studied satellite pictures of the entire area.” Phillip Stott, who has 30 years of studying tropical forests under his belt as well as being professor of biogeography at London University mentioned that, “there are now still – despite what humans have done – more rainforests today than there were 12,000 years ago.”

Conventional wisdom is often challenged as well by climatologists and specialists in their field. The NEW YORK TIMES passes along the complexity of an issue most people take for granted:

Deforestation accounts for about 20 percent of global emissions of carbon dioxide. The assumption is that planting trees and avoiding further deforestation provides a convenient carbon capture and storage facility on the land.

That is the conventional wisdom. But the conventional wisdom is wrong.

[….]

Planting trees and avoiding deforestation do offer unambiguous benefits to biodiversity and many forms of life. But relying on forestry to slow or reverse global warming is another matter entirely.

The science says that spending precious dollars for climate change mitigation on forestry is high-risk: We don’t know that it would cool the planet, and we have good reason to fear it might have precisely the opposite effect. More funding for forestry might seem like a tempting easy win for the world leaders at the United Nations, but it’s a bad bet.

SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN gets a bit more detailed regarding the above. But this is a very complicated issue… especially since chopping down massive forests is being posited as a boon to fight “global warming” – to wit:

2007 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that global-scale deforestation would result in a net cooling, as the changes in albedo and evaporation would overwhelm the impact of all that carbon being released into the atmosphere. But that doesn’t mean we should go about chopping down every tree we can—on the whole, preserving tropical forests and even adding more trees in the equatorial latitudes will be beneficial for the climate, not to mention the biodiversity that depends on rainforests. But large-scale reforestation or afforestation projects in the north may not be the best idea, as Lee says:

People are debating whether afforestation is a good idea in high latitudes. If you plant trees you sequester carbon, which is a benefit to the climate system. At the same time, if you plant trees you warm the landscape because trees are darker compared to other vegetation types. So they absorb solar radiation.

The study is another reminder of just how devilishly complicated the climate system really is….

(TIME)

Here are some other FLASHBACK articles regarding trees and the varying ideas of their effects on our climate:

Like I said – challenging conventional wisdom. In reality, what throws many of these studies of deforestation off is the urban heat island effect and rural cold island effect. For more on this see Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy’s (bio) book/chapter: “Climate Change: Myths & Realities”, 2008 — Chapter 7: Ecological changes.

NATIVE-AMERICANS

The second point I wish to comment on, and it is Prince EA’s mentioning of the Native-Americans. I do not doubt that Prince was taught these things in school. However, like many other issues cornered in the monopoly of the government, balance is needed.

For instance, I wrote a response to an in-class supplement to my sons elementary class lesson [he is now married and lives in Florida] about HOW the Settlers treated the New World versus how the Indians treated it. I made sure each parent got a copy and this engendered a visit to see the principle. Here is a quote from that post:

From James Fenimore Cooper to Dances with Wolves and Disney’s Pocahontas, American Indians have been mythologized as noble beings with a “spiritual, sacred attitude towards land and animals, not a practical utilitarian one.”[16] Small children are taught that the Plains Indians never wasted any part of the buffalo. They grow up certain that the Indians lived as one with nature, and that white European settlers were the rapists who destroyed it.

In The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, Shepard Krech III, an anthropologist at Brown University, strips away the myth to show that American Indians behaved pretty much like everyone else. When times were bad they used the whole buffalo. When times were good, “whole herds” of buffalo might be killed only for their tongues or their fetuses.[17] Although American Indians adapted to their environment and were intimately familiar with it, they had no qualms about shaping it to their needs.

Indians set fires to promote the growth of grasses and make land more productive for the game and plants that they preferred. Sometimes fire was used carefully. Sometimes it was not. Along with the evidence that Indians used fire to improve habitat are abundant descriptions of carelessly started fires that destroyed all plant life and entire buffalo herds.[18]

Nor were American Indians particularly interested in conserving resources for the future. In the East, they practiced slash and burn agriculture. When soils became infertile, wood for fuel was exhausted, and game depleted, whole villages moved.[19] The Cherokee, along with the other Indians who participated in the Southern deerskin trade, helped decimate white-tailed deer populations.[20] Cherokee mythology believed that deer that were killed in a hunt were reanimated.

In all, contemporary accounts suggest that many Indians treated game as an inexhaustible resource. Despite vague hints in the historical records that some Crees may have tried to conserve beaver populations by allocating hunting territories and sparing young animals, Krech concludes that it was “market forces in combination with the Hudchild’s Bay Company policies [which actively promoted conservation]” that “led to the eventual recovery of beaver populations.”[21]

Those who blame European settlers for genocide because they introduced microbes that ravaged native populations might as well call the Mongols genocidal for creating the plague reservoirs that led to the Black Death in Europe.[22] Microbes travel with their hosts. Trade, desired by Indians as well as whites, created the pathways for disease.


[16] Shepard Krech III, The Ecological Indian: Myth and History, W.W. Norton & Company; New York: NY (1999), p. 22.

[17] Ibid., p. 135.

[18] Ibid., p. 119.

[19] Ibid., p. 76.

[20] Ibid., p. 171.

[21] Ibid., p. 188.

[22] For a discussion of the effect of the Mongol invasions and their effect on European epidemiology see, William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples, Doubleday; New York, NY (1977).

These little historical facts changes the narrative just a tad, doesn’t it? Like when the Iroquois directed their most furious attacks against the Hurons during the Beaver Wars. One Jesuit missionary wrote, “it is the design of the Iroquois to capture all the Hurons, if it is possible; to put the chiefs and great part of the nation to death, and with the rest to form one nation and one country.” American Indians, alongside the Settlers, accelerated their hunting of the American Bison (Buffalo) that contributed to the near extinction of this plains beast. All in the name of the Mighty Buck! (READ MORE)


POLAR BEAR BREAK

(An UPDATED POST on an old one can be found showing the bottom line is that the current population is at record highs.)  While not dealt with well in Prince EA’s video, his presentation  shows a computerized Polar Bear[s] walking in the background while intimating extinction or low numbers. Again, he probably learned about this in school, so you cannot really blame him fully. He is the product of indoctrination. However, this just isn’t the case. In fact, there are a record number of Polar Bears. Here Is The Bottom Line:

1) It confirms the global population size I published in May 2015 (20,129-32,558; average 26,344). See the graph below, now amended to reflect this point. If global numbers do decline over the next 35 years, it will be from a high point not previously acknowledged by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG).

2) The current population trend is listed as: ? Unknown. [NOT declining – if anyone claims it is, send them here: IUCN Red List U. maritimus]

(MS) WINNIPEG, Canada (Globe and Mail 4/2012) The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

[….]

But many Inuit communities said the researchers were wrong. They said the bear population was increasing and they cited reports from hunters who kept seeing more bears. Mr. Gissing said that encouraged the government to conduct the recent study, which involved 8,000 kilometres of aerial surveying last August along the coast and offshore islands.

Mr. Gissing said he hopes the results lead to more research and a better understanding of polar bears. He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level]there has ever been.”

[Editors note: perhaps to 27,000-32,000?]

Again, this throws a monkey wrench into the narrative, and makes the next proposition trues if the counter proposition can be true:

Look, it is simple:

  • Either polar bears are dying because of CO2 emissions via man ~ hence, we should stopproducing high levels of CO2;

or [following the train of thinking FROM Al Gore],

  • Polar bears are at their highest recorded population levels because of CO2 emissions via man, hence, we should produce high levels of CO2.

If “a,” why not “b”?

Truth About Stranded Polar Bears Image

(SEE MORE)

FOX NEWS & SEA LEVEL RISE

Want to move on quick over this section? Here is my response to a Starbucks patron (of which I count myself) when they bring up sea rise:

  • “I believe in sea rise? Hell, 10,000 years ago it was 350ft lower. That is how the American Indian populated the continent.”

Mic Drop!

This was interesting because he calls out a news network. Good for him! He is wrong, but I like his style. This section I will deal with sea level rise in general, and then deal with the Bangladesh portion of Prince EA’s claims. The general sea rise refutation of the school-house session can be seen here, but let us look at a graph:

I wanted to draw the people who believe this (rising oceans) attention to a very old photograph compared to a new one to compare La Jolla (California) sea levels from 1871 to Now (REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE):

lajolla18712b

Also, Photographs show no change in Sydney sea level over the last 130 years (REAL CLIMATE SCIENCE):


But what interested me was his mentioning Bangladesh specifically… wrapped up in a challenge to Fox News.

Woa Whoa! Throwin’ down the gauntlet. I am going to answer this from various sources, but as you will see, this is another fail on the eco-fascists side. Here is a conservative source first:

It’s hard to believe that it’s been more than a month since the latest example of intellectual collapse at the IPCC.  Now added to the fraudulent claims about Amazon rain forests, African crop harvests, and Himalayan glaciers comes the exposure of a very large error in the UN body’s warnings about flooding in Bangladesh.  Turns out that the scientists screeching about the cataclysmic effects of sea-level rises forgot to consider sedimentary deposits (via Yid with Lid):

Scientists in Bangladesh posed a fresh challenge to the UN’s top climate change panel Thursday, saying its doomsday forecasts for the country in the body’s landmark 2007 report were overblown.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already under fire for errors in the 2007 report, had said a one-metre (three-foot) rise in sea levels would flood 17 percent of Bangladesh and create 20 million refugees by 2050.

The claim helped create a widespread consensus that the low-lying country was on the “front line” of climate change, but a new study argues the IPCC ignored the role sediment plays in countering sea level rises. …

But IPCC’s prediction did not take into account the one billion tonnes of sediment carried by Himalayan rivers into Bangladesh every year, which are crucial in countering rises in sea levels, the study funded by the Asian Development Bank said.

“Sediments have been shaping Bangladesh’s coast for thousands of years,” said Maminul Haque Sarker, director of the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic Information Services (CEGIS), who led research for the study.

Even if the sea level rises that far — a claim which is itself greeted with increasing skepticism — most of the coastline for Bangladesh won’t be affected. 

WHAT’S UP WITH THAT calls this Bangladesh “THE POSTER CHILD,” and here is the end of their report:

Deltas are formed at the boundary of rivers and oceans. The rivers that build deltas flow to low and slowly sinking parts of the crust, where large volumes of sediment are being deposited. They will always be in balance with sea level but almost by definition increase in size, if rivers are allowed to follow their course. Deltas, by their very nature are building out and up. They also tend to flood frequently and seasonally, often with disastrous effects on the inhabitants. People living in deltas should learn to swim, have a boat and generally be aware of what can happen. Sea level rise is not an issue in large deltas; they have been proven to be able to keep up with any sea level rise. Flooding disasters are seasonally the result of excessive run-off, and occasionally due to unfortunate storm surges that result in breaks through natural barriers, but this has nothing to do with sea level rise. Bangladesh will be there, even if all the ice in the world has melted, with its people still fighting floods while farming the fertile floodplains.

Scientific American also takes a wholly different course and shows that current flooding is caused in big part to the Bangladeshi’s themselves:

Man-made flood protections, not climate change, are the main culprit in sea-level rise in southwest Bangladesh, according to new research conducted for the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research.

The report from a team of scientists at Vanderbilt University is the first part in a wide-ranging, $7.5 million analysis of environmental stress and human migration scenarios in the low-lying South Asian nation.

Published this week in Nature Climate Change, the initial study finds that embankments constructed since the 1960s are primarily to blame for lower land elevations along the Ganges-Brahmaputra River Delta, with some areas experiencing more than twice the rate of the most worrisome sea-level rise projections from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

OF COURSE the magazine then goes on to assert Climate Disruption is still a threat to Bangladesh (towing the line is tough!). But this problem is moot because they gain land from the delta and the flooding is mainly “man-made,” so are the solutions [technology].

CHINA vs SARAH PALIN

WOW, another challenge. Good for you Prince EA! But again, your understanding is wrong.

The Atlantic Monthly has a VERY interesting article I read a few years back. They note that in reality the pollution in China is at our 1980-levels.

Does China, in short, truly deserve its reputation as an environmental pariah?

Ramon Guardans, a biologist who studies air pollution and co-chairs a global monitoring plan on toxic chemicals for the United Nations Environment Program, is skeptical.

“The air concentrations of several pollutants in sites in China are certainly comparable to the levels observed in heavily industrialized areas in Europe and North America before the 1970’s,” he wrote by email. But pound for pound, person for person these pollutant emissions were, and generally still are, much greater than China’s.

“So in relation to the population density we see in China,” Guardans continues, “the U.S. and Europe did a much dirtier job industrializing.”

Beijing just happens to be, similar to Los Angeles, in a geographical bind. Bloomberg makes this point as well around the same time the Atlantic Monthly does:

Why is Beijing susceptible to these episodes? First, and uncontrollable by the authorities, are the peculiarities of Beijing’s geography. In particular, the capital is surrounded by mountain ranges that lead to the unfortunate phenomenon of an inversion layer—cold air settles on top of a warmer air mass, trapping the pollutants inside. This is the same problem that bedevils Los Angeles.

Beyond the misfortune of geography, though, lie a number of factors that have everything to do with China’s policies….

China is blessed and cursed with the world’s largest coal reserves, which means that the country sources some 80 percent of its electricity from burning coal—and much of that coal is of lower quality and highly polluting. 

But as I have clearly shown… wind and solar energy is no cleaner. And the dream in peoples heads is truly just that, a dream… I mean when Google caves, you know the end-is-nigh.

  • “Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”

I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.

(read more)

And bio-fuels cause, literally, food riots and starvation in poor countries and raise the price of food which hurt the poorer people in the more well off nations: Ethanol is killing children around the world… Democrats! It takes 450lbs of Corn to fill one SUV tank… that is a years worth of food for multiple children, not to mention the rise of corn-based food for the poor worldwide. (SEE MORE)

ICE MELTING

Here is another fail on the part of the doomsayers who speak with a tongue very similar to the eschatology handed us at the most fiery southern Baptist church.

Prince EA is just relying on others work that have been either proven wrong or fraudulant in nature. Here for instance we see some predictions simlar to Prince’s:

“Peter Wadhams, who heads the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge… believes that the Arctic is likely to become ice-free before 2020 and possibly as early as 2015,” (YALE ENVIRONMENT 360 REPORTED IN 2012). Yet government data shows that arctic sea ice has increased since then….

Here I will post information from a PREVIOUS POST about Polar Bear population levels, in which I point the following out:

Recent Population Increase Partly Due To Lots of Sea-Ice

Canada (CBC News via the Canadian Coast Guard, 3/2014) [ARCTIC Sea Ice] The Canadian Coast Guard is pleading with merchant ships to plan their voyages well in advance this year as the organization’s icebreaker fleet confronts some of the worst ice conditions on the Atlantic Ocean in decades.

“Plan your voyage and we’ll all get through this,” said Mike Voight, the Atlantic region’s director of programs. “We’ve got a pretty bad or challenging ice year.”

The Canadian Ice Service, an arm of Environment Canada, said there is 10 per cent more ice this year compared to the 30-year average.

“We probably haven’t seen a winter this bad as far as ice for the past 25 years,” said Voight, referring to both the amount and thickness of the ice….

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) Abstract (12/2014) [ARCTIC sea ice] Despite a well-documented ~40% decline in summer Arctic sea ice extent since the late 1970’s, it has been difficult to estimate trends in sea ice volume because thickness observations have been spatially incomplete and temporally sporadic. While numerical models suggest that the decline in extent has been accompanied by a reduction in volume, there is considerable disagreement over the rate at which this has occurred. We present the first complete assessment of trends in northern hemisphere sea ice thickness and volume using 4 years of measurements from CryoSat-2. Between autumn 2010 and spring 2013, there was a 14% and 5% reduction in autumn and spring Arctic sea ice volume, respectively, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, since then there has been a marked 41% and 9% recovery in autumn and spring sea ice volume, respectively, more than offsetting losses of the previous three years. The recovery was driven by the retention of thick ice around north Greenland and Canada during summer 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 6% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred – climatic conditions more typical of the early 1990’s. Such a sharp increase in volume after just one cool summer indicates that the Arctic sea ice pack may be more resilient than has been previously considered.

Talking About Weather (7/2014) [ANTARCTIC sea ice] Antarctic sea ice has hit its second all-time record maximum this week. The new record is 2.112 million square kilometers above normal. Until the weekend just past, the previous record had been 1.840 million square kilometers above normal, a mark hit on December 20, 2007, as I reported here, and also covered in my book.

Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, responded to e-mail questions and also spoke by telephone about the new record sea ice growth in the Southern Hemisphere, indicating that, somewhat counter-intuitively, the sea ice growth was specifically due to global warming.

Sea Ice 2014

Let us compare this to Al Gore saying the northern ice-caps will be gone

NewsBusters makes the point another way, in that the “media” is derelict in their duty:

The same year that former Vice President Al Gore predicted that the Arctic sea ice could be completely gone, Arctic ice reached its highest level in two years, according to a report by theDanish Meteorological Institute

According to that report, which was cited by the Daily Mail (UK) on Aug. 30, “[t]he Arctic ice cap has expanded for the second year in a row.” The U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC)confirmed this trend, but didn’t go into as much detail as the Danish Meteorological Institute.

But an examination of ABC, CBS and NBC news programs since the Daily Mail story was published found that all three networks ignored news that Arctic sea ice was at a two-year high….

Remember, you can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink.…read it all at Fox News.

“The West Antarctic ice sheet sits on bedrock which is below sea level. It formed during the ice age but the sea level rose 12,000 years ago and has been chipping away at it ever since. What happens to ice which sits on rock which is below sea level? Hint: it has nothing to do with CO2.” This is a comment from Real Science’s FLASHBACK to 1932 and how the ICe-Sheets were melting then (to the right).

AND FINALLY….

ROCKETS

I hate to break it to Prince EA, but that rocket to find other worlds would have to be powered by (in part) fossil fuels to break earths gravitational force. Not to mention the massive amount of energy (fossil fuels again) And often times the left kills innovation in areas (like nuclear) for ideological reasons. Keeping us dependent on fossil fuels.

You see, all of the above “sounds good,” and grand. But as Thomas Sowell says, liberals — unlike conservatives — do not ask three simple questions:

  1. compared to what?
  2. at what cost?
  3. what hard-evidence do you have?

FOR INSTANCE, as an example, Google came to the logical conclusion that such endeavors with alternative fuels is unattainable:

We came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.

[….]

“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”

Google Joins the Common Sense Crew On Renewable Energies ~ Finally! (RPT)


  • What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change (SPETRUM)
  • Shocker: Top Google Engineers Say Renewable Energy ‘Simply won’t work’ (WATTS UP WITH THAT)
  • Polluting the Beauty and Cleanliness Of Our World With Renewable Energy (RPT)
  • Wind and Solar More Harmful To Environment Than Helpful (RPT)

From Ice-Caps to Polar Bears, The Left Gets It Wrong

(Originally posted in 2014)

This is connected to an older post titled, “Inconvenient Truths for FactCheck.org” which should also be part of a 2014 Christmas discussion titled, “Polar Bear Fraud ~ Highest Levels Eva!

Via the Daily Mail:

Myth of arctic meltdown: Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago…despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

  • Seven years after former US Vice-President Al Gore’s warning, Arctic ice cap has expanded for second year in row
  • An area twice the size of Alaska – America’s biggest state – was open water two years ago and is now covered in ice
  • These satellite images taken from University of Illinois’s Cryosphere project show ice has become more concentrated

CLIMATE DEPOT – Headlines Come and Gone

UPDATED INFO

“Numbers are so high that Inuit leaders have been pleading with the Canadian government for more polar bear population control as violent attacks against native populations have dramatically risen in recent years,” pointed out Marc Morano at the Climate Depot website, which presents evidence countering the claim that mankind is causing catastrophic global warming.

A decade ago, many scientists predicted the population of polar bears would be down by 67 percent about now.

But the report by zoologist Susan Crockford, writing for the non-partisan Global Warming Policy Foundation think tank, found that the bears are thriving.

[….]

The possible current population total of 29,500 “is a far cry” from the 7,500 “we were assured would be all that would remain.”….

via NO TRICK ZONE:

Ten years ago, polar bears were classified as an endangered species due to model-based assumptions that said the recession of Arctic sea ice would hamper the bears’ seal-hunting capabilities and ultimately lead to starvation and extinction.

The Inuit, who have observed these bears catch seals in open water for generations, disagree.  At least this is what scientists have found upon investigation.
There is no evidence that the fast reduction of sea-ice habitat in the area has yet led to a reduction in population size.” (Aars et al., 2017 )

Inuit observations: “back in early 80s, and mid 90s, there were hardly any bears … there’s too many polar bears now.  Bears can catch seals even—even if the—if the ice is really thinthey’re great hunters those bearsthey’re really smart they know how to survive.” (Wong et al., 2017)

Inuit observations: “No, because polar bears can go and follow the seals further [if sea ice retreats], so they won’t have trouble hunting. Also the snow covers the [seals’] breathing holes but polar bears can still hunt, it’s just for people. There is more rough ice, more thin iceBut it won’t affect polar bears’ hunting.” (Dowsley, 2007)

Reduction in the heavy multiyear ice and increased productivity from a longer open water season may even enhance polar bear habitat in some areas. … It seems unlikely that polar bears (as a species) are at risk from anthropogenic global warming.” (York et al., 2016)

Sometimes the “Western scientific understanding” of how the natural world operates conflicts with observations.

“The view of polar bears as effective open-water hunters is not consistent with the Western scientific understanding that bears rely on the sea ice platform for catching prey.  … [Participants] indicated that polar bear body condition is stable; they cited the fact that polar bears are capable of hunting seals in open water as a factor contributing to the stable body condition of the bears.” (Laforest et al., 2018).

The paleoclimate evidence, which shows that sea ice was thinner and less extensive than today for most of the last 10,000 years, also contradicts the assumptions about modern polar bear endangerment due to thinning ice.  One must ask: How did polar bears survive sea ice free summers in the ancient past if they existentially rely on thick sea ice to hunt prey today?

When the observations don’t agree with the models and assumptions, real scientists are supposed to reconsider their hypotheses.

[….]

In the 3 new papers referenced below, extensive observational evidence suggests that polar bear populations are currently healthier than in the past, and their numbers have been stable or growing in recent decades.

(LINK to read the papers)

Read more at WHAT’S UP WITH THAT. Here is more info on the Polar Bear numbers — because they are associated with sea ice:

New SURVEYS have shown that

“The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

The study shows that “the bear population is not in crisis as people believed,” said Drikus Gissing, Nunavut’s director of wildlife management. “There is no doom and gloom.”

Mr. Gissing added that the government isn’t dismissing concerns about climate change, but he said Nunavut wants to base bear-management practices on current information “and not predictions about what might happen.”…

In 2004, Environment Canada researchers concluded that the numbers in the region had dropped by 22 per cent since 1984, to 935. They also estimated that by 2011, the population would decrease to about 610. That sparked worldwide concern about the future of the bears and prompted the Canadian and American governments to introduce legislation to protect them. ….

But many Inuit communities said the researchers were wrong. They said the bear population was increasing and they cited reports from hunters who kept seeing more bears. …… Mr. Gissing said he hopes the results lead to more research and a better understanding of polar bears. He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level] there has ever been.”

GATEWAY PUNDIT chimes in on the polar Bear “deaths” versus the facts — a while back (2011):

Then the truth started leaking out. After democrats passed their junk science “pile of sh*t” Cap and Trade legislation in June 2009 a report was released, and suppressed, that showed that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, were much higher than they were 30 years ago. In fact, it’s about time for a cull.

Polar bear numbers in Canada have increased in 11 of 13 regions in recent years. Polar bear encounters on the North Slope oil fields have risen to record levels the last two years. There are 5 times as many polar bears today as there were 50 years ago:

[….]

Despite the fact that the bear populations are booming, the Obama administration set aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a “critical habitat” for polar bears recently. The action that could restrict future drilling for oil and gas development.

Now, to top it all off, we find out the scientists who first reported on drowned polar bears is under investigation and likely fabricated the story.

(read more)

Inconvenient Truths for FactCheck.org

(See a Christmas Conversation from 2014)

This may come as a shocker to some, but scientists are not always right — especially when under intense public pressure for answers.

Researchers with the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) recently admitted to experienced zoologist and polar bear specialist Susan Crockford that the estimate given for the total number of polar bars in the Arctic was “simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”

Crockford has been critical of official polar bear population estimates because they fail to include five large subpopulations of polar bears. Due to the uncertainty of the populations in these areas, PBSG did not include them in their official estimate — but the polar bear group did include other subpopulation estimates.

PBSG has for years said that global polar bear populations were between 20,000 and 25,000, but these estimates are likely much lower than how many polar bears are actually living in the world.

“Based on previous PBSG estimates and other research reports, it appears there are probably at least another 6,000 or so bears living in these regions and perhaps as many as 9,000 (or more) that are not included in any PBSG ‘global population estimate,’” Crockford wrote on her blog.

[….]

PBSG disclosed this information to Crockford ahead of the release of their Circumpolar Polar Bear Action Plan in which they intend to put a footnote explaining why their global population estimate is flawed.

“As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total number of polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic,” PBSG says in its proposed footnote. “Since 2005, this range has been 20-25,000. It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand.”

“It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated,” PBSG continues. “Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations.”

“Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy,” says PBSG. “Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.”

PBSG’s admission also comes after academics and government regulators have touted their polar bear population estimates to show that polar bear numbers have grown since the 1960s. PBSG estimates have also been used to show that polar bear populations have stabilized over the last 30 years.

Polar bear populations became the centerpiece of the effort to fight global warming due to claims that melting polar ice caps would cause the bears to become endangered in the near future. Years ago, some scientists predicted the Arctic would be virtually ice free by now.

Polar bears became the first species listed under the Endangered Species Act because they could potentially be harmed by global warming. But some recent studies have found that some polar bear subpopulations have actually flourished in recent years.

“So, the global estimates were… ‘simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand’ and according to this statement, were never meant to be considered scientific estimates, despite what they were called, the scientific group that issued them, and how they were used,” Crockford said….

al-bear-gore

A polar-bear expert (researcher and zoologist) refutes FactCheck.org’s article continuing to tell the lie that polar bears are endangered. The article is titled over at Climate Depot as, “Polar Bear Expert refutes warmist Factcheck.org’s claims on on polar bears.” The actual article title is: Challenging Alaska polar bear research sound bites and bewildering ESA status.

It’s easy to take polar bear research papers at face value but it’s not very scientific. The snappy sound bites provided for the benefit of the media – whether they’re embedded in press releases or in published abstracts – don’t cut it with trained scientists. Trained scientists read the whole report, critically examine the evidence it contains and assess that evidence within the context of previous knowledge. That’s what they are trained to do.

I challenge the superficial summary on the status of Alaskan polar bear populations provided by FactCheck.org journalist Vanessa Schipani.  Schipani disputed a comment made by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski that, according to the latest research Alaskan polar bear population numbers are strong and healthy. I’m not especially interested in the political context of the statement, only Schipani’s bald claim that Murkowski’s declaration is false.

[….]

Insisting that because the ESA and the IUCN Red List consider polar bears threatened with extinction means polar bear populations currently must be population deficient is false and misleading – the statuses of ‘threatened’ and ‘vulnerable’ for polar bears are based on concerns of possible future declines only.

It is factually correct to say that present populations of polar bears in Alaska are healthy. Scientific studies on polar bears – when all of the data is taken into account and considered in the context of all research on these bears – indicates this statement is true.

All of the evidence suggests Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears have recovered from a known and predictable decline in numbers in the mid-2000s due to natural causes – designating “critical habitat” along the Alaska coast will not protect the bears from repeats of this natural hazard in the future – and Chukchi Sea bears have all the indicators of a stable or increasing population. Those are the scientific facts.

(read it all if you dare!)

Here are 5 or the 10 failed predictions regarding Polar Bears via What’s Up With That?

Prediction 1. Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bear numbers will continue to declinebeyond 2004 due to ever-earlier breakup and ever-later freeze-up of sea ice.

FAIL – An aerial survey conducted by Seth Stapleton and colleagues (2014) in 2011 produced an estimate of about 1030 bears and their report stated:

This figure is similar to a 2004 mark–recapture estimate but higher than projections indicating declining abundance since then.”

This 1030 figure is the one being used by the IUCN PBSG and Environment Canada for WHB, as a limited mark-recapture studyconducted the same year (Lunn and colleagues 2014) did not survey the entire WHB region and therefore not comparable to the 2004 count.

Prediction 2. Breakup of sea ice in Western Hudson Bay (WHB) will come progressively earlier and freeze-up dates progressively later (after 1999), as CO2 levels from burning fossil fuel increase global temperatures.

FAIL – Researchers Nick Lunn and colleagues (2014) determined thatthere has been no trend in breakup or freeze-up dates between 2001 and 2010. While no analyses of breakup or freeze-up dates for WHB since 2010 have been published, this pattern seems to havecontinued to at least 2015.

Prediction 3. Chukchi Sea polar bears will be the most harmed by summer sea ice declines because they experience some of the largest sea ice losses of any subpopulation (and thus, the longest open-water season each year).

FAILA recent study of Chukchi bears (2008-2011) found them in better condition than they were in the 1980s when summer open-water seasons were short – indeed, only Foxe Basin bears were fatter than Chukchi bears. They were also reproducing well (Rode et al. 2010, 2013, 2014), with some females raising litters of triplets (see lead photo), a rare sight outside Western Hudson Bay.

Prediction 4. Cannibalism will increase as summer sea ice extent declines worsen.

FAIL – Cannibalism is a natural phenomenon in polar bears and none of the few incidents reported recently have involved obviously thin or starving polar bears(even the most recent example, filmed in mid-August 2015 in Baffin Bay when sea ice levels in the region were high),despite the fact that 2012 recorded the lowest summer ice extent since 1979. Incidents of cannibalism cannot be said to be increasingbecause there is no scientific baseline to which recent occurrences can be compared.

Prediction 5. Drowning deaths of polar bears will increase as summer sea ice continues to decline (driven home by a high-profile incident in 2004).

FAIL – There have been no further confirmed reports of polar bear drowning deathsassociated with extensive open water swimming since that contentious 2004 event, even though the two lowest extents of summer sea ice have occurred since then (2007 and 2012). A more rigorous study of swimming prowess found polar bears, including cubs, are capable of successfully making long-distance swims.  Indeed, challenging open-water swims don’t happen only in summer: in late March 2015, a polar bear swam through open water from the pack ice off Newfoundland to the Hibernia oil platform well offshore.

(…read the other five…)

An Update Via WUWT:

Guest essay by Dr. Susan J. Crockford of polarbearscience.com * see update below on the % number

Survey Results: Svalbard polar bear numbers increased 30 42% over last 11 years

Results of this fall’s Barents Sea population survey have been released by the Norwegian Polar Institute and they are phenomenal: despite several years with poor ice conditions, there are more bears now (~975) than there were in 2004 (~685) around Svalbard (a 30 42% increase) and the bears were in good condition.

Failed Predictions About Polar Bears

Here are 5 or the 10 failed predictions regarding Polar Bears via What’s Up With That?

Prediction 1. Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bear numbers will continue to decline beyond 2004 due to ever-earlier breakup and ever-later freeze-up of sea ice.

FAIL – An aerial survey conducted by Seth Stapleton and colleagues (2014) in 2011 produced an estimate of about 1030 bears and their report stated:

This figure is similar to a 2004 mark–recapture estimate but higher than projections indicating declining abundance since then.”

This 1030 figure is the one being used by the IUCN PBSG and Environment Canada for WHB, as a limited mark-recapture study conducted the same year (Lunn and colleagues 2014) did not survey the entire WHB region and therefore not comparable to the 2004 count.

Prediction 2. Breakup of sea ice in Western Hudson Bay (WHB) will come progressively earlier and freeze-up dates progressively later (after 1999), as CO2 levels from burning fossil fuel increase global temperatures.

FAIL – Researchers Nick Lunn and colleagues (2014) determined that there has been no trend in breakup or freeze-up dates between 2001 and 2010. While no analyses of breakup or freeze-up dates for WHB since 2010 have been published, this pattern seems to have continued to at least 2015.

Prediction 3. Chukchi Sea polar bears will be the most harmed by summer sea ice declines because they experience some of the largest sea ice losses of any subpopulation (and thus, the longest open-water season each year).

FAILA recent study of Chukchi bears (2008-2011) found them in better condition than they were in the 1980s when summer open-water seasons were short – indeed, only Foxe Basin bears were fatter than Chukchi bears. They were also reproducing well (Rode et al. 2010, 2013, 2014), with some females raising litters of triplets (see lead photo), a rare sight outside Western Hudson Bay.

Prediction 4. Cannibalism will increase as summer sea ice extent declines worsen.

FAIL – Cannibalism is a natural phenomenon in polar bears and none of the few incidents reported recently have involved obviously thin or starving polar bears (even the most recent example, filmed in mid-August 2015 in Baffin Bay when sea ice levels in the region were high), despite the fact that 2012 recorded the lowest summer ice extent since 1979. Incidents of cannibalism cannot be said to be increasing because there is no scientific baseline to which recent occurrences can be compared.

Prediction 5. Drowning deaths of polar bears will increase as summer sea ice continues to decline (driven home by a high-profile incident in 2004).

FAIL – There have been no further confirmed reports of polar bear drowning deaths associated with extensive open water swimming since that contentious 2004 event, even though the two lowest extents of summer sea ice have occurred since then (2007 and 2012). A more rigorous study of swimming prowess found polar bears, including cubs, are capable of successfully making long-distance swims.  Indeed, challenging open-water swims don’t happen only in summer: in late March 2015, a polar bear swam through open water from the pack ice off Newfoundland to the Hibernia oil platform well offshore.

(…read the other five…)

Polar Bear Fraud ~ Highest Levels Eva! (Part 1 of a Series)

(For an update on this topic, see this post)

From a FaceBook discussion… I incorporate Al Gore’s thinking:

Look, it is simple:

Either polar bears are dying because of CO2 emissions via man ~ hence, we should stop producing high levels of CO2;

or [following the train of thinking FROM Al Gore],

Polar bears are at their highest recorded population levels because of CO2 emissions via man, hence, we should produce high levels of CO2.

If “a,” why not “b”?

This is meant mainly as a supplement to a Christmas Eve-Eve gathering/discussion I was at. I will make this post  a little different than other posts, as, it will be “minimalist.” This is the fourth installment of the topics covered, which are polar bears, rising sea levels, CO2, Inconvenient Truth (the movie), nuclear power, warmest year, electric vehicles (EVs)/hybrid cars, and bullet trains.

Read more. Here are some designations I will use in stories linked to:

...More Than opinion

Either the polar Bear population is at record levels/health, or they are not.

Either one is true and the other false. Both cannot be true. So where do we align our opinion with that reflects the evidence closest?

In other words… we are asking a question or drawing a distinction that is beyond opinion:

“…there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. ‘That’s likely the highest [population level] there has ever been’.”

(more below)

  • Main-stream (MS) news sources such as the New York Times or CNN;
  • As well as non-main-stream sources or “new media” (NMS), which include blogs by either specialists or new media news sources. These typically reference and link to main-stream news sources or “neutral” media [see below];
  • I will also try to include more “neutral” media (NM), such as the World Wildlife Fund or NASA.

I do this in the hopes that those reading this from the conversation will have a better recourse — outside of myself — to complete a picture I was trying to (not too well considering the new wines and beer making their rounds for our tasting pleasure). I will first, however, deal with Polar Bears.

If someone were to happen across this post I would at least like them to think long and well on this one issue. And it is this: we may hold an opinion, yes… but we cannot “own” our own facts.

So… for instance. From the conversation polar bears were brought up as an evidence for man-caused global warming impacts. The “Inconvenient Truth” was mentioned as a source for this dilemma… and… I must say… this is a great commentary on the power of media. As we will see. I own and have watched the Inconvenient Truth. But I own and also have watched the Great Global Warming Swindle. This isn’t to “toot” my own horn but is how I challenge my children to think critically. Look at both sides and make a fully informed decision.

Which is much needed in our political and social discourse. For instance, Ronald Reagan and Tipp O’Neil were ideological foes, coming to conclusions on most things as opposites can allow. HOWEVER, Reagan and Tipp would regularly meet to talk, smoke cigars, and debate vigorously their ideas and would try and compromise. [Obama has met once with John Boehner, FYI]

In our current dialogue one side often finds solace in demonizing the other as anti-science, or sexist, intolerant, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, racist, bigoted.

  • Who would have a serious discussion with someone who is a believer in a flat-earth (anti-science)?
  • Who would want to talk about anything with someone who is a racist?

Which brings to a 21-second blurb by a very left-leaning professor saying that this type of thinking is damaging to the young liberal student:

To wit….

Either the polar Bear population is at record levels/health, or they are not.

Either one is true and the other false. Both cannot be true. So where do we align our opinion with that reflects the evidence closest? In other words… we are asking a question or drawing a distinction that is beyond opinion.

POLAR BEARS

...The Narrative Falls Apart

ABC television in Australia, on a show called “Media Watch,” recently debunked the entire issue

Sources Of Myth

(MS) JUNEAU, Alaska (AP 7/2011) — Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement….

(MS)   JUNEAU, Alaska (The Guardian via the AP, 12/2013) An Alaska scientist whose observations of drowned polar bears helped galvanize the global warming movement has retired as part of a settlement with a federal agency.

[….]

…In 2004, during an aerial survey of bowhead whales, Monnett and another researcher saw four dead polar bears floating in the water after a storm, observations that were later detailed in a peer-reviewed article. They said they were reporting to the best of their knowledge the first observations of the bears floating dead and presumed drowned while apparently swimming long distances.

They said their findings suggested drowning-related deaths of polar bears may increase in the future if the regression of pack ice or periods of longer open water continues. The observations helped make the polar bear a symbol for the climate change movement.

(NMS) American Thinker (5/2014, via Polar Bear Science) The greatest scientific fraud in history is slowly but surely unraveling, and the breadth of the corruption revealed is stunning. As any good con man knows, and emotional appeal is necessary, and the warmists found their cuddly-looking icon of endangerment in the polar bear, an animal frequently chosen as stuffed toys for children to hug. Pictures of polar bears on ice floes, presumably doomed to death by drowning as the Arctic ice disappeared, were used to tug on the heartstrings of adults and children alike, in order to scare them into willingly handing over power over their economic destiny to global mandarins who would reduce their standard of living.

But it was necessary to come up with “scientific” estimates of polar bear populations that showed them in danger. With all the billions of dollars available for global warming-related research, and the level of peer pressure that money generates, it wasn’t that difficult….

(NMS) Internation Climate Science Coalition (ICSC) September 7, 2012: “Polar Bear Propaganda – A Useful Tool for the Promotion of Environmental Hysteria and Politicized Science“, by Tim Ball, PhD, environmental consultant and former climatology professor, University of Winnipeg (founded the Rupertsland Research Centre).  Now residing in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Published as a Frontier Centre for Public Policy (www.fcpp.org) Special Report.

“It was convenient with the new environmental paradigm and attribution of all change to humans to claim global warming causing melting [sea] ice was killing the polar bears. It was wrong and policy based on it is unnecessary and unjustified. The Inuit are victims of what Paul Driessen wrote about in his book EcoImperialism, the forceful imposition of western environmental values on other cultures, usually to their detriment.

“Nobel Physicist Richard Feynman said, “Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.”

“Polar bears have successfully adapted to nature for eons before civilization began. That must be the basis for policy, not data severely limited and distorted by emotional, anthropomorphic, political agendas presented under the guise of the precautionary principle.”

Read whole paper.

Read introductory remarks by Peter Holle, founding President of the Winnipeg, Canada-based Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Polar Bear Population

Most recent update ~ accessed 3-18-2015 ~ via the IUCN Species Survival Commission:

The PBSG first provided a global population range estimate for polar bears in 1993. The range specified at that time, 21,470-28,370 polar bears, included statistically solid estimates (e.g. based on studies to estimate population abundance) for many of the identified polar bear subpopulations, and estimates (based knowledge of habitat quality and input from scientists) for several other subpopulations. Recognizing the false precision implied by a range of 21,470-28,370, the estimate was rounded to 22,000-27,000 in 1997. After some new population estimates were developed and after more discussion of the possible numbers in areas without estimates, the range was adjusted to 21,500-25,000 in 2001, and further simplified to 20,000-25,000 in 2005. The variation in ranges reflects the absence of rigorous estimates of subpopulation size in several areas and the consensus desire to express a reasonable round number range that could not be interpreted as more reliable than it really is.

Over the years following the first global population range estimate, the PBSG has refined subpopulation size estimates in some areas, but there still are areas where we have only educated hypotheses regarding numbers of animals present. Currently, the PBSG recognizes 19 subpopulations in the circumpolar Arctic. Scientific estimates are available for 14 (Baffin Bay, Barents Sea, Davis Strait, Foxe Basin, Gulf of Boothia, Kane Basin, Lancaster Sound, M’Clintock Channel, Northern Beaufort Sea, Norwegian Bay, Southern Beaufort Sea, Southern Hudson Bay, Viscount Melville Sound, and Western Hudson Bay). Abundance in these 14 populations was estimated using accepted inventory methods (e.g., mark and recapture or aerial survey). These estimates, descriptions of how they were developed, and the history of how they have been improved over the years, can be viewed in the population status tables (to be viewed in the proceedings). Until 2005, the PBSG status table also included estimates for 3 subpopulations (Chukchi Sea, Kara Sea, and Laptev Sea) where accepted methods never had been applied. These estimates were removed because including them in the table suggested they were more reliable than they really were. The PBSG has never provided estimates for two other regions (Arctic Basin and East Greenland). Bear numbers in the Arctic Basin are very low and bears present there may simply be passing through rather than representing a true subpopulation. East Greenland appears to have a resident group of polar bears but the PBSG has never ventured an estimate of their abundance.

For the 14 subpopulations with scientific estimates, the sum of the mid-point estimates is 18,349 bears (see http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html for estimates). The PBSG expects that the number of bears ranges from several hundreds to a few thousands in each of the subpopulations in Chukchi, Kara, Laptev and East Greenland, bringing the midpoint estimate to approximately 25,000.

Because the global population estimate range includes subpopulation estimates of variable quality it is not used as a monitoring benchmark or other status assessment tool. Rather, it simply expresses a reasonable range in numbers, based on a combination of the best available information and understandings of polar bear habitat. Conservation assessments focus on the trends in subpopulations for which statistical estimates are available. Some of those subpopulations are declining, others are stable, and some may be increasing.

(MS) WINNIPEG, Canada (Globe and Mail 4/2012) The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

[….]

But many Inuit communities said the researchers were wrong. They said the bear population was increasing and they cited reports from hunters who kept seeing more bears. Mr. Gissing said that encouraged the government to conduct the recent study, which involved 8,000 kilometres of aerial surveying last August along the coast and offshore islands.

Mr. Gissing said he hopes the results lead to more research and a better understanding of polar bears. He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level]there has ever been.”

[Editors note: perhaps to 27,000-32,000?]

(NM) United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP, 2001):

Polar Bear Numbers United Nation

(NMS) Gateway Pundit (7/2011) of the same, but updated info of populations:

polar_bear

(NM) “The total number of polar bears worldwide is estimated to be 20,000-25,000.” [pg. 33]

[….]

“The world’s polar bears are distributed in 19 subpopulations over vast and sometimes relatively inaccessible areas of the Arctic. Thus, while the status of some subpopulations in Canada and the Barents Sea is well documented, that of several others remains less known [sic]. Thus, it is not possible to give an accurate estimate of the total number of polar bears in the world, although the range is thought to be 20-25,000.” [pg. 61, press release]

Aars, J., Lunn, N. J. and Derocher, A.E. (eds.) 2006. Polar Bears: Proceedings of the 14th Working Meeting of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group, 20-24 June 2005, Seattle, Washington, USA. Occasional Paper of the IUCN Species Survival Commission 32. IUCN, Gland (Switzerland) and Cambridge (UK). http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/meetings/

(NM) “The total number of polar bears worldwide is estimated to be 20,000-25,000.” [pg. 31]

[….]

“The total number of polar bears is still thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000. However, the mixed quality of information on the different subpopulations means there is much room for error in establishing that range. That potential for error is cause for concern, given the ongoing and projected changes in habitat and other potential stressors.” [pg. 86, press release]

Obbard, M.E., Theimann, G.W., Peacock, E. and DeBryn, T.D. (eds.) 2010. Polar Bears: Proceedings of the 15th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialists Group IUCN/SSC, 29 June-3 July, 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark. Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge UK, IUCN. http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/meetings/

Recent Population Increase Partly Due To Lots of Sea-Ice

(MS) Canada (CBC News via the Canadian Coast Guard, 3/2014) [ARCTIC Sea Ice] The Canadian Coast Guard is pleading with merchant ships to plan their voyages well in advance this year as the organization’s icebreaker fleet confronts some of the worst ice conditions on the Atlantic Ocean in decades.

“Plan your voyage and we’ll all get through this,” said Mike Voight, the Atlantic region’s director of programs. “We’ve got a pretty bad or challenging ice year.”

The Canadian Ice Service, an arm of Environment Canada, said there is 10 per cent more ice this year compared to the 30-year average.

“We probably haven’t seen a winter this bad as far as ice for the past 25 years,” said Voight, referring to both the amount and thickness of the ice….

(NM) The American Geophysical Union (AGU) Abstract (12/2014) [ARCTIC sea ice] Despite a well-documented ~40% decline in summer Arctic sea ice extent since the late 1970’s, it has been difficult to estimate trends in sea ice volume because thickness observations have been spatially incomplete and temporally sporadic. While numerical models suggest that the decline in extent has been accompanied by a reduction in volume, there is considerable disagreement over the rate at which this has occurred. We present the first complete assessment of trends in northern hemisphere sea ice thickness and volume using 4 years of measurements from CryoSat-2. Between autumn 2010 and spring 2013, there was a 14% and 5% reduction in autumn and spring Arctic sea ice volume, respectively, in keeping with the long-term decline in extent. However, since then there has been a marked 41% and 9% recovery in autumn and spring sea ice volume, respectively, more than offsetting losses of the previous three years. The recovery was driven by the retention of thick ice around north Greenland and Canada during summer 2013 which, in turn, was associated with a 6% drop in the number of days on which melting occurred – climatic conditions more typical of the early 1990’s. Such a sharp increase in volume after just one cool summer indicates that the Arctic sea ice pack may be more resilient than has been previously considered.

(NMS) Talking About Weather (7/2014) [ANTARCTIC sea ice] Antarctic sea ice has hit its second all-time record maximum this week. The new record is 2.112 million square kilometers above normal. Until the weekend just past, the previous record had been 1.840 million square kilometers above normal, a mark hit on December 20, 2007, as I reported here, and also covered in my book.

Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center, responded to e-mail questions and also spoke by telephone about the new record sea ice growth in the Southern Hemisphere, indicating that, somewhat counter-intuitively, the sea ice growth was specifically due to global warming.

Sea Ice 2014

A Key Computer Model from Global Warming Alarmists falls to the Satellite evidence (Plus: the Bear Necessities)

Yahoo News reports that NASA is showing greater heat loss through the atmosphere than environmental alarmists (like Al Gore in his Inconvenient “documentary”) thought:

NASA satellite data from the years 2000 through 2011 show the Earth’s atmosphere is allowing far more heat to be released into space than alarmist computer models have predicted, reports a new study in the peer-reviewed science journal Remote Sensing. The study indicates far less future global warming will occur than United Nations computer models have predicted, and supports prior studies indicating increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide trap far less heat than alarmists have claimed.

Study co-author Dr. Roy Spencer, a principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and U.S. Science Team Leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite, reports that real-world data from NASA’s Terra satellite contradict multiple assumptions fed into alarmist computer models.

“The satellite observations suggest there is much more energy lost to space during and after warming than the climate models show,” Spencer said in a July 26 University of Alabama press release. “There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans.”

In addition to finding that far less heat is being trapped than alarmist computer models have predicted, the NASA satellite data show the atmosphere begins shedding heat into space long before United Nations computer models predicted.

The new findings are extremely important and should dramatically alter the global warming debate.

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 Yahoo also is reporting on possible fraud in that article about polar bears that caused such a fervor and large movement to “save them”:

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — Just five years ago, Charles Monnett was one of the scientists whose observation that several polar bears had drowned in the Arctic Ocean helped galvanize the global warming movement.

Now, the wildlife biologist is on administrative leave and facing accusations of scientific misconduct.

The federal agency where he works told him he was on leave pending the results of an investigation into “integrity issues.” A watchdog group believes it has to do with the 2006 journal article about the bear, but a source familiar with the investigation said late Thursday that placing Monnett on leave had nothing to with scientific integrity or the article.

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 Gateway Pundit chimes in on the polar Bear “deaths” versus the facts:

Then the truth started leaking out. After democrats passed their junk science “pile of sh*t” Cap and Trade legislation in June 2009 a report was released, and suppressed, that showed that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, were much higher than they were 30 years ago. In fact, it’s about time for a cull.

Polar bear numbers in Canada have increased in 11 of 13 regions in recent years. Polar bear encounters on the North Slope oil fields have risen to record levels the last two years. There are 5 times as many polar bears today as there were 50 years ago:

[….]

Despite the fact that the bear populations are booming, the Obama administration set aside 187,000 square miles in Alaska as a “critical habitat” for polar bears recently. The action that could restrict future drilling for oil and gas development.

Now, to top it all off, we find out the scientists who first reported on drowned polar bears is under investigation and likely fabricated the story.

…(read more)…