Polar Bears listed as threatened - now comes the lawsuits
14 05 2008
Bear down! - Send an ambulance and a lawyer!
The big green machine has finally successfully lobbied enough FUD to get the thriving polar bear listed as a threatened species. Never mind the fact that the arctic sea ice has melted before in the last 100 years. See the news release from the Department of the Interior here:
http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears.html
Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne announced on May 14, 2008 that he is accepting the recommendation of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Dale Hall to list the polar bear as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The listing is based on the best available science, which shows that loss of sea ice threatens and will likely continue to threaten polar bear habitat.
So what happens if sea ice grows? Let’s see how well that “best available science” holds up. According to the full DOI press release, computer model scenarios figured heavily into the decision.
Now come the lawsuits for everything under the sun that may potentially affect sea ice and those poor bears. Yep, fire up that big lawsuit engine, let’s get ready to ruuummmmble!
(h/t MattN)
Update: The Sierra Club is not happy about this, because the “decision is riddled with loopholes, caveats, and backhanded language that could actually undermine protections for the polar bear and other species”. You just can’t please some people.
Update 2: If you really want to see green stupidity in action, try the Polar Bear Brainwashing Parking game:
http://www.gamesfree.ca/other_games/810/Polar_Bear_Parking.html
Play the game and watch the “education” at the end. Note to intellectually challenged game designers: Penguins don’t inhabit the arctic.
Lawsuits may not be in the Greens’ best interest.
One possible outcome could be removal of the polar bear from the list.
Another could be a protected discovery, leading to witnesses who may be called upon to publicly defend their junk science - not exactly what they may want.
The whole scheme could end up exposed as a fraud.
Amicus curiae?
The thing with lawsuits are they are very expensive and the law is no friend to common sense or good science.
You never know what a judge or jury may decide. It’s easy to shop around and find a judge who’s going to support you — get the proper jurisdiction and the outcome is almost a a forgone conclusion.
Those of us who are “State of Fear” enthusiasts remember how the lawsuit over rising ocean levels in that novel wasn’t doing well because lack of actual evidence. That was one of the motivations behind the conspirators.
On the other hand, a British court ruled on 9 factual errors in Gore’s infomercial , so it’s possible that going to court might actually be productive.
One thing’s for sure — the lawyers are going to make a killing.
Now that the USFW Service has their “threatened” designation accepted it will be almost impossible to get it removed. We in Florida have been dealing with the scrub jay issue that hampers building on YOUR OWN land. The regulations are ridiculous. They consider scrub jay territory any place that has the type of tree or shrub that a scrub jay MAY use for nesting. At one point they were going to expand the definition of scrub jay territory to include any land that was capable of growing any type of tree or shrub a scrub jay MAY use. Because scrub jay habitat grows in sandy soil, that would put all of Florida in a scrub jay zone which would give the USFW jurisdiction over all building in the State. I do not know if this is still being considered or what, I just know they never give up any of their power and they are impossible to deal with.
I just heard the official explain himself on the radio. He used the term ‘the computer models tell us….’ about 6 times. This is insane. It would not be so bad if the computer modellers were capable of acknowledging the limitations of their models however experience tells us otherwise.
I can see it now: 5 years from now the ice will still be at current levels or slightly higher yet it will be impossible to get the polar bears off the list because the modellers argue that increasing sea is ‘consistent’ with their models predicting the disapperance of the sea ice.
There are so many ramifications from this activist judge’s decision they could boggle the imagination.
Never mind the polar bear population has increased from 5,000 to over 25,000; never mind the underpinnings of the Pogies has been exposed on many fronts; never mind the Nation is in dire straits for adequate oil, the Bush Administration has allowed this travesty to occur in the hopes it can salvage (or create) his legacy.
And please, don’t tell me bush is not at fault: he hired all the dimwits in his cabinet. I seriously doubt if Osama can do worse than what bush has already done.
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
I think everyone who is in favor of this listing should be required to give up anything remotely responsible, in their eyes, for AGW. So no cars, nothing that requires manufacturing, use of chemicals, no computers, no air conditioning, no TV, nothing. They should be required to return to hunter-gatherer lifestyles. If they don’t, they obviously don’t really believe the tripe they toss at the rest of us.
By the way, I think that bear in the photo is laughing his a** off!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
May 14, 2008. The day that science died. R.I.P. I agree with McGrats, I’ve given the Bush Administration the benefit of the doubt too many times. He does indeed now rank with Jimmy Carter as one of the worst presidents in the last 100 years. What a sad day. $6 a gallon gas here we come, plus with the cold winter coming next year, the economy hasn’t even begun to feel its true pain.
Bears have quintupled and now are “threatened”?
The madmen in charge of the asylum. And these are the Republican madmen.
Wait til the other madmen are put in charge.
- * -
True that Bush’s Sec. of Interior put in place a bunch of caveats, with the clear intent of sopping the enviros. Many conservatives have tried such strategies in many areas of government. These usually don’t work. Once you have cracked the door open, once there are bureaucrats whose livelihood depends on having mandates, the bureaucrats will never relent.
If those white cute bears are threatened, why do we shoot several hundred per year to keep their numbers down?
If they are threatened now at a population of ~25,000, what were they 40 years ago when there were only ~5,000 of them?
This decision completely defies any and all logic.
A California law firm known for its conservative advocacy is poised to join the political melee over the fate of the polar bear, vowing to sue the government if it cites global warming as a threat to the species. — KYPost
Yeah, good luck with that one, guys. All I see is a landslide of wealth redistribution and a drop in our standard of living on the near horizon.
Nickelodeon is also exploiting the polar bear issue to brainwash everyone’s kids. Friday, June 6th, 8PM EST, the “Naked Brothers Band” will be enlightened by “An Inconvenient Truth” and set out on a quest to save the polar bears.
In the words of C3PO, “This is madness.”
(looks around)
“Nope, don’t see any white bears on the white snow. Fire the charges!”
Incidentally, the polar bears will appreciate the lunch provided by the “Naked Brothers Band”. Or does a man-made meal violate the Act?
I expect California to pass the first CO2 restriction law. I expect lawsuits to be filed the same day.
It’s an absolute travshamockery of science.
As I said in the open thread (didn’t know where else to put this and I knew Anthony read every entry so he’d see it anyway, thanks Anthony!) the door has been kicked in…
What I have a problem with is the way “if global warming melts the Arctic ice … ” is portrayed. The ice only melts for a month or two at the height of the melt season.
Right now, some ice melts around the fringes of the Arctic in August and September and promptly refeezes back in October (after the six months of darkness sets in on September 21st each year.)
Even in an accelerated global warming scenario, the bears just have to leave the ice for a month or two - nothing unusual for polar bears as the polar bears on Hudson Bay are off the ice for 4 or 5 months.
Even if global warming and the models are accurate, it will not threaten the species.
All of you that have posted before me made your points well.
This Polar Bear thing is so disturbing, I hardly know what to say. Seems, though, that any of us that drive autos, turn an electric light on in the evening or even draw a breath of air are harming the Bear’s habitat.
This is far reaching stuff, folks.
Based on what I read over at ICECAP, it appears that the decision was written to try to please everybody, which means it will please no one.
I tell you, up here in Canada, we eat Polar Bears. Ummm yummmy. We’d also eat Penguins if they’d only migrate from the South Pole.
As an aside, I just went to the WordPress dashboard, and under the science section they have 4 posts listed. Three are for this blog.
Sheesh, ya big bully…
90 percent of the Arctic thaw is due to soot. As a thermal equivalent, it’s 20 percent of all global warming of the past century. If these enviros gave a flip about the polar bears, they’d address the soot problem first. Instead they’d rather martyr the bears on their holy cross of environmentalism and socialism.
I wrote this to to Andy Rivkin & John Tierney of the NY Times. No response.
=======
“…With (no dis)respect to the polar bears, their threatened status and the Arctic thaw, I strongly suggest a review of the studies of V. Ramanathan & Charlie Zender on the effects of soot on snow & ice in the Arctic meltdown. It’s nothing short of astonishing, even James Hansen has commented on it. Up to ninety (yes 90.0) percent of the centennial Arctic thaw appears to be due to soot, with the Arctic ice loss constituting nearly 25 PERCENT of ALL global warming since 1880 (Zender, Hansen, Ramanathan).
A NASA & NOAA team are current surveying the Arctic haze situation as well, getting real field data on how much air-heating effects can be attributed to aerosol soot. And for what it’s worth, shipping through the northern passages is probably compounding the soot deposition trend - ships use very heavy crude.
One other angle to investigate is the potential of partial Arctic recovery due to the new emissivity of the open water. The annual emissivity-to-insolation ratio is somewhere around 2:1 from open waters in the Arctic. That is, without the winter jacket of ice over the open waters, the Arctic may be losing more heat at this point than it is taking in.
The Bush administration is essentially correct in saying that the polar bear’s situation is unrelated to CO2. The Democrats know this. Zender & Ramanathan have already spoken before Rep. Henry Waxman’s committee. It’s all there:
(http://www.google.com/search?q=henry+waxman+ramanathan+zender)
If just *ONE* prominent journalist would lead the way in broadly disseminating Zender’s soot findings, the information will cascade toward a new consensus for a feasible and inexpensive near-term fix, and not a pointless and divisive long-term fight about CO2 that won’t make a lick of difference in saving the bears in the next twenty years.
I’m a moderate liberal, but I would like everyone to think about this: What has Bush done to mitigate soot? Answer: More than Clinton ever did.
===========
My post is #9. No response. CO2 is the agenda. Repeat the mantra.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/administration-polar-bear-threatened-but-co2-not-relevant/#comments
Threatened is not endangered. We’ll just have to wait to see Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne’s “administrative guidance and…rule that defines the scope of impact…in order to protect the polar bear while limiting the unintended harm to the society and economy of the United States.” Under the threatened classification, they can actually do nothing, which sounds like their intent. A lot of time and money wasted for nothing.
Will this law cover only those Ursus Maritimus which come under US jurisdiction in Alaska, or are those which infest Canadian and Russian soil excluded? They’ll have to sort that one out first. That’ll be
profitablefun, said the lawyer, rubbing his hands with glee.Currently the increase in SH sea ice is more than 5 times larger than the decrease in NH sea ice.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
Increases in SH sea ice adversely affects penguins trying to each their nesting sites on land (and this well documented, unlike the effect of ice decreases on polar bears). What’s needed is a lawsuit to make one or more species of penguin a protected species for this reason.
All this means is that the polar bear bodies will be hidden after they are shot and there will be no way to track how many have been killed and populations REALLY WILL begin to decrease.
The Polar Bear ruling was one of the topics on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show tonight. He talks often about enviromental law. Says he’s practiced ESA law for 20 years. (Environmental Site Assessment?)
Anyway, tonight he suggested that industry ought to immediately begin challenging this with absurd suits…like shutting down interstate highway construction by connecting it to CO2 emissions. A caller suggested that Chinese imports could be challenged because of the CO2 China puts in the air.
No nibbling at the edges of this thing. Just dive right into it with the most wild absurd lawsuits that can be dreamed up. Not as an effort to shut down the country. Instead, to shoot down the law.
An example of Hugh’s recent blogging regarding the Polar Bear…
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/74b80ca5-1032-475d-80bc-609df7bc7162
Well if it takes a dammed polar bear to move us away from our dependency on carbon based fuel sources than so be it!
Wether its global warming or staying competitive in a global economy carbon based fuels have got to be replaced with something better!
GISS April temps are available.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:2007.0/to:2008.33/plot/gistemp/from:2007.0/offset:-0.238/to:2008.33/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2007.0/offset:-.146/to:2008.33/plot/uah/from:2007.0/to:2008.33
A quote from D. Keith Mano’s prescient 1973 novel, The Bridge:
“Whereas it has been ascertained irrefutably by the Council’s Emergency Committee on Respiration that the process of breathing has and will continue to destroy and maim innumerable forms of microscopic biological life, we of the Council, convened in full, have decided that man in good conscience can no longer permit this wanton destruction of our fellow creatures, whose right to exist is fully as great as ours. It is therefore decreed that men, in spontaneous free will and contrition, voluntarily accede to the termination of their species. . . It is hoped bretheren, that you will donate your physical bodies to the earth in such a manner that the heinous crimes of murder and pollution committed by our race throughout history may in some small way find redress.”
Fiction… set in 2035… the eco-fascists run the world…
Well, I managed to knock over 4 penguans in one go (on the game), and after many tries, got the parking right.
That game is some very bad science propiganda.
I thought the U.S. was a “secular” state which separated religion from Politics?
“I’m a moderate liberal, but I would like everyone to think about this: What has Bush done to mitigate soot? Answer: More than Clinton ever did.”
First thanks for your brilliant post on the soot issue. Environmentalist rule #1: Hype trumps truth; politics trumps practicality. you cant hype something that’s the fault of China, god forbid we ask them to stop polluting instead of tightening the screws ever harder on ourselves.
The entire Democrat party is today in the hands of Bush-hating extremists now.
The idea that they would give Bush credit for even breathing is unthinkable.
I am sure they will find a way to hate even this sop of a decision as “not enough”
or other nonsense, even though it was what they asked for.
Whenever I begin to think the world has not gone totally insane, Anthony provides absolute proof that I am wrong.
Of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers.
How much CO2 do people exhale? Maybe we should ban breathing. At least for those folks who believe CO2 is the cause of all our problems.
Hat tip to another blogger for pointing this out:
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/beartracker/
“Follow the movements of satellite-collared polar bears on the Beaufort Sea.”
Uh…are they still alive? Because it would appear most of them are floating face-down in the water…
….except for that one down in Phoenix. Maybe he got the memo on the PDO cooling phase and decided to migrate south for the next few decades.
Just for kicks, you can use their map to zoom in on the now-proven-fraudulent three-fingered “warming island” on Greenland. And to think just last year it was predestined to become “an international symbol of the effects of climate change” — until a map from 1957 showed it as an island as well.
Y’all ever see what happens when polar bears and penguins do get together in the wild?
http://www.sillybooks.net/books/kon_and_nok/kon_and_nok.html
A growth in population from 5000 to 23000 is consistent with models as it falls well within the error bars…
Are we witnessing a Romanesque breakdown of society with the ‘green-movement’ orchestrated through ’so-called’ science?
Is ther “NO” sanity left on this Earth?
Even the Republican Presidential Candidate is buying the to Al Gore’s “Money Maker” B— S—.
JM
Lower than I expected.
http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Look.html#GISTEMP
—————————-
Concerning the bears, it’s high time to pressure the candidates into telling us NOW what steps they intend to take to solve “this problem”. The Interior Dept has spoken, now ask McCain and Obama what actions they intend to implement. Nail them down now so that the American people know what to expect.
SURFACE TEMPERATURES: 2007 vs 2008
Compare May 12 2008 Ocean temps
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/climo&hot.html
to May 13 2007 ocean temps:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.5.13.2007.gif
The Indian, Pacific were much warmer 1 year ago, and the western Atlantic shows a definite cooling trend.
Recall the GISS temp anomalies
March 2008 = +0.60.
March 2007 = +0.60.
Yet compare March 16, 2007 NOAA NESDIS colour map: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.16.2007.gif
To March 17, 2008 NOAA NESDIS colour map:
http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/PSB/EPS/SST/data/anomnight.3.17.2008.gif
Eyeballing the two, you’d have to say the 2008 map is noticeably cooler than the 2007 map.
Yet, how did Hansen come up with identical temp anomalies?
Granted I’m comparing only SSTs for one day in the middle of the month.
I here that Roy Innis and the Congress on Racial Equality is threatening to sue the DOI for doing this. Well, that’s what I heard from Pual Driessen.
Retired Engineer,
An average human inhales ” air” and exhales up to 900 grams of CO2 per day. With 6.6.billion humans on the planet. This means at least 6 billion Kg a day.
Then you have the animals exhaling CO2 + the Methane producing type.
The maths tell quite a story.
How many chickens does it take to feed the U.S. population in one year? - 10 billion? How many chickens and pigs does it take to feed the 1.4 billion Chinese population per year. The figures are astronomical. How much CO2 do all these animals produce?
$6 a gallon? You’ve seen nothing yet, here in Britain we’ve go £5 a gallon, about $10!
[...] has actually increased from about 5,000 to 12,000 in the 1960s (depending on who you believe), some people suggest that the Department of Interior’s decision is [...]
Replacing a cheap fuel with an expensive fuel is the way to save the economy?
Right.
Next you will be telling us that the way to save a drowning man will be to through him an anchor.
If the polar bears are threatened by thinning sea ice it is not due to human caused global warming because there hasn’t been any global warming for at least the last 6 years.
Something else is causing the ice to melt other than CO2 emissions, because CO2 emissions have been increasing these 6 years that the globe has been cooling.
It is not the polar bears that are on thin ice it is those who state that we are warming when we are cooling, and call an increase in polar bear population since the last time we experienced global cooling a decrease worthy of endangered species status.
When you work in the arctic, the only thing that you need to know about polar bears is that you need to be protected from them, and you always want to have a local who is a good shot with you for protection.
I think this could also cut the other way. If in say 5-10 years the Arctic shows no decrease in sea ice then I am sure many companies can show real damage because of this ruling. The climate model is in play as being incorrect and the modelers themselves can be sued.
Well if it takes a dammed polar bear to move us away from our dependency on carbon based fuel sources than so be it!
Wether its global warming or staying competitive in a global economy carbon based fuels have got to be replaced with something better!
Typical AGW religionist. Use lies, pseudoscience, pass stupid laws, whatever, just so long as you promote your AGW propaganda. With the pogies, the ends always justify the means.
“Roger Carr (22:34:54) :
Y’all ever see what happens when polar bears and penguins do get together in the wild?”
I was just wondering that myself. Given the decline in NH ice and the increase in SH ice, it seems obvious to me that the Feds should move a genetically representative group of polar bears to Antarctica. Surely the endangered status trumps the UN’s limits on environmental impact in Antarctica.
How many penguins could a PB eat in a day? Sorry - I can’t figure out how to make it sound as cute as the woodchuck tongue-twister.
There’s a “Memorandum of Understanding” between Canada and the US over the PB listing at http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears/MOU%20May%208-08.pdf
Item ‘f’ in the activity list is “Developing a plan for jointly enhancing forecasting models to better understand ecosystem changes that affect polar bears in North America.”
[Umm, how many PBs are in the Southern Hemisphere"? Perhaps some have been relocated and they aren't telling us? Alert the conspiracy theorists!]
Oh my - http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears/seaice.html hs the most misleading graphic I have ever seen - the attractive orientation greatly emphasizes the decline in ice cover. I’m surprised they started the Y-axis at 0. I’ll try to find time to post a note about it at Edward Tufte’s web site.
What I was looking for was hard data for observations and model output. I’d like to preserve it on a web page and track the performance of the models over the next few years. Does anyone know the source for that data? I’d be happy to contact the DoI after the news dies down. I’d be even happier if someone else wrote and maintained the page.
Retired Engineer (21:06:57) :
A little off thread, but related, I have for years pointed out that it can be clearly shown that, just before they die, everyone who does so was breathing. This conclusively demonstrates that breathing is dangerous and the sooner (some) people stop doing it, the better off we (the rest of us) will be.
Hasse@Norway (23:03:50) :
A growth in population from 5000 to 23000 is consistent with models as it falls well within the error bars…
Very bad for my keyboard, (snort).
What we have is an absurd decision by some wildlife biologists and bureaucrats based upon the ESA mandated “best available science.” The listing has the potential to destroy our strategic and energy policy initiatives designed to end our dependence upon foreign oil and fuel imports.
Our governance is totally corrupted. Worse, all three presidential candidates are committed to preventing development of our plentiful oil deposits in the
Arctic and our coastal waters.
Unless we exploit our oil in order to provide the time needed to develop new technologies for alternative energy production, our nation will be bankrupted.
It appears that idiots control our destiny.
GISS anomaly came in more reasonably this month compared to the satellite data (41 - still a little on the high side of reasonable, but within historical average differences), and the previous month’s anomaly was reduced by 7, to 60. Still comparatively high, but not quite as bad. Perhaps late-reported data came in on the cooler side. The Polar Bears must be thankful for this adjustment.
Last month I posted about my method of forecasting future anomalies that I just recently put together, strictly based on the data. It’s only one data point, but my predicted anomaly was 44-45. Not too bad.
I have written up my observations of the different data trends.
http://digitaldiatribes.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/may-2008-update-on-global-temperature-part-1/
I don’t have updated predictions incorporating the new data, but I’m getting there. The above post references the post with the predictions from last month and the methodology if interested.
So, back to the bears… It is my understanding that there are other species of animals that are either considered - or are close to being considered - as endangered or threatened. For some of these animals, it is not global warming that is being blamed as much as the fact that they are being decimated by the Polar Bears. I don’t have a link to back me up on this one, so maybe I’ve heard wrong. If correct, though, I’m trying to reconcile how this all makes sense.
Nathan Bobbs, Yes, let’s replace carbon fuels with Pixie Dust. Everything you say is not true.
Canada follows 13 sub-populations of polar bears, the US 2. The US has changed their status, Canada is leaving theirs where it is. The difference? As one WWF rep states “The (Canadian) process…..has been performed assuming that the sea ice will remain the same, this is a very false assumption”. So basically the Canadians looked out their window and saw a hell of a lot of ice (the norm), the Americans looked at their computer screens and saw none. For once, a Canadian government actually got it right (coming from a Canadian, that is a very rare occurance).
REPLY: Proximity to what you are measuring always trumps forecasting from afar.
OK, this is real simple. The only one of the 15 identified populations of polar bears that I can find good numbers on that is *actually* declining is the WEstern Hudson population.
I will type this once, in allcaps for effect: THE WESTERN HUDSON POLAR BEARS ARE HUNTED AND RECENTLY HAD THE LIMIT ON THEIR HARVEST REDUCED.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2007/09/21/bear-quota.html
As far as the Western Hudson polar bears, the numbers I have found say that there are currently estimated to be ~935 bears, and has been decreased by 22% in the last 17 years.
The math says: 17 years ago there would be 1198 bears (call it 1200, close enough)
1200-935= 265 fewer bears.
265/17 years = 15.5 fewer bears each year.
The quota for polar bear harvest in that area was recently reduced FROM 56 bears/YEAR!!!
What that tells me that WITHOUT HUNTING there would be (56-15.5)*17=688 more bears, or 57% more bears, despite decreasing ice levels.
The reduction in population of the Western Hudson polar bear population has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with ice.
Nathan Hobbs:
It is blatant misunderstanding of basic economics that gets into the mess we are into now. Basic Lesson 1: All known risks, as perceived by the market, are built into the product price. That means ALL risk including, investment, technological and geopolitical. Money is just a tool to relate value and risk. If other things are more expensive, then other things are riskier and hence more detrimental to society. Essentially, it boils down to you can pay $X for electricity generated by oil/coal or you can pay $X plus more for electricity generated by wind/solar/nuclear. If it is better, it will be lower cost. Plain and simple. And please don’t tell me CO2 is a pollutant and it needs to be put into the cost equation. That’s just ridiculous.
Can this be asserted?
Re”I think this could also cut the other way. If in say 5-10 years the Arctic shows no decrease in sea ice then I am sure many companies can show real damage because of this ruling. The climate model is in play as being incorrect and the modelers themselves can be sued”.
AE General said:
“Hat tip to another blogger for pointing this out:
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/beartracker/”
Now that is some funny stuff. There are acctualy 2 in Pheonix; on next to a soccer field (google maps shows kids playing soccer at this very moment, next to the polar bear), and one in someones house on Leah Ave.
As for the ones floating in the Arctic Ocean, I assum that at this time of year, there is ice there.
This fits no thread and all but…
I was just reading up on some of this controversy and I stumbled into this:
http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/09/the-deniers-are-winning-especially-with-the-gop/
Reading this blog I discovered that Anthony has been “debunked” and that anyone who doesn’t think GISS is wonderful data “doesn’t believe in science”
I don’t know, I think this blog makes a lot more sense than that one, what do you think?
The other day I was channel surfing and I came across some footage of a poalr bear circling a large group of Walrus. They are all freaking out and the polar bear kept trying to break into their circle to eat one.
Finally it approaches a female Walrus with baby and the Polar Bear jumps on the mother who is guarding the baby with her body while the Polar Bear chews on the back of the neck.
Thts where I changed channels.
Nature is cruel. Polar Bears are killing machines. Let them die if they can’t adapt.
N hobbs says.
“Well if it takes a dammed polar bear to move us away from our dependency on carbon based fuel sources than so be it!”
What does dependency on carbon based fuel has to do with CO2 Drives The Climate Theory? It has nothing to do with the theory. This is a carbon based planet. There is no source of fuel that is not dependent on carbon. You want wind power? Guest what? The blades are made from carbon.
The Pacific Legal Foundation treatened to file a law suite if the polar bears were put on the endanger list based on this. (A study by Informs)
“These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.”
http://www.informs.org/article.php?id=1383
Sounds like the same thing the NCPA said about the IPCC.
Dear Pierre Gosselin: GISS correction:
T march 2007 = ((T1 + T2 + … +Tn)/n)* 0 + 0,6 = 0,6°C
T march 2008 = ((T1 + T2 + … +Tn)/n)* 0 + 0,6 = 0,6°C
BEER FOR BEAR
Apologies to Raven. (I’m still figuring out HTML block quotes.) Two paragraphs should be in quotation marks as follows (set off the old-fashioned way):
“I just heard the official explain himself on the radio. He used the term ‘the computer models tell us….’ about 6 times. This is insane. It would not be so bad if the computer modellers were capable of acknowledging the limitations of their models however experience tells us otherwise.
I can see it now: 5 years from now the ice will still be at current levels or slightly higher yet it will be impossible to get the polar bears off the list because the modellers argue that increasing sea is ‘consistent’ with their models predicting the disapperance of the sea ice.”
Same as the DDT ban in the ’70’s with the added fillip of a court ordering the E.P.A. to decide: science be damned, politics trumps everything! Now, one of the consequences - intended or not is another issue - of the DDT ban was the death of millions - 30 to 50 million are estimates I’ve read - of humans from malaria and untotalled lost income and wealth production from inability to work or function though not dead from malaria. So, the question before the Committee is: how many are going to die as a consequence of this piece of Green tyranny and government idiocy? Who is going to be included in the victims list? How much longer are we going to tolerate this kind of nonsense? Forever, it would appear.
Wowzers. Climateprogress has drunk so much kool-aid, it’s a wonder they can stay out of the bathroom long enough to make that post….
Mauna Loa C02 continues to increase, despite the recent dairy posting eluding the contrary. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
While the sun may be the primary driver for temp, I can’t seem to fathom how man-made emissions can have no affect on climate, even as a secondary driver of temp.
Think it may be more evident for higher high temps, and higher low temps amid a larger climate cycle linked to solar activity. And while we may be entering a period of global cooling due to the current solar minimum, is it possible we run the risk of the climate not fully “cooling” due to our high levels of C02 emissions.
It would be helpful to given links to dispute how C02 is not driving temp or a link to sceptics viewpoints refuting C02 as any measure towards influening temp.
Great and very helpful site that I visit regularly. Thank you.
Great picture and caption, Anthony.
My suggestion for a potientially money-making self-help guide (with apologies to Jon Krakauer):
“Onto thin Ice; Every man’s (and woman’s) guide to politically correct environmentalisms for the 21st century and beyond”
Has a certain ring to it. The handy guide could start with Kempthorne’s:
“While the legal standards under the ESA compel me to list the polar bear as threatened, I want to make clear that this listing will not stop global climate change or prevent any sea ice from melting.”
McCain, Obama and Clinton are all big believers in the AGW scam. So get ready for more of the same in the future.
I know this isn’t a political forum so Anthony if you want to delete this post I understand.
With the demise of Mann’s Hockey Stick, the growing publicity over the poor surface temp records, the dearth of NATL Tropical Storms, a cooling Pacific and Southern Hemisphere, Artic sea ice seems to be the only consistent hobby horse the Alarmist have in thier arsenal. For over a year, they’ve been harping on it ad nauseum. Now we see why. The lawyers!
You know the game is over, when you must push your agenda through a pile of endless litigation. Look for a class action lawsuit filed against Big Oil for billions of dollars. The Polar Bears do have a function -enriching the trial lawyers bar.
If they are a threatened species, does that mean it is now illegal to hunt them for food and fur?
REPLY: Apparently, but there may be exceptions for native eskimos, or maybe not. They only thing certain for now is lawsuits.
Flood Guy,
I hate to break you the news, but there hasn’t been any Global Warming since 1998. Despite an increase in CO2 and peak solar activity global temps have slighty cooled. According to the JPL, global SSTs have been cooling since 2005 as well. You may wish to rethink your hypothesis.
That game is not easy. Best I could do was 6 penguins
Sometimes reading this stuff gives me something akin to an incipient toothache–not clear what it is that is bothering me, you know?
So, as I understand it, as a result of a court order the polar bears have been listed as “threatened” because the models (what ever that turns out to actually mean).
That reminded me that the wind blew all the ice out of the Northwest Passage (or something) last year, then somebody was fretting that all there was left was “new ice”. Or that it was coming back to fast to be any good. Or something.
So I decided to try and sort it all out. (What’s up with the PB’s in AZ? Coyote rip off some collars? GPS gone nutso? Telemetry froze?)
Noted a comment by Evan Jones in the posting at http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/02/16/ice-between-canada-and-sw-greenland-highest-level-in-15-years/ “Well, were (sic) within a month of the point where ice will start to decrease. It will be interesting to see how this year’s melting trend goes.”
That was on 16 February instant–”within a month” would have run out certainly by the mid April.
What happened? Did it all decrease? By how much?
@Fernando
Oh! That’s how it’s calculated.
Well shiver my timbers!
And all this time I thought you had to have a PhD to run that outfit
If polar bears are on the ESL, then doesn’t that mean eskimos won’t be allowed to hunt them?
I can quarentee that it won’t be anyone from any politicians, or beaurocrat’s families.
Well, I am happy Polar Bears are now better protected. As I am happy for any species.
I think they should be protected in any case - if global warming is caused by humans or not - if the artic warms or cools now.
I agree the global warming hysteria is a nonsense - because we certainly do not understand what exactly is going on with climate.
But humans do not give the other species of the planet the chance to continue living. The word population grows so fast making it almost impossible for many other species to coexist with us on the planet. It would be stupid to destroy all the nature and other species - and many already became extinct in the past 10 000 years - because of us. We never know if we may need them - or our kids. We have no right to take away nature completely for our kids.
Just because one species is stable for the last 50 years or sligthly grows is not reason, not to protect them ! The artic isnt an attractive region for humans anyways - so why we have to touch it ?
I think at least 30 % of each country, each ecosystem in the world should remain complete wilderness - by a strict law. No species would die out and we would keep the richtness of our planet.
Independent of global warming
What can I say!!
Posted today on “Icecap.com”.
http://www.webcommentary.com/asp/ShowArticle.asp?id=websterb&date=080515
Got ammo?
http://www.weatherby.com/products/ammo.asp?prd_id=13
Larry Sheldon,
Artice Sea Ice Extent April
from NSIDC
Wow, you think with all the brilliant minds on this site there would be more references to data, scientific journals and papers they’ve published.
Crickets…..
That’s because you’re all a bunch of crackpots that wouldn’t recognize real science if it bit you. Real science includes computer models and updating those models to include new information. Real science recognizes that the trend lines for both Arctic and and global sea ice are still headed down as long as you use data that’s more than a year old.
And what the hell is your obsession with sunspots? If there’s no global warming it can’t be sunspots; if there is global warming then sunspots are not the most likely explanation but rather a minor influence. Make up you minds.
REPLY: Folks, don’t feed the troll. Not worth the effort.
Storm:”The word population grows so fast making it almost impossible for many other species to coexist with us on the planet. It would be stupid to destroy all the nature and other species - and many already became extinct in the past 10 000 years - because of us. We never know if we may need them - or our kids. We have no right to take away nature completely for our kids.”
Perhaps you could lead the way and eliminate your own evil humaness as a start.
“If they are a threatened species, does that mean it is now illegal to hunt them for food and fur?”
Obviously, I am not an expert in this area either, but it is appears that most of the 50,000-odd bears live in not-Alaska, so unless the Canadians knuckle under, this nonsense won’t apply to Eskimos (all of whom live in Russia, anyway don’t they? And I don’t remember if there are polar bears where the Aleuts live. Maybe some Inuits will be involved.
Scandal up that way a while back: A Tlinkt man was discovered in a Haida bed.
How old does sea ice get?
Pierre Gosselin said: “Concerning the bears, it’s high time to pressure the candidates into telling us NOW what steps they intend to take to solve “this problem”. The Interior Dept has spoken, now ask McCain and Obama what actions they intend to implement. Nail them down now so that the American people know what to expect.
Pierre, US politicians only lie when their mouths are moving. And Osama and McCaca have been moving their mouths in abundance now-a-days. I’m not too certain how it is in Germany (haven’t been there in many, many years) but in the US only nitwits believe politicians. They are in it for power, for themselves, and for all their relatives - damn the electorate!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
PS: this will only be the second time in my life that I refused to vote in the presidential race. The other time was whem Jimmy Caca ran against bumbling Ford. In that race, as in this, you can’t even vote against one or the other — they both suck!
We can’t create more ice for the Polar Bear habitat so what can we do? Club baby seals to make more room for the ESL PB?
@Pierre Gosselin
Come to Canada, you can still hunt them here…and in Churchill Manitoba, you need to take special precautions from this ‘threatened’ species:
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1098655185981_2/?hub=Canada
And bad polar bears go to jail where they are possibly not given food:
http://www.geocities.com/mikepolarbear/faq.html#jail
Good thing they aren’t ‘threatened’ in Canada, or we might have to parole them.
Anthony,
You say there may be exceptions for native eskimos. This therefore will apply in Alaska right? But presumably those native eskimos are also Alaskans - how can there be one law for some Alaskans but not for others?
REPLY: That’s why we have lawyers ready to harpoon this law from any angle imaginable.
As an aside, I just went to the WordPress dashboard, and under the science section they have 4 posts listed. Three are for this blog.
Sheesh, ya big bully…
You better watch out. You know hat happened when Harry Potter was hogging three of the top ten spots of the NYT bestseller list? The “banned” HP by excluding all “juvenile fiction”–no matter HOW well it was selling. (”They killed Harry! Bastards.”
Next thing we know, the Rev will be redefined as a “non-scientist”, and WTFUWT will be determined to be “non-scientific” and thereby purged from the category!
As for the polar bear population, judging by its 300-to-500 percent increase it is obviously out of control. I recommend pruning.
Note that the Arctic sea ice graph has a suppressed zero. Even 2007’s reduction doesn’t look so spectacular.
Polar bears may well be endangered. Like deer along the front range of the Rockies. With few preditors, including hunters, they have outgrown their food supply and are not in great health. If those cuddly PB’s have tripled or quintupled in the past 40 years, what kind of pressure does it put on their food supply? They starve and the Goreons say “We were right!” Another excuse to go after Big Oil. Why do you rob banks? (W. Sutton)
How much did the trial lawyers association lobby to get this ruling?
Let me get this straight: Canada has 13 of the 15 tracked “population groups” of polar bears, and isn’t doing anything extraordinary aside from restricting the hunting for the bears, and the US, that has 2 of the 15 population groups of polar bears has designated the polar bears as “threatened”.
What would the US Congress do if, say, Canada reduced all restrictions on hunting of polar bears completely? The population drop would be nearly instantaneous as well as tremendous! To me, it seems the biggest danger to bears is Canadian hunting restrictions. Say, the population of Canadian polar bears goes so high as to be a nuisance and hunting is temporarily encouraged. While the US is enacting legislation to increase the polar bear population, Canada would be doing their best to reduce it!
With tongue firmly in cheek, I’ll propose that Canada hire some human coyotes and truck their spare polar bear population across the Alaskan border…
“Folks, don’t feed the troll. Not worth the effort.”
I wish you could just drop them. No discussion necessary, I’m just sayin…..
If polar bears were a part of my neighborhood, I’d sure as hell take nature completely away from my kids as I wouldn’t want my kids to become their next meal.
Alan S. Blue. Thanks. Looked. Looks to me like we are tracking a “more ice than last year” but “less ice than the long running average”. Is that right?
’bout what a know-nothing would expect, given that things happen in cycles and we aren’t apparently all the way out of the last ice age. But it makes me wonder sometimes when I go out to feed the birds and spot a few Juncos (”snow birds”
when I thought they had all left for the summer.
A fellow poster on another forum summed it up perfectly:
“The problem I have with declaring polar bear as endangered is this: the proclamation dilutes and cheapens the pursuit of protections for other species that are in far worse danger of becoming extinct. Its important to put your priorities in order.”
I couldn’t agree more.
With the arrival of “Global Warming” in the PacNW this week, I expect to see the local news giving me “Live! On The Scene!” coverage from the zoo describing how the poor polar bears and penguins are managing.
Oh, and I tried to play that silly game yesterday. Gave it a big thumbs down. I looked at it today, and the vote is, shall we shall, “polarized”.
Let’s hope the bear huggers don’t get wind about me and marmuts. I hate those nasty rodents. They poop all over high places, like on top of my stack of GOOD lumber in the barn. They also burrow under the floor boards and chew the hell out of old wood. I’ve shot three of these nasty creatures and will be shooting more as soon as I can buy more bullets.
So, how did the polar bears survive the medieval warm period? Or the Roman? etc. For that matter, how did they survive the last ice age? I don’t know the answers to any of those.
How about when the polar bear evolved? Interesting - http://www.geol.umd.edu/~candela/pbevol.html says “Somewhere during the mid-Pleistocene period (roughly 100,000 to 250,000 years ago), a number of brown (same as grizzly) bears (Ursos arctos) probably became isolated by glaciers.”
…
“Hecht (in Chaline, 1983) describes polar bear evolution: the first “polar bear”, Ursus maritimus tyrannus, was essentially a brown bear subspecies, with brown bear dimensions and brown bear teeth. Over the next 20,000 years, body size reduced and the skull elongated. As late as 10,000 years ago, polar bears still had a high frequency of brown-bear-type molars. Only recently have they developed polar-bear-type teeth.”
Wow - it sounds as though modern PBs didn’t survive the Ice Age, instead, they became PBs.
I killed 48 penguins. I ROCK!!!!
floodguy, If you have been a reading this site for a long time, then you could research past post with the links to disprove CO2 drives the climate theory.
1) CO2 lags temperature has been known since 1992 falsified the theory.
2) Global temperature have been flate or declined since 1998 while CO2 has increased falsified the theory.
3) Tropic ocean evaporation does not produce heat traping clouds falsified the theory.
4) Oceans have been cooling since 2003 falsified the theory.
5) No hot spot in the upper troposphere falsifed the theory.
You go on to say. “While the sun may be the primary driver for temp, I can’t seem to fathom how man-made emissions can have no affect on climate, even as a secondary driver of temp.”
Secondary? The sun, our orbit around the sun, the earth’s wobble, the ocean currents, the cloud cover, water vapor and who knows what else comes before CO2.
How many legs of a table have to be knock out before it will fall over?
Ok guys who here is in for a class action suit against Al Gore and the USFWS. LOL that would make me roll. Just like the bear is doing.
I was talking about this travesty to a very liberal friend of mine. He said that polar bear avg weights are down 30% and that this ‘fact’ played a big part in the decision. I can’t find that data anywhere. Does anyone have an idea where that number comes from?
Apart from other facts delinking Polar Bear numbers from alleged AGW, they are BEARS, for God’s sake, and should, therefore, be extremely adaptable. I’d be more worried about them moving South or into adjacent civilization, once “protected” and needing greater area/food sources, given increasing numbers. What a riot!
An average human inhales ” air” and exhales up to 900 grams of CO2 per day.
Beano, I did my own calculations about 3 years ago and came out with about 1000 gms CO2/day, depending upon many assumptions about the size of humans, their activity, presence of fevers causing increased metabolism, etc… Anyway, hooray, it’s a consensus!
Also, from what I calculated, a “vigorously exercising” human can exhale 1lb. CO2/hr.. So should we issue a “warning” to AGW fanatics about their harmful health habits, including being alive, or would they dismiss these facts as “natural”, and therefore not a problem? Regardless, I’m going to warn some certain personal acquaintences just to try to throw them off.
Rick Werme:
On how many penguines
would a polar ursine dine,
if a polar ursine on penguines
could dine?
(poetic liberty taken with ‘penguin’
Jim Arndt
I am.
Money “out of his pocket” would “WORK”. He does have an “ego”, you know.
“He might even have to sell his “plane” and “non-Eco” house.
Any “Great” Lawyer’s out there want to take this on “Pro Bono”?
Terrible.
(That is to say, “Good one!”
old construction worker,
Thanks for the reply