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Polar Bear Prognosis; Polar bears in the AGW debate
Topic Started: Jan 2 2012, 11:01 PM (617 Views)
Sean McHugh

Hi Chris (Ho-Stuart),

Early in December I replied to the matter of polar-bear endangerment, in the blog, “Climate Progress, Edited by Joe Romm”. I replied to a comment submitted by you. This was the page:

http://tinyurl.com/85v28k6

It is titled: “Heartbreaking Photo of Polar Bear and Icebreaking Expedition Ship”. Here was your statement to which I replied:

Quote:
 
Long term, I certainly agree that the prognosis for that polar bear is grim, given how well she is adapted to an environment now in rapid decline. [CHS]


My reply was:

Quote:
 
Hi Chris,

It’s been a while. I recently read a newspaper report that provided a scientific warning of rapid melting of Arctic glaciers. The main concern was the inundation that resultant rising seas would cause:

http://tinyurl.com/6lgu6bm
Quote:
 

“All over the world, even in the tropics, the temperature is rising, he says, adding that the Arctic glaciers are melting so fast that if something does not happen to retard the rate vast areas of inhabited coasts and low-lying country tn various sections of the world may become flooded.”


The newspaper report isn’t from the IPCC. It was written in nineteen forty-seven.


Unfortunately, it appears that you never got to see it. After submitting, I received the message, “Your comment is awaiting moderation“. I scrolled back up to the top and read what I previously missed, “Edited by Joe Romm”. The article itself was written by Joe Romm. Recalling experiences related by other sceptics posting on warmist blogs, and given that here was a high-profile climate prophet as the editor, I was apprehensive. The notice remained there there till the next day when it and my comment disappeared. Other comments were posted in the meantime. Further attempts resulted in my submission just vanishing without any message of pending moderation.

Though I was disappointed that you seem to be another who is employing questionable polar-bear endangerment, I was pleased that you attempted to dispel the emotive appeal surrounding the photo.

Cheers,

Sean
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Chris Ho-Stuart
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Welcome aboard, Sean.

I've been a bit busy in the recent break, so nothing has been happening here since Christmas. You have the first post for the new year!

I'm not entirely sure what your point is here; could you be a bit more specific? You've cited an old paper from 1947, which noted that the world was warming up. Ironically, perhaps, this projection didn't look particularly good in following decades, as there was a brief cooling worldwide in the late forties, and warming didn't pick up again strongly until the seventies.

I checked the background. The authority cited is Professor Hans Ahlmann (1889 - 1974), a pioneering glaciologist from the University of Stockholm. (See this obituary.) You can also see a brief account of his work in the larger context of the history of glaciology and climate change in Ice Sheets and Rising Seas, an extract from Spencer Weart's book, The Discovery of Global Warming. (This is a very useful and thorough history of the science of climate; I highly recommend it. Not polemic, but simply history; and a fascinating one.)

We don't have the data which would been needed to determine with confidence all the forcings that were involved in the early twentieth century; and the temperature record is not as well constrained as at present, so the magnitude of cooling and warming also has limited precision. There's a mix of causes involved. It seems likely that aerosol pollution had a major role for the cooling episode in the late forties and the extended lull following.

Ahlmann was an early pioneer in glaciology and climate interactions; the specifics of his theories for polar warming are out of date, but his observations of warming was true enough, and his point on sea level is valid. The article does not indicate a time scale. There's an article on his work in the Science history journal Osiris: The Anxieties of a Science Diplomat: Field Coproduction of Climate Knowledge and the Rise and Fall of Hans Ahlmann’s “Polar Warming” by Sverker Sörlin, in Osiris (2011) Vol 1, pp 66-88.

There's a lot of uncertainty on how sea level will play out in this century; unfortunately the major unknown is whether we get a continual gradual rise culminating in another half a meter or so by 2100; or whether instabilities in ice sheets and glaciers could give a meter or more of sea level rise.

Be that as it may; I really don't know your intended point here. You give some interesting background, and I've filled it out a bit further by looking for more on the work and the authority cited in the old newspaper.

But you seem to be dubious about my statement that the prognosis for polar bears in a warming world is poor. I personally find it a bit odd that this one animal is singled out; probably it is because it is such an awe inspiring animal. Be that as it may, I don't see any reason to revise what I said earlier in blog comments you've cited.

Was this intended as an indication that science is uncertain? If so -- I agree. We gradually build a better understanding of the world over time, a process in which Professor Ahlmann has an honourable role and which goes on still today. I don't agree that this means we can dismiss the risks for animals adapted to the Arctic environment; there's no credible basis for denying that the world to which they are adapted it is now changing drastically and rapidly.

Cheers -- Chris
Edited by Chris Ho-Stuart, Jan 3 2012, 08:27 AM.
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Sean McHugh

Hi Chris.

Quote:
 
CHS: Welcome aboard, Sean.

I've been a bit busy in the recent break, so nothing has been happening here since Christmas. You have the first post for the new year!


Thank you, Chris, for the welcome and for providing the forum.

Quote:
 
CHS: I'm not entirely sure what your point is here; could you be a bit more specific? You've cited an old paper from 1947, which noted that the world was warming up. Ironically, perhaps, this projection didn't look particularly good in following decades, as there was a brief cooling worldwide in the late forties, and warming didn't pick up again strongly until the seventies.


It appears that you have got the general gist of my point, Chris. I do have some problems with your linking the 1947 Arctic warming with the present, with an interruption comprising of a 'brief cooling' period. I'll get to that later.

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CHS: There's a lot of uncertainty on how sea level will play out in this century; unfortunately the major unknown is whether we get a continual gradual rise culminating in another half a meter or so by 2100; or whether instabilities in ice sheets and glaciers could give a meter or more of sea level rise.


I believe the sea-level rise gets shamelessly exaggerated (eg. Tim Flannery), like just about everything else in CAGW, to the point of eliciting excruciating resentment and terminal incredulity. Actually, sea-level rise is how I became interested in the subject and crossed over the line to scepticism. It was when I saw Liz Hayes on 60 Minutes standing waist deep at a Maldives beach, saying that when she was there eight years earlier, it was dry sand. I immediately became suspicious and started Googling. Viewers were invited to talk online to the expert. None of my questions even appeared. The media's CAGW disciples are treating the public like morons on a daily basis - two instances noted on this day of writing. This, I believe is why the scientists are losing the PR battle. They admit they are losing but regularly blame supposed teams of highly organised 'deniers' who are supposedly being funded by Big Oil. What a joke. What fools.


If sea-level rise is due to CO2, it should be accelerating. It isn't. In fact, at the moment, it isn't rising at all. This page tells us how even the CSIRO has been caught exaggerating the supposed problem. I live close to Sussex Inlet where, as in the Maldives, the people live only a few feet above the water. Residents say they have noticed no rise in 50 years. Accordingly, popular reports of islanders being evacuated from Tuvalu (to New Zealand) are baloney, sheer baloney. You have no idea just how fed up I am with the CAGW machine's compulsive dishonesty, Chris. Please note that I am not insisting there has been zero rise over modern times, just that it has been no big deal and that there have been rises and falls before.

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CHS:Be that as it may; I really don't know your intended point here.


I am a little surprised by that. Joe Romm (or his moderator) presumably understood the inconvenience when my original post and subsequent attempts were being censored. He has a reputation (see Kramer) for doing that with problem sceptical posts - as do other CAGW advocacy moderated blogs.

You'll recall that I used to be very involved in debating against religious claims. When the Jehovah's Witnesses used to visit my door, I would show them their previous premature Armageddon prophesies. In the Joe Romm blog I presented a dire prediction for the Arctic from 1947. Here is an Arctic climate Armageddon unfolding in 1922.

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The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot, according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone. Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm.


The point is, of course, that none of this is new. Note that "scarcely any ice . . as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes", describes a more dramatic reduction than we are presently witnessing. And if it was like that in 1922, it must have been heading that way earlier. Now back to your linking the 1947 Arctic warming with the present warming - except for an interrupting "brief cooling" period in the late forties. We can now take your associated earlier warming back to the early twenties and even earlier than that. But how can this be due to copious amounts of man's CO2, when, in 1922 and before then, there was only a fraction of the human-generated CO2 emissions? That was still the case in 1947. At that time the sun was seen as the culprit. Actually the boom in man-made CO2 emissions only started after the Second World War and that's when the decades of relative coolness started. The earth's temperature history simply does NOT show a coherent dependance on CO2 levels. And in the ancient proxy records, over very long periods, it shows a backward correlation, with temperature driving CO2 after an 800 year lag. Al Gore had to remove his beloved pet exhibit when this inconvenience was discovered with closer examination.

The early melting association doesn't even tally with Michael Mann's Hockey Stick, which, in another blog, you appear to defend (I don't). At 1922 the Hockey Stick does not have the global temperature as being high. The HS doesn't accommodate the Arctic melting of 1922, which would presumably require significant warming even before that.

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CHS: But you seem to be dubious about my statement that the prognosis for polar bears in a warming world is poor.

I don't believe that either the warming or ice loss is unprecedented. Should I? Why? And even HadCRUT shows the temperature as displaying no further significant rise over the last fourteen years. Nature has ignored the models for that long. Fourteen years is a long time for the temperature to forget it's supposed to be doing an ascent that would do a rock climber proud. The problem can't be dispatched by appeal to relatively short-term fluctuations or weather - cold weather that is; hot weather becomes Global Warming. If the theory is correct, the heat must be somewhere, regardless of local fluctuations. The theory's heat budget must be balanced. In the Climategate 1.0 emails, Trenberth despaired at their failure to find the missing heat. He called the failure a "travesty". You see, these people are worried and badly want to see the world fry so they can be seen as correct. Better that than having the heat on them - and boy, it will be.

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CHS: Was this intended as an indication that science is uncertain? If so -- I agree.


So the science isn't 'settled' then? So then how do they even know that the overall feedback is positive? How about, they don't? They don't know how much clouds affect the feedback. They don't even know for sure the direction of the cloud feedback. The models curiously favour positive feedback for clouds - viz: more heat --> clouds respond in some unfavourable way --> more heat. This positiveness is questionable. There is even some new evidence that water vapour itself, could provide negative feedback. I'll remain agnostic on that.

Here is what the illustrious (and now infamous) Phil Jones had to say about clouds in the Climategate 2.0 emails:


Quote:
 
Basic problem is that all models are wrong- not got enough middle and low level clouds. Problem will be with us for years, according to Richard Jones..


This is from the IPCC:

Quote:
 
The sign of the net cloud feedback is still a matter of uncertainty, and the various models exhibit a large spread [across the positive (SM)]. Further uncertainties arise from precipitation processes and the difficulty in correctly simulating the diurnal cycle and precipitation amounts and frequencies...


That the models tend to fundamentally agree with each other, lends no deserved confidence, because the same questionable assumptions that have been included in any model are used in the other models. Whatever the problems are, the models aren't working. That's the bottom line. This should cause them to suspect their assumptions are incorrect and suggest the need to start again.

Quote:
 
CHS: We gradually build a better understanding of the world over time, a process in which Professor Ahlmann has an honourable role and which goes on still today. I don't agree that this means we can dismiss the risks for animals adapted to the Arctic environment; there's no credible basis for denying that the world to which they are adapted it is now changing drastically and rapidly.


But as I have presented, the Arctic has changed dramatically before, before CO2 could be blamed. And what about the Arctic in the Medieval Warming Period?

Among other sins, Michael (Piltdown) Mann disappeared the Medieval Warming Period in his graph. Doing that kept the shaft of his hockey stick nice and flat to make more spectacular the near-vertical blade at the end. That is what happend to the MWP, folks. It was removed with the IPCC-beloved but now widely-discredited Hockey Stick. It's why the HS is still pertinent to today's whole scientific Global Warming paradigm. One should also ask, if CAGW is the reason for the Arctic's negative ice anomaly, why does the Antarctic collectively have a positive ice anomaly? Why has the Antarctic shown a positive ice trend since 1979?

As for polar bears, do you think there is good evidence that their numbers are diminishing? I submit that there is evidence to suggest that they are doing very well. This is from 2010:

Quote:
 
The Inuit have always insisted the bears' demise was greatly exaggerated by scientists doing projections based on fly-over counts, but their input was usually dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.

As Nunavut government biologist Mitch Taylor observed in a front-page story in the Nunatsiaq News last month, "the Inuit were right. There aren't just a few more bears.

There are a hell of a lot more bears."

Their widely portrayed lurch toward extinction on a steadily melting ice cap is not supported by bear counts in other Arctic regions either.


I suggest that one could better justify worrying about tiger numbers and their future. Unfortunately for them, they are not particularly useful for propaganda, political power and massive global financial movements. Do you realise that with Global Warming and/or polar-bear anxiety, not going along with the party line will actually get you barred:

Quote:
 
Taylor, who has been researching polar bears for 30 years, was told that he was barred from the group because “his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group
.

Many have discovered the same the hard way. The Climategate emails left no doubt that that's the corrupt and bullying way that global-warming science operates. Dissent is shut down. The science doesn't work on peer review but on pal review. It's a closed shop; the science is 'settled' . A scientist who forgets that he's there to reinforce the paradigm, does so at his own peril.

But back to the polar bears. Chris, are you aware the whole polar-bear angle, for climate-change PR/alarmism, started with a very dodgy almost childlike study, if it can be called a study at all? See here and here.

Cheers,

Sean
Edited by Sean McHugh, Jan 4 2012, 11:50 PM.
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Chris Ho-Stuart
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Sean, you raise an awful lot of issues there!

That augers well for some interesting discussions; may I suggest that it would be best to keep focus? I'd be very glad to see a couple of new threads starting up some of those other points. My hope is that a board like this will allow a more constructive engagement across differences that simply long lists of standard talking points from each side.

I'll just focus here on the points you raise with respect to polar bears and their prognosis. I'm not simply avoiding all the other points; I do hope you will raise some of them again in focused threads; also feel free to repeat a point or two if you think it immediately pertinent to polar bear prognosis.




Sean McHugh
Jan 4 2012, 09:54 AM

As for polar bears, do you think there is good evidence that their numbers are diminishing? ...


Yes: the evidence is mainly for declining numbers.

A more careful analysis looks at sub-populations; conventionally 19 sub-populations are identified. Here is a diagram of the 19 subpopulations used in surveys by the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group:
Posted Image
Of the regions, indications are: 7 are unknown, 3 stable (yellow), 1 increasing (green), and 8 declining (red). More detail is at this status table per 2010, and you can hover your mouse over this map to get a background comment on each subpopulation.

I think the major concern for a future prognosis is the loss of habitat due to the rapid and accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice. Hence the issues in my view are not so much with extrapolating the population trend, but with anticipating what is likely for the habitat in another thirty to forty years. This is the time frame within which the Arctic sea is likely to be mostly free of sea ice in the summer. Also, I think polar bears are a convenient and charismatic symbol; the drastic changes in the Arctic will (and do) impact more than just bears.

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… I submit that there is evidence to suggest that they are doing very well. This is from 2010:

Quote:
 
The Inuit have always insisted the bears' demise was greatly exaggerated by scientists doing projections based on fly-over counts, but their input was usually dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.

As Nunavut government biologist Mitch Taylor observed in a front-page story in the Nunatsiaq News last month, "the Inuit were right. There aren't just a few more bears.

There are a hell of a lot more bears."

Their widely portrayed lurch toward extinction on a steadily melting ice cap is not supported by bear counts in other Arctic regions either.


That is actually a newspaper article from 6 March 2007, not 2010. Mitch Taylor is a polar bear expert, though usually at odds with his most of colleagues. He's most definitely no climatologist! The newspaper article you've cited is rather silly, and not a particularly good guide to anything, IMHO.

For a better guide, I suggest we refer to Proceedings of the 14th Working Meeting of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group (2005) [2MB pdf]. Mitch Taylor was a prominent participant, and the report gives a lot more detail on the matter with due recognition of competing views. In particular, see page 20, which has minutes of what must have been an interesting discussion.
[indentblock]There was considerable debate of the recent changes in subpopulation estimates and quota increases for some polar bear subpopulations in Nunavut. Several members commented that Nunavut increased quotas for some subpopulations following new science-based estimates; however, no one has seen the science or had the opportunity to review it. M. Taylor replied that the papers have been written, some have been submitted for publication, and some are in press and copies can be provided. There was concern expressed about the use of traditional knowledge to increase subpopulation estimates where, at best, there is no new scientific data and in some cases there are strong data available that do not support the increases. There was no disagreement with the accuracy of local knowledge and there was no one doubting that hunters are seeing more bears. What was questioned was that an increasing subpopulation is the only explanation for seeing more bears. ... [/indentblock]

Note that the newspaper remark about "dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters" is an inflammatory exaggeration of how hunter input is actually considered.

Pages 31-32 reveals another interesting point of dispute. The group tabled six resolutions; five passed by consensus but one had to be voted upon. (Resolution 1: A precautionary approach when setting catch levels in a warming Arctic.) Mitch Taylor appears to have been the major obstacle to consensus on this resolution; but the vote was unanimous, since it was one vote per country and the two other Canadian representatives agreed with the rest of the meeting. The issue Taylor had appears to have been specifically on the "Davis Strait" sub-population.

Quote:
 
I suggest that one could better justify worrying about tiger numbers and their future. Unfortunately for them, they are not particularly useful for propaganda, political power and massive global financial movements. Do you realise that with Global Warming and/or polar-bear anxiety, not going along with the party line will actually get you barred:

Quote:
 
Taylor, who has been researching polar bears for 30 years, was told that he was barred from the group because “his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group
.


A more accurate description (and one Taylor himself uses) is that he was "not invited". It isn't a case of being "barred". His views on global warming are nonsensical and have no credible scientific backing. They are relevant in the context of the workshop. It isn't just the "rest of the group" that he's out of step with -- it is the whole field of climate science. He's way out of touch on the matter, and debating basic climate science simply isn't appropriate at a polar bear workshop.

This, of course, is going to be a major point where we disagree. My own major interest is physics and basic science; not so much polar bears or environmentalism. When I look at Taylor's comments, I can see why he'd be a major distraction from the business of the workshop… as he was in the past. He's not a lone voice for good science. On climate he would be a lone voice for nutty science; and that weighs heavily in the balance against the positive contributions he could make on his area of legitimate expertise.

Quote:
 
But back to the polar bears. Chris, are you aware the whole polar-bear angle, for climate-change PR/alarmism, started with a very dodgy almost child-like study, if it can be called a study at all? See here and here.


That's simply not true. The polar bear angle is certainly older than the Charles Monnett study of 2006. See, for example, Climate change threatens polar bears, from New Scientist in May 2002.

As for the study you mention; let's link to the article itself. The study you mention is

There's nothing "dodgy" or "child like" about it. I am not aware of any scientific objections to the paper.

The recent "suspension" of Monnett is about alleged conflicts of interest with grant money. I certainly hope it will all get properly investigated; INCLUDING a hard look at the instigation of this investigation. It was not a scientific issue; what I want to know is whether there was a genuine basis for concern or whether the investigation is just government harassment of working scientists. I'm keeping an open mind on that; harassment from political motives does occur, as do legitimate questions of propriety with grants. This case is not clear to me at all; but the alleged impropriety looks dashed flimsy and hasn't come to anything as yet.

All that is beside the point, the journal article itself is not suspended or questioned or retracted. It seems perfectly okay. What is your problem with it?

Cheers -- Chris
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Sean McHugh

Hi Chris,


Quote:
 
Quote:
 
SM: As for polar bears, do you think there is good evidence that their numbers are diminishing?


CHS: Yes: the evidence is mainly for declining numbers.

A more careful analysis looks at sub-populations; conventionally 19 sub-populations are identified. Here is a diagram of the 19 subpopulations used in surveys by the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group:

Of the regions, indications are: 7 are unknown, 3 stable (yellow), 1 increasing (green), and 8 declining (red). More detail is at this status table per 2010, and you can hover your mouse over this map to get a background comment on each subpopulation.


But this is the bottom line. From CNSNews.com:

Quote:
 
No Decline in Polar Bear Population

(CNSNews.com) - The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organization of scientists that has attempted to monitor the global polar bear population since the 1960s, has issued a report indicating that there was no change in the overall global polar bear population in the most recent four-year period studied. The total number of polar bears is still thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000,” the group said in a press release published together with a report on the proceedings of its 15th meeting

20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide is exactly the same population estimate the group made following its 14th international meeting.

The 15th meeting of the IUCN’s Polar Bear Specialist Group took place from June 29-July 3, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark—four years after the 14th meeting, which took place in Seattle, Wash., June 20-24, 2005. But the report on the 15th meeting and its conclusions about the polar bear population—including subsequent information that was developed through March 2010—was not published until this year (on Feb. 25, 2011).


Good belated news, don't you think, Chris? For the bears I mean, not the science. This is the sort of news you will never hear from our government's main propaganda arm, the electronic media (esp. the ABC). And if we look at the table (from here) the news gets even better. You will see the previous 20,000-25,000 for 2005, but between 1965-1970 the estimate was only 8,000 to 10,000, and in the 1950s it was 5,000! The sources are cited as: "New York Times; Covebear.com; International Bear Association; International Wildlife; IUCN, Polar Bear Study Group."

That might explain why the locals and the ostracised polar-bear expert (of 30 years) maintained that there was no recent decline in polar bear numbers.

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CHS: That is actually a newspaper article [this one] from 6 March 2007, not 2010.


Thank you for the date correction. It is actually helpful, as will be shown.

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CHS: Mitch Taylor is a polar bear expert, though usually at odds with his most of colleagues. He's most definitely no climatologist!


Is Taylor an expert on polar bears or not? You have already said that he is. The invoking of his climate science differences constitutes ad hominem argument, if not bigotry.

Quote:
 
CHS: The newspaper article you've cited is rather silly, . . .


We will see.

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CHS: . . . [ newspaper article . . . silly] and not a particularly good guide to anything, IMHO.


But that's not true, Chris. For a start it is giving the other side of the story, something usually withheld from the public - at least in Australia. By pointing out that the latest count is higher than counts in previous years, it rightly challenges the veracity of Global-Warming political correctness with regard bear numbers. The 2007 newspaper article indirectly challenges the IUCN 2005 report, which you recommended and understood as maintaining declining polar bear numbers. The newspaper article is vindicated when the non-decline is later admitted in the IUCN 2011 report to which I previously referred. Remember, you pointed out that the newspaper article was from 2007, not 2010 when the most recent IUCN study was being processed for the 2011 report. The "silly" newspaper article reported what the IUCN conceded years later.

The article also rips into the now-exposed iconic Global Warming photo of two polar bears portrayed as forlornly stranded on ice awaiting their death. Recall the evocative plea: "This is truly the tip of an iceberg, the bears are desperately stranded as the water swells around them". That photo (falsely claimed to have been taken by Canadian Environmentalists (see video)) was produced thousands of times by Al Gore and the WWF. It went all over the world to the major newspapers. The photo was actually taken by an Australian marine biology student. She said she was taking a photo of the wind sculpted ice and never considered the polar bears to be in any danger. I think that the millions who were sucked in by that hijacked photo, as evidence of Global Warming, need to read an article just like the one that you dismissed as "silly".

While we are on the subject, how about this photo that appeared in Science magazine, again showing a polar bear to be stranded at sea? It's a fake! And there was the photo in the Joe Romm page. You did caution him, but don't you see a pattern here of global-warming-agenda-driven misinformation and deception? Do you think it stops at photos of polar bears? Why would it?

Quote:
 
CHS: Note that the newspaper remark about "dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters" is an inflammatory exaggeration of how hunter input is actually considered.


I wasn't expecting to see "ramblings of self-interested hunters" appearing in the report. The hunters are Eskimos. Political correctness alone would prohibit. Those compiling the 2005 report would have been aware of how they needed to tread as carefully as agenda fulfillment would allow. The following excerpts are from another article, by an actual Yukon resident, Justine Davidson. He is receiving reports from Doug Clark, a polar bear management expert who heads a forum with the affected locals:

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Polar bear hype is about communication: experts

After two days of lectures, discussions, and workshops, . . .

“The group made it really clear that all the politics - all the hype and controversy - it’s not about the bears,” forum organizer Doug Clark told the Star this week. “It’s about the processes and communication that we use when trying to manage them.”

Polar bear management has become an extremely divisive issue in Canada’s North over the past two decades, with scientists, environmentalists and Inuit hunters all pitted against each other in a debate over the health of Canada’s 12 ursus maritimus populations.

The addition of climate change, with all its attending facts and fictions, has heated the issue to its boiling point. .


Chris, please note the next sentence for when we later discuss the impact of Monnett's paper. It adds support to a statement I made last post, when I said that the whole polar-bear thing in climate-change PR/alarmism, came about with the Monnett/Gleason paper. You said that it simply wasn't true:

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An exhausted polar bear unable to find an icefloe on which to rest has become the poster child for the stop-global-warming movement . . .

At a public meeting last April in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, dozens of hunters showed up to say the Baffin Bay polar bear population is growing


And now please note well this next bit. It is pertinent to your main contention with the first newspaper article, when you charged it of "inflammatory exaggeration of how hunter input is actually considered":

Quote:
 
The Inuit hunters don’t trust the scientists’ information because it contradicts their own experience, the scientists disregard the hunter’s intimate knowledge of the land as subjective and perhaps even self-serving, and the environmentalists hope the bear will be their ace in the hole in forcing governments to stop their climate-changing behaviours. [emphasis SM]


That appears to be the origin of the comment in the other article, the on that you found objectionable. Please keep in mind that this current article is a fairly congenial (not hostile) report on Clark's forum and thoughts. Now note again from this article, the same theme (in bold) as presented immediately above :

Quote:
 
“That was a provocative statement,” Clark said. On the one hand, it is insulting to Inuit, who see it as a patronizing policy, that their generations’ worth of experience would only serve as back-up to the work of a graduate student from southern Canada.

On the other, it flies in the face of the belief that science provides the ultimate in objective truth, whereas traditional knowledge is muddled by myth and self-interest.
[emphasis SM]


There it is again. The hunters themselves felt they were dismissed and they were angry about it. The provocative statement that Clark talks about is this:

Quote:
 
For example, in his introduction, Clark quotes Resolution Number One of the World Conservation Union’s Polar Bear Specialist Group: “That polar bear harvests can be increased on the basis of local and traditional knowledge only if supported by scientifically collected information.”


He is quoting from page 57 of the IUCN 2005 report. He continues:

Quote:
 
There is no follow-up resolution which says it should work the other way as well, that any wildlife management decisions made on the basis of scientifically collected information should be backed up by traditional knowledge.


So, the original newspaper article I submitted was pretty close to the mark with the contentious statement (and everything else!). The bottom line is that the 'scientific' polar-bear work needs no local backup. Local observations only count if they are covered and supported by the 'science'. Decades of local knowledge will be trumped by the work of a visiting undergraduate student. By my reckoning, and obviously that of the Eskimos, that equates to the local experience and observations being rejected, regardless of how diplomatically or academically the rejection is presented.

Quote:
 
CHS: A more accurate description (and one Taylor himself uses) is that he was "not invited". It isn't a case of being "barred"..


I got not invited to Kate's and Prince William's royal wedding. I get not invited to thousands of events every day. The phrase covers too much territory to be sufficiently descriptive of Taylor's pointed exclusion from the polar-bear-global-warming choir. The polar bear expert, who was funded to go to the conference, was personally notified that he wasn't to attend.

Quote:
 
CHS: His views on global warming are nonsensical and have no credible scientific backing. They are relevant in the context of the workshop. It isn't just the "rest of the group" that he's out of step with -- it is the whole field of climate science. He's way out of touch on the matter, and debating basic climate science simply isn't appropriate at a polar bear workshop.


That tells me he's out of touch with basic sky-is-falling too. As for debating climate science, the person who told him he wasn't be attend the conference, let it slip that climate science wasn't even a part of their Copenhagen meeting. The exclusion demonstrated bigotry, as does the defense of the same.

Mitch Taylor, who had published 59 peer-reviewed papers on polar bears, was informed by email of his exclusion from the conference by the Polar Bear Study Group (PBSG):

Quote:
 
". . .views that run counter to human induced climate change are extremely unhelpful. In this vein, your positions and statements in the Manhattan Declaration, the Frontier Institute, and the Science and Public Policy Institute are inconsistent with positions taken by the PBSG. . . . it was the positions you’ve taken on global warming that brought opposition. . ."


Chris, those and your own words reveal that it never was really about the bears.

Quote:
 
CHS: This, of course, is going to be a major point where we disagree.


It is the whole point. I'm noticing that there and below, your suggested "focus" in the polar bear situation is via the lens of catastrophic man-made global warming - which is now being cited as a 'basic' given. If the supposed bear stress/decline evidence and argument is to require catastrophic Global Warming assumptions, perhaps that warrants extending the focus to again include the challenges to CAGW that I submitted in my last post.

May I remind of the most relevant items I raised? There was the alarming Arctic melting in 1947. That melting can't coherently be grouped with today's melting and CO2, firstly because there wasn't enough atmospheric CO2, secondly, there were higher CO2 levels in the decades following 1947 when ice was plentiful, and thirdly, the same sort of melting was reported in 1922 when the atmospheric CO2 would have been even lower. Then there was the melting in the Medieval Warming Period in the Arctic, that couldn't be blamed on man-produced CO2. There was also Al Gore's inconvenient CO2/Temperature correlation graph - inconvenient for him, that is. There is also the fact that there hasn't been any further warming over the last decade and a half. And there was the question of why, if the Arctic is melting due to AGW, why the Antarctic currently has a positive ice anomaly and has had a positive ice trend for over thirty years! Please see my earlier post for those issues. And there is this new stuff since I last posted:

Quote:
 
NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab: Major Impact On Arctic Sea Ice Melt Is Nature's Own 'Arctic Oscillation'

Scientists from Jet Propulsion Lab and Univ. of Washington determine that fresh water from Russia's rivers and the Arctic Oscillation are major factors for Arctic sea ice melt

Read here. The 'Big Green' controlled IPCC and the typical Climategate scientist have publicly claimed that the recent Arctic sea ice melt is entirely due to human CO2 emissions. The majority of climate scientists don't agree with this IPCC stance, knowing full well that other natural and human influences are at work in the Arctic.


That would possibly explain why the Antarctic has not been exhibiting the same recent melting of sea ice. By the way, that's from NASA proper, not NASA GISS. The latter is the dodgy (challenge invited!) climate change department, under Dr. James Hansen. It's where rocket scientists need not apply.

Quote:
 
CHS: My own major interest is physics and basic science; not so much polar bears or environmentalism. When I look at Taylor's comments, I can see why he'd be a major distraction from the business of the workshop… as he was in the past.


There's no doubt that selling the idea, that the polar bears are doing fine, would be bad for "business".

Quote:
 
He's not a lone voice for good science. On climate he would be a lone voice for nutty science; and that weighs heavily in the balance against the positive contributions he could make on his area of legitimate expertise.


I am so reminded of how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) head, Dr. Pachauri, branded the sceptical claims, that the Himalayan glaciers definitely would NOT disappear by 2035, as "voodoo science". The IPCC is still trying to recover from that. Please see the video.

Chris, if you are going to allow both sides of the debate at your site, you are going to get sceptics arguing what you label as "nutty science". It won't be persuasive submitting to them - or to me for that matter - that dissenting voices warrant dismissal essentially because they are dissenting.There are a lot more sceptics than staunch believers seem to think, and the number is growing. More and more people are seeing the science as far from settled and the 'consensus' as illusory.

Quote:
 
Quote:
 
SMc: But back to the polar bears. Chris, are you aware the whole polar-bear angle, for climate-change PR/alarmism, started with a very dodgy almost child-like study, if it can be called a study at all? See here and here.


CHS: That's simply not true. The polar bear angle is certainly older than the Charles Monnett study of 2006. See, for example, Climate change threatens polar bears, from New Scientist in May 2002.


What I said is true, Chris, and above I have drawn advance attention to supporting evidence. Please note that I specified that it was with publication of the Monnett/Gleason paper that the polar bear began to be used for the PR/alarmism. Monnett's drowning or about-to-drown bears were picked up by Al Gore, the media and the politicians and became the public icon of CAGW. The public appeal wasn't via bears in a science magazine that supposedly weren't killing enough seals to get fat. It's like saying the Beatles started the British Invasion (music). It's not the same as saying that the Beatles were the first British band.

This is from the Guardian, which is know for its CAGW advocacy:

Quote:
 
The paper [Monnett/Gleason] quickly heightened public concern for the polar bear. Al Gore, citing the paper, used polar bear footage in his film Inconvenient Truth. Campaigners focused on the bears to push George Bush to act on climate change, and in 2008, the government designated the animal a threatened species.

It was the first animal to be classed as a victim of climate change.


And from Nature Magazine:

Quote:
 
The idea that polar bears could drown like this became a rallying point for advocates of action on climate change, most notably appearing in former US vice-president Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth (2006).


Do you now see and agree to the remarkable consequences of Monnett's paper?

Quote:
 
CHS: As for the study you mention; let's link to the article itself. The study you mention is Monnett, C; and Gleason, J.S. (2006) Observations of mortality associated with extended open-water swimming by polar bears in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea, in Polar Biology, Vol 29, No 8, pp 681-687.


With that link, I could only find the first page with the abstract. It didn't appear very useful. Here is the whole paper.

Quote:
 
CHS: There's nothing "dodgy" or "child like" about it. I am not aware of any scientific objections to the paper.


"[D]odgy" meaning poor in quality and unreliable, "childlike" meaning simplistic and naive. If if the study were so so solid, why was Monnett's paper reviewed by his wife and an indebted pal (more on that later)? Does that sound like proper peer review? The transcript shows the investigators as being quite dubious of the Monnett/Gleason study. As might be expected, searches for comments on the Monnett/Gleason work result in a flood of post-investigation articles. Sifting eventually located this one from 2008, which was before the investigation:

Quote:
 
Where Are All The Drowning Polar Bears?
. . . . . . .
Last fall, as a massive media campaign reminded us, the extent of Arctic ice was at an all-time (since 1979) low, yet we cannot recall a single report of a drowned polar bear as a result. Surely, with all the attention on polar bear well-being that arose as the Interior Department considered its ESA decision, if there were evidence of polar bears drowning last summer, it would have been held up front and center. But it wasn’t. Because they weren’t.
. . . . . . .
In 2004, the researchers saw four, that’s right 4, polar bear carcasses floating at sea where they had never seen any in previous surveys.


Note again, that the "massive media campaign" was spawned by Monnett's and Gleason's dodgy - I will be supporting that adjective - study.

Quote:
 
CHS: The recent "suspension" of Monnett is about alleged conflicts of interest with grant money. I certainly hope it will all get properly investigated; INCLUDING a hard look at the instigation of this investigation. It was not a scientific issue; what I want to know is whether there was a genuine basis for concern or whether the investigation is just government harassment of working scientists.


One hears the statement that the science was not the issue but in reading the interview transcripts, it becomes quickly clear that the science was a very major part of the investigation. It is also clear that the investigators rightly found the science shoddy. We'll get to that later:

Quote:
 
Although the director of BOEMRE, Michael Bromwich, has stated that the investigation has "nothing to do with [Monnett's] scientific work, or anything relating to a 5-year-old journal article, as advocacy groups and the news media have incorrectly speculated," yesterday's 3-hour session focused exactly on those issues, says Jeff Ruch, the director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility in Washington, D.C.


But you look at the interviews for yourself, Chris. Monnett is told that he has been accused of scientific misconduct (p3) and that it relates to his statistics (p83).

Monnett's interview is here.

Gleason's interview is here.

Quote:
 
CHS: I'm keeping an open mind on that; harassment from political motives does occur, as do legitimate questions of propriety with grants. This case is not clear to me at all


This is from physicist Dr. Luboš Motl:

Quote:
 
In 2004, Monnett saw (?) the drowned polar bears. On April 25th, 2005, the paper about the observation was received by the journal.

In 2005, Andrew Derocher [who reviewed Monnett's paper, along with Monnett's wife] received a $1.1 million grant from "officers" in Monnett's U.S. institution for some extra research of polar bears in the Beaufort Sea, "Populations and Sources of the Recruitment in Polar Bears", in which Monnett was just a rank-and-file member. In 2006, Monnett's paper on the two-year-old observation was finally published. Because of Monnett's sudden fame, he began to control about $50 million of Arctic wildlife research funds in recent years.


This additional discussion comes from ' NPR':

Quote:
 
Monnett's legal team has said that in past interviews, investigators have seemed to ask whether the contract was inappropriately steered to the University of Alberta scientist by Monnett in exchange for the scientist offering a peer review of Monnett's soon-to-be-famous dead polar bear paper.


Quote:
 
CHS: [This case is not clear to me at all]; but the alleged impropriety looks dashed flimsy and hasn't come to anything as yet.


Ah, but it has "come to" something, Chris. From the previous source (NPR):

Quote:
 
The polar bear researcher who was suspended from his government job last month has received a new letter from investigators that lays out actions he took that are described as being "highly inappropriate" under the rules that apply to managing federal contracts. [emphasis by SM]


Still, it was well worth it for Monnett and Derocher. By the way, recall the separate Taylor matter from above. It was actually Derocher, the guy who reviewed Monnett's paper (along with Monnett's wife), who sent the letter to polar-bear expert, Taylor, telling him to forget attending the conference. I didn't know any of this when, in my last post, I spoke of "pal review" and "closed shop". I am just aware of how things operate in climate politics/science and expressed the same by making reference to the Climategate emails.

Quote:
 
CHS: All that is beside the point, the journal article itself is not suspended or questioned or retracted.


That's not right, Chris. The paper, or more to the point, the supporting study, was most definitely questioned. That is overwhelmingly evident in the interviews of both Monnett and Gleason. That would reasonably be the case in examining whether the paper stood on its own merit or needed "highly inappropriate" assistance. As far as retraction goes, that would be like Christianity retracting the Easter story. Neither is ever going to happen.

Quote:
 
CHS: It seems perfectly okay.


I do not see inerrancy.

Quote:
 
What is your problem with it?


One problem is where to start illustrating the problems. Let's look at Monnett's statistics and extrapolations and how he comes up with the paydirt, the 25% survival rate:

Quote:
 
Limiting data to bears on transect and not considering bears seen on connect and search segments, four swimming polar bears were encountered in addition to three dead bears. If these bears accurately reflect 11% of bears present under these conditions, then 36 bears may have been swimming in open water on 6 and 7 September, and 27 bears may have died as a result of the high offshore winds. These extrapolations suggest that survival rate of bears swimming in open water during this period was low (9/36=25%).


In other words, 4 bears found swimming, 3 later found drowned, represents 25% survival across the "population". Dress it up however you like, that's it. That's Monnett's E=mc^2. During his investigation interview, Monnett makes his derivation painful to the point of cruelty.

Table 2 in the Monnett/Gleason paper shows that before the strong winds between the 10th and 13th of September, six live swimming bears had been seen - four on transects (see above). These sightings occurred on the 6th and 7th. Table 1, however, shows that the survey flights started on the 1st of September, with no bear-sighting entries before the 6th. That suggests that the 6th and the 7th were unusual. Monnett confirms this in the interview on page 30. This raises the question of how these two days were associated with the dead count that started after the 13th. Setting aside the inadequate sample size for such projections, just because more bears were seen swimming on the 6th and 7th, it can't be assumed there was an unusually high number swimming on the 8th and 9th or more importantly, on the 10th when the high winds and rough seas started. In his paper, Monnett says that they flew on the 8th, which was closer to the date of the high winds. The absence of the 8th from Table 2 implies that no swimming bears were seen on that flight.

It is interesting that in the interview, Monnett merely thinks it was on more than one flight that the four dead floating bears were seen (p25-26). By page 31 it becomes two or three flights. In his paper, Table 2 indicates that it was with four flights! You think he would remember his ground-breaking observations better than that. This also raises the question of how many transects were involved and/or how many kilometres were completed during the surveys when the live swimming bears were counted, compared to how many of the same were completed in obtaining the dead count. In this regard it is interesting to note that, whereas Table 1 has the flights finishing on the 18th, Table 2 has a 'dead' bear being counted on the 22nd, nine days after the high winds ended and two weeks after the 'four' bears were seen swimming on the transects.

Neither table provides any indication of which bears were seen along the transects and which ones weren't. There is even a note to that affect with Table 1. Table 2 demonstrably has the same problem because it records four dead polar bears with a superscript "a", when we are told that three were on transects. The presentation for these data is strange given that flying transects is supposed to represent the methodology for the surveys and for Monnett's special bear survival statistics. Also not provided is the number of transects completed and/or distances covered on given dates. Furthermore, dates when no swimming bears were observed, are simply omitted in Table 2. One doesn't know if the there were zero bears spotted during the flight or there was no flight that day.

Recall that for for their 25% survival conclusion, Monnett and Gleason limited their arithmetic (of profound global political significance) to sightings along the transects. One wonders how they later determined which bears were spotted during transect runs and which ones weren't. Certainly not from Tables 1 and 2. One asks, if they had the relevant data recorded, why did they omit the same from their paper?

There is also the question of how positively the 'dead' bears were identified. The following talks about the interview with the paper's co-author, Gleason.

Quote:
 
Gleason [the paper's co-author] says the airplane circled all dead polar bears to get a better look. On page 25 of the Monnett transcript, Monnett agrees, but then contradicts himself on page 29, when he says “I know some of them, we didn’t circle on. We just kept going. We, we identified them, um, you know, flying by.” Note that the paper says “Swimming and floating polar bears are difficult to see from the survey’s standard 457m altitude even under ideal conditions.”


Difficult to see but apparently not too difficult to diagnose! On page 25 of the interview, Monnett says they might have seen a 'fifth' dead bear but they couldn't go back to find it. Lucky, doing so could have brought the extrapolated survival rate down to 0%. And if, additionally, the 'fourth' one had been on a transect, the survival rate would have dropped from 0% down to -25%!

Gleason was asked why he took only (bad) photos of one 'dead bear' and no subsequent ones:

Quote:
 
ERIC MAY: So the first dead polar bear you observed, that's when you took the photos?

JEFFREY GLEASON: We're pretty sure that was the very first, yeah.

ERIC MAY: Then the subsequent one, you just didn't try?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Um-hm [yes].

JOHN MESKEL: Was this a significant thing at the time, to observe these dead polar bears?


He was asked why his whale photos were clear but not the bear photo:

Quote:
 
JEFFREY GLEASON: Yeah, those are just bowhead whale pictures.

ERIC MAY: Was this around the time you observed the dead polar bears, because this is pretty clear.

JEFFREY GLEASON: Yeah.

ERIC MAY: And I obviously have the dead polar bear photo. Why is this [whale photo] so much more clear than the polar bear shot that you took?


Here is the photo:

The investigators asked why the photo appeared to be manipulated:

Quote:
 
ERIC MAY: Did Mr. Monnett try to manipulate these photos to make it more clear?

JEFFREY GLEASON: Not that I'm aware of.

JOHN MESKEL: So was that you that was using that program, whatever it was you referred to, to try –

JEFFREY GLEASON: Yeah, like I said, it was just something on the computer, Paint or one of the – in the hopes of trying to make it clear. And it allows you to do some things, but I could never get it to where I thought it was worth including in the manuscript. And like I said, we took probably that file to an image processing place to see if they could enhance it.


Gleason was also challenged as to why the 2004 findings were not reflected in subsequent surveys - I believe that's still the case:

Quote:
 
ERIC MAY: Well, the reason I ask is because I did do some research on the sightings. And we found that through 2007, it appears there were no subsequent sightings of dead polar bears during the surveys conducted after your survey of 2004.


I told a friend at work, a software engineer, of this study and how it was based on the spotting of 'four' live bears at one time and 'three' dead ones at another time. I told him how that was extrapolated to conclude a 25% survival rate. He replied, "You're kidding?". His response wasn't rhetorical; it was a genuine query. I recall, decades ago, being driven back from Wollongong. There were two cars ahead of us. One proceeded straight ahead, as we did; the other turned left onto a side road. The driver, who must have been getting bored after numerous late-night Wollongong-Nowra runs, extrapolated and submitted the statistics as indicating that 33% of the traffic traveling south along the highway, turns onto that side road. He didn't write a paper on his study; he was being facetious and failed to consider Global Warming. It wasn't nearly so popular and profitable in those days.


Cheers,

Sean


Edited by Sean McHugh, Jan 16 2012, 08:42 AM.
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Chris Ho-Stuart
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I've not tried to quote and respond to everything; but this is still pretty long. I've tried in good faith to deal with what is important.

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

But this is the bottom line. From CNSNews.com:

Quote:
 
No Decline in Polar Bear Population

(CNSNews.com) - The Polar Bear Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organization of scientists that has attempted to monitor the global polar bear population since the 1960s, has issued a report indicating that there was no change in the overall global polar bear population in the most recent four-year period studied. The total number of polar bears is still thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000,” the group said in a press release published together with a report on the proceedings of its 15th meeting

20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide is exactly the same population estimate the group made following its 14th international meeting.

...


You've got the links to the actual report -- read that if you want to know what it really says.

What the report, and the press release, actually indicates is that evidence is mostly for decline in numbers; and also that the major risk is loss of habitat in the future.

The uncertainty in total numbers is sufficiently large that the total population estimate remains within about the same large range of numbers over a span of four years (20 to 25 thousand). The newspaper article takes this as a basis for saying the report indicates "no decline", or "no change" in overall population. That's just not accurate; it's not correct as to what the report is saying, it's misleading as to the nature of evidence, and it's invalid as an implication of those numbers.

To repeat what I said originally:
[indentblock]I think the major concern for a future prognosis is the loss of habitat due to the rapid and accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice. Hence the issues in my view are not so much with extrapolating the population trend, but with anticipating what is likely for the habitat in another thirty to forty years. This is the time frame within which the Arctic sea is likely to be mostly free of sea ice in the summer. Also, I think polar bears are a convenient and charismatic symbol; the drastic changes in the Arctic will (and do) impact more than just bears.[/indentblock]

The reports you mention only support this assessment. You may disagree with it yourself, of course; but the above summary continues to be how I see the science on the subject. If there are no drastic changes to the Arctic environment in coming decades, then polar bears should be fine; but that's not what the science is indicating on the matter -- though that is now moving into climate science.

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

Quote:
 
CHS: Mitch Taylor is a polar bear expert, though usually at odds with his most of colleagues. He's most definitely no climatologist!


Is Taylor an expert on polar bears or not? You have already said that he is. The invoking of his climate science differences constitutes ad hominem argument, if not bigotry.


He is a polar bear expert, as I have said. He is also at odds with many other polar bear experts on some matters relating directly to bears; experts do sometimes disagree within their area of expertise. But the biggest problem is outside his area of expertise, in his stance on climate science. This really is an important and substantive consideration for the workshop.

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

While we are on the subject, how about this photo that appeared in Science magazine, again showing a polar bear to be stranded at sea? It's a fake! And there was the photo in the Joe Romm page. You did caution him, but don't you see a pattern here of global-warming-agenda-driven misinformation and deception? Do you think it stops at photos of polar bears? Why would it?


I do try to correct errors and problems and distortions wherever I see them. Especially if they are made by someone who ought to be a more reliable source and who is making a reasonable effort to get the science right. I'll keep doing that.

I also try to acknowledge and fix my own errors as quickly as possible, with grateful thanks to anyone who can help me find them.

I see patterns alright, but let's not try to go straight to sweeping summaries of "sides". I try my best to consider each new publication or evidence or claim or image on its own intrinsic merits, no matter how it aligns with perceived "sides".

The image you mention was a collage used in Science magazine to illustrate a letter by 255 scientists. The problem was with Science editors, not with the scientists who wrote the letter. Furthermore, Science acknowledged that it was a poor choice of image, and published a retraction. You can see the letter here Climate Change and the Integrity of Science. (Science 7 May 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5979 pp. 689-690).

The image printed with the letter includes a link to the acknowledgement of error in the previous choice of illustration and need for correction, and a further link to the original poorly chosen image.

I agree it was a mistake to use the collage image; but I can't get too fussed over it since the issue was acknowledged and fixed promptly. THAT'S what I try to live up to. Making a mistake is something we all do; acknowledging and fixing it is less common.

The REAL point ought to be the letter itself. It's a very good letter that I'd be very happy to sign onto myself (though I would not be qualified to do so).

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

There it is again. The hunters themselves felt they were dismissed and they were angry about it. The provocative statement that Clark talks about is this:

Quote:
 
For example, in his introduction, Clark quotes Resolution Number One of the World Conservation Union’s Polar Bear Specialist Group: “That polar bear harvests can be increased on the basis of local and traditional knowledge only if supported by scientifically collected information.”


He is quoting from page 57 of the IUCN 2005 report. He continues:

Quote:
 
There is no follow-up resolution which says it should work the other way as well, that any wildlife management decisions made on the basis of scientifically collected information should be backed up by traditional knowledge.



I share the view in general (and not only in respect of polar bears) that local knowledge needs to be backed up by evidence in good scientific standing, but not conversely. Using local knowledge is a good thing; but it should be as a guide to be checked, and certainly not as a requirement for any conclusion.

That's my basic perspective for ANYTHING in trying to sort out what is going on, with ANY subject.

Native people the world over do often feel overrun and disempowered as scientists investigate things they care about; the spectre of imperialism lies in the background. Being sensitive to that is a good thing. The best outcomes occur when everyone is able to participate in the scientific process -- that means everyone empowered to share in using the best available tools; it does not mean giving undue weight to uncontrolled observation when it comes from local sources. This clash over how to answer questions about the world is the scientific method in a nutshell.

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM
Chris, those and your own words reveal that it never was really about the bears.


I'd put it as follows: it isn't only about bears and nothing else; it can't be. To that extent, sure, this is my position. You cannot, in a complex world, separate out the implications of other fields of science for a workshop on bears.

So to be precise, I think it REALLY IS about bears, and that the background to bears is all the other areas of science which may bear upon the context in which they live. Climate happens to be a big one.

You don't need to know all the answers on climate science to have a workshop on bears. But you sure as heck don't need to be distracted with nonsense having no scientific backing.

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

Quote:
 
CHS: This, of course, is going to be a major point where we disagree.


It is the whole point. I'm noticing that there and below, your suggested "focus" in the polar bear situation is via the lens of catastrophic man-made global warming - which is now being cited as a 'basic' given. If the supposed bear stress/decline evidence and argument is to require catastrophic Global Warming assumptions, perhaps that warrants extending the focus to again include the challenges to CAGW that I submitted in my last post.

May I remind of the most relevant items I raised? ...


I know many of these items already. My heart sinks somewhat here. Many things you say are simply untrue. But what we have is a bit like the "Gish Gallop" in creationist/evolution discussions. This is where a discussion ostensibly on one issue gets sidetracked with a sudden flurry of assertions and claims that would fall apart if taken individually.

Yes, I DO use the lens of climate science to look at the world, in the same way exactly as I use the lens of evolutionary biology, relativistic cosmology, conventional medicine, or any other field of science. If that is a problem -- and it is -- then we should look at this lens itself.

Can we have a new thread please, to focus specifically on one of these items? I have some hope that you and I may be able to make more real progress together than will generally occur in these types of discussion, given our history together. I'd like to see if we can sort out one what the science actually says on one specific point. Here are the items you mention, my paraphrase, and my bracketed comment.

  • Alarming Arctic melting in 1947. (Not so alarming.)
  • Melting in the Medieval Warming Period in the Arctic. (Huh?)
  • No further warming over the last decade and a half. (False.)
  • Why the Antarctic currently has a positive ice anomaly and has had a positive ice trend for over thirty years. (Land enclosed ocean vs ocean enclosed land.)
  • A recent NASA and University of Washington study on freshwater runoff in the Arctic. (Get the original report if you choose this!)
  • Dr. Pachauri speaking of something as "voodoo science". (Contrary to your links, Pachauri was NOT referring to the correction of the 2035 dating error; but to a report which was pretty much voodoo science. I've read it.)

I'd be very happy to look at any one of them, but I decline to write a long post saying what is wrong in each case. I've briefly given my unsubstantiated comment above; discussion would require me to back it up. But mercy please... one at a time!

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

Chris, if you are going to allow both sides of the debate at your site, you are going to get sceptics arguing what you label as "nutty science". It won't be persuasive submitting to them - or to me for that matter - that dissenting voices warrant dismissal essentially because they are dissenting. There are a lot more sceptics than staunch believers seem to think, and the number is growing. More and more people are seeing the science as far from settled and the 'consensus' as illusory.


I certainly hope to get active skeptical involvement, and I hope that claims from ANYONE get looked at robustly and backed up substantively when challenged. For this to occur, we need to maintain focus. That's the great benefit of a board like this; we can have threads on specific focused topics. There's also scope to have special forums for one-on-one debate, or run by individual moderators, either climate skeptics or supporters of the conventional science.

I urge you, again, to actually take one of your items and make it a topic to look at on its own immediate merits. I will not dismiss it just because it is dissenting.

Describing the lack of invitation to Mitch Taylor, you have shown it is basically because of his stance on climate science, and I concur. Our difference is that I think it is totally appropriate and you don't. This isn't a case of me dismissing him only because he is dissenting. It's a case of working scientists opting not to include him in a workshop because he is dissenting. For you and I to judge that fairly, we HAVE to move on to look at the meat of our disagreement -- the climate science itself.

We should be able to do that with mutual respect for persons, with good will, and with robust examination of the actual issue. But one issue at a time, please. Whether anyone shifts their perspective on climate science wholesale is best left to them in their own time; I see topic threads as places to look at individual issues substantively and robustly.

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What I said is true, Chris, and above I have drawn advance attention to supporting evidence. Please note that I specified that it was with publication of the Monnett/Gleason paper that the polar bear began to be used for the PR/alarmism


Some people would call the 2002 WFF reports on the polar bear and climate "alarmist". Deciding what is or isn't "alarmist" is too subjective -- it's not a useful word, in my view. I was content to show the M&G paper wasn't the start of a focus on polar bears and climate.

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Do you now see and agree to the remarkable consequences of Monnett's paper?


Oh for sure, I agree it got a lot of play -- to the surprise of the authors. It hit a chord, I guess. I'm just saying it was not actually the start of the polar bear and climate meme.

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But you look at the interviews for yourself, Chris. Monnett is told that he has been accused of scientific misconduct (p3) and that it relates to his statistics (p83).


Yes. This is why I think the investigation itself was probably a case of government interference and harassment. I'm still open on the impropriety changes, but the misconduct accusations were absurd. The scientific misconduct insinuations didn't have a prayer of flying with the scientific community in general. This is almost certainly why in public they continually emphasized the financial accusations. The impropriety claim looks thin, but it was at least plausible.

The interviews -- which I had already seen -- are bizarre. It was a fishing expedition by hacks who obviously do not use or understand science. They were a mile shy of what a real scientific misconduct issue looks like, conducted by criminal investigators who were like fish out of water.

Did you know it was was Monnett's lawyers who released those interviews? I still am willing to hear the other side; but the interviews as they stand do much more damage to the credibility of the investigation than to Monnett or Gleason. That's not just my view; that's the actual consequence following from the release of the interviews.

More disturbingly, this isn't isolated. There's a prior history of this kind of poorly founded bureaucratic interference and even harassment of scientists in BOEMRE who report work relating to climate change. How much credence to give it all is not clear to me; but what I find really bizarre is to see this spun as a case of government sponsored alarmism. It's precisely the reverse, an apparent bureaucratic distortion of science to minimize any "alarmism".

Sean McHugh
Jan 16 2012, 06:54 AM

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CHS: All that is beside the point, the journal article itself is not suspended or questioned or retracted.


That's not right, Chris. The paper, or more to the point, the supporting study, was most definitely questioned. That is overwhelmingly evident in the interviews of both Monnett and Gleason. That would reasonably be the case in examining whether the paper stood on its own merit or needed "highly inappropriate" assistance. As far as retraction goes, that would be like Christianity retracting the Easter story. Neither is ever going to happen.


Retractions happen all the time in science, when you can actually find a real cause. I have a long standing interest in good and bad in science, and I commend to you the blog: Retraction Watch.

When I say that the journal article is not suspended or questioned or retracted, I mean by people actually working on the science and with any standing to be taken seriously. The interviews were by criminal investigators having no relevant background, and it shows. Honest, it does; you're barking up the wrong tree entirely on this.

The article itself is fine. It does not claim "inerrancy"; that's just being stupid. This isn't religion; it's a pretty conventional journal article which only attracted attention because of the topic, not because of errors or bad science. Whatever nonsense went on in the interviews, it certainly came to nothing in the way of criticism, question or retraction of the research. The public face of the investigation is that it isn't about the article.

Cheers -- Chris
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Sean McHugh

Hi Chris,


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CHS: I've not tried to quote and respond to everything; but this is still pretty long. I've tried in good faith to deal with what is important.


I can understand that but I was surprised by your reiteration of your already registered views rather than addressing of the counterarguments from my last post.

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20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide is exactly the same population estimate the group made following its 14th international meeting.


You've got the links to the actual report -- read that if you want to know what it really says.


Thanks so much for the advice, Chris.

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CHS: What the report, and the press release, actually indicates is that evidence is mostly for decline in numbers; and also that the major risk is loss of habitat in the future.

The uncertainty in total numbers is sufficiently large that the total population estimate remains within about the same large range of numbers over a span of four years (20 to 25 thousand). The newspaper article takes this as a basis for saying the report indicates "no decline", or "no change" in overall population. That's just not accurate; it's not correct as to what the report is saying, it's misleading as to the nature of evidence, and it's invalid as an implication of those numbers.


From the 2005 IUCN report (14th meeting):

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"The total number of polar bears worldwide is estimated to be 20,000–25,000."


From the 2009 IUCN report (15th meeting):

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"The total number of polar bears worldwide is estimated to be 20,000 – 25,000."


How does one infer a declining global polar-bear population from that? If elsewhere, the 2009 report demonstrates (where?) that the global polar bear population has dropped since the earlier report, why is the same estimate (equiv: 22,500 +/-11.11%) supplied for both reports? I submit that, from the above numbers, one could safely say that statistically there is no decline in the total number of polar bears. The reporter didn't specify, 'statistically' but I don't consider that to be particularly bad as far as news reports go. I also don't see it as particularly misleading, given that the article prominently provides the 20,000 to 25,000 range for both the 2005 and the 2009 reports. I believe that this, from the ABC (the Government's taxpayer-funded propaganda arm), is regularly more misleading to the average listener. For example, the ABC basically tells us that Trenberth's "missing heat" has been found in the uncertainties:

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They found that once these uncertainties had been factored in, along with considerable short-term variations known to result from temperature, cloud cover and humidity changes associated with El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the measurements were found to be in broad agreement.

The analysis also showed that the Earth has been steadily accumulating energy at a rate of half a watt per square metre throughout the decade.


So not only does uncertainty deliver the sought numbers, it 'shows' the rate of heating. What a con!

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CHS: Mitch Taylor is a polar bear expert, though usually at odds with his most of colleagues. He's most definitely no climatologist!


Is Taylor an expert on polar bears or not? You have already said that he is. The invoking of his climate science differences constitutes ad hominem argument, if not bigotry.


CHS: He is a polar bear expert, as I have said. He is also at odds with many other polar bear experts on some matters relating directly to bears; experts do sometimes disagree within their area of expertise. But the biggest problem is outside his area of expertise, in his stance on climate science. This really is an important and substantive consideration for the workshop.


Not being a climate disciple allows Taylor to see actually a healthy bear population, something too uncomfortable for CAGW political correctness. Whatever the subject, once CAGW lens is applied, the view is always distorted, amplified and bad. The badness has degrees that range from, 'alarming', to 'worse than we thought' to , 'happening even faster than we thought'. Having seen too much evidence of how detractors get censored - including my own experience - I don't for a second buy the snow-white picture being painted. Anyway, didn't I provide evidence that climate wasn't even discussed at the conference from which Taylor was excluded? Taylor, the polar bear expert of 30 years, was excluded from the polar bear conference for being a climate heretic. That is not surprising. What is surprising is that it was actually admitted in writing.

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While we are on the subject, how about this photo that appeared in Science magazine, again showing a polar bear to be stranded at sea? It's a fake! And there was the photo in the Joe Romm page. You did caution him, but don't you see a pattern here of global-warming-agenda-driven misinformation and deception? Do you think it stops at photos of polar bears? Why would it?


CHS: I do try to correct errors and problems and distortions wherever I see them.


But you see no problems with the Monnett paper.

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CHS: I also try to acknowledge and fix my own errors as quickly as possible, with grateful thanks to anyone who can help me find them.


I am sure that no one here would try resisting, if it were shown that we forgot to carry the one, even if conceding meant ditching the conclusions. There is nothing to be gained in trying to deny absolute errors. It's the harder tests that count, ones where you think you might be able to tough it out.

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CHS: I see patterns alright, but let's not try to go straight to sweeping summaries of "sides". I try my best to consider each new publication or evidence or claim or image on its own intrinsic merits, no matter how it aligns with perceived "sides".


The "sides" aren't just perceived, Chris. Even you refer to the sceptics as, 'deniers' and as being proponents of 'nutty science'. There are most definitely sides and you are one of the ones doing the segregating. The demarcation will make it more interesting when the winners and losers are finally determined. I expect there will be a rush for the door. I gained a lot of respect for you during our mutual time in ARC, but I don't believe that you are showing yourself as impartial in evaluating climate evidence as you would like to imagine. I don't pretend to be unbiased; I have seen climate science exhibiting too much bad form. I do not trust the science or its political advocacy.

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CHS: The image you mention was a collage used in Science magazine to illustrate a letter by 255 scientists.


'Collage' sounds much nicer than 'fake'. Same thing though. It is so ironic, yet befitting, that that photo was used for a letter titled: "255 Members of the National Academy of Sciences Defend Climate Science Integrity".

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CHS: The problem was with Science editors, not with the scientists who wrote the letter.


The magazines are a big part of the machine and a big part of the problem. With the Monnett paper, for instance, the article was published despite having had bad peer reviews. More on that later. Editor review is the review that counts. The 'collage' that you speak of, was an illustration of the editor's loyalty to the cause. You might wish to challenge my choice for the last word of the last sentence.

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CHS: Furthermore, Science acknowledged that it was a poor choice of image, and published a retraction. You can see the letter here Climate Change and the Integrity of Science. (Science 7 May 2010: Vol. 328 no. 5979 pp. 689-690).


It was retracted because, once discovered, there was nowhere to hide. There was no wiggle room. They had no choice. Those sort of retractions are cheap.

Of the three photos I presented, the one you have not addressed is the primary one, the one that was most deceptive in terms of fooling the public. It was featured by Al Gore, went worldwide to all the major media outlets and was seen by umpteen millions. Aided by Monnett's paper, it became the poster child of global warming . But that wasn't the only reason I gave that photo primary focus. It was one of the myth-busting items in the National Post (Canada) article that you, out of hand, dismissed as, "silly".

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CHS: I agree it was a mistake to use the collage image; but I can't get too fussed over it since the issue was acknowledged and fixed promptly. THAT'S what I try to live up to. Making a mistake is something we all do; acknowledging and fixing it is less common.


The collage wasn't a mistake; it was a trick. There are lots of tricks in climate science.

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The REAL point ought to be the letter itself. It's a very good letter that I'd be very happy to sign onto myself (though I would not be qualified to do so).


I read it and found it to be full of the usual scientific self-gratification and harmonious singing of climate chorus lines. They say they are deeply disturbed by the political assaults on scientists, presumably by 'deniers'. Poor things! This is what appeared in either Tom Nelson or Climate Depot a couple of days earlier (than my writing this):

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LORD LAWSON had barely removed his microphone when the vitriolic attacks began.


In a selection of the printable insults Lord Lawson was described as “a rabid climate change denier”, “a liar” and “a lone nutcase”. One listener even posted: “Why isn’t he dead yet?”

There has even been the suggestion that sceptics be imprisoned and executed. Ultra-prominent climate high priest, James Hansen of NASA GISS, wants sceptics tried for crimes against humanity and imprisoned for life. Here is what they want to do to us . We must be winning for them to be that angry.

And be invited to watch this lovely little video. No pressure of course.

Sorry, they just keep coming. This was linked in Tom Nelson today:

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every time someone dies as a result of floods in Bangladesh, an airline executive should be dragged out of his office and drowned.

- George Monbiot


As any follower of the subject would know, Monbiot is one of Global Warming's highest of priests.

Just one more for today. David Roberts, a blogger who has the green website Gristmill, which is associated with the online environmental magazine Grist, wants Nuremburg type trials for 'deniers'.

And where do they get off complaining about politics? Politics, along with political correctness, has been the sugar daddy to the parasites.Without it, they don't exist. They allude to Big Oil funding the 'deniers'. That is as funny as, "It's worse than we thought!". The opposite is the case - a thousand times over at least (no exaggeration)! Global warming advocacy has billions of dollars thrown at it. If one wants to do a study on the mating habits of black swans, make it a study on the effects of climate change on the mating habits of black swans.

The letter invokes 'consensus' which does not belong to scientific method:

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This process is inherently adversarial—scientists build reputations and gain recognition not only for supporting conventional wisdom, but even more so for demonstrating that the scientific consensus is wrong and that there is a better explanation.


But we have learned that peer review is corrupted in climate science. One learns that it is very dangerous to be seen as damaging or adversarial to the cause:

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Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.


Climate Science's pal-review is anything but adversarial. As an example, when I first criticised Monnett's study to you, it was without realising (or perhaps, not remembering) that the paper was reviewed by his wife and someone who was indebted to him. Back to the "very good" letter. Here's more 'consensus' appeal:

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Even as these are overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, fame still awaits anyone who could show these theories to be wrong.


Like hell! As evidenced by experiences and the ClimateGate emails and sceptics anecdotes, what "awaits" the scientific detractor is a career ruined. The same sort of treatment applies to magazines and/or their editors that show any disloyalty to the cause. Since ClimateGate, things are slowly changing, but there is a long way to go. Here is email 1089318616 from Phil Jones:

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"I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is !".


This page shows an exchange of emails that are plotting to have the previously mentioned editor, Dr. Chris de Freitas, removed for publishing an inconvenient paper. The whole sequence is so long, that the page writer had to break the article, "Climategate 2 and Corruption of Peer-Review" into two parts. The following is from Part II:

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It could be through boycotting the journals, but that might leave them [them??? - people who disagree] even freer to promulgate misinformation. To my mind that is not as good as getting the offending editors removed [they want to determine who can and cannot edit a journal?] and proper processes in place. Pressure or ultimatums to the publishers might work, or concerted lobbying by other co-editors or leading authors
.

That's part 3b from Pittock. Phil Jones replies:

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Mike Hulme is moving towards your 3b course of action and I’ll talk to Hans von Storch, who although he says he’s not the Chief Editor is thought of by many to be this de facto. 3c is possible through contacts we all have with editors at Science and Nature.


So, Chris, are you starting to get the idea of what I think about these precious 255 scientists, their crocodile tears and their self-righteousness?

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CHS: Native people the world over do often feel overrun and disempowered as scientists investigate things they care about; the spectre of imperialism lies in the background. Being sensitive to that is a good thing. The best outcomes occur when everyone is able to participate in the scientific process -- that means everyone empowered to share in using the best available tools; it does not mean giving undue weight to uncontrolled observation when it comes from local sources. This clash over how to answer questions about the world is the scientific method in a nutshell.


I was showing that the comments by Clarke, the person in the Yukon running a forum trying to pacify things with the locals. It was his words that I cited because his words were remarkably close to those in the National Post article, the article hat you dismissed as "silly". That was my counterpoint. The words in National Post were essentially an echo of what Clarke said and Clarke was there for damage control. He was not there representing scepticism or cynicism.

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CHS: I'd put it as follows: it isn't only about bears and nothing else; it can't be. To that extent, sure, this is my position. You cannot, in a complex world, separate out the implications of other fields of science for a workshop on bears.


I have yet to see evidence that factoring in global-warming science leads to more accurate predictions. The opposite reliably appears to be the case. Science, based on 'global warming, seems to be failing everywhere. There is the growing Antarctic ice. The NOAA's own data shows that the US has cooled over the last decade and a half. Ditto HadCRUT for the globe. Did AGW models predict the very long warming pause? Did any predict the current deadly winter in Europe? The were many predictions that global warming meant Australia would never again get the sort of rain we have received over the last two years. Now global warming is being blamed for flooding. The UK Met Office, with their 30 million pound supercomputer and climate models, predicted warm winter after warm winter (surprise, surprise). Well, they turned out to be brutally cold and the public was furious at being very unprepared. The Barrier Reef is not dying; rather it is thriving. The Himalayan glaciers aren't to disappear in a few decades.. The total stats for polar bears are not showing a decline. Cyclones and tornadoes aren't increasing. Malaria doesn't care about CO2. Tuvalu has NOT been evacuated (as reported) due to rising seas and islands there have actually grown - as has the gross deception. One could go on.The false predictions for global warming come off a fast green conveyor belt that has a ringing alarm bell for each item.

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CHS: So to be precise, I think it REALLY IS about bears, and that the background to bears is all the other areas of science which may bear upon the context in which they live. Climate happens to be a big one.


So far, the numbers don't appear to support that concern, not even the numbers from the IUCN. The 2009 estimate of 20,000 to 25,000 bears was the same as for 2005. There is evidence that the bear population is growing.

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"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s.


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CHS: You don't need to know all the answers on climate science to have a workshop on bears. But you sure as heck don't need to be distracted with nonsense having no scientific backing.


That needs "backing", Chris. Otherwise, it's just ad hominem.
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CHS: I know many of these items already. My heart sinks somewhat here. Many things you say are simply untrue. But what we have is a bit like the "Gish Gallop" in creationist/evolution discussions. This is where a discussion ostensibly on one issue gets sidetracked with a sudden flurry of assertions and claims that would fall apart if taken individually.


The Chris Ho-Stuart, that I remember from ARC, would have been able to take care of Gish.

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CHS: Yes, I DO use the lens of climate science to look at the world, in the same way exactly as I use the lens of evolutionary biology, relativistic cosmology, conventional medicine, or any other field of science. If that is a problem -- and it is -- then we should look at this lens itself.


Funny how the natural sciences managed for so long without the boutique morbid green spectacles.

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CHS: Can we have a new thread please, to focus specifically on one of these items? I have some hope that you and I may be able to make more real progress together than will generally occur in these types of discussion, given our history together. I'd like to see if we can sort out one what the science actually says on one specific point. Here are the items you mention, my paraphrase, and my bracketed comment.


Bracketed comments still count as comments. But that's not my only reason for responding (please see below).

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CHS: Alarming Arctic melting in 1947. (Not so alarming.)


Not alarming to you in 2012, but that is understandable. The contemporary writer seemed alarmed in 1947. And anyway, what explains the 1947 (and 1920s) Arctic melting?

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CHS: Melting in the Medieval Warming Period in the Arctic. (Huh?)


Sorry, I really don't get the, "Huh?".

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CHS: No further warming over the last decade and a half. (False.)


I'll start a separate thread on that one.
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CHS:Why the Antarctic currently has a positive ice anomaly and has had a positive ice trend for over thirty years. (Land enclosed ocean vs ocean enclosed land.)


I don't see how that explains why the ice has been growing for thirty years. Anyway, your explanation is at odds with Gore, Hansen and Trenberth going to the Antarctic to not see ice. And apparently they believe that January is winter there!

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This winter we will be talking about Antarctica as part of our ‘Living on Thin Ice’ campaign which will focus on how people around the globe are being impacted by the melting of the world’s ice,” [emphasis by SM]


They have been described as The Three Stooges. They provide illustration that they deserve it.

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CHS: A recent NASA and University of Washington study on freshwater runoff in the Arctic. (Get the original report if you choose this!) [emphasis SM]


I was actually going to resist reciprocal comments in this list. That's until I saw another unsolicited instruction. Anyway, it appears I can't access the whole paper without subscribing. I won't be doing that. However, one doesn't need to reproduce the whole paper to demonstrate that the study attributes melting of Arctic sea ice to continental freshwater runoff.

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CHS: Dr. Pachauri speaking of something as "voodoo science". (Contrary to your links, Pachauri was NOT referring to the correction of the 2035 dating error; but to a report which was pretty much voodoo science. I've read it.)


It was not a simple "dating error", like a typo, Chris. It was IPCC science. It represented the fantastic rate of melting they assigned in their report. It remained in the AR4 document for two years before the IPCC was forced to withdraw it. It was the sensational predictions of the IPCC that prompted Raina's paper:

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“But all along I knew that this was not based on facts. During my 50 years of research and several expeditions to the region, I never found anything as sensational as was predicted in the IPCC, but no one heard me then.”


Pachauri was slow to remove the claim. He left it there until after the Copenhagen summit.

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The IPCC's chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, has hit back [at Raina's study], denouncing the Indian government report as "voodoo science" lacking peer review. He adds that "we have a very clear idea of what is happening" in the Himalayas.


Meaning, a very clear picture of the glaciers melting so fast, that they could disappear by 2035! The 'voodoo' scientist has studied glaciers for 50 years, has written scores of scientific papers and three books. The IPCC warned us of the Himalayan glaciers melting by 2035. Raina's paper basically said, "That's not going to happen" (my words). I think I'll take the 'voodoo', Chris. You know, you are the only one I know who extends such succour to the IPCC on this matter. So, let's see - that's, "nutty science" for Taylor and "voodoo science" for Raina, but thumbs up for Pachauri and Monnett.

Update: Here is some supporting "voodoo" from Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, as reported by The Guardian:
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The Himalayas and nearby peaks have lost no ice in past 10 years, study shows

"The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero."


The Guardian, by the way, is known for its AGW advocacy.

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CHS: I certainly hope to get active skeptical involvement, and I hope that claims from ANYONE get looked at robustly and backed up substantively when challenged. For this to occur, we need to maintain focus. That's the great benefit of a board like this; we can have threads on specific focused topics. There's also scope to have special forums for one-on-one debate, or run by individual moderators, either climate skeptics or supporters of the conventional science.


I have had a couple of formal debates at IIDB. They were quite strict. Disparaging comments toward the opponent resulted in the whole host sentence being deleted and a warning issued. I forget how many warnings there were before a forfeit occurred. I didn't agree with all of the moderators' citations.

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CHS: I urge you, again, to actually take one of your items and make it a topic to look at on its own immediate merits. I will not dismiss it just because it is dissenting.


Yes, I have. You can drop the other items as you wish.

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CHS: Describing the lack of invitation to Mitch Taylor, you have shown it is basically because of his stance on climate science, and I concur. Our difference is that I think it is totally appropriate and you don't. This isn't a case of me dismissing him only because he is dissenting. It's a case of working scientists opting not to include him in a workshop because he is dissenting. For you and I to judge that fairly, we HAVE to move on to look at the meat of our disagreement -- the climate science itself.


I agree with the last part of the last sentence. Regardless of the reliability of climate science, I still believe that Taylor should have had input at the conference. I believe that his exclusion is explained more by the ClimateGate culture and groupthink, than by academic integrity.

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What I said is true, Chris, and above I have drawn advance attention to supporting evidence. Please note that I specified that it was with publication of the Monnett/Gleason paper that the polar bear began to be used for the PR/alarmism…


CHS: Some people would call the 2002 WFF reports on the polar bear and climate "alarmist". Deciding what is or isn't "alarmist" is too subjective -- it's not a useful word, in my view. I was content to show the M&G paper wasn't the start of a focus on polar bears and climate.


I feel we have gone away from the point. The actual matter that was being laboured, was not resolved. The key part of "PR/alarmism" was the "PR" bit. Recall that after I said that Monnett's paper was responsible for the PR/alarmism and the public (P) selling of the plight of drowning polar bears, you said, it simply wasn't true. In response I provided several items of evidence showing, overwhelmingly, that Monnett's works is what brought the supposed tragedy of the drowning polar bears to the public attention and made it a popular icon of the climate cause.

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Do you now see and agree to the remarkable consequences of Monnett's paper?


CHS: Oh for sure, I agree it got a lot of play -- to the surprise of the authors. It hit a chord, I guess.


It didn't just happen to strike a chord and its usefulness to the climate change cause did not come as a surprise. Both were the agenda:

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Eric May: Okay. Dr. Monnett, here's an email sent to you from Jeffrey Gleason, dated September 28th, 2004, which was written approximately eight days after your observations of the dead polar bears. Can you please read this email out loud, please. Charles Monnett: "Chuck, just got off the phone with my co-supervisor from my Ph.D. who is an Arctic ecologist and I mentioned the dead polar bears. He thought we might be onto something with a global warming angle.


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CHS:I'm just saying it was not actually the start of the polar bear and climate meme.


You said my statement was "simply untrue". It wasn't and that is why I dealt with the matter at such length.

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CHS: The [Monnett/Gleason] interviews -- which I had already seen -- are bizarre.


I'm confused, Chris. If you had already seen transcripts of the interviews, why did you originally say the science wasn't under scrutiny? Even the most cursory reading reveals that it was.

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CHS: It was a fishing expedition by hacks who obviously do not use or understand science. They were a mile shy of what a real scientific misconduct issue looks like, conducted by criminal investigators who were like fish out of water.


You speak in the past tense but it appears that more has come to light. It seems that, in a second interview with Gleason, it was charged that others saw dead bears in the water days before Monnett and Gleason did - IOW before the storm that supposedly killed the three bears. If that is so, it blows the flotsam of their 'study' out of the water.

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CHS: Did you know it was was Monnett's lawyers who released those interviews? I still am willing to hear the other side; but the interviews as they stand do much more damage to the credibility of the investigation than to Monnett or Gleason. That's not just my view; that's the actual consequence following from the release of the interviews.


The interviews raised some serious and awkward questions. I presented those and my own criticisms (at length), in my last post. None if that has actually been acknowledged, let alone addressed. I will discuss that matter later.

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CHS: More disturbingly, this isn't isolated. There's a prior history of this kind of poorly founded bureaucratic interference and even harassment of scientists in BOEMRE who report work relating to climate change. How much credence to give it all is not clear to me; but what I find really bizarre is to see this spun as a case of government sponsored alarmism. It's precisely the reverse, an apparent bureaucratic distortion of science to minimize any "alarmism".


AGW advocates shouldn't complain about bureaucracy. The Global Warming industry lives on bureaucracy. Without it, it dies.

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As far as retraction goes, that would be like Christianity retracting the Easter story. Neither is ever going to happen.


CHS: Retractions happen all the time in science, when you can actually find a real cause. I have a long standing interest in good and bad in science, and I commend to you the blog: Retraction Watch.


I scanned 15 back pages before I found a something on Global Warming. I was surprised to find that . . . but not for long. It appears that the editor of 'Remote Sensing' resigned over his allowing a sceptical article to be published. Is that what you wanted me to find, Chris? It well supports what I have written above about how the global-warming advocacy valve still functions and shows how climate obedience and loyalty are required of science editors.
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CHS: When I say that the [Monnett] journal article is not suspended or questioned or retracted, I mean by people actually working on the science and with any standing to be taken seriously.


No, Chris. I'll be starting another thread on this and showing, that in a second interview, Monnett said that the people he originally nominated as the peer reviewers (first interview) were not the peer reviewers. Because of the heat being applied over his steering Derocher a $1.1 million grant, Monnett was now trying to distance Derocher from the peer review process. In his second interview, Monnett retracted the list of "peer reviewers" that he submitted in his first interview. Emails revealed Monnett and Derocher discussing the paper and the grant on the same day! He said that the actual peer reviewers were anonymous and that they are the ones who evaluated the science before the paper went to the journal. Those three reviews weren't flattering and two were very critical. They challenged the lack of information, criticised the assumed cause of death of the bears and said the extrapolations were, "risky", "dubious", "meaningless" and "not supported". Isn't that what I have been saying? The fact that the paper still not only made it through but became climate Scripture, makes my point rather than yours.

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CHS: The interviews were by criminal investigators having no relevant background, and it shows. Honest, it does; you're barking up the wrong tree entirely on this.


There is plenty that is wrong with Monnett's polar-bear paper. Discrediting the detractors won't suffice in removing those problems. I intend to add more material and distribute a rebuttal to several sites.

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CHS: The article itself is fine.


Please, Chris.

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CHS: It does not claim "inerrancy"; that's just being stupid.


Not only is that an unacceptable remark, it is premised on something I didn't say. Here is your comment, followed by my reply:

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CHS: It [the article] seems perfectly okay.


SMc: I do not see inerrancy.


I believe it shows that my response was not addressing what the article said of itself, but what you said of it. You said it was, "perfectly okay" (emphasis mine). The article has been shown to be not "perfectly okay". It has many problems, problems that I presented at your request/challenge. We now find out that they are the same problems that the peer reviews (not his cheer reviewers) saw. How long can you persist in saying that the paper is perfectly fine, Chris?

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CHS: This isn't religion;


Then why is everything a sign (floods, drought, snow, no snow, earthquakes, windstorms etc, etc, etc)? Why will we (in Australia) be buying carbon indulgences? Why are we told by climate evangelists, who live opulent resource-demanding lifestyles, that the rest of must curb our greedy ways? Why do we have AGW Armageddon prophets? Why the string of failed predictions? Why do believers need to label non-believers as climate infidels ('deniers')? Why does one hear calls for climate Inquisitions, with imprisonment or execution for unbelievers? Why was the Cuncun climate conference (2010) opened with a prayer to Tim Flannery's god, the Mayan goddess Gaia? But you are right, Chris, it isn't religion proper; it's quasi-religion, a very similar cultivated societal psychological condition.

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CHS: it's a pretty conventional journal article . . .


If that's become the standard it might explain why science receives disrespect these days. Too many reports of stupid studies have become the norm. Studies like this one from New Scientist:

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Carbon dioxide encourages risky behaviour in clownfish


And like this one:
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Geriatric wheat caused by climate change


And this one is straight off the Climate Bible Conveyor Belt (emphasis SM).

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Climate change a fundamental health risk: academic <Armageddon snipped>


Academic fundamentalism is right. I think the public is fed up with these climate prophets. Unfortunately the cheer-squad media haven't woken up to that yet. Of course it isn't only climate hysteria that inundates us. SARS and Bird Flu come to mind.

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CHS: it's a pretty conventional journal article which only attracted attention because of the topic, not because of errors or bad science. Whatever nonsense went on in the interviews, it certainly came to nothing in the way of criticism, question or retraction of the research.


How about the article's contents and all the problems I pointed out, problems that you requested? Several of those problems were revealed in the 'nonsense' interviews. I'll assume that time and post length is the problem preventing you from responding to any of those points. Given the time and effort I have put much into examining it (in conjunction with the interviews), I will, as I said, start a separate thread on the Monnett/Gleason paper. It won't be addressed to anyone in particular, just for anyone who is interested in reading or responding

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CHS:. . . it certainly came to nothing in the way of criticism, question or retraction of the research.


Oh but it has. I presented that above. That it still got through shows how soft and climate-change-friendly the system has become. Monnett and Gleason were alerted to its problems with the peer review, but they relied on the global-warming gold pass to get it through. It didn't get criticised by the cheer squad that Monnett originally nominated as the peer reviewers, but that is hardly surprising. As for subsequent peer criticism, the quietness isn't too difficult to explain. As confirmed in the ClimateGate emails, groupthink is demanded (recalling Taylor). Doubts are only expressed in private:
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<0714> [Phil] Jones: Getting people we know and trust [into IPCC] is vital – hence my comment about the tornadoes group.

<1939> Thorne/MetO: Observations do not show rising temperatures throughout the tropical troposphere unless you accept one single study and approach and discount a wealth of others. This is just downright dangerous. We need to communicate the
uncertainty and be honest. Phil, hopefully we can find time to discuss these further if necessary [...]

<2884> Wigley: Mike, The Figure you sent is very deceptive [...] there have been a number of dishonest presentations of model results by individual authors and by IPCC [...]


Now who is Mike and what's his dodgy 'Figure'? No prizes given.

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CHS: The public face of the investigation is that it isn't about the [Monnett] article.


Why do you refer to, "public face"? Are you there conceding that, contrary to your previous position, the investigation was very interested in the Monnett/Gleason science?

Cheers,

Sean


Edited by Sean McHugh, Feb 12 2012, 09:16 PM.
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