Bishop Hill Polar bears
Aug 7, 2013 Climate: WG2 I was just on Radio 5 to talk about the Guardian's "polar bear dies of climate change" article. I was up against Greenpeace's John Sauven. I think I was better read on the subject than he was.
I liked this tweet from 4d2b
Easy victory for @aDissentient over Greenpeace spox re polar bears on @bbc5live just now.
and this one from Barry Woods:
AM: I read the report it says computer models. - greenpeace: andrew should read the report, AM: I said I read the report!!
There are a couple of points I should probably follow up on. The bear was found 150 miles from where they have seen it in previous years and the Guardian says this represents "an unusual movement away from its normal range". However, given that polar bears normally range over hundreds of miles, this doesn't quite seem to stack up.
I'll try to upload the audio when it's available.
Bishop Hill
The audio file is here.
Reader Comments (105)
Given the frenzy that surrounds any event that can be torqued into a validation of the catastrophist narrative, I'm sure you will be able to supply citations.
Once upon a time there was a single tree single tree in Yamal and now we have a single polar bear in Svalbard. These guys would be great in Marketing.
In the Radio Times dated from 10 to 16 Aug:
On Sunday 11 Aug
10.30 p.m. to 11.20 p.m. on BBC4
Polar Bears on top of the World
Natural History film comparing the fortunes of polar bears with grizzlies by following 2 families in the wild. As the Arctic warms up, the creatures habitats are beginning to overlap, causing the animals to compete for food and space and in some cases interbreed.
Might be worth watching if I have nothing better to do!
Ben Pile's blog link reveals the dubious, perhaps even duplicitous, foundations of the report in question.
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2011/12/the-polar-bear-affair-part-1001.html
I guess being supercilious and sardonic must be good for career progress in the peculiar but lucrative profession of fundraising through fearmongering. But those characteristics don't come over well in a radio discussion especially when being superficial. Two-nil for the Bish - 1 point for substance, 1 point for style.
I am very sorry to report this, but I think the Bishop did not do anything to help anyone understand the problem. I have been coming here for years, and not posted before. I have posted on WUWT under the same name. People who wanted to believe were told by the greenpiss guy that this is in line with models, and papers and all the regular BS. The Bishop responded that Polar Bears had thrived in the past, and should be ok now.
How about mentioning that the current sea ice in the arctic is the best for years. How about the global temps are not up in the last 10, 15, 16,17, 20, 200, 500 years? How about Polar bears are doing fine thank you very much?
Refer to all the science and scientific papers you like but a good soundbite wins every time.
The Greenpiss guy won hands down. Sorry.
Well Roy, you and me we've had a few hours to think about what we might have said. I'd guess the Bish would have made a dozen more telling points if he'd had that luxury (and somehow found an opportunity to make them amidst the interruptions!). As it was, he made it three good points that I can recall: 1. polar bears have survived warm spells such as the the warmest phase in our Holocene interglacial 2. where polar bear populations have been counted, they are, all but one, clearly increasing 3. the claim that retreating ice must mean fewer polar bears is the basis for a computer model of their populations and the basis for claims of mostly decreasing numbers. Now this hypothesis is just what Greenpeace and their like dearly want to believe and so they enter a virtual world in which such claims are the stuff of their reality. Sauven's input was as a voice from that world.
I agree with Roy UK. It must be tough to think quickly on your feet in that environment particularly when confronted with a smarmy, condescending, know nothing with an ax to grind. As Roy said the weakness in the Greenpeace Argument is current ice levels and the actual polar bear demographics. Andrew was correct about the latter but his point was severely diluted by starting with the Holocene optima. It was a case of needing to follow the KISS principle.
I get my information from this polar bear science site. They are convinced it was a set-up and the photographer was called in when the tracker stopped moving.
http://polarbearscience.com/2013/08/07/ian-stirlings-latest-howler-the-polar-bear-who-died-of-climate-change/#more-2526
Ivor Ward
Here's the transcript:
https://sites.google.com/site/mytranscriptbox/home/20130807_r5
Soundbites rule the media, where low information listeners attend. A simple statement such as "some models predict decreasing polar bears, but observations confirm stable or rising populations" would have made more of an impression. Still, full marks for descending into warmist territory and getting through without making a fool of yourself, Andrew, while Mr. Watermelon made quite a fool of himself, comparing your stance as equal to belief in a square earth, as he did. And it is always simple to look back and "perform" better than the warrior in the arena. It is easier to whisper words of advice from cover, than to risk all at the point of attack.
A brief and ultimately pointless/depressing exchange. One the one hand, a clear and exceedingly smug activist – oddly unable to pronounce the word Arctic, which he consistently called the Artic – on the other the Bish, who sounded exasperated and flustered.
It advanced neither cause beyond a vague reinforcement that something horrible is happening in the Artic (sic) and that we must all be to blame, a notion the Bish, worthy though he otherwise is, was unable to counter beyond a certain understandable spluttering.
On the whole, far from enlightening. And definitely a waste of time.
To date there has never been a polar bear & global warming scare story that has survived scrutiny. Yet they keep trying. Follow the money.
Just today I visited the "Grotte di Troiana" which are extensive caves about 10 km inland from Borgo St Spirito in the Italian riviera. 10,000 years ago the region was inhabited by indigenous bears up to 3m in height. This was at the height of the last Ice Age. The bears had to hibernate for 4-5 months months during the winter months when temperatures reached -40C outside. Many young and old bears perished each winter and hundreds of bones have been found next to their hibernation spot in the cave. Today temperatures rarely drop below zero. It is the cold that kills - not warmth. Early man also lived in these caves faring little better,
@John Shade. I can see where you are coming from. Greenpiss people will cheer their guy. We will cheer our guy. But this is radio. Most people are not from Greenpiss and never visited this site. The listeners KNOW that polar bears are endangered because greenpiss has told them a million times before. They will never, ever, go and check out some Holocene minimum paper proving that polar bears are fine. But the greenpiss guy knows that, he can quote papers until he is green in the face, no one checks if he is right, everyone knows global warming/climate change/weather wierding is right.. Global warming is killing polar bears, see the 1749 study by green et al, which proves it (people believe what they want to believe). The Bish needs to call him out. KISS as the previous poster said. Call him a liar. Ask him to prove it was global warming, ask him if the virology tests were done, ask him if a blood test was done. Anything, but quote a paper about the Holocene warming period.
I apologise to my host. I know nothing of the paper you quoted, or the holocene minimum/warming period.. I know little about you. But I know you are able to stand up for me and stop people like the greenpiss guy from telling lies on national radio. And BTW they do it knowing that there is not a d*mn thing I can do about their lies, because I have complained to the BBC on many occasions and never had a complaint go past the front desk...
Susan Crockford has a scathing takedown of the "starving polar bear" report over at Polar Bear Science:
http://polarbearscience.com/2013/08/07/ian-stirlings-latest-howler-the-polar-bear-who-died-of-climate-change/
The key graph:
I suggest this is what really happened: the polar bear biologists working in Svalbard earlier this year knew this bear was going to die back in April when they captured him – they simply waited, with a photographer on hand, until he died. It was an orchestrated photo-op.
Her analysis:
The fact that the bear was onshore in April, available for capture by polar bear biologists, is a red flag. He should not have left the ice this early. He should have been out on the ice hunting seals. The ice may have pulled away from the shore but there was no compelling reason for him to go onshore if he was healthy and still successfully hunting – he just had to stay on the ice. He must have been sick or dying of old age.
As they say, read the whole thing!
Curt;
Well that was quick - my post at 10:11
As well as surviving the Holocene optimum, polar bears made it through the last interglacial when it was markedly hotter and the Arctic was ice-free.
Polar Bear Science also has a good take-down of some of the methodology used for counting bears: it is redolent of "tree-ring science".
Afterthought...
Are Fox's Glacier Mints still around? If so, do they still have that logo of the bear balancing on a mint/chunk of ice? Might be time for a re-design!
SandyS,
Many reports of this death push the 'polar bears catch seals from sea ice' but they also catch them on land as you've found, they also pinch young walrus, consume dead animals and fish that wash ashore (including whales) and occasionally eat each other. They seem like fairly adaptable creatures. They don't even mind when we watch them eating.
The photographer who took the picture has a website and his images from his trip to Svalbard are in a gallery. The images of the polar bear begin on this page.
Please see below - W(iggle) W(affle) F(udge) polar bear population page on their WWF web site, the way I read it is that their own conclusions and explanations on this page back up Andrews position to the hilt.
Most of the ice area has either insufficient data or populations increasing and less than a third of the area showing slightly reducing populations.
The most interesting comment from the page is-
The status of polar bear populations has been assessed at both national and international level, and 7 of 19 of the World's polar bear sub-populations are found to be declining in number, with trends in two linked to reductions in sea ice.
Biodiversity - Status and Trends of Polar Bears (2011)
ONLY 2 LINKED TO SEA ICE - Hoist by one’s own petard I believe ( meaning- Injured by the device that you intended to use to injure others.)
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/wildlife/polar_bear/population/
Roy UK:
Andrew didn't quote from a paper. Thanks for your opinion.
Back in WW2 the press in the UK announced the arrivals of every convoy, listing the supplies landed due to the pertinence to the well being of the nation.
Earlier this year The Guardian heralded the arrival of a tanker from Qatar announcing:-
"UK gas supply pressure eased with arrival of tanker from Qatar"
At the time I thought this might be first of many such announcements, it was not. It must have only been pertinent to that particular day in March 2013?
Yet again I wonder about announcements of potentially recurring significant issues. Are we to be greeted each morn with a Guardian list of the polar bears to have perished over the previous 24 hrs?
Will there be a role of honour? With the obvious significance of the demise of this one bear, we can only hope that the Guardian will post full confirmed numbers of the fallen on a daily basis, but obviously not named until next of kind have been informed :-)
Perhaps the bear died of exhaustion due to being hunted by Vikings from Greenland?
Warming causes Vikings at numerous locations inside the Arctic circle.
Why is a guy from Greenpeace on radio? He should "go away" and climb something?
shub
"Why is a guy from Greenpeace on radio?"
Because it suits the BBC meme.
"He should "go away" and climb something?"
No need to whilst the BBC continues to do the climbing for him.
Just how many times was this bear anaesthetized and captured during the last number of years? A lot apparently, factor in old age and the effects of sedation and you wonder why this bear didn't die sooner.
Well,
Here is a sad photo of a heat stress deceased polar bear!
The article should be read through to the last punch-line:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/who-dares-to-deny-arctic-warming/
Tony Brown has done some excellent research on this.
@Richard Drake. Thank you for pointing out my error, I have listened again and now realise my mistake. My point stands, The main part of the discussion was about a scientific paper which was brought up by the Greenpiss guy. Andrew mentioned the holocene something at the beginning of the interview.
I still think it would have been nice to get some points across, like how come this bear died from lack of ice when there is more of it about this year?
Bob, thanks for the Spencer link on Subov, read it before but had forgotten.
Here's the link to Subov's book on the Arctic warming (1930):
and here is the 1922 Norwegian reports of open water to the north of Svalbard as far north as 81 degrees. http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/050/mwr-050-11-0589a.pdf
It seems beyond doubt to me at least that the Arctic has 60-70 cycles, primarily determined by the strength of the Gulf Stream, and that the apparent lack of ice in more recent years has feck all to do with C02. btw, there has been no warmth up there this summer, I check the weather stations and webcams and DMI data regularly. Minus 3 at Ischasen just now, even Alert (the garden of the Arctic which Hansen's GISS uses to extrapolate from) is only zero. Resolute, Barrow and the western NWP have had a chilly summer also.
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=Nunavut&wuSelect=WEATHER
And here it is again
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2385930/Starved-polar-bear-dead-Norway-categorical-proof-climate-change-wiping-species-say-experts.html
Fwiiw, I think Roy has a point, and our host was too polite and could have got some other points across. But I recognise that it is very difficult to do in a live studio situation where the Greenpeace guy would not let Andrew speak and continued on with erroneous assertions. Morano tends to be much more assertive, and gets the points across well, but at the risk of sounding rude and aggressive, especially to British Radio 4 type audiences.
It appears the troll has reached a new low - resorting to stupid insults aimed at someone who appears to be extremely well qualified to have an opinion about polar bears.
The stupidity of this attack surprised me, even for the troll, as verifying Susan Crockford's credentials takes simply a couple of clicks and a few seconds reading - so why on Earth would anyone take the troll's comments seriously?
"Are we to be greeted each morn with a Guardian list of the polar bears to have perished over the previous 24 hrs?"
If it did, there would roughly 5 a day, and even a Grauniad reader might work out that there must be quite a lot of them.
James P
Yes and a full obituary for each one. Including the names of the seals they ate.
If Thatcher got an obituary, why not a polar bear ?
steveta
We don't
Aug 7, 2013 at 7:15 PM | Unregistered CommenterBad Andrew
What happened to Entropic Man?
Did his own Superpower/Identifying Characteristic finally do him in?
Andrew
Maybe he's gradually becoming Ectopic Man
Militants by definition always shout down the opposition, whether it's banner-wagging or radio interviews. If this happens again Andrew, you could perhaps appeal to the interviewer to call for silence to let you make your point and insist that shouter-down answer your point. But Shelagh Foggarty did a pretty bad job IMO and left the impression that you were both responsible for the debate going round in circles, whereas the only one endlessly and volubly repeating himself was Sauven.
I don't know what other qualities John Sauven has, but arrogance and sneering disdain for non-believers were strongly detected.
The first intervention by the Greenpeace chap was allowed to continue by the host and this gave Mr Greenpeace the signal to keep on doing it (successfully in my opinion). Unfortunately we can’t all be polished political combatants but it is a useful tactic to nip these interventions in the bud right from the start. It is necessary to establish the ground rules early on to keep the mediator on their toes and make them aware of their duty of balance. Be alert and ready to meet the first intervention and quickly come in with a ” hold, on, hold on – if I can just finish my point …”
Andrew is being invited onto these shows precisely because he is polite, thoughtful and ‘manageable’. There are times when they will want fireworks and times when they will want reasoned debate. We need Andrew to continue to be their ‘go to’ person for reasoned debate on climate change. It is absolutely necessary to keep doing these shows, practice makes perfection.
When I discussed the item with the R5 researcher we discussed sea ice levels, which is something I'm pretty clued up on. I was amazed when the debate was brought to an end before we'd discussed it.
Roy (7 Aug 7:15pm) - I can see where you are coming from too, and also lapogus whose recent comment provides a neat summary of what I think is your position. I see this as a truth-seeking blog, not a partisan one so I did hesitate a bit when gave a 2-nil score to the Bush. That reflected my exasperation with the shoddy behaviour and speciousness of the chap with the vested interest in dead polar bears that he shared the programme with. I hope we shall all not hesitate greatly when it comes to criticising each other's views or contributions to the task in hand. With all the goodwill here, such criticisms would mostly help us all.
Andrew - write to them to express disdain that you did not get a chance to discuss what you thought you had been invited to discuss. Sounds like a fairly typical media ambush, Channel 4 News tried to do with with me when they invited me as a sceptic to an audience discussion with Miliband pre-Copenhagen - I had to decline due to short notice, but glad I did; I watched the programme later and I would have been the token SOLE sceptic in a studio full of environmentalists, who proceeded to give Miliband a hard time for not doing enough to save the world. Despite the invitation email there was no mention of climategate or climate science in the discussion, save from Jon Snow who introduced one of the audience guests who had recently been flooded in Cumbria, "well you are a victim of climate change"...
Why reach for some poxy proxy to show temperature change when bleedin' thermometers are about the place?!
Sorry about that but I, at least, have been caused to overheat.
steveta,
I would suggest a certain amount of caution about Susan Crockford. As so often happens one side has decided to demonise her and the other to lionise her; it seems to me that the truth lies somewhere inbetween. If you google her for a minute all looks good; after 5 minutes you start to wonder.
Take a look at her own web site for her book Rhythms of Life. People who summarise their own work as
make me nervous.
5,000 bears in the 1950's, 25,000 bears now. Where is the decline?
Andrew, you need say no more than this on the polar bear story and spend the rest of the time debunking CO2 myths.
Polar bear at the pole?
From the North Pole Environmental Observatory here are a couple of images from the webcam archive.
Archived photo 07-Aug-2013 06:45
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/WEBCAM1/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam1_20130805200920.jpg
Note the footprints in the snow and the lack of melt pools that can cause the webcams to tip over.
Then the next image from the archive at 07-Aug-2013 18:45
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/NPEO2013/WEBCAM1/ARCHIVE/npeo_cam1_20130806195908.jpg
Of course the webcams are no longer at the pole. They have drifted to about 85N.
http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/DriftTrackMap.html
Dr Roy Spencer observed more life at the pole in his July 26th posting.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/07/big-bird-at-the-north-pole/
Meanwhile, some 300 miles short of the north pole, the NPEO webcam1 has been knocked over. There were footprints all around it a few days ago, so I suspect a not dead polar bear. Source: http://psc.apl.washington.edu/northpole/.
update - Alan, you beat me to it.
The segment was about polar bears. The two points Andrew made were the simplest and most effective. Job done. And for seeding the idea of computer models as hypotheses, not evidence, considerable bonus points. A million miles from an ambush.
The moment this ended I was thinking how much better it was than the whole of the programme with Tamsin Edwards and Peter Lilley and (I assume) the Google Hangout with Richard Betts and Judith Curry. It didn't need the fiddly stuff about Arctic sea ice levels (and it is fiddly on radio). Discussion for another day.
Can Polar Bears survive without Ringed Seals, their main source of food? According to 'Polar Bears International' they can.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/about-polar-bears/essentials/hunting-and-eating
They say:
"The polar bear is an opportunistic hunter, always alert to other food sources—including vegetation, geese, and even bird eggs if available. These terrestrial foods do not provide enough calories to sustain them, however. But other arctic marine mammals, including whales, walruses, and narwhals, do provide adequate nutrition for hungry polar bears. Beluga whales or narwhals that become trapped in a savsatt—a small opening in pack ice—become easy prey for the bears. And whale carcasses on the shore offer a bonanza.
Alaskan marine biologist Lloyd Lowrey observed a group of bears capture about 40 whales at a savsatt in the northern Bering Sea. And in 1999, 13 bears harvested beluga whales trapped in a savsatt near Canada's Ellesmere Island."