quote:

I can't say as to what the ice conditions currently are at either Barrow or Kaktovik.
Bear in Fairbanks

quote:

Originally posted by Bwana Bunduki:
Being closely observant of this situation RE: Polar Bear, Please understand that there are more Polar Bear than any time in the past 25 years when bear counts first started.

Jeff

quote:

Being closely observant of this situation RE: Polar Bear, Please understand that there are more Polar Bear than any time in the past 25 years when bear counts first started.

quote:

That is BULLSHIT, as polar bears are able to swim and it`s a common behavior.

quote:

Originally posted by Peter:

quote:

Being closely observant of this situation RE: Polar Bear, Please understand that there are more Polar Bear than any time in the past 25 years when bear counts first started.

True if you take the entire population into account (especially the Soviet Union), Otherwise BULLSHIT! The availability of sea ice, as has been already stated, is VITAL to the survival of polar bears. That is where they hunt (seals) from, and that is how they get the fat to survive the time when they are on shore hibernating. I went to Churchill last October (2008). If you are really interested in the truth, rather than just coming up with some hair brained view that just supports your opinion, the science is out there. Where they don't know, they will say so. Churchill is quite far south, but is in a unique location for sea ice, hence the number of polar bears. When looking at numbers the thoughtful person will also factor in the hunting situation eg. open, limited etc.
Peter.

quote:

Originally posted by BW:
Given that very few of us have actually seen a polar bear, most are not likely to know if the science is correct or not.

So we go with science, which say yes.

The folks in Churchhill have seen an increase in their area, but that may be due to ice retreating, not increased bear numbers.

I know for a fact that there's less ice around the shores of the Bueafort Sea in the last few summers.

The real question for Alaskans is...

Are our activities on the North Slope causing the decline?

I'd say that answer is no, not directly.

quote:

Peter I wrote about this in Sports Afield recently.

quote:

Originally posted by Bwana Bunduki:
Guys I will post some science to refute the big melt off if I can get a little help.

quote:

How to submit articles and photos to Sports Afield

All manuscripts must be submitted on CD-ROM; both Mac and PC formats are acceptable. Microsoft Word files are preferred. Please include a hard copy of the article. Finished articles should not be submitted via e-mail unless specifically requested in that format by the editor. (It's OK to send queries via e-mail.) We will not review any simultaneous submissions or stories that have been previously published elsewhere. Please keep a copy of your article and digital photos as we do not return CD-ROMs.

Photographic support is extremely important. Every article submission must be accompanied by a a CD of at least ten different high-resolution digital images. There should be a good variety of images, including action shots of hunters glassing and hiking, photos of the camp and terrain, and a “trophy shot.” Photos of hunters posing with their trophies should be tasteful, respectful (please don’t sit on the animal), free of blood, and show the animal to best advantage. Please do not send slides, black-and-white photos, or color prints. Digital photos must a resolution of 300 dpi at 8x10 inches in size, taken with a camera of not less than 6 megapixels. We accept JPG, TIF, EPS, and RAW images. Please do not process or sharpen your photos using Photoshop or other image-processing software.

Include a photo release form for all recognizable people pictured in your photographs (other than family members or guides), and submit clear captions for each photograph that include: names of people depicted, location, date, activity, and relevance to the story subject.

quote:

And it's email smartass...

quote:

nswered by Dr. Andrew Derocher
Some recent media reports have cited inaccurate data concerning polar bears. For clarification on polar bear numbers, we turned to Dr. Andrew Derocher, Chair of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group.

Dr. Derocher is a polar bear scientist with the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada. He also serves on PBI's Scientific Advisory Council.

Question: The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has proposed that the polar bear be listed as a threatened species. Yet some news reports state that polar bear numbers are actually increasing. For example, the following paragraph appeared on the Fox News Web site:

"In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it's 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent."

If this is true, then why are scientists worried about population declines?

Answer from Dr. Derocher: The various presentations of biased reporting ignore, or are ignorant of, the different reasons for changes in populations. If I thought that there were more bears now than 50 years ago and a reasonable basis to assume this would not change, then no worries. This is not the case.

The bottom line here is that it is an apples and oranges issue. The early estimates of polar bear abundance are a guess. There is no data at all for the 1950-60s. Nothing but guesses. We are sure the populations were being negatively affected by excess harvest (e.g., aircraft hunting, ship hunting,self-killing guns, traps, and no harvest limits). The harvest levels were huge and growing. The resulting low numbers of bears were due only to excess harvest but, again, it was simply a guess as to the number of bears.

After the signing of the International Agreement on Polar Bears in the 1970s, harvests were controlled and the numbers increased. There is no argument from anyone on this point. Some populations recovered very slowly (e.g., Barents Sea took almost 30 years) but some recovered faster. Some likely never were depressed by hunting that much, but the harvest levels remained too high and the populations subsequently declined. M'Clintock Channel is a good example. The population is currently down by over 60% of historic levels due only to overharvesting. Some populations recovered as harvests were controlled, but have since declined due to climate-related effects (e.g., Western Hudson Bay). In Western Hudson Bay, previously sustainable harvests cannot be maintained as the reproductive and survival rates have declined due to changes in the sea ice.

At this point, we lack quantitative data for an overall assessment of trend in Canada or Nunavut as a whole. There is, however, very strong evidence for a decline in Western Hudson Bay and the Southern Beaufort Sea based on quantitative studies. More recently, scientists working in the Southern Hudson Bay have reported a major decline in the condition of polar bears. A decline in condition was the precursor to the population decline in Western Hudson Bay. There is clear suggestion of a population decline due to over-harvest in Baffin Bay, Kane Basin and possibly Norwegian Bay.

The point is that you cannot simply summarize the status of polar bears—the information lies in the individual populations. You cannot put the various time periods together into a simplistic overview. Sea ice is declining but again, it is not declining the same everywhere. Some small areas of multi-year ice may improve habitat for polar bears. This latter point, however, does not mean that the habitat in all areas will improve and the predictions are very clear that the primary habitat of polar bears is at risk.

We can control harvests through management and these efforts are underway for several of the over-harvested populations. So far, I have not seen any movement on serious consideration of reducing greenhouse gases in North America (or other countries with few exceptions). Climate warming is not under control and I do not see the management changes coming to effect the needed changes in climate change emissions.

Look at the messengers: lobby groups for big business say there is no problem. Yes, conservation groups moved the issue forward for listing under the Endangered Species Act but this was already an issue that was founded on scientific information. The IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group was moving on a Vulnerable designation (the same as Threatened under the Endangered Species Act) before anybody heard of actions from environmental groups. Sea ice change and habitat loss is the key driving force. Ignore the bears for a moment and look at the evidence for sea ice change: NASA is a key player in looking at the actual decreases in sea ice. It is an easy matter to put the dots together: no habitat, no seals; no seals, no bears. This never was an issue of polar bears alone. The only effective conservation approach is to protect the habitat and this is an issue of climate change. You can distort the issue any way you so desire. At the end of the day, the sea ice is disappearing. Take away the habitat and the species follows shortly thereafter (or before).

Comparing declines caused by harvest followed by recovery from harvest controls to declines from loss of habitat and climate warming are apples and oranges. Ignorant people write ignorant things.

quote:

ESA LISTING NOT NEEDED FOR POLAR BEARS

Environmental activists have presented only one academic study that shows any negative effect of warming temperatures on polar bears, and only anecdotal evidence of bears drowning and eating each other, says H. Sterling Burnett, senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Other, more comprehensive research suggests the plight of that one population does not reflect the polar bear population trend as a whole:

* Since the 1970s, while much of the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased dramatically, from roughly 5,000 to 25,000 bears -- a higher polar bear population than has existed at any time in the twentieth century.
* Scientists believe polar bears thrived in the past in temperatures even warmer than at present -- during the medieval warm period 1,000 years ago and during the Holocene Climate Optimum between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago.
* Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist with Nunavut Territorial government in Canada says the polar bear population in Canada alone has increased 25 percent from 12,000 to 15,000 during the past decade, with 11 of Canada's 13 polar bear populations stable or increasing in number.

Groups such as the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) have written on the threats allegedly posed to polar bears populations from global warming. But their analysis isn't supported by the data, says Burnett:

* Only two bear populations -- accounting for about 16.4 percent of the total number of bears -- are decreasing, and they are in areas where air temperatures have actually fallen, such as the Baffin Bay region.
* By contrast, another two populations -- about 13.6 percent of the total number -- are growing, and they live in areas where air temperatures have risen, near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea.
* As for the rest, 10 populations representing about 45.4 percent of the total number of bears are stable, and the status of the remaining six populations is unknown.

quote:

Originally posted by Bwana Bunduki:
Guys I will post some science to refute the big melt off if I can get a little help.

quote:

Originally posted by Bwana Bunduki:

Mar 16th

Peter,

Just saw your response. I am afraid, you terribly uninformed... ...I suppose I could copy and paste the dozens of papers to refute your powerful statement of bullshit, but I won't be able to take the time right now.

Mar 18th

Okay if someone can tell me how to insert articles from my email I will present what I can.

Mar 20th

Guys I will post some science to refute the big melt off if I can get a little help.

Mar 23rd

And it's email smartass...


26 March

My main computer melted down that contained the emails. That was the pbm I was having...MaybeSmiler. Once I have it back I will post what I have...

quote:

Dr. Andrew Derocher, Chair of the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialist Group
“Sea ice change and habitat loss is the key driving force. Ignore the bears for a moment and look at the evidence for sea ice change: NASA is a key player in looking at the actual decreases in sea ice. It is an easy matter to put the dots together: no habitat, no seals; no seals, no bears. This never was an issue of polar bears alone. The only effective conservation approach is to protect the habitat and this is an issue of climate change. You can distort the issue any way you so desire. At the end of the day, the sea ice is disappearing.”

Jim
"Life's hard; it's harder if you're stupid"
John Wayne

quote:

Summarizing the Climate Debate

Lee C. Gerhard

In this time of a new administration, it is clear that the media and most of the recently elected members of Congress are unanimous in attacking global warming, even as the globe cools substantially and many are suffering from the ravages of cold and snow and ice. Nevertheless, those who accept the myth that human activities are responsible for global climate change, particularly global warming threaten the very existence of modern society with demands to drastically reduce the generation of electrical power and substitute theology for science.

The real argument arises from the claim that emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities are warming the climate, and will inevitably lead to ecocatastrophe.

If this claim is true, then climate change over the last one hundred years must have taken place at rates and ranges never before seen in history. It didn’t! Ignoring all the ice core data that show that global temperature has been decreasing for the last 8000 years, anthropogenic climate change advocate James Hanson, in a letter to the President Obama, argues that the temperature of today is as high as it has been since the end of the last glaciation. All the historic temperature data show that the argument is specious. It is not only unsubstantiated, it is patently untrue.

To establish that emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities are the cause of global warming, there must be a direct and close correlation between increasing temperature over the last 100 years and increasing carbon dioxide concentration levels in the atmosphere.

Except for a decade or two, over the last 100 years, there is no correlation. While positive correlation is not proof of cause, negative correlation disproves cause.

To establish that emissions of carbon dioxide from human activities are the cause of global warming, there must be a plausible theory substantiated by laboratory testing, that increased concentration of carbon dioxide has a significant effect on temperature.

The thermodynamics of carbon dioxide specify that the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature is logarithmic, decreasing exponentially with carbon dioxide concentration. 95-99% of the possible total effect of carbon dioxide had already been accomplished when its level in the atmosphere reached about 280 ppm. Therefore, doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will have essentially no effect on future temperature, especially in a wet atmosphere, the normal state of the earth’s envelope.

It is critically important to identify the real cause of climate change before irrational public policies are adopted and Draconian economic sanctions are placed on Western Civilization. The causes of short term changes in climate are many. Long term climate drivers are not so easy to identify. There is, however, a record of climate change in the historic and geologic past that identifies solar and orbital variations as the essential drivers of long-term climate change.

Actual measured solar intensity variations are not large, and the disciples of anthropogenic global warming (AGW ) have argued that it is too small to account for the temperature changes that have taken place, although the changes in carbon dioxide levels are too small also.

To make their case, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) tells its faithful believers that the exponential decrease in the effects of increased carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere must be offset by “amplifiers” to arrive at the temperature projections their computer models spew. The fallacy of that argument is that the amplifiers work no matter what the driver may be, since the amplifiers are derived from the temperature changes themselves, not driver mechanisms. It seems that the IPCC is returning to the astronomy of Ptolemy and the cycles and epicycles he relied upon to explain the motion of the moon and planets while still claiming the Earth was the center of the universe.

What we do know is that there is a close correlation between solar and orbital variability and climate change. We can relate recorded temperature change to documented solar cycles. For instance, we can identify that the 1934 temperature spike (the warmest temperature in the United States in the last 100 years) marks the beginning of a Gleissberg cycle (the 60-80 year-long solar cycle, and the warming leading to the 1998 spike the other end of the cycle. In between the warm spikes there was a 30-year cooling from about 1940 to 1970. From those data one can predict, as I did, that the current temperature should trend downward in response to lower solar activity, which it has.

The very fact that we can predict changes in temperature and match those predictions with history as well as current events makes this correlation a much more rigorous and therefore credible hypothesis for causation than just simple correlation of past events. Similarly, we can predict, and do, that the millennial cycle is close to a major change, having previously been high about 1000 A.D., and due now for a decline. This matches predictions that the next solar cycle will be the weakest since the Little Ice Age around 1750, and may presage a longterm decline in global temperature.

The computer models upon which the AGW adherents have based their argument have not been able to predict, nor have they been able to replicate documented climate change which has already occurred. They predict continuing warming, but it has been cooling for ten years. Why should we accept their predictions of climate change yet to come?

There is no substantial credible scientific evidence that carbon dioxide is the driver of modern climate or accounts for climate change on Earth since the last ice age. Those who still argue that it is will not acknowledge the failure of their hypothesis because there is too much money and social engineering based upon their theory to abandon it. But claiming humans are causing significant global climate change is no longer science. It is theology.

Dr. Lee C. Gerhard is a geologist who has studied meteorology since 1958 and climate change since 1964. He is retired as Getty Professor of Geological Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and also as State Geologist and Director of the Kansas
Geological Survey. He has published more than 200 scientific and policy papers, including 20 evaluating causes of climate change. He wasd elected to the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, US Section in 2007, and is an Honorary Member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, Kansas Geological Society, and the AAPG’s Division of Environmental Geosciences. He is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America. He lectures widely about environment and natural resources policy and about climate change.



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