A brief historical perspective on the failed predictions that have plagued scientific understanding of Arctic sea ice changes – predictions embraced wholeheartedly by polar bear specialists and conservation experts. It’s worth a watch.
Transcript here from the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Comments Off on History of anxiety over sea ice gets a video
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, Summary
Tagged death spiral, decline, extinction, facts, history, polar bear, predictions, sea ice, September ice minimum, threatened
This is a follow-up to my last post and this time, I’ll address the implied correlation between freeze-up dates for Hudson Bay and Churchill temperatures in November that is being made by folks who should know better .
Monday, 14 November 2016 a.m, over at Polar Bears International [my bold]:
“As a new week starts in Churchill, the weather is the warmest we’ve ever seen at this time of year. The tundra is muddy, with remnant patches of snow, and the bay is ice-free.” PBI Blog (no author designated)
Well, that may be true for the last few years – the high on 14 November 2016 (-1.20C) was the highest since 2012.
Andrew Derocher made a similar statement on the 4th (my bold):
“There’s no sea ice anywhere in Hudson Bay yet—not even in the northern part of the Bay where ice should be forming. It’s above freezing today and if the forecast holds, it will be a record high for this date. It was 10 degrees colder last year at this time.”
Derocher is being unscientifically vague here and also misleadingly cites highs and lows as if they were the same. In fact, according to weather records kept by Environment Canada, for 4 November 2016 at Churchill, the daily high was +1.50C (compared to –1.50C in 2015). The daily low in 2015 was -15.30C, a 10 degree difference. The next-highest temp. for that date since 2012 was +0.70C in 2014 – hardly an earth-shattering difference.
However, if you are trying to draw conclusions about climate, you should go back at least 60 years (two climate periods of 30 years each). Temperature records for Churchill go back to 1943, which can be used to assess the claim for the 14th of November made by PBI.
According to weather records kept by Environment Canada, for 14 November at Churchill, the year with the highest temperature was 1975 (+2.20C):
That was Monday. But as of yesterday, the weather recorded – and the forecast for the following week (17-23 November) was quite different, as the screencap below shows:
The final recorded max. for yesterday (Thurs. 17 Nov) was -9.70C vs. a min. of -17.70C. So, a bit warmer during the day than predicted but as cold as expected overnight.
And for today, the current temperature in Churchill, as I write this is, is -190C (-310C with the wind chill) and the year with the highest temperature recorded for 18 November was 1944 (0.00C) – which was also the highest temperature for the 19th, recorded in 1943.
Ice maps and historical background below. See last post for recent multi-year comparison.
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Comments Off on No correlation between freeze-up dates for WHB sea ice & Churchill temperatures
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat
Tagged advocacy, Churchill, correlations, Derocher, freeze-up, historical records, Hudson Bay, observations, PBI, polar bear, sea ice, temperatures, western hudson bay
Guess which year between 2006 and 2016 had the latest start to freeze-up on Hudson Bay, given that 2012 had the lowest September average and 2007 and 2016 tied for second-lowest (see graph below, from NSIDC), and that sea ice in the Arctic right now is the lowest it’s been for this date since 1979?
If you guessed anything other than 2010, you guessed wrong – in addition, 2006 (not 2016) was second latest.
There is no correlation between Arctic sea ice coverage and freeze-up dates for Western Hudson Bay.
Yet, Polar Bears International (“Save Our Sea Ice”) – who were surely in and around Churchill in 2010 and 2006 watching polar bears – just posted an alarming statement about local conditions, implying that slow freeze-up of Hudson Bay this year is a reflection of the fact that “sea ice is at a record low across the Arctic.”
They also claim that “…the weather is the warmest we’ve ever seen at this time of year.” That may be true, but if so, it is also meaningless with respect to the progress of freeze-up.
Does no one at PBI remember the very late freeze-up of 2010 or 2006? Odd, that.
Comments Off on No correlation between freeze-up dates for Hudson Bay & total Arctic ice cover
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, attack, Derocher, fall, fatality, freeze-up, Hudson Bay, Lunn, minimum ice extent, PBI, polar bear, Polar Bears International, population size, problem bears, sea ice, western hudson bay
The New York Times reported this morning: “Donald Trump Is Elected President in Stunning Repudiation of the Establishment.”
I’ve never been very interested in politics but this result has me wondering. Could the new president reverse the Endangered Species Act (ESA) decisions listing polar bears and other species as ‘threatened’ with extinction due to future threats from global warming?
Comments Off on Will Trump reverse ESA decisions listing polar bears & Arctic seals as threatened?
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Summary
Tagged advocacy, Arctic, bearded seals, climate change, election, ESA, extinction, global warming, media, polar bear, president, ringed seals, threatened, Trump, walrus
Viewers outside the UK can now watch polar bear scientist Steve Amstrup live (Episode 2, filmed 2 November 2016), state that there are “20,000-25,000” polar bears in the world, almost a full year after the IUCN Red List put the worldwide polar bear population size at 22,000-31,000.
[even though Amstrup (now chief scientist and spokesperson for Polar Bears International) was a co-author of that 2015 Red List report, Wiig et. al. 2015]
Watch Steve Amstrup, live (Episode 2, filmed 2 November 2016) state that sea ice is only “usually” present in March/April when females with cubs emerge from their dens to feed – as if there has ever not been sea ice present at this critical time of year!
Watch Amstrup , live (Episode 2, filmed 2 November 2016) not point out that the prediction he was responsible for making in 2007 (that got polar bears listed as ‘threatened’ in the USA) has been a total failure: even though the USGS models predicted that polar bear numbers worldwide would decline by 67% and Western Hudson Bay polar bears (as well as nine others) would be wiped out completely when summer sea ice reached the levels they’ve been at since 2007, he pretends that prediction was scientifically valid.
We’ve had sea ice levels not predicted to occur until 2050 for 8 out of the last 10 years and polar bears are still going strong. If Amstrup had been right about the relationship of summer sea ice and polar bear numbers, there would have been no polar bears in Churchill for the BBC to film this year.
Watch all three hour-long episodes below as these two organization team up to promote fear of future global warming with polar bears (or polar bears, as Humble says it). Decide for yourself if polar bear science is being fairly represented.
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Comments Off on BBC Arctic Live for viewers outside the UK: watch scientist distort polar bear facts
Posted in Advocacy, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged advocacy, Amstrup, BBC, carbon footprint, ESA, PBI, polar bear, population size, predictions, Red list, threatened, USGS, youtube video
Week 17 (I’ve been counting) for 31 October – 6 November (Week 1 was 11-17 July):
“Most bears are still out at Cape Churchill.” [see map below]
See previous reports here, and here. Ten-day sea ice animation, CIS.
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Comments Off on Polar Bear Alert report for 1st week of November 2016, Churchill Manitoba
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged alert, attacks, Churchill, patrol, polar bear, problem bears
After a great start this year for Churchill-area polar bears of Western Hudson Bay – who came off the ice in better than usual condition after what must have been a good spring hunting season – ice maps suggest that freeze-up will be later than last year, an impression confirmed by on-the-ground observers.
Ice coverage this year at 7 November (2016):
Ice coverage last year at this date (7 November 2015), see this post for details:
UPDATED 23 November 2021: see below.
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Comments Off on Ice formation in W Hudson Bay slower than 2015 but not likely as slow as 1983
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged attack, body condition, Churchill, freeze-up, Hudson Bay, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, spring feeding
Could polar bears trump sharks at the theatre? Does the fact that unlike sharks, polar bears make house calls, give it better odds than most?
Take a walk down memory lane and give some thought to what has made films starring big animal predators a hit (or not), like JAWS, THE SHALLOWS, THE BIRDS, GRIZZLY, and a number of others, both classics and bombs. What do these predator attack films tell us (if anything) about the probability of EATEN becoming a terrifying motion picture?
Read the rest here.
Comments Off on EATEN the movie – what are the odds?
Posted in Polar bear attacks
Tagged attacks, block-busters, film, grizzly, JAWS, killer, movie, novel, polar bears, predators, The Birds, The Shallows, thriller
Two out of three polar bear females that were collared by USGS researchers near Barrow, Alaska last spring are hanging out on the northwest coast of Banks Island, Canada. The other bear (bright green icon) appears to have been collared on the ice off Prudoe Bay in April. And as I discussed last month, it’s unusual for bears from the western end of the Southern Beaufort subpopulation (or even the central region) to end up in the Northern Beaufort subpopulation territory.
Original caption: “Movements of 3 satellite-tagged polar bears for the month of October, 2016. Polar bears were tagged in 2016 on the spring-time sea ice of the southern Beaufort Sea. All 3 of these bears have satellite collar transmitters. Polar bear satellite telemetry data are shown with AMSR2 remotely-sensed ice coverage from 29 October, 2016.” See full resolution image here and close-up below.
Comments Off on Tracking west Alaskan polar bears in the Beaufort in October – all at Banks Is., CAN
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Alaska, Beaufort, denning, facts, females, freeze-up, ice growth, polar bear, satellite collars, sea ice, subpopulation boundaries, tracking, USGS
The simple fact is that if polar bear experts had been right about the threat to polar bears from the loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, there would be no polar bears in Churchill this fall. No bears for tourists to photograph, none for biologists to study, and certainly none for the BBC to film for an upcoming three-part TV special called “Arctic Live.”
The low-ice future that biologists said would doom polar bears to extinction by 2050 has already happened in 8 out of the last 10 years. The sea ice future has been realized.
Polar bears have experienced those supposedly deadly low-ice summers for almost a decade but the global population did not drop by 2/3 as predicted and not a single one of the ten subpopulations predicted to be extirpated under those conditions has been wiped out.
How much more wrong can you be than that? Will the BBC mention this conundrum in their show? Will the polar bear experts they consult share this fact with viewers? We’ll all have to watch and see [show times and summaries of each program here, 1-3 November] but here are some background facts that might enhance your viewing experience.
UPDATE: Sea ice condition of Hudson Bay at 1 November 2016 below from the Canadian Ice Service (some slushy ice looks to be forming along the coast north of Churchill – this is how freeze-up starts). See the animation for the last 10 days here:
Comments Off on If experts had been right about sea ice, there would be no polar bears in Churchill
Posted in Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic Live, BBC, Churchill, extinction, extirpation, facts, future, minimum, observations, polar bear, predictions, resilience, sea ice, September, survival, threatened
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