The polar bear experts who predicted tens of thousands of polar bears would be dead by now (given the ice conditions since 2007) have found my well-documented criticisms of their failed prophesies have caused them to lose face and credibility with the public.
Predicted sea ice changes (based on 2004 data) at 2020, 2050, and 2080 that were used in 2007 to predict a 67% decline in global polar bear numbers vs. an example of the sea ice extent reality experienced since 2007 (shown is 2012). See Crockford 2017 for details.
Although the gullible media still pretends to believe the doomsday stories offered by these researchers, the polar bear has fallen as a useful icon for those trying to sell a looming global warming catastrophe to the public.
Here’s what happened: I published my professional criticisms on the failed predictions of the polar bear conservation community in a professional online scientific preprint journal to which any colleague can make a comment, write a review, or ask a question (Crockford 2017). Since its publication in February 2017, not one of the people whose work is referred to in my paper bothered to counter my arguments or write a review.
They ignored me, perhaps hoping the veracity of my arguments would not have to be addressed. But it has not turned out that way. Now, too late, they have chosen a personal attack in the journal BioScience (Harvey et al. 2018 in press).
UPDATE 30 November 2017: See a detailed criticism of this nasty paper here and a shorter one below.
This is absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published https://t.co/jBSiJ1DMlL pic.twitter.com/XnuRZDrsUt
— Judith Curry (@curryja) November 29, 2017
Harvey et al. (“Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy”) pretends to be a scientific analysis on internet blog posts about polar bears, climate change, and Arctic sea ice but single me out for their peculiar brand of “scientific” smearing because most of the polar bear content on the blogs they examined (80%, they estimate) came from me.
You wouldn’t know from the paper, for example, that I am a professional zoologist with a Ph.D. in evolution (with polar bears in my dissertation), only that the GWPF describes me as “an expert on polar bear evolution” (as if this is probably a lie).
The authors state: “Crockford vigorously criticize, without supporting evidence, the findings of several leading researchers who have studied polar bears in the field for decades.”
Anyone who reads my blog or has read my paper knows this is the opposite of what I do.
The fact that I criticize with supporting evidence is precisely why these “leading researchers” feel so threatened and why the paper had to be written.
These misrepresentations alone tell you all you need to know about the motive behind the paper and the accuracy of the rest of their statements about me and others.
The long list of co-authors joining in on this attack includes several psychologists, one of whom has written similar papers before, as well as serial-litagator/climate change champion Michael Mann:
BioScience is an interesting choice for this “Forum” paper: I counted only 4 polar bear research papers in this journal since 2004 but 11 papers on “climate change denial” since 2010 (not including this one). In other words, few polar bear scientists would usually read this journal but many people interested in the “problem” of “climate change denial” would seek it out.
You can read it here (open access).
References
Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 2 March 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Open access. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3
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