Monthly Archives: September 2019

Activist biologist filled with eco-anxiety shares unfounded fear of polar bear catastrophe

Misplaced eco-anxiety that kids have about polar bears starts with activist biologists like Steven Amstrup, spokesperson for an organization devoted to raising climate change alarm – and media outlets like The Guardian who help them spread fears unsupported by scientific evidence.

Kaktovik AK fat adult male polar bear mid September 2019_Ed Boudreau photo permission to use

Fat healthy polar bear male at Kaktovik, Alaska in the Southern Beaufort Sea, September 2019, Ed Boudreau photo, with permission.

You can’t get much more over the top than these statements from Amstrup today but read carefully: it’s either opinion or factual aspects of polar bear life (“we know that the bears aren’t feeding”) made to sound like new, terrifying developments that can be blamed on climate change. Continue reading

New polar bear horror emerges out of advice to parents on eco-anxiety in kids

Unbelievably wrong: A psychologist has told parents to assure their children that rising sea levels might be an immediate threat to polar bears – but not to kids in the UK. She says this is “putting things into perspective” for anxious kids but is horrifyingly and almost laughably far off the mark.

PolarBearLG_USGS

The amount of ignorance about polar bears from those who still consider the species an appropriate icon for catastrophic climate change never seems to end.

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No climate emergency for polar bears or walrus means no climate emergency period

We are told the Arctic is warming twice as fast as anywhere else in the world, yet as the internet reverberates with shrill, almost-the-lowest-ice-extent-ever stories, polar bears, Pacific walrus, and the most common ice seal species (ringed and bearded seals, as well as harp seals), are all thriving.  Two new videos published by the GWPF on polar bears and walrus confront this conundrum and the conclusion is clear: if there is no climate emergency for polar bears, there is no climate emergency anywhere.

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Help fight against JCU attack on scientific enquiry and advancement of knowledge

Great Barrier Reef scientist Peter Ridd is heading back to court. Astoundingly, John Cook University (JCU) has appealed the verdict ruled against them in court last month for firing Ridd and which awarded him $1.2 million in damages, in part for JCU’s appallingly behaviour. Peter is asking for additional funds to mount a defense to take this fight to the highest court in Australia. I have made my donation and on his behalf, I ask readers to support this important issue if they are able.

peter-ridd-m

This sort of attack on professional scholars who legitimately challenge the work of their colleagues – just because the questions pertain to the topic of human-caused climate change – must stop. Such stifling of academic freedom by universities goes against the very essence of scientific inquiry and advancement of knowledge. I’ve had my share of it and it stinks.

Please help if you can: https://www.gofundme.com/f/peter-ridd-legal-action-fund

From Peter Ridd this morning on his academic freedom/free speech lawsuit against with his former employer, John Cook University: Continue reading

Six-city European lecture tour kicks off at Oslo conference and ends in Munich with EIKE

In less than four weeks, I’ll be heading off to Europe for a five-city six-city lecture tour that starts with the Climate Realists’ conference in Oslo in mid October and ends with the EIKE conference in Munich in late November. I am really excited to meet my European colleagues and blog supporters, and talk to the public in these cities about polar bear science – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Chukchi male from ship in 2016_SMALL_NOAA Caitlin Bailey GFOE

Details below. Once I have times and venue locations for all of these, I will update this post with that information.

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People go to Churchill to see polar bears in the wild and PBI controls the info they get

Polar Bears International is the non-profit organization that virtually rules the town of Churchill when it comes to informing naïve tourists about polar bears.  A million-dollar donation last year guaranteed the creation of a new building to permanently display PBI-generated information in downtown Churchill – previously limited to those visitors wealthy or influential enough to ride Tundra Buggies run by Frontiers North.

tundra buggy and bear_Frontiers North_wikipedia

PBI is an organization dedicated to the promotion of climate change rhetoric that currently purports to present unbiased scientific information about polar bears and climate change. It was founded by a retired marketing director andpolar bear enthusiast” in 2002 but its current leader is ‘chief scientist’ Steven Amstrup. Amstrup was almost single-handedly responsible for the failed survival model that got polar bears classified as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the US (Crockford 2017, Crockford 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018).

Amstrup’s model predicted that 2/3 of the world’s polar bears would be gone if sea ice got as low as it has been since 2007 but it was spectacularly wrong: polar bears are healthier and more numerous than 50 years ago.

Population size estimate graph chapter 10

Global polar bear population size estimates to 2018. From Chapter 10 of The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened (Crockford 2019).

Amstrup presented his firmly-held opinions as if they were scientific facts but observations have shown his guesses were incorrect. But he refuses to acknowledge this and PBI continues to spead a message of impending doom [my bold]:

“This year’s polar bear season is going to be big for our team, perhaps our biggest yet. Not only do we have an amazing schedule of Tundra Connections webcasts and live chats, but we’re also working with an array of media to tell stories and spread awareness about polar bears and the threats they face in a warming Arctic. This is especially important following another summer of massive sea ice loss in the Arctic and amidst overwhelming global momentum pressuring world leaders to address the climate crisis.”

Below is an excerpt from an interesting story from 2010 on how PBI controls the ‘polar-bears-are-doomed/save-our-sea-ice‘ narrative presented to the media and innocent tourists who just come to see polar bears in the wild.

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Polar bear at a walrus haulout with cliffs in Russia: Netflix scenario all over again?

In the news this morning is a report out of Russia that a team from WWF and a Russian documentary film crew were approached from the top of the cliff by a polar bear – at what looks suspiciously like the steepest part of the same Chukotka cliff that the infamous Netflix ‘Our Planet’ walrus video was filmed in 2017. The Netflix crew insisted that no polar bears were around when the walrus deaths occurred, despite strong evidence to the contrary (including a polar bear shown in the final seconds of the film!)

WWF and RT journalist fend off polar bear as they film walrus in Russia_13 Sept 2019 headline

Is the cliff above the same one we saw last year as walrus fell to a gruesome death on the rocks below, falsely blamed on lack of sea ice? It is mid-September, the same time of year as the 2017 walrus footage was filmed by the joint Netflix/WWF crew – and surprise, surprise, it looks like WWF are taking other filmmakers back for more of the same.

Or have they found another location with the same features?

Here is the original WWF Behind the Scenes video from the Netflix incident:

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These starving polar bears falsely blamed on climate change have scared kids to death

These four images of thin or emaciated polar bears falsely blamed on climate change have scared kids like Greta Thunburg to death: the four white lies that scarred a generation.

Starving polar bear composite_11 Sept 2019

If you see kids marching with signs like the one below – from a protest earlier this year in Montreal – you know they have seen the white lies that have been spread online. Note the poster starving bear below compared to the real-life on from 2015 above.

Polar bear endangered plackard at Kids Global Strike Montreal March 2019 CBC

Here I summarize the truth about all four of these starving polar bear images that have been used since 2009 to emotionally manipulate the public (especially young girls), into getting on board the climate change band wagon. Rational people have seen through the rhetoric and come to realize that climate change is virtually never the cause of starvation. However, some poor kids have been scared to death by these images and the stories of climate change catastrophe they inspired – they are very real victims of climate change messaging at its worst.

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Death by drowning: Al Gore told us this was the future of polar bears but it wasn’t

In this short interview clip with Friends of Science director Michelle Stirling, I talk about the drowning polar bears in Al Gore’s 2007 movie that he implied would lead to the extinction of the species. Except that it didn’t…

My new book, The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened, explains why.

Polar bear books for kids and young adults are the perfect antidote for climate anxiety

In this short interview clip with Friends of Science director Michelle Stirling, I talk about Polar Bear Facts & Myths (for kids 7 and up) and EATEN, my science-based polar bear attack thriller that’s appropriate for older teens and young adults. Both are available in paperback and ebook formats, while the paperback version of Polar Bear Facts & Myths is also available in French, German, Dutch, and Norwegian.

Polar Bears: Outstanding Survivors of Climate Change is also suitable for teens and young adults and is fully referenced.