Category Archives: Advocacy

17 years of near-zero trend in September sea ice demolishes claim that more CO2 means less sea ice

Posted on September 22, 2023 | Comments Off on 17 years of near-zero trend in September sea ice demolishes claim that more CO2 means less sea ice

If the hottest year ever can’t precipitate ‘ice-free’ conditions in September, what’s it going to take? Arctic sea ice failed to nose-dive again this year, undoubtedly disappointing expects who have been anticipating a ‘death-spiral’ decline for ages. Arctic sea ice hit its seasonal low sometime around mid-September this year and although the precise value hasn’t been published, the average September ice coverage will likely be about 4.2 mkm2 once it gets announced in early October.

This means we have now had 17 years of a near-zero trend for September sea ice, extending the nearly-flat trend NSIDC sea ice experts acknowledged four years ago. This surely busts a huge hole in the prevailing concept that more atmospheric CO2 causes less summer sea ice. Note that CO2 levels measured in August 2023 were 419.7 parts per million (ppm), compared to 382.2 in August 2007, a rise of 37.5ppm with no corresponding decline in summer sea ice (and vs. 314.2 ppm in 1960). Measured in metric tons, CO2 emissions due to fossil fuels rose from 31.1 billion in 2007 to 37.1 billion in 2021 (last year of data), again with no corresponding decline in summer sea ice.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on 17 years of near-zero trend in September sea ice demolishes claim that more CO2 means less sea ice

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

New study that claims it can directly link GHG emissions to polar bear cub survival is poppycock

Posted on August 31, 2023 | Comments Off on New study that claims it can directly link GHG emissions to polar bear cub survival is poppycock

A global warming miracle has happened. While no scientist worldwide has ever drawn a straight line between greenhouse gas emissions and population declines in a species considered at risk due to climate change, a new paper just published in Science Magazine claims to have performed this unlikely feat for polar bears. It’s called “Unlock the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions.”

Note this analysis has not been peer reviewed: as a “Policy Forum” contribution, it’s considered by the journal to be a public interest commentary, not a research paper.

One might be forgiven for asking whether this work represents solid, reproducible science or simply well-timed, sciency-looking rhetoric ready-made for the litigious Center for Biological Diversity to pressure the US government to increase protections for polar bears before the 2024 US election. It is surely no coincidence that this paper made its appearance near the seasonal low for Arctic sea ice as well as during the 15-year anniversary of the ESA listing of polar bears as ‘threatened’ and the 50th anniversary of the ESA itself.

Moreover, knowing this paper was in the pipeline might explain why the 2022 government report on the most recent Western Hudson Bay polar bear decline, which I discussed yesterday, has been kept secret for so long: the results of that report are cited in this new Science paper as supporting evidence that sea ice declines are responsible for recent population declines, which Reuters said in December was clearly not the case for the period 2017-2021.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on New study that claims it can directly link GHG emissions to polar bear cub survival is poppycock

Posted in Advocacy, Population, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , ,

W. Hudson Bay polar bear numbers declined 27% in 2021 but not because of missing ice: secret paper

Posted on August 30, 2023 | Comments Off on W. Hudson Bay polar bear numbers declined 27% in 2021 but not because of missing ice: secret paper

As will become apparent tomorrow, Western Hudson Bay polar bear numbers apparently declined 27% between 2017 and 2021 but not because of sea ice loss. This fact, gleaned from a secret government report leaked to the media, emerged just before Christmas last year and spread around the world. I commented on it here at the time.

It will also be apparent tomorrow why that government report is still unavailable. Thursdays are when the big two science magazines publish their papers, which means associated news stores promoting preferred narratives are embargoed until then. Stay tuned.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on W. Hudson Bay polar bear numbers declined 27% in 2021 but not because of missing ice: secret paper

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

“10k dead penguin chicks” more animal tragedy porn used to advance global warming agenda

Posted on August 27, 2023 | Comments Off on “10k dead penguin chicks” more animal tragedy porn used to advance global warming agenda

Like the 2017 video of the National Geographic starving polar bear, the 2022 deaths of emperor penguin deaths promoted last week is emotional blackmail. Both are examples of preposterous fear-mongering pushed by activist scientists and the media for political purposes. Don’t fall for it.

Despite the hype last week over the newly published paper by Peter Fretwell and colleagues, there is no plausible ecological rationale for proposing that that a single season’s reproductive failure in four small colonies of emperor penguin (Aptenodytes fosteri), due to La Nina conditions — phenomena unrelated to carbon dioxide emissions — are signs of a future “quasi-extinction” of the species, as proposed in the BAS video here. None of the estimated 282,150 breeding pairs of adult emperors were lost in 2022 off the Antarctic Peninsula and chicks born in several dozen other emperor colonies around the Antarctic continent survived, which means this was a tiny bump in the road rather than a catastrophe for the species.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on “10k dead penguin chicks” more animal tragedy porn used to advance global warming agenda

Posted in Advocacy, emperor penguin, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Activists try to reboot Pacific walrus as climate change icons just as numbers reach a new high

Posted on August 20, 2023 | Comments Off on Activists try to reboot Pacific walrus as climate change icons just as numbers reach a new high

Activists have again resorted to using documentary film to promote Pacific walrus haulout deaths as contrived “proof” of gruesome climate change impacts even as evidence emerges that walrus numbers are higher than at any other time since the late 1970s. Oops! Busted by facts yet again!

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Activists try to reboot Pacific walrus as climate change icons just as numbers reach a new high

Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Conservation officers misleading the public about polar bear problems in Churchill

Posted on August 16, 2023 | Comments Off on Conservation officers misleading the public about polar bear problems in Churchill

Canadian government-funded media outlet CBC ran a story this morning about problem polar bears in the town of Churchill, Manitoba, the self-described “Polar Bear Capital of the World” that contains some very misleading statements from Manitoba Conservation officers.

Breakup of sea ice on Hudson Bay was earlier this year than it has been in more than a decade (17 June) and some people are trying to hype the significance of this phenomenon to support a tenuous link to human-caused climate change, even though bears out on the ice this spring were reportedly in good condition and one of the problem bears captured on 8 August was also in good condition (a male weighing 910 lbs, photo above). Unfortunately, reports for similar early breakup years in the early 2000s have not been made public. However, I’ve been keeping track of these Polar Bear Alert Program Reports since 2015 and have read the available literature about their history: these records simply do not corroborate the statements in this CBC account.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Conservation officers misleading the public about polar bear problems in Churchill

Posted in Advocacy, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces

Posted on August 8, 2023 | Comments Off on Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces

A Grist article last week pandered to activist polar bear specialists over their failed climate change agenda as it tried to minimize why the climate movement doesn’t talk about polar bears anymore. Apparently, the Arctic icon has “largely fallen out of fashion” through “overexposure” resulting in polar bear images invoking “cynicism and fatigue.” But that isn’t really true, is it?

While there is an admission that the over-hyped lies about starving bears promoted by National Geographic in 2017 and 2018 were a factor, there is no mention in the article of the well-known, documented evidence of scientists’ own failed assumptions that polar bears require summer sea ice for survival have had any impact on public opinion (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2015, 2019, 2022, 2023; Lippold et al. 2019; Rode et al. 2021).

Thriving populations in the Chukchi Sea and elsewhere amid low summer ice levels have busted the myth that polar bears need ice year-round.

Andrew Derocher was also allowed to repeat, unchallenged, the ridiculous narrative he and his activist supporters have peddled before, that insists the polar bear had become a climate change icon by accident rather than design, a lie I addressed in detail last year. Some excerpts from that 2022 post are copied below.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Repeat of 2013 high-profile Sierra Club polar bear attack, this time with Inuit victims

Posted on July 30, 2023 | Comments Off on Repeat of 2013 high-profile Sierra Club polar bear attack, this time with Inuit victims

Almost 10 years later to the day, another polar bear attack resulting in serious injury has taken place in the northern Labrador/Quebec region of Eastern Canada. Remember the Sierra Club lawyer snatched, tent and all, in the middle of the night on 24 July 2013, in an almost-fatal attack that was reported around the world, see here and here? This time virtually the same thing happened to two Inuuk campers on July 26, in the same general area, as reported last week by Nunavut News. This will undoubtedly renew concerns that Davis Strait Inuit have raised about their safety in the face of high population numbers of polar bears (Tomaselli et al. 2022).

Sea ice conditions were similar in both attacks. In 2013, the attacking bear appeared to be a fully adult male in good condition that had been watching the hiking party since the previous day but this year the predatory bear was described as a small “young adult” animal, suggesting it could have been a 3-4 year old female or perhaps a 2 year old male.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Repeat of 2013 high-profile Sierra Club polar bear attack, this time with Inuit victims

Posted in Advocacy, Polar bear attacks, Population

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Hudson Bay sea ice loss has not accelerated since 2014: in fact, summer ice cover has improved

Posted on July 14, 2023 | Comments Off on Hudson Bay sea ice loss has not accelerated since 2014: in fact, summer ice cover has improved

This is an early breakup year for Hudson Bay but sea ice loss has not been accelerating. While some Western Hudson Bay bears have been on land for weeks, others are still out on melting remnants of sea ice, much of it invisible to satellites. This is only the third year since 2014 that the bay has had less than usual amounts of ice, which means most years since then have had normal or nearly normal ice coverage, similar to the 1980s. Hardly the ever-worsening catastrophe of sea ice loss story being spun in the media for Western Hudson Bay polar bears.

From the tracking map above, out of the 38 visible tags or collars on bears at 11 July 2023, 16 bears (42%) were on land and 22 (58%) were still out on the sea ice. That’s virtually identical to the 40/60 percent split last week when there was even more ice.

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Hudson Bay sea ice loss has not accelerated since 2014: in fact, summer ice cover has improved

Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , ,

Claims of interspecies hanky-panky have unfairly sullied polar bear & Neanderthal reputations

Posted on June 21, 2023 | Comments Off on Claims of interspecies hanky-panky have unfairly sullied polar bear & Neanderthal reputations

One big question I asked before writing my book on polar bear evolution was this: did interbreeding with grizzlies, aka brown bears, profoundly impact polar bear history, as geneticists insist? Or is something else going on?

Polar bear hybrid, 3/4 grizzly (offspring of a hybrid female backcrossed to a grizzly male), Ulukhaktok, Victoria Island, Canada, 2010.

Virtually all genetic studies done in recent years, which I review in my book, conclude that hybridization with grizzlies has happened to various degrees over the course of polar bear history (e.g. Cahill et al. 2013, 2018; Cronin et al. 1991; Edwards et al. 2011; Hailer 2015; Kumar et al. 2017; Miller et al. 2012). Two of the most recent studies claim the most complicated hybrid ancestry for polar bears yet, invoking tales of “extensive” past hybridization events between the two species (Lan et al. 2022; Wang et al. 2022).

But does their interpretation of the genetic data represent reality or does it simply fit the authors’ preferred but false narrative that climate change is to blame for recent hybridization events and therefore likely to happen more often in a warmer world? And if, as I argue in my book, grizzly hybridization isn’t needed to explain polar bear evolutionary history, what does that say about similar claims that there has been a significant amount of Neanderthal interbreeding with humans in our past? Put another way, are geneticists everywhere going overboard with claims of interspecies hanky-panky?

Continue reading →

Comments Off on Claims of interspecies hanky-panky have unfairly sullied polar bear & Neanderthal reputations

Posted in Advocacy, Book promotion, Evolution, Hybridization

Tagged , , , , , ,