Thursday May 15, 2008, 3:21 pm
"The polar bear just got listed as a threatened species, but veteran polar explorer Will Steger and the team he's leading in the Canadian Arctic found themselves threatened - by the bears.

Steger said the large concentration of polar bears they encountered last month added to the dangers his team faces as they make their way north to Ellesmere Island, the northernmost part of Canada.

"I've never seen so many bears _and curious bears - in one area like this," he said Thursday via satellite phone from the northern tip of Axel Heiberg Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. "They would walk, literally, right into camp."

Fortunately, the bears weren't aggressive because they were well fed on seals, he said. "But they were curious and not afraid at all. And they kept us up a number of nights," he said."

He's never seen so many FAT curious bears, well-fed on seals, yet he continues on with the usual AGW nonsense.

Why is an animal which has grown in population by 2-3x listed as "endangered" anyway?

Thursday May 15, 2008, 3:25 pm
Okay I am confused, by all this...who IS right??? The one scientist that has a larger count or the one who has the lesser??? Gezzzzzzzz like I said I am confused...why did the US put them on the endangerd list then...Judy you live there correct??? Are you not concerned about them..not being sarcastic but you live there are there really that many...how many are dying of this so called starvation..see why I am confused...

Big Gorilly Hugs

Thursday May 15, 2008, 4:14 pm
Lets see...one persons antidotical observations being weighed against MANY scientific research studies...lets see, which to believe.

Also, if one actually bothered to READ the information regarding the listing, the scientists note that bear populations are currently OK. The problem results from the continued melting of the artic ice sheet in the FUTURE (near future).

and here is all or the information supporting this decision:

http://www.doi.gov/issues/polar_bears.html

Thursday May 15, 2008, 4:18 pm
I do read chris that is why all the confusin for me now....

Thursday May 15, 2008, 4:22 pm
Actually, that remark was directed at Judy...I know that you do look at the issues..sorry for the misscommunication...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 4:25 pm
Sorry chris I am just trying to understand all this and something diffrent always comes out and Yes I am cunfused on this issue now badley...what do you suggest I read besides the link given....I didnt think you were talking to me but wasnt sure...LOL You never know anymore...LOL

Big GOrilly Hugs to ya...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 4:35 pm
We need to investigate and find out what this Will Steger really does for a living....if he even exists!

Thursday May 15, 2008, 4:46 pm
Never mind! I was reading Judy's comment and thought she was bombing us with yet another contrarian story. My apologies.

Polar bears are still common in some areas, but we can still forsee their endangerment over the next several decades. Artic animals in general are far fewer than animals in lower latitudes by the very poverty of the environment they live in. So any serious reduction in their population would have a proportional greater impact than an animal population in temperate or tropical areas. Both their fewer numbers and their specialization makes Artic animals vulnerable to extinction even in good times.

Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:09 pm
I live in Canada. That is where Steger encountered the fat bears. If the bears have been listed as threatened in the US for what MIGHT happen, this is crystal ball gazing, not science.

To reiterate...1998 was the peak of the warm spell and we have been cooling off since 2001 We are expected to keep cooling off until 2012 0r 2015 or 2023 depending on the sunspot cycle. We may even be in for one of those nasty cold minimums like a Dalton or Maunder which tend to happen when a sunspot cycle goes past the 11 year mark as this one, #23 has.

Report: Global Sea Ice at 'Unprecedented' Levels
April 2008 had the third highest recorded amount since records were started in 1979,(data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)), contradicting media coverage of diminishing sea ice.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20080506084437.aspx

Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:28 pm
This is why I am so perplexed in this matter...goodness....

Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:29 pm
The false confusion is exactally what the denialists strive for...they try to confuse the issues so that we do not take action...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:30 pm
I can see that....Agggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh...LOl

Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:38 pm
I have made several posts in this thread which have dissapeared...don't know why...anyway, if you want more information regarding this issue, you can check out my global warming action group - follow the "What we can do to stop global warming" group from my profile page (I would post the direct link, but that is one thing that is being deleated)...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 6:10 pm
This article might help clear up the confusion.

Polar Bears: 'Still Alive... Having Fun'

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, May 14, 2008 4:20 PM PT

Regulation: The Interior Department ruled Wednesday that the polar bear will be protected as a threatened species. Why special treatment for an animal whose population has more than doubled over the last 50 years?

Because it's politically correct. The polar bear has become such a beloved icon that even a pro-development Republican secretary of the Interior can't muster the courage to say no to the forces of environmentalism.

The polar bear is more than just a cuddly looking beast that roams the Arctic region. It's a wishbone in the fight between misanthropic activists determined to send the developed world back a few centuries and those who wish to see human development go forward.
Illustration:Sad polar bear stranded on ice floe courtesy of AP. Get the picture?

These beautiful creatures have become pawns in the environmentalists' campaign to block oil and gas exploration and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and beyond.

To be fair, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne's decision was forced. In late April, a federal judge in Oakland gave the department until May 15 to decide if the polar bear should fall under protection of the Endangered Species Act. The court was acting on a suit filed by environmental groups that were trying to compel a ruling.

Though bullied by the court, Kempthorne still had a choice. He just made the wrong — and an unnecessary — one. The polar bear is already under the shield of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act and its population is at a historic high.

Oh, you thought its numbers were shrinking? Forget the maudlin media wailing about global warming leading to the extinction of the polar bear because man-made global warming will melt its habitat.

Its numbers are actually growing. There might be as many as 25,000, and probably no fewer than 22,000, today while 50 years ago, there were somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000.

Three years ago, Mitch Taylor, director of wildlife research for the government of the Canadian territory Nunavut, told the Edinburgh Scotsman that the growing polar bear population increase is "really unprecedented, and in places where we're seeing a decrease in the population, it's from hunting, not from climate change."

"Never before has a thriving species been listed under the Endangered Species Act, nor should it," said Reed Hopper, an attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation that plans to sue the government over the listing.

Hopper also notes another reason the listing was unwarranted: The polar bear has already survived two global warming eras that were as hot or hotter than the anticipated coming climate change.

Perhaps the administration made the ruling because it felt that it just couldn't compete with the hype campaign being waged by environmental groups and their allies in the media.

That famous photo of those stranded polar bears drifting out to sea on a melting ice floe is hard to overcome — even after it was learned that the photo was taken in August, when fringe ice routinely melts in the Arctic, and a witness said the bears were "not in danger at all" and "are still alive and having fun."

Never mind the facts. The goal is to scare the public, to assert with confidence that two-thirds of the world's polar bear population will be gone by 2050 — which would, incidently, return it to the level it was a half century ago, an age that was much cooler than the extreme heat that's been projected (by questionable models) for the middle of this century.

We close by citing the observation of the one person who can bring clarity to a debate that has been almost shut down because those who dare question the environmentalists' orthodoxy are routinely shouted down:

"No evidence exists that suggests that both bears and the conservation systems that regulate them will not adapt and respond to the new conditions" of climate change, Canadian biologist Taylor wrote in a report for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

"Polar bears have persisted through many similar climate cycles."

Man is far better off helping himself than trying to help animals that aren't in danger.
http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=295659615314179

Thursday May 15, 2008, 7:56 pm
Shure- lets bet the exixtance of polar bears on their ability to adapt to the environment WE ARE CREATING - if they can't make it, tough luck...we have money to make...

"No evidence exists that suggests that both bears and the conservation systems that regulate them will not adapt and respond to the new conditions" of climate change, Canadian biologist Taylor wrote in a report for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

OK, where is the evidence that they WILL adapt - there is none...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 8:51 pm
Oh Honey Child...it has warmed countless times since Polar Bears evolved from Grizzlies. There was the Roman Warm period, the Medieval Warm period, the warming of the 1920-1940 period which happened faster, was warmer and lasted longer than the one we just went through...which is soooo over!

“In 1922 some people thought the Arctic was melting away forever, and in the 1970s scientists were warning of an impeding ice age due to global cooling. Overheated rhetoric about environmental disasters has been around for a long time. Hopefully when the next story of impending doom hits the news, it won’t take 85 years to put the claims in perspective.”

The original November 2, 1922 article which can not be refuted and which I know you have seen before...so why the dumb question about whether Polar Bears will survive a warming. Hello....what planet are you on? BTW the whole Solar System warmed when we did. All those Martian and Neptunian SUVs must be at fault...and don't forget those coal burning plants on Pluto.

Arctic Ocean Getting
Warm; Seals Vanish
And Icebergs Melt*

(By the Associated Press)

The Arctic ocean is warming
up, icebergs are growing scarcer
and in some places the seals are
finding the waters too hot, ac-
cording to a report to the Com-
merce Department yesterday
from Consul Ifft, at Bergen ,
Norway .

Reports from fishermen, seal
hunters and explorers, he
declared, all point to a radical
change in climatic conditions
and hitherto unheard-of tem-
peratures in the Arctic zone.
Exploration expeditions report
that scarcely any ice has been
met with as far north as 81
degrees 29 minutes. Soundings
to a depth of 3.100 meters
showed the gulf stream still very
warm.

Great masses of ice have
been replaced by moraines of
earth and stones, the report
continued, while at many points
well known glaciers have entirely
disappeared. Very few seals and
no white fish are being found in
the eastern Arctic, while vast
shoals of herring and smelts,
which have never before
ventured so far north, are being
encountered in the old seal
fishing grounds.

Thursday May 15, 2008, 9:10 pm
and we have gone through the "the other planets are warming too" dogma MANY times before - but you keep repeating that montra...

Objection: Global warming is happening on Mars and Pluto as well. Since there are no SUVs on Mars, CO2 can't be causing global warming.

discussion here:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/222712/69

Thursday May 15, 2008, 9:11 pm
get a clue - it is hotter NOW than in 1922...so polar bears have not seen this ammount of warming before...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 9:15 pm
the current level of greenhouse gasses is unpresidented in the existance of humans - or polar bears...

Greenhouse Gases Highest For 800,000 Years-Study
http://www.care2.com/news/member/537645068/744364

Thursday May 15, 2008, 9:22 pm
please show data (not from Exxon and not from one limited area, i.e. global averages) which showes that it was warmer in the 1920-1940's than it is today...that is laughable honey child :)

Thursday May 15, 2008, 9:57 pm
Delusional, just delusional.Anything that grist or realclimate says is the truth, according to you, and anything else, even with no connection to Big Oil, you dismiss.

"Several articles have appeared in Energy and Environment recently with results of considerable interest to us at World Climate Report. The first piece is by Dr. Craig Loehle who received his Ph.D. in mathematical ecology in 1982 from Colorado State University. He has published over one hundred papers in applied mathematics and ecology on topics that include statistical models, optimization, simulation, artificial intelligence, fractals, and wavelets. Among other accomplishments, he is the developer of “Global Optimization” which is a Mathematica application package that has been on the market since 1998. Dr. Loehle’s affiliation listed in the two articles is the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, Inc. In the second paper, Loehle is joined by J. Huston McCulloch of the economics department at Ohio State University. There is no evidence that their work is funded by anyone with any stake in the greenhouse – global warming debate.

In the first article, Loehle notes that many long-term reconstructions of climate are based on tree rings, but “There are reasons to believe that tree ring data may not capture long-term climate changes (100+ years) because tree size, root/shoot ratio, genetic adaptation to climate, and forest density can all shift in response to prolonged climate changes, among other reasons.” Furthermore, Loehle notes “Most seriously, typical reconstructions assume that tree ring width responds linearly to temperature, but trees can respond in an inverse parabolic manner to temperature, with ring width rising with temperature to some optimal level, and then decreasing with further temperature increases.” Other problems include tree responses to precipitation changes, variations in atmospheric pollution levels, diseases, pest outbreaks, and the obvious problem of enrichment that comes along with ever higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Trees are not simple thermometers!

Loehle gathered as many non-tree ring reconstructions as possible for places throughout the world (Figure 1). There are dozens of very interesting ways to peer into the climatic past of a location, and Loehle included borehole temperature measurements, pollen remains, Mg/Ca ratios, oxygen isotope data from deep cores or from stalagmites, diatoms deposited on lake bottoms, reconstructed sea surface temperatures, and so on. Basically, he grabbed everything available, so long as it did not rely on trees.

Loehle, C. 2007. A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 18, 1049-1058.

Loehle, C. and J.H. McCulloch. 2008. Correction to: A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-tree ring proxies. Energy and Environment, 19, 93-100.

We suspect you have been living your life unaware of the articles by Loehle and McCulloch. The reason is obvious – they found evidence that temperature variations over the past 2,000 years indicate that the earth’s average temperature bounces around naturally to a larger degree than other paleo-reconstructions indicate, and further, that temperatures about 1,000 years ago were not that dissimilar to today’s temperatures. This suggests that the earth’s ecosystems are more resilient (and adaptive) than some pessimists give them credit for—not a favorite topic in the mainstream press."

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:08 pm
Actually, as I keep saying, I give it a 10% chance that I am wrong about anthropogenic climate change (based on the literature). What in your opinion is the probability that YOU ARE wrong??

(BTW, TWO scientists you cite above, compaired to the NUMEROUS scientists that don't agree with them, is what produces the uncertancy factor, science is never 100% only dogma is 100%)..

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:21 pm
You've lost already. Once it was shown that warming precedes rises in CO2 it was game over...except for all the money being spent by Gore...$300,000,000 on keeping up the pretense. You pretend that only a few scientists are skeptics
when there are thousands.

The lies, the falsification and the outright bribery that has gone on with this scam is almost beyond belief...but the weather itself is exposing it.
That is the reason for the panic...it keeps getting colder. Tough!

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:25 pm
OK, so are you saying the is ABSOLUTLY NO proof for human caused global warming????

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:32 pm
we have discussed the CO2 follows warming dogma before, it appears that you are discounting EVERY bit of evidence I have provided...is that true??

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:38 pm
you make this acusation above about me:

"Delusional, just delusional.Anything that grist or realclimate says is the truth, according to you, and anything else, even with no connection to Big Oil, you dismiss. "

Does it not seem that you may be dismissing quite a bit of information yourself - like any and everything that supports human caused warming...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:49 pm
What supports the hypothesis that humans cause the warming? What?
The phony IPCC report? The phony construct of the Hockey Stick that tried to disappear the inconvenient Medieval Warm Period?

What have you got beside those and both have been shown to have been FAKED!

It's over, people are waking up.....the polls show attitudes changing.

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:51 pm
whow...that looks like a lot of dismissal of information to me ROFL!!!!

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:54 pm
Delusional, just delusional.

I am done with this discussion...

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:59 pm
Leaving so soon? You haven't come up with any evidence yet...just flapdoodle!

Thursday May 15, 2008, 11:00 pm
Delusional, just delusional.

Friday May 16, 2008, 12:01 am
http://orangepunch.freedomblogging.com/
The world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud,” he has a chapter addressing the central dispute in the global warming debate (which contrary to what some would have you believe, /*is */still being debated).

Is it warmer? Is it much warmer? Is man to blame?

Solomon quotes Syun-Ichi Akasofu as one who denies alarmists’ assertions. Akasofu is no kook. He’s founding director of the International Artic Research Center of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with a Ph.D. in geophysic. He has published more than 550 professional journal articles, twice been named among the “1,000 Most Cited Scientists,” been honored by the Royal Astrononmical Society of London, the Japan Academy of Sciences and the American Geophysical Union. There are heaps more credentials, but you get the idea.

(Al Gore, of course, labels any disagreers as “flat earthers.” But other than that statuette and the political prize from Stockholm, what are /his /credentials?)

Anyway, Akasoful points out that the Earth has warmed over the 20th century about a half degree Celsius, but during the 19th century it also warmed about a half degree Celsius, as it did in the 18th century, and as best can be measured, it did in the 17th century as well.

“Throughout these centuries, which followed the depths of the Little Ice Age, the rate of global warming has been fairly consistent,” Solomon sums up.

Says Akasofu himself: “Roughly the same linear change in temperatures extends back to the earliest recordings, going back to about 1660, even before the Industrial Revolution.”

Hey, that’s even before SUVs.

One (more) thing the alarmists don’t mention is that the IPCC’s own 2001 report carried this caveat: “The fact that the global mean temperature has increased since the late-19th century and that other trends have been observed does not necessarily mean that an anthropogenic (manmade) effect on the climate system has been identified. Climate has always varied on all time scales, so the observed change may be natural.”

To which we can only say, “Duh,” and ask, “Then why the crisis?”


http://orangepunch.freedomblogging.com/