Dr. Susan Crockford
One other pronouncement from conservation activists at Polar Bears Worldwide taken and not using a single verify of info makes the BBC look ineffective and gullible.
The photograph above of a ‘inexperienced dot’ bear was taken 10 November 2022 by a Churchill resident. Bears launched from the ‘polar bear jail’ when there may be sufficient sea ice for them to renew searching are marked with a inexperienced dot.
From a BBC article at present (18 December 2022), ‘Canada’s polar-bear capital Churchill warms too quick for bears‘:
However because the polar bear turns into an icon of local weather change, the bears’ plight in Churchill embodies the inextricable hyperlink between preserving the pure world and preventing international warming. The polar-bear capital of the world is solely getting too heat for polar bears. …
“Trying during the last couple of many years, it kinds later and later and it breaks up earlier and earlier in spring,” Dr Flavio Lehner, of conservation charity PBI, says.
“So this season in between – the place the bears are on land and may’t make the most of these searching alternatives – that’s is getting longer and longer, with warming.”
The straightforward truth is that sea ice in Western Hudson Bay, the place Churchill is positioned, has not been declining an increasing number of with rising CO2 emissions, based on knowledge revealed by polar bear specialists (e.g. Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017).
Since 2015, there was just one ‘late’ freeze-up yr (2016)–however 5 very early ones–and at most one comparatively early breakup year (with some bears ashore in June). This yr (2022) freeze-up was about as early because it was within the Nineteen Eighties, as was the case in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, because the chart beneath signifies (darkish blue is extra ice than standard in comparison with 1991-2020). Breakup occurred in July in 2022, so additionally not early.
In different phrases, there was no escalation of poor Churchill-area sea ice circumstances in recent times as said by the BBC.
The BBC and others solely get away with such blatantly false statements as a result of polar bear specialists merely don’t replace their revealed knowledge on Western Hudson Bay sea ice or situation of bears. Knowledge for ice is now 7 years outdated and data on the situation of the bears is many years outdated.
Furthermore, the fashions predicting the demise of polar bears by 2100 are implausible prophesies based mostly on discredited RCP8.5 situations that assume an unrealistic 500% enhance in coal and a 60C rise in international temperature (Hausfather and Peters 2020) and out-of-date info on WH bears (Molnar et al. 2010, 2020).
This little bit of PR possing as science comes as PBI’s ‘chief scientist’ declares his retirement from the group. His feedback are telling about why he stop the US Geological Survey in 2010 to affix PBI:
I initially deliberate to stick with PBI for about 5 years—considering that, by then, societies would have moved towards extra sustainable CO2 emissions pathways and the longer term for polar bears can be safer. I had many causes to be optimistic, however boy was I flawed. I didn’t absolutely respect the ability of the denial motion. I additionally didn’t think about that our coverage leaders, lots of whom are sensible individuals, would select to actually break the world in change for the additional enrichment of a only a few. So, the preliminary 5 years stretched into greater than a decade—and we nonetheless have far to go.
The announcment states that Amstrup “plans to step as much as an emeritus place whereas passing the baton to 2 hand-picked successors, Dr. John Whiteman and Dr. Flavio Lehner.” Hand-picked, by Amstrup, means extra of the identical from PBI.
It’s no marvel the BBC promotion piece for PBI contains so many statements from Lehner, who just isn’t a polar bear biologist however an activist local weather scientist. Just like the BBC, I count on Lehner additionally believes all the things that Amstrup says with out checking for himself.
References
Castro de la Guardia, L., Myers, P.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, N.J., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D. 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Collection 564: 225–233. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p225-233/
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, G.P. 2020. Emissions – the ‘enterprise as standard’ story is deceptive [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620
Molnár, P.Ok., Bitz, C.M., Holland, M.M., Kay, J.E., Penk, S.R. and Amstrup, S.C. 2020. Fasting season size units temporal limits for international polar bear persistence. Nature Local weather Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9
Molnar, P.Ok., Derocher, A.E., Theimann, G., and Lewis, M.A. 2010. Predicting survival, replica and abundance of polar bears below local weather change. Organic Conservation 143:1612-1622. http://www.math.ualberta.ca/~mlewis/Publicationspercent202010/Molnar-Derocher-Thiemann-Lewis.pdf
