Blinded by Beliefs: The Straight Poop on Emperor Penguins. Guest essay by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University and author of Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism Two recent press releases concerning the Emperor Penguin’s fate illustrate contrasting forces that will either advance or suppress trustworthy conservation science.
The first study reminds me of Mark Twain’s quip, “Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned.” Embodying that truism is a paper by lead author Dr. Michelle LaRue who reports new advances in reading the Emperor Penguin’s fecal stains on Antarctic sea ice that are visible in satellite pictures. LaRue’s new study advances the science by analyzing the shifting patterns of penguin poop, and her results are prompting some scientists to “unlearn” a key belief that has supported speculation of the Emperors imminent extinction. Below is the graph featured by penguin expert Dr. Placing a band on an Emperor Penguin is no easy task. 2. 3. Polar-Bear-Gate. Walrus Deaths Were Due To Polar Bears – Andrew Montford. The Polar Bear Affair. Part 1001. – Climate Resistance.
The BBC’s Frozen Planet is continuing to fuel controversy.
First, as discussed previously on this blog, the BBC’s decision to sell the seventh episode of the series — David Attenborough’s personal view of climate change and the crysophere — as an option led to screams and shouts from environmentalists. Environmentalists turned natural history into a morality tale. A new brouhaha has broken out. A short opinion piece in the Radio Times — the BBC’s ‘what’s on TV’ guide — by Nigel Lawson has got polar Open University Polar Oceanographer Dr Mark Brandon all hot and sticky. No, climate change hasn’t driven polar bears to take over a Russian town. Dr.
Susan Crockford writes: The MSM have gone mad for this story today. I wrote up a post yesterday debunking the AGW claim. Polar bears have been terrorizing a Russian town on the Barents Sea since December Since early December, a group of 52 polar bears have terrorized the Russian village of Belushaya Guba on southern Novaya Zemlya. Polar Bear Climate Change Deaths Exposed as Fake News - Principia Scientific International. Published on Written by William F Jasper Just in case you may have been tempted to allow your feelings of guilt and angst over your carbon footprint to subside, the New York Times is back with another polar bear alarm to boost your fear and anxiety quotient.
The Times is not alone of course; The Atlantic, The Guardian, The Independent, National Geographic, and others are also sounding the hue and cry about the supposed demise (once again) of the furry, cuddly, hoary, Arctic killers. And, naturally, their lachrymose stories about these darling endangered icons are picked up and repeated, unchallenged, by countless other outlets in the establishment media echo chamber.
But relax. Dr. Well, is that what happened? But nothing of the kind happened. The “precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population” Today’s MSM is woefully inept at catching mistakes.
Worse, reporters are often woefully inadequate at getting facts straight in the first place. And, with instant electronic distribution, it is much like the imaginary Roman vomitorium; eat, regurgitate, rinse, and repeat. Yesterday’s LA Times story on the Obama administration deciding not to use polar bears as a global warming tool that we covered on WUWT had this howler: “…the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population…”. Polar bear populations may in fact may be larger than they were decades ago. The Problem with Polar Bear Propaganda. On December 7, National Geographic shared a video in which an emaciated polar bear, hair clumped and skin hanging off its bones, drags itself over the tundra on Baffin Island, scavenging an animal skull from a rusty barrel.
“This is what climate change looks like,” a caption declares ten seconds in. The captions go on to assert that with shrinking sea ice, polar bears are losing their platform from which to hunt seals and are starving as a result. The video quickly went viral. Though the footage was widely viewed and shared, not all agreed with the assessment from SeaLegacy, the conservation group that produced the video. “Climate change has very little to do with it,” says Eric Ootoovak, a hunter and the vice-chair of the Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization in Pond Inlet, Nunavut, at the north end of Baffin Island. Environmental groups and Inuit in Canada have long had a fraught relationship, and it has only recently begun to improve. Climate Fraudsters Continue Their Meltdown Ahead Of Trump’s Inauguration. My old buddy Bob Berwyn, who lives in the thin air up in mountains over the Continental Divide, says scientists are stunned by how fast Greenland is melting down.
Sunday set: Meltdown – Summit County Citizens Voice Greenland has gained a record amount of ice this winter (more than 400 billion tons) is two months ahead of average ice growth, and has already gained 80% of the typical amount of winter ice. Greenland Ice Sheet Surface Mass Budget: DMI.