Polar Bear Scare in NYT Article Shows Misleading Nature of AGW Press

[JBG]

This thread and another thread (link to thread) shows that the AGW movement will stop at nothing to lie and mislead. This article (link to article, excerpts below) shows what a steaming load of BS the global warming press perpetrates. The article is loaded with internal self-contradictions. It is almost as if no one checked the article before publishing. Now this article was published on the front page of the Science Times section on September 22, 2014. The first page of the article, which continued into the paper, was written in 14 or 16 point font.

I cannot, within the limits of what I am allowed to quote, highlight all of the garbage. The premise of the article is set out in the opening, quoted below:
 

LA PÉROUSE BAY, Manitoba — The sea ice here on the western shore of Hudson Bay breaks up each summer and leaves the polar bears swimming for shore. The image of forlorn bears on small rafts of ice has become a symbol of the dangers of climate change. And for good reason. A warming planet means less ice coverage of the Arctic Sea, leaving the bears with less time and less ice for hunting seals. They depend on seals for their survival.

 

But the polar bears here have discovered a new menu option. They eat snow geese. Because the ice is melting earlier, the bears come on shore earlier, and the timing turns out to be fortunate for them. As a strange side-effect of climate change, polar bears here now often arrive in the midst of a large snow goose summer breeding ground before the geese have hatched and fledged. And with 75,000 pairs of snow geese on the Cape Churchill peninsula — the result of a continuing goose population explosion — there is an abundant new supply of food for the bears.

 

What’s good for the bears, however, has been devastating to the plants and the landscape, with the geese turning large swaths of tundra into barren mud. Nor does it mean that the bears are going to be O.K. in the long run. What is clear is that this long-popular fall destination for polar bear tourism
has become a case study in how climate change collides with other environmental changes at the local level and plays out in a blend of domino effects, trade-offs and offsets.

Here's the contradiction. The AGW press has been trying to say, for a long time, that polar bears in northern Manitoba were negatively impacted by the melting of Hudson Bay ice and the resulting inability to find seals. Fair enough, even though Hudson Bay has always been ice-free during the summer. The snow geese are arguably devastating the salad of vegetation on the tundra. Again, for the moment and the sake of argument, fair enough. But if the bears now are having a regular summer menu of both the geese and the birds, it is not reasonable to suppose that the bears are somehow causing an increase in the bird's population. Thus, if anything, bears are preserving the balance of nature by killing the errant geese.

The end of the article highlights a glaring omission:
 

“In some years, summer season starts very late,” she said. “Some years, it starts very early. Sometimes, the fall comes very late. Sometimes, the fall comes very early.” And, she says, “A cold year slams plants down much harder than a warm year advances them.” One aspect Dr. Mulder is studying is how the plants deal with this increased variability. It may be, she said, that for some plants, growth may ultimately be delayed rather than advanced because of the effect of the colder years.

 

One advantage Dr. Mulder has in her studies is a rich historical database. As early as the 1700s, people associated with the Hudson Bay Company were recording the weather.

The article made no reference whatsoever to any trends disclosed by that "rich historical database" of temperature records. And from my prior reading, for good reason. Canadian author Farley Mowat, in Lost in the Barrens, highlighted an anomalous warm spell that wound up endangering the two protagonists' lives, probably in the same general area. While the book is a novel, Farley Mowat was/is quite the student of the Arctic. The book was written in the 1950's. Fiction tends to hew fairly close to fact. The book described tundra, not palm trees. The article would have no doubt mentioned a steady warming trend since the 1970's if there was was.

Let's see the records. And if anyone wants an e-mail of the PDF of the whole aricle (six pages of PDF) just PM me. I will be happy to send it.

My conclusion is that the believers of AGW will present data in an appealing, simplified and ultimately fraudulent manner.

[ORH_wxman]

Media doing a poor job with climate science?

 

 

Yawn. Old news.

 

 

It's not easy to get to the public to do...but the sooner people just ignore mainstream media when it comes to climate science, the better. Read the literature.

 

 

I don't really think the article sounded that terrible anyway. I've read far worse. It's really a non-starter for discussion to me.

[JBG]

I don't really think the article sounded that terrible anyway. I've read far worse. It's really a non-starter for discussion to me.

Had you read the article before? It is really making the rounds here in New York.

 

If you don't use an article as a base how do you start a discussion about the misleading nature of AGW propaganda?

[nflwxman]

Broadly speaking media will always have a tough time reporting on science.  It's a tough issue to break down for the laymen (aka average reader).  That should not be an excuse, but media has been terrible on climate science in general.

[JBG]

Broadly speaking media will always have a tough time reporting on science.  It's a tough issue to break down for the laymen (aka average reader).  That should not be an excuse, but media has been terrible on climate science in general.

I am no scientist but this article looks like no one proofread it. The New York Times is supposed to be a serious paper. What gives?

[Jonger]

I'm not weighing in on the article yet, I'm on my phone.

2 days ago our local forecaster had a webcast video dedicated to CC.

He actually said that sea ice was decreasing in Antarctica, while we were enduring an all time high. He glossed over this and tried to steer the conversation to OHC. OHC is only going to appease the public for so long before they will want to see surface Temps rise.

Anyhow, most conventional fossil fuels are exhausted already, it's going to be the end of the road for most co2 emissions sooner or later.

[chubbs]

I'm not weighing in on the article yet, I'm on my phone.

2 days ago our local forecaster had a webcast video dedicated to CC.

He actually said that sea ice was decreasing in Antarctica, while we were enduring an all time high. He glossed over this and tried to steer the conversation to OHC. OHC is only going to appease the public for so long before they will want to see surface Temps rise.

Anyhow, most conventional fossil fuels are exhausted already, it's going to be the end of the road for most co2 emissions sooner or later.

 

Your last clause is one we should all be able to agree with.   There is a lot of commonality between sound energy and agw policy. 

[FloridaJohn]

I don't see anything is the part of the article you quoted that says polar bears are causing an increase in goose population.

[PhillipS]

JBG - I think you need to reread the article.  Nowhere does it imply that the Polar Bears are responsible for the increase in Snow Geese population.  In fact, it is very clear:

 

The goose population, Dr. Rockwell said, was once limited in size by its sparse winter food supply in southern states. After many of the marshes were drained for various kinds of development, “the snow geese just sort of said, well, wait a minute, what was that green stuff just north of here? And it turns out those are the rice prairies,” he said.

 

Having found the rice farther north in Louisiana, the geese continued to explore and expand their winter range, finding the vast agricultural fields of the Midwest. “So a species that was once in part limited by winter habitat now has an infinite winter supply of food, and that includes the best agricultural products: corn, wheat, soybeans, canola, rapeseed, all of that,” Dr. Rockwell said.

 

The whole gist of the article seems to me to be a concern that news of the West Hudson Bay population of Polar Bears finding an alternative to seal pups for food will be conflated  to saying that ALL Polar Bear populations are doing well.  Which they aren't.

 

You flaunt your biases when you use terms like "propaganda".  The term propaganda has a very specific meaning and this is not propaganda.  This is just an article, good or bad depending on ones' perspective, but just an article.  When you use terms improperly you aren't being persuasive, you just come across as another pseudo-skeptic on a baseless rant.

[JBG]

I don't see anything is the part of the article you quoted that says polar bears are causing an increase in goose population.

The article may not say it directly. The article heavenly implies that the two developments are linked. Overall, the article is very misleading by implication if not by express words.

The Internet text does not do the presentation of the article justice. The font size and the fact that the article occupies the entire first page of the Science Times does. The effect if not the purpose of the article is to engender panic.

[JBG]

This is just an article, good or bad depending on ones' perspective, but just an article. When you use terms improperly you aren't being persuasive, you just come across as another pseudo-skeptic on a baseless rant.[/color][/font][/size]

fid you see the print version of the article?

[FloridaJohn]

I have read the entire article, and do have the same takeaway as JBG. It does not, in my opinion, either explicitly say nor imply, that the increase in goose population is caused by the polar bears. In fact, it spends six paragraphs describing how an increase in winter food supply (in the US) has lead to the increase population that summers in northern Canada. The only thing it says about polar bears is that they like to eat the geese, but they especially like the eggs.

 

The article does mention that the scientists are worried that an increase in summer goose population may lead the public to believe that the threat to the polar bear is over, but they also say that only a small part of the entire global population of polar bears has access to the geese. Overall the population of polar bears is on the decline.

 

The section about the "rich historical database" is discussing a database of plants, not temperature data. They are using this database to see where the plants are today vs where they were growing in the past. The book by Farley Mowat wasn't even mentioned in the article, so I don't see how that is relavant to the topic at hand.

 

Basically, the article is about the research taking place in the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska, and how the climate affects are complex and varied, and how you can't just point to one data point to describe what is seen in the natural world. I don't see anyting controversial about that.

[JBG]

I have read the entire article, and do have the same takeaway as JBG. It does not, in my opinion, either explicitly say nor imply, that the increase in goose population is caused by the polar bears. In fact, it spends six paragraphs describing how an increase in winter food supply (in the US) has lead to the increase population that summers in northern Canada. The only thing it says about polar bears is that they like to eat the geese, but they especially like the eggs.

 

The article does mention that the scientists are worried that an increase in summer goose population may lead the public to believe that the threat to the polar bear is over, but they also say that only a small part of the entire global population of polar bears has access to the geese. Overall the population of polar bears is on the decline.

They also say that the geese are wrecking tundra. It's the overall tenor of the article that I object to, that all of this is man-caused.

The section about the "rich historical database" is discussing a database of plants, not temperature data. They are using this database to see where the plants are today vs where they were growing in the past.

If that's true, the problem is that plant growth is slow in that part of the world, but there is growth. One would expect the growth to get lusher and more temperate seeming as the Ice Age recedes into the past. The slow creep of subarctic boreal forest north may reflect this slow, but steady gain, even without further warming.

The book by Farley Mowat wasn't even mentioned in the article, so I don't see how that is relavant to the topic at hand.

THe book is not mentioned but severe variability in weather is. I was pointing to the book, and other quasi-historical resources, to the effect that the Arctic has always had warm spells, even in winter.

 

Basically, the article is about the research taking place in the northern reaches of Canada and Alaska, and how the climate affects are complex and varied, and how you can't just point to one data point to describe what is seen in the natural world. I don't see anyting controversial about that.

The premise of the article is the research. The tone of the article is to engender panic.

[FloridaJohn]

One would expect the growth to get lusher and more temperate seeming as the Ice Age recedes into the past.

Except that without global warming we would be headed into the next ice age with a gradually cooling climate. This interglacial period has already peaked.

The tone of the article is to engender panic.

I don't read it that way at all. There are no "calls to action" or "dire consequences" mentioned. It reads to me more like a matter-of-fact account of current research. Unless you can point to specific passages that specifically "engender panic," I think you are reading too much into what was actually written on the page.

[The_Global_Warmer]

Polar Bears mostly eat seals and baby seals over the sea ice in Spring and Summer. 

 

Reduction in Sea ice area and thickness can cause obvious problems for polar bears.

[JBG]

Except that without global warming we would be headed into the next ice age with a gradually cooling climate. This interglacial period has already peaked.

Lots of ups and downs in those cycles.

I don't read it that way at all. There are no "calls to action" or "dire consequences" mentioned. It reads to me more like a matter-of-fact account of current research. Unless you can point to specific passages that specifically "engender panic," I think you are reading too much into what was actually written on the page.

With 16 point font?