Polar bears are starving! (NOT)
Fake science: Two articles yesterday from the so-called science journals Nature and Science today illustrate once again how pervasive the corruption in the climate field has now spread to almost anything that relates to climate.
- Nature: Polar bears are wasting away in a changing climate
- Science: Polar bears are starving, and this video reveals why
Both articles refer to a paper published this week in Science, though the Nature article is far more detailed and longer. Researchers had tracked 9 polar bears during the spring months in three separate years, and had found that 5 of them had lost weight during this time period. From the Nature article:
On average, the bears needed nearly 12,325 kilocalories per day — 1.6 times more energy than previously thought. To meet such energy demands, a female bear on the spring sea ice should eat either one adult or 19 newborn ringed seals every 10 to 12 days, the scientists concluded.
But nearly half of the bears didn’t catch enough food — and were forced to fast or scavenge carcasses. These animals lost 10% of their body mass over about 10 days. “That’s dramatic,” says physiologist John Whiteman at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. It’s as if a person weighing 80 kilograms shed 8 kilograms in just over a week, he says.
Catching enough to eat isn’t the only challenge polar bears face. As rising temperatures thin the sea ice, wind and currents make it drift faster on the ocean surface. “Think about a treadmill,” says Merav Ben-David, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Wyoming in Laramie. If the sea ice moves faster under their paws, polar bears have to walk faster — or for longer — to remain in the same spot3, which forces them to expend more energy, she says. [emphasis mine]
Oh my god! The polar bears are dying! And global warming is killing them!
What a joke. A quick look at the graph above, captured from the Science video, reveals that what the researchers really found is that four bears lost weight, four bears gained weight, and one stayed about the same. The bears studied weren’t “starving,” they represented what looks like an ordinary cross-section of population.
Moreover, this study is incredibly uncertain in that it only studied 9 bears, and only during the spring months during three years. What happens during the rest of the year? What would happen if they studied a larger population? While the data here teaches us something about the polar bear’s diet, calorie intake and calorie requirements, it is absolutely insufficient to provide any conclusions about the future of the bear population.
Worse, while both articles were quick to mention the threat from global warming, neither mentioned that the polar bear population continues to thrive, and has been doing so for the past decade, with no declines in almost all Arctic regions.
Further compounding the bad reporting here, while both articles repeated their religious belief in global warming and the impending disappearance of the Arctic icecap, there remains zero evidence in all data gathered of the ice pack by satellites and ground research that the icecap is shrinking significantly. In fact, while it had shown a steady decline through the first decade of the 21st century, in the past few years there has been a marked recovery. While these scientists might want the ice cap to disappear for political reasons, it simply isn’t doing so.
This is junk journalism and fake science. In fact, it is downright pitiful. That the reporting at such important science journals as these has become so slipshod speaks badly for the future of science in general.
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“. . . there remains zero evidence in all data gathered of the ice pack by satellites and ground research that the icecap is shrinking significantly.”
At Anthony Watts blog he’s got a sea ice reference page, near the top of that page there’s a graph headed “JAXA Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or Greater:” that shows the sea ice average extent for the 1980’s, 1990’s, 2000’s and 2010’s.
The trend in declining sea ice that that graph shows over that period is clear and consistent, dropping from an average September minimum of over 7 million km^2 in the ’80’s to under 4.5 million km^2 in the 2010’s.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Wow, I’m going to use this in my next course as an example of what NOT to do. I teach statistics.
A sample size of 9 – Just. Wow.
Andi-
Good man!
tangentially– the FDA wants around ‘3,500’ people enrolled in Phase 3 and 4 drug studies.
Andrew_W
February 2, 2018 at 11:41 am
The trend in declining sea ice that that graph shows over that period is clear and consistent, dropping from an average September minimum of over 7 million km^2 in the ’80’s to under 4.5 million km^2 in the 2010’s.
Looking at the graph, there isn’t anything alarming there. An average isn’t something that happens every year without change. The climate isn’t static, so we can expect fluctuations. The graph does show fairly stable icepacks over the last thirty years, at times when alarmists said there was run away heating which apparently had no impact on the ice. These same alarmists said we wouldn’t have any ice right now, and we do.
Looking at short term trends and trying to apply them to predictions going out decades to centuries is foolish.
When I was a kid, the nature shows would show the struggle the apex predators had catching their food. It was always a struggle. Success was never guaranteed. Back then, it was portrayed as how tough nature is.
Today, apex predators are portrayed as super animals always successful who live easy lives with abundant food and no skill or struggle in catching food. The problems that have are only from the climate apocalypse.
The sciency people seem determined not to understand how nature actually works. But hey, many of these people think humans living as hunter/gatherers was a time of leisure, health, and prosperity.
There is a reason they call it fishing and not catching.
Andi wrote: “Wow, I’m going to use this in my next course as an example of what NOT to do. I teach statistics. A sample size of 9 – Just. Wow.”
I’m sure Andi read the book “How To Lie With Statistics.” It explains how to get four out of five dentists surveyed to agree on something: just take a lot of surveys of five dentists until you get a group in which one who will not recommend the specific brand of sugar-free gum. One has to wonder just how many groups of Polar Bears the researchers had to study — and for how many years — in order to find a group and a factor that could conceivably be used to “prove” global climate warming disruption change.
What year was it that all those yachts got stuck in the Arctic ice because they believed the politician who said that the Arctic would be ice-free?
Wasn’t that shortly after an Antarctic research ship (with paying tourist passengers) got stuck in the Antarctic ice for the same reason?
Guys, you know they are lying when their lips move.
The graph does show fairly stable icepacks over the last thirty years,
We must be looking at different graphs then, as I said: The trend in declining sea ice that that graph shows over that period is clear and consistent, dropping from an average September minimum of over 7 million km^2 in the ’80’s to under 4.5 million km^2 in the 2010’s.
Andrew_W,
Could you be more specific about which graph you are looking at? I counted 17 graphs on the page at your link. The only graph that would support your statement has the following notice: “Note: this is only updated monthly, and is a model output, not a real-time observation”
A model showing a decline in sea ice does not demonstrate an actual decline in sea ice. You may be confusing the map for the territory.
wodun made two points: “These same alarmists said we wouldn’t have any ice right now, and we do. Looking at short term trends and trying to apply them to predictions going out decades to centuries is foolish.”
In addition to his points, why would anyone act surprised that global temperatures might be rising or that polar ice caps may be shrinking when we have been coming out of a Little Ice Age for three centuries or so?
Clearly the polar bears survived the last time that there was a Northwest Passage, so what has changed with them that they might not survive this coming warm age with a Northwest Passage? Polar bear counts show that there are more polar bears now than in the 1980s, so it seems that warmer temperatures are better than cooler temperatures. Less ice is better than more ice.
I’m not sure that even if the Arctic becomes ice-free year around that there is anything to worry about. Do you have some insight about this that you can share?
Perhaps there would be even more food available for the polar bears, and they would not have to rely upon ice flows to find food. Perhaps with warmer temperatures they would not need to spend as much energy keeping warm, and they could get by with fewer than 220 Big Macs every 10 to 12 days.
Andrew_W, are you listening to politicians when their lips move? Be careful about that, because that is when they are lying to you.
Edward, I said nothing about polar bear population, for which there is no good data to establish any recent overall population trend.
Robert made the claim that “. . . there remains zero evidence in all data gathered of the ice pack by satellites and ground research that the icecap is shrinking significantly.” Then going on to opine that “while it had shown a steady decline through the first decade of the 21st century, in the past few years there has been a marked recovery.”
In fact there has not been a recovery in recent years, the trend remains solidly downwards.
I identified the graph I was referring to as headed with: “JAXA Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or Greater:”
There is exactly one graph with that heading and it is not the PIOMAS ice volume graph you you refer to.
“JAXA Arctic Sea Ice Extent – 15% or Greater” is not well presented. Apparently your monitor and mine are showing differences in gray scale darknesses. It is too bad that they did not use different line types (dots, dashes, double dots, double dashes) rather than all the same.
As for polar bears, that is the topic of the post. They are starving. Or maybe some are finally following their doctors’ recommendations that they lose weight.
I agree they should have used different line types, my monitor shows the later decades as darker, the 1980’s are easily seen as being the lightest grey, getting steadily darker in more recent decades. If you’re unsure of the order of the following decades consider this: The lines never cross.
https://polarbearscience.com/2016/02/24/harp-seal-most-abundant-arctic-seal-is-an-undervalued-polar-bear-prey-species/
Bears like all wild animals do not like coming into contact with people.
So if there are more polar bears digging through peoples garbage for food it must be because of one of two things.
First the bear must be stupid. Not likely.
Second is that all their food went away for some reason.
Food only goes away for two reasons. It dies or is eaten by other predators, like bears.
So either the food went away. It did not. Or the bears are being out compeated by other bears. Far more likely.
With a rising population of food like seals then the bear population must also be rising and the more agressive and successful bears are out hunting the slow and stupid bears who are forced to dig through peoples garbage or end up looking starved.
This relates to people also.
The lazy and stupid end up self enslaving themselves to the government sliding down the social ladder. The smarter more motivated folks become independent and self supporting, often climbing the social ladder far above what even they expected.
so…. the point most people miss is this:
SCIENCE Phenomenal Reality
this side only has ideas THIS SIDE IS REAL
The two shall never meet, even if they were perfect reflections…. and they never will be. The universe is infinite. Our minds are not.
Crap science? It’s all crap. Some of it just happens to be useful and functional. BUT SCIENCE CANNOT EVER BE TRUTH OR CORRECT. IT IS IMPOSSIBLE
and if you disagree…. you’re just wrong. i’m not arguing this.
Rule 9: Assume People Might Know Something You Don’t
Jordan Peterson
https://youtu.be/wopkwSfbRlQ
3:22
@pzatchok
Polar bears don’t have any natural enemies. They lack instincts to be afraid of humans or of anything.
Andrew_W,
You wrote: “If you’re unsure of the order of the following decades consider this: The lines never cross.”
The lines not crossing has no significance for determining which decades they represent.
I still do not understand why you point out a significance to any decline in the size of the ice coverage, unless you think that it is related to the starvation of the polar bears, as the articles say.
From the Nature article: “but with sea ice melting under their feet, the bears often struggle to get enough to eat.”
From the Science article: “But as climate change melts this ice, the bears have to work harder to find prey, and that’s taking a toll on their health, researchers report today in Science.”
As has already been pointed out, the data does not show any struggle to get enough to eat, any extra work to find prey, or any toll on their health. The data does not even show a correlation between ice coverage and polar bear weight.
And it definitely does not show a cause and effect relationship for any change in polar bear weight, either individually or as a group. The bogus conclusions seem to come from someone’s behind, except it has even less value than night soil.
Unfortunately, this type of conclusion has become standard operating procedure for certain areas of science.
“The lines not crossing has no significance for determining which decades they represent.”
Wrong.
“I still do not understand why you point out a significance to any decline in the size of the ice coverage, unless you think that it is related to the starvation of the polar bears, as the articles say.”
I’ve quoted the passages from Robert’s post that are the reason for my comments.
Must be a very dangerous job, weighing starving polar bears.
“The lines not crossing has no significance for determining which decades they represent.”
It’s like a trace on a cylinder, for a continuous trace to change the direction of a downwards spiral to an upwards spiral the trace has to cross itself.
Andrew_W wrote: “It’s like a trace on a cylinder, for a continuous trace to change the direction of a downwards spiral to an upwards spiral the trace has to cross itself.”
And now we all understand the problem. Andrew_W cannot read a chart.
The lines in question are decadal averages, as specified in the chart, not continuous annual tracks. Discontinuous lines of averaged data need not cross when they fluctuate upward or downward.
No Edward, because after December comes January, the trace is a continuous trace, another analogy is that it’s like a wall map of the Earth, if you’re always traveling West to East and spiraling south you can’t travel North to be above one of your previous circumnavigations without crossing your own path.
After a bit of thought, I agree, there is a discontinuity between each calendar year because of the decadal averaging that doesn’t occur in a chart showing a trace between one year and the next.
So I found the JAXA chart showing only the 80’s, 90’s and 00’s. Ice cover for those 3 decades are the higher ice extent lines on the chart I link to.
http://global.jaxa.jp/press/2012/08/20120825_arctic_sea_e.html
@Andrew_W
First post: “The trend in declining sea ice that that graph shows over that period is clear and consistent”
According to the graph in your link Sea Ice Extent – Change in Maximum, Mean and Minimum, Arctic sea ice extent is now at the same level as it was 14 years ago. That’s not what Al Gore predicted 14 years ago. We also see that the year 2012 saw both the smallest and the largest ice extents. 2013 and 2014 are high both seasons, and those are 3 out of the last 8 years plotted. So it doesn’t correlate well with the CO2-level, especially not with any catastrophic runaway effect. And how why would CO2 melt ice when the temperature hasn’t increased since soon 20 years?
The graph you refer to shows a change in sea ice extent, from 1979 – 2017, of:
-2.737%/decade in the yearly maximum
-4.108/decade in the yearly mean
-9.038/decade in the yearly minimum
The details you point you are either cherry picks or wrong.
I don’t care what Al Gore predicted 14 years ago, he is not a scientist qualified in this or any other field.
The seasonal max and min extents have returned to the same extents as 14 years ago. Use a ruler on the screen! How does that correlate with CO2-levels?
2018-14=2004, in 2004 the levels at maximum and minimum are above present levels and near the trend line.
Keep commenting, Andrew_W. You are reinforcing my point.
Well, ten years then. The ice extent was the same in 2017 as in 2007.
How has the Antarctic sea ice extent changed? Is it correlated with CO2?
How does local weather around the Arctic affect ice coverage there? The Arctic sea is surrounded by great rivers that feed it with fresh water that float in top and freeze at lower temperatures, so that flow controls the ice extent on the Arctic Sea.
Al Gore’s doomsday myth is what counts, since that is the climate politics that the politicians have accepted to 100%. Everyone is called a “climate denier”. Have the authors of the articles you link to vehemently publicly declared that Al Gore is a fraud who lies about the climate? Only those who do that can have any kind of credibility what so ever. Climate is politics. Those who want to talk science about it must very clearly distance themselves from politics. Very few so called climate scientists seem willing to do so. None of them can be taken seriously.
Treating a “climate scientist” as a scientist would be like treating a Marxist as a scientist. A Marxist scientist must make very clear that Marxism is politics, not science, and that he studies Karl Marx and his followers from a historic and psychological perspective, not as a “believer”.
LocalFluff-
Good stuff!
Jordan Peterson
“How to shut up a Marxist”
https://youtu.be/8p2QfjaSIUo
(2:50)
Edward, you don’t have a point.
Localfluff, you attempt to cherry pick 2 dates to make a case, get it wrong, and then go and dump the first date and cherry pick another, any claim you think you have to distancing yourself from having a political motivation and being able to “talk science” is shot.
Wayne, why do you feel compelled to reference that Jordan Peterson talk on Marxism?
“Can you keep your room organized?”
Jordan B. Peterson
[Joe Rogan Experience #958]
https://youtu.be/gvpSB1ajcBo
2:28
Jordan Peterson –
“It’s More Difficult To Rule Yourself, Than To Rule A City”
[Biblical Series VIII: The Phenomenology of the Divine 2017]
https://youtu.be/vyeik_iBKf4
(9:17)
So the ice extent in the Arctics is no different today than 10 years ago. And the global average temperature hasn’t increased for 20 years, so that’s no wonder ice isn’t melting. There’s no point in looking at ice coverage from a human CO2 emission perspective, as long as the temperature doesn’t increase, is there? Not even climate doomsdayers claim that CO2 directly melts ice.
Localfluff, statistics is a branch of mathematics, and as with all forms of mathematics there are rules, cherry picking start and end dates to get the result to fit your political position makes the statistics invalid. So, just as there is a right way to a simple equation like 10+10*10-10=? there’s a right way to analyze data to determine it’s validity.
Further discussion with you is pointless because you’re only interested in doing the math using your own rules rather than the correct rules, and there are indeed correct rules.
Localfluff wroteL “Al Gore’s doomsday myth is what counts, since that is the climate politics that the politicians have accepted to 100%. Everyone is called a climate denier. ”
Gore’s doomsday myth is one of the reasons why people keep getting stuck in the Arctic and Antarctic ice. People believe that the ice is gone or not widespread, ignore the ice that is forming around them, continue onward, then realize the awful truth as they desperately call for rescue. The politicians are lying when their lips move.
Andrew_W,
You wrote: “Edward, you don’t have a point.”
The fact that you do not understand that I have a point explains a lot. This suggests that further discussion with you is pointless, because you fail or refuse to understand what is discussed.
You wrote: “Localfluff, statistics is a branch of mathematics, and as with all forms of mathematics there are rules, cherry picking start and end dates to get the result to fit your political position makes the statistics invalid.”
Except that Localfluff was not using statistics. Even more about you is explained.
You wrote: “So, just as there is a right way to a simple equation like 10+10*10-10=? there’s a right way to analyze data to determine it’s validity.”
Just to let you know, there are several right ways to analyze the simple equation you presented. Both the commutative and the associative properties apply. As for analyzing data, you have demonstrated that you do not know any right way.
There are indeed correct rules in doing math, science, and data analysis, but you seem to have missed those classes in school, otherwise you would have known the basics, such as the commutative and associative properties. Do you know the distributive property without having to look it up?
That’s what I thought.
You believe that discussion is pointless, at least with people who know math, science, and data analysis, because you think that you know them and that those people do not. You assume much without knowing the people in the discussion, and you reveal much about yourself in the discussion process.
One revelation is that you have no interest in learning anything other than the belief system drummed into you by the politicians. Do you remember what they are doing when their lips move? I pointed out that global temperatures might be rising because we have been coming out of a Little Ice Age for three centuries or so. You ignored this fact, because it goes against your belief system. Instead, you attacked the data, and now claim that your way (whatever your way is) is the only right way to analyze data or do math.
You didn’t answer the question: “clearly the polar bears survived the last time that there was a Northwest Passage, so what has changed with them that they might not survive this coming warm age with a Northwest Passage?” You don’t have an answer, because you rely upon articles such as the one Robert posted for your information. As has been pointed out, that article does a poor job of interpreting the data that it presents, and it assumes conclusions from data that it does not present.
Then you assume the same assumed conclusions.
Back in the late 1960s, some young Americans had a phrase: Question authority. Now those Americans have become the authority — they are the authority — and they do not like being questioned, even by actual scientists, calling those who question them “deniers.” In their youth they were rebels against the system that brought them prosperity; in their old age, they have become authoritarian as political leaders, and that prosperity has become doubtful as they tell us that a lack of prosperity is “the new normal.”
Part of that authoritarianism is insisting that we must do as they say, otherwise the world’s ecosystem will be irreparably harmed. And you, Andrew_W, have bought into it, so now you worry about the amount of Arctic ice when it does not matter how much there is now, how much there was during the Little Ice Age, or even how much there was before the Little Ice Age.
Do you see my point?
Just to let you know, there are several right ways to analyze the simple equation you presented.
No Edward, there is only one correct answer to that equation.
One revelation is that you have no interest in learning anything other than the belief system drummed into you by the politicians.
You do not have the necessary information for you to draw that conclusion, so your assertion is a demonstration of you relying on faith in your own prejudices rather than in the information available to you.
You didn’t answer the question: “clearly the polar bears survived the last time that there was a Northwest Passage, so what has changed with them that they might not survive this coming warm age with a Northwest Passage?”
I didn’t address your question because it’s irrelevant to the points I’ve raised, in short, and despite your unreliable crystal ball gazing, chicken entrails reading or whatever system it is that supports your faith, I have no opinion on effects of the reduction of sea ice with regard to the survival of the polar bear in the wild.
Looking at short term trends in a chaotic system with lots of natural variation and predicting the future over the next couple hundred years is foolish.
We are currently in an ice age because we have polar ice caps. It isn’t uncommon in Earth’s history to be ice free. If the Earth is heading toward a period like this, it wouldn’t be apocalypse. Warm weather is good for life. Interglacials used to be called climate optimums but this was before the sciency crowd abandoned traditional religions but adopted being sciency as a religion because they are incapable of recognizing their own magical thoughts.
Bears will eat trash because it is easy to do so. Polar bears eating trash isn’t a sign they are starving.
Polar bears are the perfect target for alarmists because so few people experience them so we have to rely on the biased “scientists” who always sue everything for fearmongering advocacy for AGW apocalypse.
This lady has been targeted by the priests of the sciencys for excommunication from society for being a heretic. https://polarbearscience.com/
wodun, changes in the weather are “short term trends in a chaotic system with lots of natural variation”, and weather does account for the short term variations in sea ice extent that so mystify Localfluff. But, the changes in sea ice volume and extent over a nearly 40 year period with a consistent tend is a change in climate, such a change can only be the result of a long term forcing – just as the LIA in the North Atlantic was a climatic change and I’ve no doubt a result of a long term forcing (the Sun directly, or perhaps a change in ocean currents as a result of changes in solar activity?). We have a viable candidate for such a forcing, ocean and surface temperatures have risen as a result of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, a rise in temperature on the order of that observed was mathematically calculated 120 years ago.
I expect the trend in declining Arctic sea ice to continue until there’s either none left or until a change in the forcing result in colder Arctic sea and surface temperatures. So rather than hand waving, perhaps those wishing to claim the decline as being a result of something other than AGW should go and find some other forcing to account for the change, go dig up a strengthening in the Gulf Stream or something.
Failed persons who lie that they use science make obviously false claims to preserve what they have made into their their religious belief. it is mentally too hard for them to change. They never dealt with science at all, they from the beginning were only preaching their gospel. They never studied reality, their belief never evolved.
Andrew_W
Can you describe one scenario that would convince you that AGW isn’t a problem, what would that scenario be? if temperatures suddenly dropped by 5 degrees and stayed there for a century, would you then still insist that Al Gore’s climate doomsday will kill us all if we don’t give away all our monies and freedoms to the UN super government for rationing who will be allowed to live and who “must contribute to the greater goal of reducing the number of human beings alive”?
You don’t mention the Antarctic ice extent. AGW stands for *global* warming, doesn’t it?
Seriously, you must understand that there are a hundred big sources of errors in any computer climate model. It is totally anti-scientific to make such predictions of a doomsday. And these same false climate scientists suddenly become economic scientists and engineering scientists and dictate what must and must not be produced where and how.
In the mean while, all wild life on Earth is blooming thanks to human CO2-emissions, the gas of life. Agricultural areas used for food production are actually shrinking in the world, in large part thanks to human CO2-emissions. Wild life now takes over old agrochemical industrial areas. The rain forests are expanding, the deserts are shrinking, Siberia is greening thanks to plants being able to use their sparse sunlight more efficiently with a higher CO2-lever in the atmosphere. What’s the problem? Al Gore’s theological hallucinations? 1 mm higher sea level at your bungalow? What’s the real problem with human CO2-emissions? Much better to burn dead fossil fuel from the underground than to grow and burn living food, like the bio fuel mafia does.
LocalFluff-
good stuff.
Jordan Peterson
….on Overpopulation
[from the June 2017 Patreon Q & A]
https://youtu.be/xfZZLSWbY3g
7:29
You don’t mention the Antarctic ice extent.
Here you are then:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716301481
The balance of your comment is irrelevant to the point I’ve been making, which is that Arctic sea ice has been steadily decreasing, contrary to Robert’s claim there has been a recent “marked recovery”.
Your comment suggests to me that you’re projecting your own ideological motivations for your opinions on AGW onto me, assuming that my motivations must also be ideological, in this assumption you are incorrect.
Assuming Wayne’s posting of Jordan Peterson videos is motivated by a belief that they are somehow relevant to the topic at hand or at least the reasons for me having the opinions I do on the topic at hand, he appears to share your delusion that ideology is somehow relevant to my conclusions, it is not.
Heres a Jordan Peterson video for you Wayne, a point he never argues is that for most people using an incorrect gender pronoun would be a minor issue, even doing so deliberately is more infantile than insulting, so why should it be a human rights issue at all? If I address you as “Mrs.” or Localfluff as “it” hopefully neither of you are going to be deeply hurt to the point of needing the intervention of government forces to protect you (assuming you consider those pronouns inappropriate when applied to you), so why is there the slightest need for the need for government forces to be brought to bear on such cases involving transgender people?
If you disagree with me I’d be happy to hear your case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIAAkSNtqo
You don’t mention the Antarctic ice extent.
Here you are then:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716301481
The balance of your comment is irrelevant to the point I’ve been making, which is that Arctic sea ice has been steadily decreasing, contrary to Robert’s claim there has been a recent “marked recovery”.
Your comment suggests to me that you’re projecting your own ideological motivations for your opinions on AGW onto me, assuming that my motivations must also be ideological, in this assumption you are incorrect.
Assuming Wayne’s posting of Jordan Peterson videos is motivated by a belief that they are somehow relevant to the topic at hand or at least the reasons for me having the opinions I do on the topic at hand, he appears to share your delusion that ideology is somehow relevant to my conclusions, it is not.
Heres a Jordan Peterson video for you Wayne, a point he never argues is that for most people using an incorrect gender pronoun would be a minor issue, even doing so deliberately is more infantile than insulting, so why should it be a human rights issue at all? If I address you as “Mrs.” or Localfluff as “it” hopefully neither of you are going to be deeply hurt to the point of needing the intervention of government forces to protect you (assuming you consider those pronouns inappropriate when applied to you), so why is there the slightest need for the need for government forces to be brought to bear on such cases involving transgender people?
If you disagree with me I’d be happy to hear your case.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnIAAkSNtqo
Andrew_W;
…not really wanting to engage in this game. I’ll leave it to the very capable hands of other’s here.
Jordan Peterson –
“Rules of the Game”
https://youtu.be/xC9zUdOj-mM
6:22
Thanks for the video Wayne, part of it relates to a discussion I was having with wodun a few days ago on another site about why it’s so hard to change governing structures even when it should be obvious that they don’t give us the better quality results that we should know are possible under different governing structures – the fear of creating chaos while trying to jump from A to B.
@Andrew_W
Literally, your conclusion is that there exists no imminent threat against human civilization from AGW. You never claim that there does, do you? So POLITICALLY we seem to agree, you and I, that there exists no kind of scientific evidence at all for taking any political or economic action what so ever, because of the AGW hypothesis.
Is that right? Or where do you stand politically on the CO2-emission issue?
You can’t hide behind nothing-saying science to motivate the most draconian and disastrous politics ever in the history of human kind (the abolishment of industry, energy, agriculture, transportation).
There’s no point at all in discussing climate science, since both you and I know that it is way way way too complicated to be predicted today and in our lifetime. So the only thing to discuss about the climate is the politics. That’s the only thing with the climate that matters this century. You never talk about your climate politics prescription, do you? Do you care tell us what it is?
Andrew_W;
(is this Andrew from NZ?)
-watch the whole video here:
Jordan Peterson:
“Dragons, Divine Parents, Heroes and Adversaries: A complete cosmology of being.”
june 2014
https://youtu.be/nqONu6wDYaE
1:14:41
(and seriously, –it’s worth watching his lectures in their complete form, and more than once. He goes deep.)
–Just briefly; I would put forth the proposition we know exactly what sort of governing structures are optimal, and part of my goal as a conservative-libertarian-republican-classical-liberal, is to preserve what we know works, rather than “jump from A to B.”
(That’s too much akin to “Fundamental transformation” for me, and we know how that always ends– barbed wire & death camps.)
To summarize–
Polar bars are not starving.
Carbon is not the devil.
Al Gore is and always will be, a totalitarian-statist.
LocalFluff
Good stuff.
your conclusion is that there exists no imminent threat against human civilization from AGW.
You’re using definitive terms, (trying to put words into my mouth?).
My expectations is that climate sensitivity is in the middle of the IPCC range, somewhere around 2 degrees C, so we will see an increase in temperature not dramatically different to current forecasts, Arctic sea ice will continue to decline, extreme weather events will increase, but on the other hand because of polar amplification productive land area will increase as will plant growth in many places, rainfall will increase but so will evaporation rates.
There is such a thing as the tragedy of the commons, it’s an economic principle that is recognised by economists across the spectrum, so it is not an ideological claim that dumping excess CO2 into the atmosphere, externalizing costs, could lead to a bad result globally, it’s also not an ideological claim that unified action to address such a problem, if it is a problem, is justified.
On the other hand greater wealth and productivity through better technology and political/economic systems can be a very effective antidote to nature change and also obviously to anthropogenic change to the natural environment.
There’s no point at all in discussing climate science, since both you and I know that it is way way way too complicated to be predicted today and in our lifetime.
Not only do you and I not know that, we cannot know that.
My hope is that technological progress will lead to low carbon technology that out-performs current high carbon output technology on a purely economic basis, and, despite claims to the contrary, that is happening; unsubsidized PV solar power stations now exist that produce some of the cheapest power available, electric cars are far, far, simpler mechanically than ICE vehicles and have far, far lower running costs, technological progress has done a huge amount to clean up our cities and waterways, I’m confident it can also stabilize our impact on the wider environment.
So I’m hopeful that dramatic political action won’t in the end be necessary to get emissions down, eventually carbon emission do have to be reduced simply because you can’t keep increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations without at some stage the change having an impact that would be deleterious, even if that point isn’t reached until we get to over 2000 ppm CO2.
(is this Andrew from NZ?) Yep.
I would put forth the proposition we know exactly what sort of governing structures are optimal
Really? The US democratic model, the Swiss democratic model, or something else? The US and Swiss systems are very different in terms of how the voters are represented, how government works and I suggest the outcomes. To suggest that there are not potentially other systems (democratic in some form or other to be sure) that wouldn’t be an improvement (direct democracy, geographically independent democracy, sovereign independent nations without an even vaguely contiguous form?) superior to those we now have I think shows that you haven’t really thought along such lines.
Forget the Kracken… Unleash the LocalFluff!
Andrew_W; ref:
“…hopeful that dramatic political action won’t in the end be necessary to get emissions down…”
Q: Just exactly how far are you prepared to go, to control my life?
It’s sounds so quaint, ‘political action,’ more like ….barbed-wire & death-camps, again and again and again, over and over.
Dangers of Totalitarian Utopian Visions
(spoiler alert: “profoundly anti-human.”)
Jordan B Peterson
https://youtu.be/Isp4ssqJQ_g
2:17
my goal as a conservative-libertarian-republican-classical-liberal, is to preserve what we know works, rather than “jump from A to B.”
You must be very conflicted.
(That’s too much akin to “Fundamental transformation” for me, and we know how that always ends– barbed wire & death camps.)
To me that comment suggests much more conservative than libertarian. There have been many transformations that led to improvements* in the structure of governance, the reduction of the powers of the Monarchs in England in the 13th century, the collapse of the USSR, the implementation of democratic systems in Japan after WW2.
*Improvements for us common people, not necessarily for the rulers.
Jordan Peterson:
Government Validating Your Narcissism
https://youtu.be/o1-sIZirQh4
2:51
Q: Just exactly how far are you prepared to go, to control my life?
Firstly I’m not and will never be controlling your life, quell your paranoia. “Dramatic”? Well, that could be something terrible, equivalent to courts imposing fines on people who dump their waste into rivers. This will shock you, but dairy farmers in New Zealand aren’t allowed to let effluent from their milking sheds to run into rivers because it’s bad for the ecology, and it might shock you further to learn that right wing economists agree that taking away farmers freedom to pollute rivers, imposing a cost on others, is economically justified.
A previous conversation with Andrew, and other conversations have revealed that from country to country, the definitions of “liberal,” “conservative,” “left wing,” and right wing” differ greatly, and often contradict. That makes me hesitant to parse Andrew’s statement about what right wing economists say (not that the right wing, by anyone’s definition, is a monolith)
Garry-
good stuff.
I’ll pivot to this:
Richard Epstein
The Continuing Relevance of Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty
Mercatus Center
https://youtu.be/DhqXIc5CEpU
1:30:08
Andrew_W,
You wrote at February 5, 2018 at 8:39 pm:
“ — Just to let you know, there are several right ways to analyze the simple equation you presented.
“No Edward, there is only one correct answer to that equation.”
But you did not say “answer.” You said: “So, just as there is a right way to a simple equation like 10+10*10-10=? there’s a right way to analyze data to determine it’s validity.”
You were talking about ways to analyze, not talking about answers. You now are claiming to have changed context — and meaning — in mid sentence. Somehow, a right way to analyze has turned into “only one correct answer,” not the order of calculation. I still get the right answer even if I were to subtract the last 10 from the first 10 before multiplying the two middle 10s, and there are several other combinations of ways to analyze that equation and still arrive at the right answer. If you meant ‘answer’ in the first part of your sentence, then why did you change context and the meaning to ‘methods’ in the second part?
Words have meaning, and if you are unwilling to mean what you say and say what you mean, or continue to change the meanings midsentence, you will continue to have difficulty getting your meaning across. Your communication skills need some work. This tells us even more about you.
Or maybe you don’t mind being like Louis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty: “’When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’” Under those rules then queen start bug. Understand?
You are the one creating confusion. (I knew that I would have to explain it to you.)
“You do not have the necessary information for you to draw that conclusion, so your assertion is a demonstration of you relying on faith in your own prejudices rather than in the information available to you.”
Actually, I do have the necessary information. We have had previous discussions.
“I didn’t address your question because it’s irrelevant to the points I’ve raised”
Maybe so (or maybe not), but it was still a question. If you will only speak to the points that you have raised, then this particular comment of yours is also irrelevant. It will continue to be difficult to have a discussion with you if you are not willing to have the discussion.
Naturally, you have missed the part where this entire post is about the polar bears, and the ice discussion is only how the environment affects them. If we were to follow your rules of discussion, then we would have to ignore most of your commentary, or more correctly you would not make most of your comments.
“and despite your unreliable crystal ball gazing, chicken entrails reading or whatever system it is that supports your faith”
Now you project your own beliefs upon me (and this is relevant, because you brought it up at February 6, 2018 at 9:37 am). This reveals even more about you and your beliefs.
I noticed that you still do not see that I have a point.
From your commentary of February 6, 2018 at 2:24 am: “But, the changes in sea ice volume and extent over a nearly 40 year period with a consistent tend is a change in climate, such a change can only be the result of a long term forcing – just as the LIA in the North Atlantic was a climatic change and I’ve no doubt a result of a long term forcing (the Sun directly, or perhaps a change in ocean currents as a result of changes in solar activity?).”
Climate is long term. Centuries or millenia, not decades. That is why we have a Little Ice Age (LIA) that lasted centuries, and not a dozen or so climates. Unless you want to say that there was one climate, in the US, from about 1900 to 1940 (warming), another from 1940 to 1970 (cooling), and a third from 1970 to 2000 (warming), and 2000 to today (stagnant). Most real climates are fairly stable. Deserts remain deserts, rain forests remain rain forests, and ice caps remain ice caps for centuries or millennia.
Further, you are projecting a near-term trend into the future. This is risky, unless you have knowledge as to why the trend existed in the first place. Climate scientists do not understand the Earth’s short term trends, so they have had trouble predicting the future with their projected trends.
“We have a viable candidate for such a forcing, ocean and surface temperatures have risen as a result of the increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations, a rise in temperature on the order of that observed was mathematically calculated 120 years ago.”
You have confused correlation with causation. Not only is there zero evidence that ocean temperature and surface temperature rises are a result of atmospheric CO2 concentrations, but the surface temperatures were rising since the end of the LIA, long before the CO2 concentrations began to rise; the Arctic ice has been reducing in volume since the end of the LIA; and the historic ice core evidence is that, unlike Gore’s claim, thermal changes precede CO2 concentration changes.
In addition, a recent study has shown that this relationship — thermal change then CO2 concentration rise — can occur more strongly than previously believed: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2017/03/09/soils-carbon-climate/
“So rather than hand waving, perhaps those wishing to claim the decline as being a result of something other than AGW should go and find some other forcing to account for the change, go dig up a strengthening in the Gulf Stream or something.”
How are you not embarrassed over such a statement? Robert has suggested exactly that same other forcing factor, yet you ignore it entirely.
Indeed, now you have moved away from merely discussing the ice to claiming a cause, yet you have less evidence of your cause (zero evidence) than Robert has for his (historical sunspot data, as he pointed out).
This disregard for actual evidence and missing other people’s points is why you have such a difficult time discussing anything, here. Rather than discuss the issue, you make unsupported declarations based upon popular culture, not based upon science. You could not even stick to the poorly performed and reported science of the post.
From your commentary of February 6, 2018 at 9:36 am: “a point he never argues is that for most people using an incorrect gender pronoun would be a minor issue, even doing so deliberately is more infantile than insulting, so why should it be a human rights issue at all?”
You are changing the subject, because you are unable to win the current argument. Long ago, we showed you that AGW has no basis in scientific evidence or observation, but you continue to advocate for it. In the previous discussions, we asked you for scientific evidence to support your AGW claim, and all you could point to was a series of opinions but not the scientific analyses that would support those opinions.
Even the AGW claim is a change of subject, because the original articles linked in the post only related polar bear body weight to the food availability during the ten day period that they were monitored, then assumed that some of the bears did not come across food because of reduced ice coverage in the Arctic. No mention of human factors in any of those items. We also have to ask how often a polar bear historically goes ten days without food; that was not mentioned in either article.
Once again, you expect us to follow you as you move the topic around, but if I stick to the original topic and relate ice to polar bears then you declare that “it’s irrelevant to the points I’ve raised” Discussions go two ways, not just your way.
From your commentary of February 6, 2018 at 12:08 pm: “There is such a thing as the tragedy of the commons, it’s an economic principle that is recognised by economists across the spectrum, so it is not an ideological claim that dumping excess CO2 into the atmosphere, externalizing costs, could lead to a bad result globally”
First, can you give an actual example of an occurrence of the tragedy of the commons? Second, just because an economic principle exists does not mean that it must apply to everything.
For instance, let us assume that CO2 increase is related to human activity and not natural release due to global warming post LIA. Why does an increase in temperature to historical temperatures, which have been higher than modern temperatures, mean that there is a tragedy coming? How is the increase in plant life to the levels of yore worse than the plant life levels of today? How is anything of those warmer, more CO2-rich times worse than today? You called it a problem, so what is the specific problem of AGW? What is the tragedy that we should be expecting, and where is the scientific evidence (not speculation or speculative models) of such tragedy?
Or is that also irrelevant to your point?
” — There’s no point at all in discussing climate science, since both you and I know that it is way way way too complicated to be predicted today and in our lifetime.
“Not only do you and I not know that, we cannot know that.”
All evidence tells us that we do know that.
— Our best climate scientists failed to predict what they now call the current “pause” in the temperature rise, which implies that they think it will resume even though they now call global warming by the new name of climate change in order to make up for their inability to predict future climate.
— We continually get new calls that if we don’t stop global warming/climate change/climate disruption/whatever by some date then it will be too late. It has been too late several times now, yet it has never been too late, meaning that the predictions of tragedy of the commons keeps failing to come true.
— CO2 concentration has continued to rise, even though temperature stopped rising (the aforementioned “pause”), meaning that the correlation between CO2 and global temperature is not as causative as climatologists had assumed.
— The pause means that there are factors that have not been taken into consideration by the climatologists, and because they are not fixing their models, we know that the complicated nature of climate science has befuddled even them too much to be able to even try to make usable predictions.
That you, Andrew_W, do not know that climate science is so complicated explains even more about you and your belief system.
From your commentary of February 6, 2018 at 12:43 pm: “Firstly I’m not and will never be controlling your life, quell your paranoia. ‘Dramatic’? Well, that could be something terrible, equivalent to courts imposing fines on people who dump their waste into rivers. This will shock you, but dairy farmers in New Zealand aren’t allowed to let effluent from their milking sheds to run into rivers because it’s bad for the ecology, and it might shock you further to learn that right wing economists agree that taking away farmers freedom to pollute rivers, imposing a cost on others, is economically justified.”
First, your advocacy that a governing body imposes fines to control someone’s life is the same thing as your own desire to control his life, if only vicariously.
Second, I am not surprised that your government controls your farmers’ lives.
Third, I am not shocked that “right wing” economists agree with reduced freedom, because as we have learned from earlier discussions (as Garry noted), your definition of “right wing” is the exact opposite as Americans’ definition. You are confused about the issues at hand, and you misinterpret reality, causing you to assume our reactions incorrectly.
Fourth, now that you bring in the “right wing” topic, I think you can understand why wayne linked to the Marxism video.
Fifth, you have advocated that we change our behavior in order to save the planet from the tragedy of the commons. That sounds like you want to control our lives or at least have our lives controlled.
It is that communications problem that you are having. It is also your refusal to interpret and adapt to our meanings when you speak to us, adding to your own confusion and adding to ours. It is the responsibility of the speaker to make sure his audience understands him, but you do not attempt that. Instead you require that we figure out your meaning, even when it contradicts context and changes within a single sentence.
Some of us already know what some of your words and phrases mean, but you refuse to use the American meaning when you are talking to Americans. Do you attempt to confuse your audience on purpose in order to get a rise, or have I been right about you for a long while?