Are Polar Bear Populations Thriving?

There's a new lie being spread by conservatives and those who continue to deny climate change stating that polar bear populations are on the rise. Some claim populations are "thriving" and "booming."  One meme (it's a meme, it must be true!) claims that "when Al Gore was born," there were only "7,000" polar bears left, and that today there are "30,000." (Deniers love to pick on Al Gore, as if he fabricated global warming and climate change -- and as if there didn't exist an overwhelming consensus among scientists all over the world, as well as harsh on-the-ground evidence happening around the globe.) 

I wish polar bears were thriving; unfortunately, they're not.

Complicated issues are difficult -- if not impossible -- to convey in a meme. It make take a bit of time and effort, but for those interested in facts here you go:

When Al Gore was born in 1948 there were no legitimate estimates of how many polar bears existed – guesses varied widely because they were based on stories from explorers and hunters rather than scientific surveys. Before the polar bear treaty was signed in 1973, and before polar bears were listed as endangered, several populations of bears were decimated by hunting which began around 1600 and continued unchecked for 350 years. Early scientific estimates from the 1980s, after polar bears were protected for a decade or so, are in the neighborhood of 20,000 to 40,000 polar bears. Most researchers assume that the number of polar bears did increase due to the controls and quotas instituted by the 1973 treaty.

Today, researchers estimate that there are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears in 19 relatively distinct sub-populations. Of those 19 sub-populations, eight are declining; three are stable; one is increasing and, for the remaining seven, there is insufficient data to determine. For comparison: In 2005, five populations were declining; two were stable and two were increasing. (There is insufficient data for the others.) 

Currently, most of the populations are losing sea ice habitat which has negative impacts on their hunting, as a result most populations are experiencing declines in weight and health of bears, along with low reproductive and cub survival rates.

Since satellite records began in the late 1970s, about 50% of the ice area has within polar bear habitat has been lost, and the ice that remains has lost about 50% of its thickness. In 2012, the area of sea ice loss was greater than the entire area of the United States. That is a significant degradation of critical habitat for polar bears. 

Because polar bears feed almost exclusively on seals they hunt on ice. Changes in the sea ice that affect access to prey has and will continue to have negative effects on the bears. In particular, if more snow falls, polar bears are less successful at breaking into the birth lairs of ringed seals. If too little snow falls, ringed seal pups are born on the sea ice without a lair and this makes them very vulnerable to predation by polar bears and arctic fox -- which can lead to a decline in seals. With less food, polar bears will fail to reproduce more often and give birth to smaller young that have higher mortality rates.

Unfortunately, polar bears are not "thriving" and their future doesn't look so bright.

The Logic of Denial

After spending some time trying to understand where skeptics of climate change are coming from, I think I am starting to see the light.

The arrogant scientists who think humans can influence climate remind me of all those scientists around the world claiming that too much fast foods and junk foods high in fat, sugar and calories are unhealthy and bad for you. I am guessing they are paid to come up with such conclusions. Fortunately, there are a few smart folks working on behalf of the Junk Food and Fast Food Industry Association proving just how wrong all those scientists are. They have assured me that junk food and fast food is healthy. I believe them. I know a guy who eats at McDonalds a lot and he is pretty skinny. I think these "health nut" scientists are involved in a plot, a hoax, to harm the American food service economy.

Similarly, there are scientists all over the world claiming cigarettes are bad for us. I have no doubt they are paid to come to such ridiculous conclusions. They are obviously part of a hoax out to destroy the American tobacco industry and hurt the poor, hard-working farmers who grow fine, healthy tobacco. Fortunately, there are a handful of good, smart folks working on behalf of the tobacco industry to show us how wrong most of the world’s scientists are. I trust them. After all, I knew a guy who smoked nearly two packs a day and lived to be 90.

Now the liberal elitists are out to control Americans and destroy the fossil fuel industry. They are wealthy, powerful and influential enough to have paid a majority of the world’s scientists to fabricate so-called peer-reviewed research and cooperate in a massive, world-wide conspiracy and hoax claiming that human emissions of C02 and other so-called “greenhouse” gasses are causing our planet to warm, melting glaciers and icecaps, changing ocean temperatures and currents and thereby altering regional and global climate. They have even managed to manufacture actual, observable changes in temperatures, weather and related impacts to land, water and wildlife which they pretend to have predicted. Fortunately, there are a handful of smart people working on behalf of the fossil fuel industry who have proved that the overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists are wrong. Fortunately, they have exposed the hoax. I trust them. After all, we had a couple cold days and big snowstorms this year and Senator James Inhofe was able to throw a snowball on the Senate floor in Washington DC in February.

What’s next? Is some liberal, elitist scientist going to try and prove to us that the world is round?

Skeptics and Deniers are Dangerously Wrong (The Science Is In)

"Global Warming" by Fernando Agudelo

There is a deceptive, disingenuous video circulating the cyber world called "What They Haven't Told You About Climate Change" produced by Prager University, a nonprofit organization that claims to offer "knowledge and clarity on life's biggest topics at no cost" through "awesome five minute videos" from a "conservative perspective." Even their name is deceptive. "We are not an accredited academic institution," reads the disclaimer on their website, "and we don't want to be." The so-called “University” was created by nationally syndicated conservative talk radio show host Dennis Prager. Their recently-released climate change video features Patrick Moore, who left Greenpeace years ago to become a paid spokesman for corporate polluters and is now a consultant for the nuclear and fossil fuel energy industry. (During a recent interview with  a French television station, Moore was asked about the safety of the herbicide glyphosate. He told the interviewer that one "could drink a whole quart of it" without any harm. When Moore was challenged to drink a glass of the weedkiller, he refused and ended the interview.)  In the Prager climate change video -- in a excruciatingly monotone voice and tedious manner -- he seems to be reading from scripted cue-cards that just might as well have been provided by the Koch brothers.

He does bring up an interesting analogy: Climate change deniers are, indeed, similar to those who deny the Holocaust – they all ignore overwhelming evidence and fabricate their own crazy “truths.” They are no different from those who claim cigarettes aren’t really bad for you. In fact, many of the people now paid by the fossil fuel industry to spread climate-change denial were once paid by tobacco companies to discredit and refute the overwhelming scientific evidence about the toxic dangers of smoking.  

There exists a well-funded, highly-complex, fairly coordinated "denial machine" made up of pseudo scientists, fossil fuels corporations, conservative think tanks, politicians and various front groups fighting against what they perceive as a threat to a western social order built by industrial capitalism powered by fossil fuels. They specialize in manufacturing conspiracies, hoaxes, skepticism, uncertainty and doubt. They attack good, sound science. They lie.

Prager University and Patrick Moore are part of that propaganda machine. 

Moore says our climate has changed before. He is correct. He is incorrect in claiming we don’t understand why those changes occurred. We do.

Thanks to what we collectively call “science,” here is what we know: Carbon Dioxide (C02) and methane were involved in all of Earth’s past changes in climate. When they were reduced, global climate became colder. When they were increased, global climate became warmer. When C02 levels jumped rapidly, the global warming that resulted was highly disruptive and sometimes caused mass extinctions. Humans today are emitting prodigious quantities of C02 at a rate faster than even the most destructive climate changes in earth's past.

Most living organisms have time to adapt and change along with gradual changes in climate; most living organism do not have time to adapt and change to abrupt changes – changes like we are seeing today.

Life flourished in the Eocene, the Cretaceous and other times of high C02 in the atmosphere because greenhouse gasses were in balance with carbon in the oceans and the weathering of rocks. Life, ocean chemistry, and atmospheric gasses had millions of years to adjust to those levels. But there have been several times in Earth’s past when temperatures jumped abruptly, in much the same way as they are doing today. Those times were caused by large and rapid greenhouse gas emissions, just like humans are causing today. Those abrupt global warming events were almost always highly destructive for life, causing mass extinctions. The symptoms from those events (big, rapid jumps in global temperatures, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification) are all happening today with human-caused climate change.

So yes, Moore is absolutely right: Our climate changed before, even before humans came along, but scientists know why. In all cases we see the same association between C02 levels and global temperatures. Past examples of rapid carbon emissions (just like today) were highly destructive to life on Earth.

Moore also says there is no correlation between atmospheric C02 levels and changes in Earth’s temperatures. He is wrong. They fit like pieces of a puzzle; a puzzle that an overwhelming majority of the world’s top scientists are collectively putting together.   

Thanks to science, here are a few other things we know about past changes in Earth’s climate that Moore failed to mention: Sudden releases of freshwater from glacial lakes can rapidly modifying the surface circulation in the North Atlantic and the climate of adjacent regions. Massive volcanoes can have similar affects. The oscillation between glacial and warm conditions can also result from periodic and predictable changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun. These changes influence the seasonal distribution of solar radiation and can potentially cause abrupt changes in El Niño, monsoons and the global atmospheric circulation. Scientists also hypothesize that abrupt changes in climate can result from “crossing thresholds,” such as when fresh water from melting ice rapidly flushes into the North Atlantic, shutting down ocean thermohaline circulation that influences climate with regional and global consequences.

What is ocean thermohaline circulation?  It is something we have come to understand though science. Driven by the sun's heat absorbed by tropical oceans and impacted by variations in salt content in the water, thermohaline circulation is a powerful force on the world's climate system. It’s conveyer belts of currents, moving water of various temperatures around the planet that influence regional and global climate. 

As heat from the tropics is carried by the Gulf Stream into the North Atlantic where it is vented into the atmosphere, a deep convection of ocean waters is caused by surface cooling, with the flow of water then sinking to depths and then upwelling back to the surface at lower latitudes – making some parts of our planet colder or warmer than other parts. Some places are cold enough to freeze water into glaciers and icecaps. (Glaciers store about 69% of the world's freshwater. If all land ice melted our seas would rise about 230 feet. During the last ice age -- when glaciers covered more land area than today -- the sea level was about 400 feet lower than it is today. At that time, glaciers covered almost one-third of the land. During the last warm spell, 125,000 years ago, seas were about 18 feet higher than they are today. About three million years ago the seas could have been up to 165 feet higher.)  Frozen water releases salt, and thus when it melts it is salt-free. This factor and the heavier density of salty water is particularly important in polar regions where the convergence of fresh and saline waters influences ocean currents. In other words, when the frozen waters melt, not only do sea levels rise, but the world’s “conveyer belts” of currents change, slow down, perhaps stop and thus regional and global climates also change.   

Ocean thermohaline circulation is dynamic and has been known to dramatically shift, as it appears to have done just after the last Ice Age and perhaps during episodes of abrupt climate change. Shifts in the thermophile circulation’s  "conveyor belts" of ocean currents can cause major changes in climate over relatively short-time scales (10-20 years) which in turn can have enormous impacts.

Because massive human-induced releases of C02 and other greenhouse gasses are warming our planet and melting glaciers and polar ice caps, understanding the thermohaline circulation has become a major focus for scientists who conduct climate research. Here is what they have thus far discovered and accurately predicted: Thermohaline circulation is slowing down in as a result of greenhouse warming. The slowdown is occurring because the rapid melting of glaciers and icecaps is flushing freshwater into the North Atlantic making it less dense and less able to sink to depth.

In other words: The engine that runs the system is breaking down. We are breaking it. We can fix it, but some would rather deny the problem so as to protect greed and profit. They would rather kill the proverbial goose that lays the golden eggs, so they perpetuate and disseminate deceptive lies, half-truths and misconceptions to an ignorant public that has little understanding of science. Most of them, like Patrick Moore, get paid to do so.

Moore says warming trends have leveled off. He is wrong.

Records show that the Earth has been warming at a steady rate and there is no sign of it slowing any time soon. Last year (2014) was the hottest year on record. The global temperature was 1.24°F above the long-term average, besting the previous record holders by 0.07°F.  Thirteen of the 15 hottest years on record have all occurred since 2000. This is the 38th consecutive year with global temperatures above average. And that’s just surface temperature. Oceans give a much more alarming indication of the warming that is happening. More than 90% of global warming heat is absorbed by our oceans, while less than 3% goes into increasing the surface air temperature. Last year was the highest ocean temperatures on record, coming in at 1.09°F degrees above average. Oceans continue to warm, changing the currents that change temperatures that change regional and global climate.

Since global warming influences ocean currents that influence regional climates, this results in severe and record-breaking fluctuations in weather in various places – from unusually warm to unusually cold, at times, with more frequent extremes such as tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards. This is why, on an unusually cold and snowy February day in Washington DC, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma was able to throw a snowball on the Senate floor in an ignorant attempt to “prove” that human activity isn’t causing climate change. It’s also why Washington DC now experiences record-breaking heat most every summer, and why springtime in our nation’s capital is now, on average, seven degrees above the historical norm.

How do we know all this? Scientific data gathered through scientific research in accordance with rigorous standards of the scientific method and compiled by scientists into scientific reports that are scientifically peer-reviewed by other scientists who scrupulously and methodically try to find flaws in the works of their fellow scientists. Scientific theories, hypotheses and results are constantly challenged and tested over and over again until something is either disproved or, as is the case with human-caused climate change, an overwhelming consensus is reached. It would be impossible, yes impossible!, to bring together all the world's leading scientists to agree to a secretive plot. Climate change is not a hoax. The science is real.       

Moore says there is no consensus among scientists about human-caused climate change, that “the science is not in.”  He is wrong.   

  

In the scientific field of climate studies – which is informed by many different disciplines – the consensus is demonstrated by the number of scientists who have stopped arguing about what is causing climate change – and that’s nearly all of them.  A survey of 928 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subject of global climate change shows that not a single paper rejected the consensus position that global warming is man caused. A follow-up study of more than 12,000 peer-reviewed abstracts on the subjects of global warming and global climate change found that, of the papers taking a position on the cause of global warming, more than 97% agreed that humans are causing it.  The scientists who authored the research papers were also contacted and asked to rate their own reports, and again more than 97% who took a position on the cause said humans are causing global warming.

Several studies have confirmed that “The debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”  In other words: More than 97% of scientists working in the disciplines that contribute to studies of our climate conclude that current climate change is being caused by human activities. There are no national or major scientific institutions anywhere in the world that dispute the theory of human-caused climate change. Not one!

Why do so many Americans believe a handful of paid corporate lackeys and right-wing politicians who manufacture conspiracies, hoaxes, skepticism, uncertainty and doubt instead of an overwhelming majority of the world's top scientists -- and the actual, growing evidence throughout our rapidly changing world that scientists have been predicting for years?  

It’s time to ignore dangerously ignorant corporate mouth-pieces like Patrick Moore -- people paid to fuel climate-change denial so as to protect greed and profit while diminishing the health of the planet that sustains us. It’s time to listen to the overwhelming majority of knowledgeable, informed scientists throughout the world who have reached near-unanimous consensus in regards to human-caused climate change. The science is in. It’s time we collectively move past denial towards acceptance and action.  

For more on climate change, please check out: "Our Wild World Unraveling: Thoughts on Climate Change from a Hunter, Fisherman and Backpacker," and "A Bipartisan Call for Climate Action."