Global warming?

[SamIam]

Meanwhile, back at one of those islands where no one is supposed to be concerned about the rising ocean:

MALE (Reuters) – The Maldivian president and ministers held the world's first underwater cabinet meeting on Saturday, in a symbolic cry for help over rising sea levels that threaten the tropical archipelago's existence.
…Clad in black diving suits and masks, Nasheed, 11 ministers the vice president and cabinet secretary dove 3.8 meters (12 feet, 8 inches) to gather at tables under the crystalline waters that draw thousands of tourists to $1,000-a-night luxury resorts.
As black-and-white striped Humbug Damselfish darted around a backdrop of white coral, Nasheed gestured with his hands to start the 30-minute meeting, state TV showed.
"We are trying to send our message to let the world know what is happening and what will happen to the Maldives if climate change isn't checked," a dripping Nasheed told reporters as soon as he re-emerged from the water.
The archipelago nation off the tip of India, best-known for luxury tropical hideaways and unspoiled beaches, is among the most threatened by rising seas. If U.N. predictions are correct, most of the low-lying Maldives will be submerged by 2100.
"SOS" MESSAGE
Nasheed and the ministers used a white plastic slate and waterproof pencils to sign an "SOS" message from the Maldives during the 30-minute meeting.
"We must unite in a world war effort to halt further temperature rises," the message said. "Climate change is happening and it threatens the rights and security of everyone on Earth."
World leaders will meet in Copenhagen to hammer out a successor agreement to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and industrialized nations want all countries to impose sharp emissions cuts.
"We have to have a better deal. We should be able to come out with an amicable understanding that everyone survives. If Maldives can't be saved today, we do not feel that there is much of a chance for the rest of the world," he said.

More at:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091017/...es_environment

[spudcon]

And where are the charts from 2000 -2009 that show global cooling?

[Undertoad]

Sea level increased 8 inches in the last 100 years.

Polar bear numbers have doubled in the last fifty years.

It's complicated!

[SamIam]

The good news and the bad news about polar bears:

Polar bears are a potentially endangered species living in the circumpolar north. They are animals which know no boundaries. They pad across the ice from Russia to Alaska, from Canada to Greenland and onto Norway's Svalbard archipelago. Biologists estimate that there are 20,000 to 25,000 bears with about sixty percent of those living in Canada.

The main threat to polar bears today is the loss of their icy habitat due to climate change. Polar bears depend on the sea ice for hunting, breeding, and in some cases to den. The summer ice loss in the Arctic is now equal to an area the size of Alaska, Texas, and the state of Washington combined.

At the most recent meeting of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group(Copenhagen, 2009), scientists reported that of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, eight are declining, three are stable, one is increasing, and seven have insufficient data on which to base a decision—this is a change from five that were declining in 2005, five that were stable, and two that were increasing. During the meeting, delegates renewed their conclusion from previous meetings that the greatest conservation challenge to the polar bear is ecological change in the Arctic related to climate warming.

On May 14, 2008, the U.S. Department of the Interior reclassified the polar bear as a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act, citing concerns about sea ice loss. Russia lists the polar bear as a species of concern.

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/bear-facts/

[Undertoad]

You don't have to cherry-pick the experts because they have done it for you. They barred a polar bear expert who is a global warming skeptic from that Copenhagen meeting. His views were considered "unhelpful". This expert has found that 17 out of 19 of the populations have increased.

NOTHING makes me more skeptical than this sort of "look here, don't look there" behavior.

[xoxoxoBruce]

If all the Arctic sea ice melts, and all the Polar bears die, do you still have to go to work the next day? I mean really, these two items are not problems, they're symptoms.
We know the climate is changing, as it has for billions of years. We don't know;

1-How much it will change, ie, how hot it will get?
2-What all the effects of that change will be?
3-How much we're contributing to that change?
4-If we can slow the change, significantly?
5-If we can limit the range, the max, of the change?
6-If we can actually reverse the direction of change?
7-If we can do something(s) effective, which something(s) are they, and which things are just a waste of time and money. Time and money not every country will share, btw.

[SamIam]

I don’t know what you mean about “cherry picking.” Most of the articles that came up when I googled the subject said more or less the same thing. You are correct in stating that the polar bear population is currently at an all time high. However, at the same time there is major cause for concern over their ultimate fate.

As for Mitchell Taylor, the scientist banned from the Copenhagen meeting, I don’t have enough information to really comment on the fairness of his banishment or not. It was obviously a stupid stunt to pull if they wanted good publicity.

Mitchell Taylor is really not the person you should be quoting to build your case, however. Here are a couple of his comments taken at random from a second google search. The first I have edited for brevity, but if you want to read the entire article, just click on the cite.

A Vancouver Province newspaper editorial criticizing the U.S. government for proposing polar bears as a possible threatened species has the scientists it quoted crying foul. Calling the US decision “a classic case of blinkered thinking,” the Province claims that Mitchell Taylor, manager of wildlife research for the Nunavut government, has been quoted as saying that, except for Hudson Bay, "polar bears appear to be overabundant."
…Contacted by DeSmog readers, however, Taylor said [he was] misquoted in the Province editorial.
“I don't even know what "overabundant" means,” said Taylor. “There are some populations that appear to be at levels where problem-bear issues are at or approaching unacceptable levels. I have said that in various interviews. I think it is pretty clear what the (Province) author’s perspective is on climate change and polar bears. I guess this is freedom of the press in action.”

http://www.desmogblog.com/node/1166

There is a very good interview of Dr. Taylor printed by the Canadian Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Here is just one sample question and response:

FC: Do you think that the current level of harvest is having a significant effect on polar bears overall and more specifically on certain sub-populations of the animals?

MT: The harvest rates are usually intended to keep the population at current levels so even a sustainable harvest would have a stabilizing effect on a population. If you are asking if I think that some populations are declining because of over harvest, I think that probably Kane Basin numbers are stable even though it is over-hunted. Kane Basin seems to be a sink for polar bears right now. The harvest in western Hudson Bay has recently been reduced and the population is thought to be stable or increasing slowly. I’m not exactly sure what’s happening with harvests in the Southern Beaufort Sea, but this population appears to have been badly stressed by the recent arctic warming. The most recent data for the other populations indicates they are sustaining current harvest levels except for Baffin Bay. In Baffin Bay the research data suggests a significant decline in population numbers, but local hunters report that numbers are stable or even increased.

http://www.fcpp.org/publication.php/2571

One might also keep in mind that Taylor is a zoologist, not a climatologist. I respect what he has to say about current bear populations, but I am skeptical about his stance on climate change.

[xoxoxoBruce]

What/where did he say about climate change? All I read was he said the Arctic is warming.
You're right him being a zoologist. He works for the native (Nunavut) regions government, making sure there is sufficient wildlife to sustain the natives tradition, and culture, of subsistence hunting. In other words, this guy should know as much or more than anyone, about what's happening with the critters in the great white north.

When the, "Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission)", meets in Copenhagen to talk about Polar Bears, they should be begging this guy for his expertise. But I suspect because his point of view is sustainable levels for hunting and ecological balance, probably differs from their view that every Polar Bear is precious, he was shunned.
I also suspect they are smart enough to know that, but are operating under, "the end justifies the means rule", which tells me they don't want to know the truth.
They can't handle the truth.

[SamIam]

From the same interview quoted above:

FC: We hear of sea ice decline but is it due to human-caused global warming?

MT: From what I have read, the arctic sea ice declines have been mainly due to natural causes although some authors have ascribed some fraction of it to CO2 without being specific about the mechanism. The arctic warming mechanism identified in the IPCC suite of climate models is atmospheric warming due to increased CO2 levels, not an unusual influx of warm Pacific surface water and unusually strong offshore winds in the eastern Siberia and Alaskan area which is what actually caused what is being called the “Arctic Warming Period”.

He pretty much states that he is not a climate specialist, but he has a different theory as to what is causing the arctic warming. Please note that his theory does nothing to explain ANTARCTIC warming. The man has gained notoriety as a result of having been banned from a meeting, NOT for his expertise on climate. I agree that it makes the organization which banned him look bad.

[Henry]

Remember the book and movie Never Cry Wolf? Excellent book, btw, by Farley Mowat. Anyway, it's a true story about when Mowat was sent by the Canadien gov't into the great white north to figure out what was happening to the caribou herds, whose populations had been dropping precipitously. The native innuit needed caribou to survive and were blaming the wolves for their decimation. Mowat found different, but his gov't wouldn't believe him - if not eating the caribou, what could the wolves possibly survive on? Having witnessed wolves hunting, Mowat proved a large carnivore could survive very well on field mice alone by using himself as an example - he ate nothing but mice for the winter. He also proved that wolves were only taking a small number of caribou, the old, sick, and weak caribou, which served to strengthen the herd, not decimate it. So what, then, was killing all the caribou?

Poachers. The locals, innuit and anglo, were overhunting the caribou and falsely blaming the wolves.

My point is: why do we never seem to see an accounting of how much poaching affects polar bear numbers? If poaching unnoticed by offialdom could drastically lower the population of herd animals of huge numbers, poaching could easily decimate the polar bear population.

There must be some prospective number assigned to poaching, but this brings another question: While you can know the number of times poachers were caught and perhaps extrapolate a poaching harvest number, how do you measure what you haven't seen, those you haven't caught?

My hope is that next year, the Senate will move ahead with a bill comparable to the American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act that was passed by the House.

A good summary of ACES is here.

It will stimulate the development of new and cleaner energy resources; provide for (require) greater energy efficiency in automobiles, buildings appliances, etc; and address the issue of excessive CO2 emissions (the most controversial provisions).

And despite the "sky is falling" rhetoric from the opposition, IMO, the cost to taxpayers is more than reasonable..estimated by several sources (CBO, EIA, EPA) as between 25 cents and 50 cents per day or $83 to $175 per year..excluding the savings that consumers would see from the proposed energy efficiency standards.

We can keep debating the issue of polar bears, cow flatulence, and whether excessive man-made CO2 emissions impact the natural atmospheric/environmental balance and may or may not contribute to climate change...or we can act.

IMO, it is time to act.

[Undertoad]

NOTHING makes me more skeptical than this sort of "look here, don't look there" behavior.

Or we can just bury our heads and keep debating

I'm sorry. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING makes me more skeptical than people who say "the debate is over".

Firstly, in science the debate is NEVER over. If the debate is over, it's not science.

Secondly, of COURSE the debate is not over.

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm sorry. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING makes me more skeptical than people who say "the debate is over".

Firstly, in science the debate is NEVER over. If the debate is over, it's not science.

Secondly, of COURSE the debate is not over.

At some point, debate (particularly rehashing the same arguments) does little other than prevent any action....a very effective stalling tactic by those opposed to change.

The fair question is if we have reached that point and decide its time to act. Or if not, when do we reach that point?

Should we debate for another 5 years...10 years...while we belch another 25-50 billion metric tons of man-made CO2 emissions into the atmosphere? There will NEVER be 100% agreement....but there is currently overwhelming consensus among the scientific community.

And I agree, debate is never over, it just takes a different form...that is the primary reason we have Congressional oversight....to review the effectiveness (and/or necessity) of further action, or rolling back actions, AFTER legislation has been enacted.

[xoxoxoBruce]

But Tony, tw said the debate is over a long time ago. um, nevermind.


Dr. Taylor

From what I have read, the arctic sea ice declines have been mainly due... snip

SamIam

He pretty much states that he is not a climate specialist, but he has a different theory as to what is causing the arctic warming.

Taylor says up front, he gets his climate change information the same way you and I do. What he is, being there doing his job, is a first hand witness to the result of the warming's effect on the flora & fauna in the Arctic.
He's also one of the world's most knowledgeable people on the condition of the bears. To exclude him from a meeting about the bears is unconscionable.

[dar512]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I'm sorry. NOTHING, I mean NOTHING makes me more skeptical than people who say "the debate is over".

Firstly, in science the debate is NEVER over. If the debate is over, it's not science.

Secondly, of COURSE the debate is not over.

Not really UT. The debate over flat earth - pretty much over. The debate over evolution - also pretty much over (at least amongst scientists). Some things do get settled pretty much.

Not saying that applies to global warming. Just sayin'.

Here's the real question for you. Why don't we know for sure one way or the other? Lack of tools? Obfuscation of the data?

Is it impossible to know at this point? Isn't the question important enough to make a definitive exploration of the subject?