Check it out… The climate is really causing strange things to happen like in this video!!!
Climate change doesn’t kill polar bears. Icecaps melting sometimes isolate polar bears, and those are doomed (they are not amphibians, after all). I don’t understand how there are people who can’t believe the tangible proof that the climate is changing.
So, Blaquesmith, are there more or fewer polar bears in the world? Or is this concern best left “intangible” because the numbers don’t add up? 
I don’t know, Fred Perhaps you’d best go out and count them all for us to show there are no ill effects.
Off you go!
You SAID it.
Okay.
Sure thing.
Okay, 15 second later and I am back.
Here you go.
[quote=“fred smith”]Okay, 15 second later and I am back.
Here you go.
theglobeandmail.com/news/nat … le4099460/[/quote]
Ok, so you quote a news article which cites a study which actually shows the polar bear population is in trouble.
[quote]The study’s conclusions drew concern from Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta who has been studying polar-bear populations for years. Prof. Derocher said the 1,013 figure is derived from a range of 717 bears to 1,430. “It’s premature to draw many conclusions,” he said, adding that there were no comparative figures and the upper end of the range, 1,430, was highly unlikely.
Prof. Derocher also said some details in the survey pointed to a bear population in trouble. For example, the survey identified 50 cubs, which are usually less than 10 months old, and 22 yearlings, roughly 22 months old. That’s nearly one-third the number required for a healthy population, he said. “This is a clear indication that this population is not sustaining itself in any way, shape, or form.”[/quote]
So much for proving there are no ill effects.
Yes, but had you spent 30 seconds Fred you might have gotten past the misleading title. Here’s the real issue:
[quote]There’s much at stake in the debate. Population figures are used to calculate quotas for hunting, a lucrative industry for many northern communities. Hunting polar bears is highly regulated but Inuit communities can sell their quota to sport hunters, who must hunt with Inuit guides. A polar-bear hunting trip can cost up to $50,000. Demand for polar-bear fur is also soaring in places like China and Russia and prices for some pelts have doubled in the past couple of years, reaching as high as $15,000.
The Nunavut hunting quota in the western Hudson Bay area fell to 8 from 56 after the 2004 report from Environment Canada. The Nunavut government increased it slightly last year but faced a storm of protest. Over all, about 450 polar bears are killed annually across Nunavut. Mr. Gissing said a new quota is expected to be announced in June.[/quote]
Hmm, so the people who stand to benefit monetarily from higher polar bear numbers are saying, oh my god, that those numbers are higher than the evil commie scientists with their professional studies. No, better to rely on the anecdotal evidence of hunters.
Now, I have spent a fair bit of time in the north, unlike any of you lot, and while I have respect for hunters and fishers, I know most of them are prone to exaggeration and self-serving stories. They also tend to be dismissive of scientists and their quotas, even though such systems have created decades of sustainable subsistence hunting and fishing.
I know who I trust in this debate.
[quote=“Fortigurn”][quote=“fred smith”]Okay, 15 second later and I am back.
Here you go.
theglobeandmail.com/news/nat … le4099460/[/quote]
Ok, so you quote a news article which cites a study which actually shows the polar bear population is in trouble.
[quote]The study’s conclusions drew concern from Andrew Derocher, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta who has been studying polar-bear populations for years. Prof. Derocher said the 1,013 figure is derived from a range of 717 bears to 1,430. “It’s premature to draw many conclusions,” he said, adding that there were no comparative figures and the upper end of the range, 1,430, was highly unlikely.
Prof. Derocher also said some details in the survey pointed to a bear population in trouble. For example, the survey identified 50 cubs, which are usually less than 10 months old, and 22 yearlings, roughly 22 months old. That’s nearly one-third the number required for a healthy population, he said. “This is a clear indication that this population is not sustaining itself in any way, shape, or form.”[/quote]
So much for proving there are no ill effects.[/quote]
Indeed. I had to do some research on pb last summer and found that most scientists believed the current population is fine, possibly even larger than expected (yes, many freely admitted that) but will start to face a serious threat in the coming decades. Polar bears are fairly long-lived creatures so of course it is going to take time for numbers to drop.
This thread makes me sad, Fred Smith used to be a poster who was thoughtful and had some logical views on the world.
Now he’s just this hack right wing rabble rouser trying to poke at any poster who will wrestle with him, spewing out all the nonsensical jibberish that the uninformed pledge, fighting mountains of evidence with a minutia of circumstance, and stumping for all the wrong reasons.
Lordy Lordy Lord.
[quote]This thread makes me sad, Fred Smith used to be a poster who was thoughtful and had some logical views on the world.
Now he’s just this hack right wing rabble rouser trying to poke at any poster who will wrestle with him, spewing out all the nonsensical jibberish that the uninformed pledge, fighting mountains of evidence with a minutia of circumstance, and stumping for all the wrong reasons.
Lordy Lordy Lord.[/quote]
Not as sad as I am. I chose this article deliberately because it was “balanced” in the traditional way by stating a proposition, coming to an overall conclusion but giving alternative voices a chance to be heard. I INTENTIONALLY provided this and now I have my little fun. AREN’T those here pointing to the other criticisms in this article not engaging in CHERRYPICKING of data to prove their points? So, is cherrypicking of data allowed or is it not? The criticism of cherrypicking of data is nearly ALWAYS on the side of those who claim that climate change alarmism is a settled fact with all that consensus and look how they scramble to pick and choose what they will respond to. THIS not the true polar bear population is EXACTLY WHY I chose this article.
This study conducted an aerial survey. AND the conclusions were that the polar bear population was increasing. What evidence (and now we have the “I travel to the North a lot more than you” browbeating)… AND this is where I love the predictable responses. WHEN I discussed rising sea levels by noting that I was living in the South Pacific and seeing no such evidence, I was not allowed “first-hand” privileges. Are we now going to give those to the one who cannot even keep his moral concerns consistent? Bah! Hah! Gotcha!
[quote=“fred smith”][quote]This thread makes me sad, Fred Smith used to be a poster who was thoughtful and had some logical views on the world.
Now he’s just this hack right wing rabble rouser trying to poke at any poster who will wrestle with him, spewing out all the nonsensical jibberish that the uninformed pledge, fighting mountains of evidence with a minutia of circumstance, and stumping for all the wrong reasons.
Lordy Lordy Lord.[/quote]
Not as sad as I am. I chose this article deliberately because it was “balanced” in the traditional way by stating a proposition, coming to an overall conclusion but giving alternative voices a chance to be heard. I INTENTIONALLY provided this and now I have my little fun. AREN’T those here pointing to the other criticisms in this article not engaging in CHERRYPICKING of data to prove their points? So, is cherrypicking of data allowed or is it not? The criticism of cherrypicking of data is nearly ALWAYS on the side of those who claim that climate change alarmism is a settled fact with all that consensus and look how they scramble to pick and choose what they will respond to. THIS not the true polar bear population is EXACTLY WHY I chose this article.
This study conducted an aerial survey. AND the conclusions were that the polar bear population was increasing. What evidence (and now we have the “I travel to the North a lot more than you” browbeating)… AND this is where I love the predictable responses. WHEN I discussed rising sea levels by noting that I was living in the South Pacific and seeing no such evidence, I was not allowed “first-hand” privileges. Are we now going to give those to the one who cannot even keep his moral concerns consistent? Bah! Hah! Gotcha![/quote]
Sure fred. You chose it because it came up on the first page of a google search. 
And yes my anecdotal first hand experience is worth more than yours because we are talking about a predictable and common response of hunters and fishers to dismiss government studies. We are also talking about people who stand to make a lot of money off inflating numbers versus researchers whose agenda, if they have one, is curtailed by professionalism and peer review.
My experience with northern culture, especially with the connection between hunting and business, is worth something in this debate. Your saunters on the beach at night with a brain addled by a fatty dinner and a bottle of wine to see if the tides were covering more of your little piggies today that yesterday are of little value.
In any case, I never said at the time that your saunters were worthless in the debate. Somehow you have never learned that you can’t make the charge of hypocrisy by taking what someone else said years ago and pairing it up with what someone else said recently.
And now that we have established that choosing which facts to present is not only acceptable but a habit engaged in by all of the climate change alarmists, we will expect no further criticism from them on this subjecty in the future.
AND, we will either take first-hand accounts or we will not. I am open to either. Although, I cannot see how visits to the North would expert credibility on polar bear populations by someone just because they are Canadian while my direct and specific visits to islands and coastlines was to determine environmental damage precisely so that programs could be established.
Now, the REAL article that I wanted to use with ALL the details. Cherrypick as you like. Happy to have you do so
[quote]Canada’s growing polar bear population ‘becoming a problem,’ locals say
NewsJanuary 8, 2010
By: Kirk Myers
Next to whales, the cuddly fur balls enjoy a special place on the “Animals to Love” list. Grown-ups adore them (provided it’s from a safe distance), and grade-school kids who can’t find Greenland or Manitoba on a map raid their penny jars to save them. But are the denizens of the deep north facing extinction? Are they in desperate need of saving? It depends on who you ask. According to the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), the polar bear population is on shaky ground – actually, ice – because of warmer temperatures and shrinking ice floe in the Arctic triggered by the favorite bad-guy of the green movement – anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming. In a news release issued after its conference last July, the PBSG concluded that only one of 19 total polar bear subpopulations is currently increasing, three are stable and eight are declining. Data was insufficient to determine numbers for the remaining seven subpopulations.
The group estimated that the total number of polar bears is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000. (Estimates of the population during the 1950s and 1960s, before harvest quotas were enacted, range from 5,000 to 10,000.)
However, the PBSG quickly acknowledged that[color=#BF40BF]
“the mixed quality of information on the different subpopulations means there is much room for error in establishing” the numbers, and “the potential for error, given the ongoing and projected changes in habitats and other potential stresses, is cause for concern.”
[/color] Despite those problems, the PBSG said it is optimistic that “humans can mitigate the effects of global warming and other threats to the polar bears.”
Not so fast. According to a U.S. Senate and Public Works Committee report, the “
[color=#8040FF]alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. [/color]
Those predictions are being “challenged by scientists and forecasting experts,” said the report. Those challenges, supported by facts on the ground, including observations from Inuit hunters in the region, haven’t stopped climate fear-mongers at the U.S. Geological Survey from proclaiming that future sea ice conditions “will result in the loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century.” Such sky-is-falling rhetoric brings smiles to the Inuit population of Canada’s Nunavut Territory. They, too, know how to count, and they claim the bear population is stable or on the rise in their own backyard. Polar bears may be on the decline in some areas, but during their frequent visits to Inuit towns and outposts they rarely decline an easy meal from the local dump or a poorly secured garbage can.
Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. [color=#0000FF]
He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.
[/color] “Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says. Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist who has been researching polar bear populations in Canada’s Nunavut Territory for 35 years, seems to agree.
[color=#40BF40]“The study estimates from the Iqaluit area agree with those of local hunters, although the accuracy of the counts is doubtful in some areas,[/color]
” he says. Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director of wildlife for Nunavut Tuungavik Inc., is another doubter who questions the accuracy of helicopter surveys. “Helicopters have many limitations, including fuel capacity. They can’t go far out into the open water,” he says. But hunters crisscrossing the area by dog team, snowmobile or boat “are seeing polar bears where scientists and helicopters are not traveling.” Forty years ago, old-timers living in the area around Hudson Bay were lucky to see a polar bear, Nirlungayuk says. “Now there are bears living as far south as James Bay.” The growing population has become “a real problem,” especially over the last 10 years, he says. During the summer and fall, families enjoying outdoor activities must be on the look-out for bears. Many locals invite along other hunters for protection. Last year, in Pelly Bay, all the bears that were captured were caught in town, Nirlungayuk says. “You now have polar bears coming into towns, getting into cabins, breaking property and just creating havoc for people up here,” he says. In the Western Hudson Bay area, where harvest quotas were reduced by 80 percent four years ago, communities are complaining about the number of polar bears. “Now people can look out the window and see as many as 20 polar bears at the ice-flow edge,” Flaherty says.
During a public hearing last September focusing on the polar bear population in the Baffin Bay region, hunters reported more sightings of females with three cubs. The normal litter is one or two. Flaherty, himself a serious hunter, says the abundant food supply – primarily baby ring seals – in the area is responsible for the bigger litters. The on-the-ground reports, if accurate, seem to contradict the official story of the beleaguered polar bear. According to the standard theory, warmer temperatures (caused by human CO2 emissions) are shrinking the ice floe, the polar bear’s main hunting ground, forcing populations to compete for a diminishing food supply. Warmer temperatures also are to blame for the loss of thicker “multi-year ice.” Flaherty and many others disagree with the official story. “We are aware there are changes in the weather, but it is not affecting the daily life of the animals,” he says. “Polar bears hunt in the floe-edge areas, on newly formed ice, and in the fiords in search of baby seals. They don’t hunt in the glaciers [areas of multi-year ice]. “We’re not seeing negative effects on the polar bear population from so-called climate change and receding ice,” he says. He is convinced that some scientists are deliberately “using the polar bear issue to scare people” about global warming, a view widely shared by many Nunavut locals. [color=#4000FF]
It has warmed in the region and, as Taylor confirms, the summer sea-ice boundary has been slowly contracting for the last 30 years and experienced a big decline in 2007 – an event that was widely reported as evidence of anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming.
[/color] However, the shrinking sea ice does not affect polar bear numbers uniformly, he emphasizes. “Even in adjacent sub-populations, the impact may vary,” he says. “Every population is ecologically different. Some populations may actually benefit from less sea ice.”
Taylor downplays the theory that CO2 is the culprit responsible for warmer Arctic temperatures. Other factors, including wind-driven ice movement, shifting ocean currents, reduced albedo effect (less snow-cover resulting in less heat reflection) and increased water vapor (the major greenhouse gas) from a growing expanse of ice-free water, leading to warmer air temperatures, may be influencing the local climate, he says. "Arctic warming is real, but just because it’s warmer doesn’t mean it’s caused by carbon dioxide. I don’t think CO2 is the main factor causing it.” He notes that the current model forecasts, which show elevated CO2 levels triggering global temperature increases, don’t agree with the contemporary temperature record. “When predictions don’t match the observations, scientists should say ‘there is something wrong here.’” [color=#FF4000]
The IPCC models, he claims, are “multiplying the effect of CO2 to obtain the temperature increases they predict,” a criticism shared by others in the scientific community who have openly accused modelers of data manipulation.
[/color] “The idea that these models can make predictions 50 to 100 years into the future seems, frankly, absurd to me.” Both Nirlungayuk and Flaherty ridicule media claims that the polar bear is threatened or on the verge of extinction. “Polar bears are very intelligent . . . they have adapted through many climate changes for thousands of years. They are not going to wait around for the ice to freeze to start hunting. They live on more than just seals,” says Nirlungayuk.Adds Flaherty: “At the end of the day, the King of the North will always be here. When we hear that polar bears are headed towards extinction, we just kind of smile at ourselves.”[/quote]
examiner.com/article/canada- … locals-say
Here is the more comprehensive report.
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Note that the ice has been shrinking since 30 years ago… Hmmmm 30 years ago was 1982. The relatively cold period was from 1973-1982 and started warming thereafter… that is why we always see Arctic ice measurements using a benchmark of 1979-1982 when the ice expanse was at its greatest.
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Note with humor that the Inuit dismissed helicopter surveys but then enaged in them on their own… only to have them dismissed out of hand by several posters here for exactly the same reasons that they Inuit gave. Anyone see the irony and humor here? If not, please refer to the charges of cherry picking and demands for respect for first-hand accounts!
-
And yet again we have use of these computer models that are forcing climate to comply with preconceived or rather preordained results. Not very scientific and I am sure that there is 100 percent consensus on that!
So, this is Fred Smith signing off with :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
I will give this prediction up in advance: The writer of this report is not a climate scientist with NO peer-reviewed papers or research and is therefore not qualified to write such an article! Right! hahahahahahahahaha
Yep, it was one of the first and then I chose a second one that was more authoritatively in line with my views and then I thought… wait… let me put this more balanced article out first to see what happened and guess what? you all predictably answered just as I expected you to. I have to admit that I was also inclined to just cut and paste the sections that I wanted and then I found that I could not for some reason cut and paste from the article so I thought (hee hee), let’s post the whole link and then use the other one as reserve and well, guess that was kind of amusing in how easily it worked out. VERY easy. SUPER easy. LAUGHABLY easy… :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
Yes, there is a lot of predictable behavior, non? first, we don’t accept on-the-ground evidence but then when it is you, we are to accept on-the-ground evidence but no we won’t because helicopters were not used and now that they were we won’t accept them because of the limitations of helicopter observation. Oh, I get that this is all about cherry picking and I think that your little cadre on this has more than proved that point. I tricked you into responding like the lemmings that you are. I KNEW you would respond this way. God knows, we all know how your interest in an issue waxes and wanes… :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:
Hurray!!! Again, thank you thank you!!! So, you now ACCEPT that those who “stand to make a lot of money off inflating numbers” is possible? likely? And how pray tell is this “curtailed by professionalism and peer review?”
Ah… what a pleasant picture. What pray tell is your connection to the hunting business? Hmmm? Something sorta kinda like your experience as a defender and stalwart supporter of human rights!!! Bwahahahahahahahaahahahah
Yes, I can imagine why you would be so desperate to have your views of yesteryear separated from those of today. I truly get that. I don’t respect that but I understand that you need to live with yourself and well… find a way to make the truth palatable to you because you are not going to get any pass from me on your Convenient Truths (deliberate).
Hmm, given your last post I concede it is possible you chose the first article carefully as a set up. Wow, you really are a sad little man.
Not sad, experienced. I have discussed issues with you before and I would rather be waterboarded than watch your precious prancing and prattling about ANY issue.
Gotcha!
:discodance: :discodance: :discodance:
It’s even more sad that fred is starting yet another “hey everybody - let’s sit on our collective ass and do nothing at all!” thread in the week that Neil Armstrong died. Back in an era when a computer was something made from a couple of thousand discrete transistors and a few flashing lights on the front, NASA set out to achieve impossible things and made them happen. In largely indefinable ways, they made the world a better place. The ideas that fred and his ilk promote are toxic because he thinks it’s OK to not even try.
OTOH I don’t think he believes a word of what he says here. Most of his stuff seems to be just a setup for a round of :roflmao: :roflmao: :roflmao:. Come on, Fred. You’ve had the most comprehensive answers anyone could ever ask for. People even agree that politicans are a bunch of self-serving, time-wasting assholes (no, really?!). Give it a rest. Don’t you have any other interests except winding people up?
Finley:
Many thanks for your reply… why did you reply?
Should it not be those who call for “ACTION” to actually engage in “ACTION” that actually leads to something of any use whatsoever rather than calling for action? How is my useless hey! thread any different than what passes for “ACTION” by the climate change alarmist brigade? Will you now be condemning their “freak weather event of the day” threads? Asking them to shut up regarding specious claims of events that PROVE climate change alarmist tenets? Scoff when the next round of Rio 1257 emerges? Chuckled uncontrollably when evidence is cited as to why massive transfers of wealth from the developed world to the developing one are required because… of, er seashells, no sea gulls, no sand that, no palm trees but polar bears, and Arctic ice and baby seals and and panda bears who cannot mate because bamboo shoots no wait … er nuclear power BAD no good no bad no good but coal is worse but better than biofuels which used to be good but now are bad because… um… I JUST WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE!!! DO I have to be intelligent and does my action have to have meaning? hahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahaah
[quote=“fred smith”][quote]This thread makes me sad, Fred Smith used to be a poster who was thoughtful and had some logical views on the world.
Now he’s just this hack right wing rabble rouser trying to poke at any poster who will wrestle with him, spewing out all the nonsensical jibberish that the uninformed pledge, fighting mountains of evidence with a minutia of circumstance, and stumping for all the wrong reasons.
Lordy Lordy Lord.[/quote]
Not as sad as I am. I chose this article deliberately because it was “balanced” in the traditional way by stating a proposition, coming to an overall conclusion but giving alternative voices a chance to be heard. I INTENTIONALLY provided this and now I have my little fun. AREN’T those here pointing to the other criticisms in this article not engaging in CHERRYPICKING of data to prove their points? So, is cherrypicking of data allowed or is it not? The criticism of cherrypicking of data is nearly ALWAYS on the side of those who claim that climate change alarmism is a settled fact with all that consensus and look how they scramble to pick and choose what they will respond to. THIS not the true polar bear population is EXACTLY WHY I chose this article.
This study conducted an aerial survey. AND the conclusions were that the polar bear population was increasing. What evidence (and now we have the “I travel to the North a lot more than you” browbeating)… AND this is where I love the predictable responses. WHEN I discussed rising sea levels by noting that I was living in the South Pacific and seeing no such evidence, I was not allowed “first-hand” privileges. Are we now going to give those to the one who cannot even keep his moral concerns consistent? Bah! Hah! Gotcha![/quote]
Current populations rise and fall based on hunting practices.
The water ways of the north are melting and opening (see the US army expenditures, Canadian gov’t expenditures, Russian gov’t expeditures etc… on the new realities of the North).
When the waters open up the bears will be in trouble (not today) because they will need to swim greater distances.
I know you agree with all the above, so my question is why are you posting so vociferously when there is an inherent flaw in your argument that you are fully aware of. On the internet, the kids call this trolling.