Far North Science

What’s in your climate change wallet?
USFWS

Here we go again. The rhetoric and disinformation surrounding climate change science continues to grow ever more shrill.

In any given week, one might read that Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth is “science fiction.” That the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change practices “junk science.” That the Earth was colder (warmer) in the Little Ice Age (when the dinosaurs roamed.) That polar bears are thriving. That the sunspot cycles drive climate. That Antarctica’s ice cap has thickened.

That scientists challenging global warming might get “assassinated.” That those wacky climate modelers once tried to warn us about the danger of a new ice age, and just can’t seem to get their story straight.

And there you are, a regular person watching the sky, wondering if the mosquito you just swatted carries West Nile virus. In between paying bills and commuting to work, you ponder: Do droughts and wildfires prove global warming? Or is it those mondo hurricanes with nine feet of precipitation?

Is it time to plant the tomatoes? Will gasoline go up in price again? Will Jack Bauer rescue the computer chip and prevent nuclear war?

National Climate Data Center

The people at the easy-to-read New Scientist don’t have all these answers, but they did just publish a clear, concise primer on 26 different climate myths. The collection is included with dozens of other climate change stories in New Scientist’s online archive of special reports on climate change. It’s well worth a look to freshen up your facts.

Climate Change: A Guide for the Perplexed works through topics like We can’t do anything about climate change to The ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong to It was warmer during the Medieval period, with vineyards in England.

Several items will be interesting to those tracking Far North climate developments.

Alaska scientist Syun-Ichi Akasofu — one of the state’s most accomplished science aministrators and aurora theorists — has argued that recent observed warming can be explained by a cold period between 1600 and 1850 called the Little Ice Age. His paper.

Here’s an excerpt from the New Scientist response:

The term “Little Ice Age” is somewhat questionable, because there was no single, well-defined period of prolonged cold around the entire planet. … While there is some evidence of cold intervals in parts of the southern hemisphere during this time, they do not appear to coincide with those in the northern hemisphere. Such findings suggest the Little Ice Age may have been more of a regional phenomenon than a global one.

Another “myth” explained by New Scientist (in the excerpt below):”Polar bear numbers are increasing. This notion has surfaced lately in Alaska. Legislators and the governor have argued there are gobs of polar bears out there. So what if “junk science” claims the ice will shrink?

FNS tackled the issues surrounding climate change and polar bear health and the nimknow environmental wisdom of Juneau solons. New Scientist published a concise explanation about why we might need to act to protect polar bears before ice shrinks even further.

USFWS — Scott Schliebe

Polar bears have become the poster children of global warming. The bears spend most or all of the year living and hunting on sea ice, and the accelerating shrinking of this ice appears to pose a serious threat. The issue has even become politically sensitive.

Yet recently there have been claims that polar bear populations are increasing. So what’s going on? There are thought to be between 20,000 and 25,000 polar bears in 19 population groups around the Arctic. While polar bear numbers are increasing in two of these populations, two others are definitely in decline. We don’t really know how the rest of the populations are faring, so the truth is that no one can say for sure how overall numbers are changing.

The two populations that are increasing, both in north-eastern Canada, were severely reduced by hunting in the past and are recovering thanks to the protection they and their prey now enjoy.

The best-studied population, in Canada’s western Hudson Bay, fell by 22% from 1194 animals in 1987 to 935 in 2004, according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. A second group in the Beaufort Sea, off Alaska’s north coast, is now experiencing the same pattern of reduced adult weights and cub survival as the Hudson Bay group.

A comprehensive review (pdf) by the US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded that shrinking sea ice is the primary cause for the decline seen in these populations, and it recently proposed listing polar bears as threatened (pdf) under the Endangered Species Act. The International Conservation Union projects the bears’ numbers will drop by 30% by 2050 (pdf) due to continued loss of Arctic sea ice.