Thin Polar Bears Called Sign of Global Warming

Environmental News Service ^ | 05/16/2002

[cogitator]

Thin Polar Bears Called Sign of Global Warming

WASHINGTON, DC, May 16, 2002 (ENS) - Hungry polar bears are one of the early signs that global warming is impacting Arctic habitat, suggests a new study from World Wildlife Fund. The report reviews the threats faced by the world's 22,000 polar bears and highlights growing evidence that human induced climate change is the number one long term threat to the survival of the world's largest land based carnivores.

Global warming threatens to destroy critical polar bear habitat, charges the report, "Polar Bears at Risk." The burning of coal and other fuels emits carbon dioxide (CO2) and other gases that blanket the earth, trap in heat and cause global warming.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change in the polar region is expected to be the greatest of anywhere on Earth.

"The WWF report shows that polar bears in Hudson Bay are being impacted by climate change," said Lynn Rosentrater, coauthor of the report and climate scientist at the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) Arctic program. "The polar bear's basis for survival is being threatened by the reduction of the sea ice."

"Since the sea ice is melting earlier in the spring, polar bears move to land earlier without having developed as much fat reserves to survive the ice free season," Rosentrater explained. "They are skinny bears by the end of summer, which in the worst case can affect their ability to reproduce."

Increasing CO2 emissions have caused Arctic temperatures to rise by five degrees Celsius over the past 100 years, and the extent of sea ice has decreased by six percent over the past 20 years. By around 2050, scientists now predict a 60 percent loss of summer sea ice, which would more than double the summer ice free season from 60 to 150 days.

Sea ice is critical to polar bears' survival because it is the platform from where they hunt their primary prey - ringed seals and bearded seals. Diminishing ice cover and longer ice free periods limit the time the bears have on the ice to hunt and means that they have fewer fat resources to survive during the longer summer season.

Lower body weight also reduces female bears' ability to lactate, leading to fewer surviving cubs. Already, fewer than 44 percent of cubs now survive the ice free season.

As early as 1999, Canadian researchers noticed that polar bears in the Hudson Bay region were having trouble finding enough seals to eat due to the earlier breakup of sea ice. The scientists from the Canadian Wildlife Service found that weight for both male and female polar bears was declining, and female bears were having fewer cubs.

The impacts of global warming come on top of problems that polar bears already face from hunting, toxic pollution and oil development in the Arctic. The Arctic region is contaminated by pesticides and other chemicals carried by air and condensation from industrialized areas far to the south.

The pollutants enter the food chain, and animals at the top of the chain, such as polar bears, can carry tremendous body burdens of toxic chemicals. Research on polar bears has shown a link between high contaminant levels and reduced immune system function.

Due to the rapid pace of change in the Arctic, there is no time to lose in reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, WWF argues. The group says major reductions can be achieved by using existing technologies to increase the energy efficiency of homes, businesses and automobiles, and by using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels.

Bipartisan support has grown in Congress for a renewable portfolio standard that would ensure that 20 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable energy by 2020. However, President George W. Bush has opposed the proposal.

World leaders will discuss a similar proposal at the World Summit for Sustainable Development in South Africa this summer. The WWF is calling on President Bush to support this initiative in Johannesburg.

"Arctic nations that are home to most of the world's polar bears should be leading the charge against global warming," said Jennifer Morgan, director of WWF's climate change program. "Instead, the United States - the world's largest global warming polluter - is essentially ignoring this problem. All eyes will be on President Bush at the upcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa this August to test his commitment to sustainable energy solutions for climate change."

The WWF has created a new Web site: http://www.panda.org/polarbears with extensive information about polar bears and their Arctic domain. The site includes satellite tracking of two female bears, Louise and Gro, as they roam the ice pack in search of prey.

[the bottle let me down]

Polar bears don't hibernate in the winter like the other kinds of bears?

Pregnant females use a den for shelter and to protect new-born cubs from the worst winter weather. Males will also take shelter from weather, but generally remain active in the winter.

The bears generally eat seals, which they hunt by waiting near the seal's breathing holes. The seal comes up for air or hauls itself out onto the ice and the bear makes a kill. This requires the bear to be able to blend into the white ice floe background so that it can get close enough to the hole in the ice. Hence the bear's white color. When the ice breaks up, the bears lose access to their primary food source. Remember that the ice stays around long after the worst winter weather is over. The question is how long it stays.

A basic FAQ is here.

[the bottle let me down]

In northern climes, I have seen plenty of seals when there wasn't any ice.

The problem is that when there is no ice, the seal swims away and the bear can't catch it. When the water is frozen over, the bear can ambush the seal by waiting near its air hole. After all, the seal has to come up for air sometime.

[JasonC]

No, I am sure they know they are saying "5 C" on purpose. It is a mantra, a holy talisman, to find 5 C somewhere. They undoubtedly mean to imply that temperature change was much higher at the poles, or at least at one of them, than elsewhere (like, zero elsewhere? Colder? Not all regions can be above average, any more than all children in Lake Woebegone). Part of an epicycle hunt. A tiny temperature change overall is supposed to melt the ice caps, remember? Since it is tiny, that is completely implausible. So they need an untiny one, at least there.

[ancient_geezer]

Increasing CO2 emissions have caused Arctic temperatures to rise by five degrees Celsius over the past 100 years

 

Certainly not from any station measurements, Even Overpeck et. al. 1997(global warming proponents) fail to claim a 5C^o using his reconstructed temperatures using proxy climate data from tree-rings, ice-cores, lake and marine sediments. .

 

Measurements at land sites around the arctic over the last 50 years do not begin even to support a such warming claim:

What Arctic Station Records Say for additional graphical representations of Arctic land temperatures over the last 50-100 yrs, again show no such trends.

[ancient_geezer]

P.S.

It should be noted that the Franz Joseph Land data above, show a maximum excursion from a min to a max in 20 yrs ('63min '83max) of 5 degrees centigrade. One must watch such claims like a hawk to learn what the real basis of GW claims really are.

It should also be noted that Artic temperatures have returned to near zero trendline since '83.

[ancient_geezer]

One could really wish that the global-warming/sky-is-falling folks could be consistant, or at least on the same page.

BBC Friday, 11 May, 2001, 04:11 GMT 05:11 UK
Global warming helps Arctic animals

Polar bears could be benefiting from global warming
By the BBC's Richard Lister in the Alaskan Arctic

Research in the American Arctic has revealed that the polar bear and bowhead whale populations are booming after decades of decline, and part of the reason for that may be global warming.

Although the long-term predictions suggest many Arctic species could be jeopardised by any continued rise in temperatures, scientists think that at the moment some animal populations may be benefiting from a slightly warmer climate.

***

[cogitator]

Are you completely unaware that Polar ears hibernate in winter? I haven't seen a damn one having a seal feast on December 25th.

Did you read the informative posts #81 and #82? I believe that they explain the situation quite well (and better than I could have done).

[1Old Pro]

I just have a hard time believing anything from the World Wildlife Fund.

Me too.

[cogitator]

I guess the Arctic Ocean is a different body of water than Hudson Bay. Interesting that there are different responses in different bodies of water (but not unexpected).

Thanks for your other data points. The comment on maximum warming in the Arctic was quite good.

[cogitator]

Agreed if the alternative criterion (an additional one day earlier spring thaw trend for Northern Hemisphere rivers and lakes) is the alternative "win" scenario.

And I also wanted to note that you've successfully moved me from my original betting position, which was that a majority of a selection of fifteen currently deleterious environmmental trends would show "worsening" over the next decade. The reason that I actually wanted to state the bet that way was that climate and environment are variable, and a variety of "probes" are required to provide a genuine overall assessment. Your doctor doesn't base his entire assessment of your health on your blood pressure and temperature, for example (or if he does, he's a quack). SOOOO... just because I think the terms are reasonable despite the full focus on global warming, for the fun of it I'll take them. But I also know that we could easily hit a decade-long lull in warming rate, and you'd win. But it's worth a 12-pack of my favorite beer.

[glory]

These chicken little reports are laughable, especially as I sit here in Central Ohio the morning of a new record low at freezing.

[Number_Cruncher]

Arctic's big melt challenged. New data suggest the North Pole got a little thicker in the 90s.

Also 39 record lows set from May 15 to May 19.

[ancient_geezer]

The comment on maximum warming in the Arctic was quite good.

The problem with the "anthropogenic" warming scenarios is, when one looks at basic assumptions built into the models of the IPCC "story line" & "projections", on which their conclusions are based, you find a severe lack of science in setting the basic coefficients driving the model and a lot of hype by the media and and "global warming" proponents stretching science and observation in favor of making political statements. The assumption appears to be all global warming and any anomoly(from the reporter's viewpoint) is anthropogenic, and all temperature excursions upward must be assigned an anthropogenic basis with negative excursions ignored or explained away with ad hoc remedies.

For example anthropogenic CO₂ is decidedly and undoubtedly increasing. The problem is that CO₂, at the concentration levels actually found in earth's atmosphere, is an ineffective greenhouse gas component. Where the models used asssume a climate sensitivity of nearly 1^oC change for each 1wm² increase of radiative forcing, presumably due to CO₂, the thermodynamics, experimental and observational data concerning the CO₂ climate sensitivity parameter, indicate a tenth of that value as something closer to 0.15^oC per wm² change.

For a "story line" doubling of CO₂ from the present 370ppm levels, IPCC projects a maximum radiative forcing due to CO₂ of +4.5wm² or about 4.5^oC max.

Thermodynamic considerations and actual CO₂ IR absorption characteristics in the presence of atmospheric concentrations of water vapor indicate less than a +0.5^oC change for that IPCC "story line" doubling of CO₂.

On looking into the sources for the Global Climate Model characterization of the climate sensitivity parameter of 1oC for 1 wm2 it has been noted by Dr Heinz Hug:

http://www.microtech.com.au/daly/artifact.htm

"If we allocate 7.2 degC as greenhouse effect for the present CO2 (as asserted by Kondratjew and Moskalenko in J.T. Houghton's book The Global Climate [14]), the doubling effect should be 0.17% which is 0.012 degC only. If we take 1/80 of the 1.2 degC that result from Stefan-Boltzmann's law with a radiative forcing of 4.3 W/m², we get a similar value of 0.015 degC.

Kondratjew and Moskalenko are referring to their own work [15] - but when we checked their Russian book on that page, it turned out that this was nothing but an index of terms and nowhere else a deduction of this broadly referred 7.2 K figure [16] could be found. It should be mentioned that the radiative forcing for the present CO2 concentration varies considerably among references. K.P. Shine [17] specifies a value of 12 K whereas according to R. Lindzen CO2 only accounts for about 5% of the natural 33 degC greenhouse effect. This 1.65 degC is less than a quarter of the value used by IPCC and leads to a doubling sensitivity of 0.3 to 0.5 degC only [18]."

---

14] K.Ya. Kondratyev,N.I. Moskalenko in J.T.Houghton, The Global Climate", Cambridge Universitiy Press, 225-233 (1984)

[15] K.Ya. Kondratyev, N.I. Moskalenko, Thermal Emission of Planets, Gidrometeoizdat, 263 pp (1977) (in Russian)

[16] C.-D. Schönwiese, Klimaänderungen, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, p. 135 (1995)

[17] Henry Charnock, Keith P. Shine, Physics Today, Dec 1993, p. 66

[18] Richard S. Lindzen, Proc. Nat. Acad. of Sciences, 94, 8335-8342 (1997) 8 and (in German) Klima 2000 (Heuseler), 2, 3-8 (1998) 5/6

This sort of thing does not leave one with good feelings about Global Warming "science", nor is it the only such problem of that nature. Yet the models referred to in the IPCC statements and on which the Kyoto protocals and general policy statements regarding global warming rely heavily on these kind of made to fit assumptions. Another good example are the sufate aerosol introductions to induce tropospherice cooling. The concentration levels set for such aerosols do not correspond to any actual measure of atmospheric contaminant. They were made to adjust for the observed rates of cooling matching model to measurement of temperature change, yet have no correlation to actual observations of sulfate aerosol concentrations present in the real upper atmosphere. The introductions were made to specifically match the stratospheric projections to real temperatures when the model was shown to be defective and could no longer be sustained. But actual aerosols present are nowhere near those demanded by the models.

[ancient_geezer]

"tropospherice cooling" = "stratospheric cooling", some days are better than others. The troposphere doesn't appear to be changing much in the real world, even though the GCMs tell us it is supposed to be warming up in response to surface heating.

[cogitator]

For example anthropogenic CO2 is decidedly and undoubtedly increasing. The problem is that CO2, at the concentration levels actually found in earth's atmosphere, is an ineffective greenhouse gas component. Where the models used asssume a climate sensitivity of nearly 1oC change for each 1wm2 increase of radiative forcing, presumably due to CO2, the thermodynamics, experimental and observational data concerning the CO2 climate sensitivity parameter, indicate a tenth of that value as something closer to 0.15oC per wm2 change.

Sorry about the formatting, I don't have time for all the superscripts and subscripts. According to James Hansen of Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the actual climate response is about 3/4 deg. C per 1 W m-2 of forcing. This is primarily based on the difference between the current world climate and the Ice Age climate.

If I could post the figures in the following document, I would. Some of them used to be online. The figure of note is Slide 7, on page 12.

Global Warming Debate (PDF)

[Number_Cruncher]

Correction:

There were 54 record lows on May 18.

There were 98 record lows on May 19.

There were 92 record lows on May 20.

There were 52 record lows on May 21.

Expect NOAA to announce soon that May had record warmth.

Also message 95 describing the low sensitivity of climate to greenhouse gases is correct. The models allow for more absorption by carbon dioxide but they fail to recognize that the emissivity of the atmosphere increases, offsetting most of the predicted warming.

[ancient_geezer]

The PDF document [ http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/gwdebate.pdf ] that you linked to:

PRELIMINARY DRAFT

Today’s Debate on Global Climate Change:
Searching for the Scientific Truth

by Paolo Zannetti (pzannetti@envirocomp.org)
President, EnviroComp Institute (www.envirocomp.org)

Does not support claim you ascribe to Hansen.

I don't find the figure you are referring to, could you describe its content or title so I can search for it?

Also Hanson's response here: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/

The Global Warming Debate
By James Hansen

Does not address the issue of the magnitude of climate temperature sensitivity to CO2 concentration.

It may be within my database, but your "slide 7, on page 12." doesn't seem to get me anywhere useful. The pdf document argues the faults of the GCMs being used, but fails to directly address the temperature coefficient we are talking about. It does however have alot of other good points(against the IPCC storylines and conclusions.)

the actual climate response is about 3/4 deg. C per 1 W m-2 of forcing.

This is primarily based on the difference between the current world climate and the Ice Age climate.

Statistical correlation does not imply causation. And I rather doubt that characterisation comes from Hanson

In fact Hanson( Hansen et al. 1997 )

uses a figure:

"Finally, in addition to the four measured radiative forcings, we add an initial (1979) disequilibrium forcing of +0.65 W/m^-2. This forcing yields a global surface warming of about 0.2°C over 1979-1996, close to observations, and measureable heat storage in the ocean."

Which yields a 0.308^oCWm^-2

in his own use of Climate temperature sensitivity for radiative forcing.

Using iceage derived data as you infer, current temperatures would be rising at a rate of 6^oC for each 100ppm change in CO₂ concentration from the last glacial period to the current interglacial we are now experiencing.

This by the way corresponds to early projections pushed by global warming proponents. Since the end of the little ice age, CO₂ concentration has increased about 100ppm, where is the +6^oC change?

The problem with that kind of estimate is it assumes warming to be the cause of CO₂ concentration rather than CO₂ concentration concequent to out gassing from the the ocean reservoirs(hydrates & CO₂ solution), ice field melting, increases in biomass etc. that are a consequence of warming. Antrhopogenic increases in CO₂ do not imply substantive increase in global temperature, they are merely additions to the natural background concentrations from nature carbon sources and thus do not correlate with measurable climate temperature changes or trends.

The physical chemistry of IR absorption by CO₂ simply does not fit with GCM assumptions about climate temperature sensitivity to radiative forcing.

For Experimental/Observational results regarding CO₂ in a oxy/nitrogen and water vapor atmosphere:

See: Climate Catastrophe, A spectroscopic Artifact?

Nor do numerous theoretical studies, as well as emperical calculations from many different directions and sources support anything near the climate warming coefficients assumed the GCM/IPCC statements, nor with the .

See: Effects of Doubling CO₂ from 300ppm to 600ppm

On Theoretical basis:

"1. Richard Lindzen (1995) obtains a theoretical value of 0.30 C. More recently he appears to have revised this number to 0.55 C (i.e., 1 F).

2. Calculations by Stephen Schneider in 1971 gave a value of about 0.67 to 0.8 C.

3. Newell and Dopplick (1979) gave a number of 0.25 C."

On empirical basis:

1. 0.64 C (empirical, based upon sensitivity of climate to solar forcing of 0.16 C/W/m² derived by Crowley and Kim [1996] and 4 W/m² forcing with a greenhouse gas warming;

2. 0.44 C +/- 0.12 C (empirical, based upon sensitivity of climate to solar forcing of 0.11 +/- 0.03 derived by White et al. [1997] and 4 W/m² forcing with a greenhouse gas warming)

3. Richard Lindzen derived a value of 0.3 to 0.5 C empirically based upon responses of the Earth's temperature to volcanic forcing (see Lindzen, PNAS, 1994; JGR, 1998).

4. 0.30 to 0.60 C (empirical, based upon observed change in global annual temperature cycle in the 1900's by Mann et al.)

5. 0.36 C (empirical, based upon comparisons of observed and calculated changes in sea level).

6. 0.45 C (empirical, calculated from ice core carbon dioxide and temperature variations, after de-trending both time series to remove orbital effects).

7. 0.80 C, based upon surface temperature observations since 1940 (see Greenhouse Warming Scorecard).

And by other emperical and theoretical measures s as well:

See: A Lukewarm Greenhouse

are consistent with the 0.15oC/wm^-2 coefficient.

[ancient_geezer]

For your reference:

Putting the IPCC Global Climate Model projections into perspective of the historical record:

http://www.co2andclimate.org/Articles/2001/vca7.htm#fig1

Figure 1 depicts earth’s reconstructed and observed temperature history during the past thousand years. The temperature trend during the first nine out of the last ten centuries is negative. We’ve tacked onto its end the range of future temperatures projected by the IPCC (a rise of 1.4°C to 5.8°C by the year 2100). We have also attached the range of future temperatures that could be anticipated using historical observations as a guide (a range defined by the maximum and minimum century-long temperature trends in the observed and reconstructed temperature record).

Figure 1. The 1,000-year temperature history, as culled from proxy records and observations, shows a 900-year decline in temperature that does not reverse until the 20th century (black and purple lines). The small variation in the historic record is evidence of the extreme range of the IPCC warming scenarios for the next 100 years (red-shaded region). If we use the past as prologue to our future, the range is much less alarming (orange-shaded region).