Re: [asa] Arctic sea ice and global warming

At 12:04 AM 1/8/2007, PvM wrote:

>Including 2006, the September rate of sea
>ice decline is now approximately ­8.59% per
>decade, or 60,421 km2/year (23,328 mi2/year.
>NSIDC Research Scientist Julienne Stroeve said,
>"At this rate, the Arctic Ocean will have no ice
>in September by the year 2060." The loss of
>summer sea ice does not bode well for species
>like the polar bear, which depend on the ice for their livelihood, she said.
>
>But then again, the polar bear was never
>mentioned in the Bible so why should we care P-) ..." ~ Pim

@ Good news is mentioned in the Bible. (So is
the one who personifies "bad news") :)

12/30/2006
Ice Shelf Becomes Sea Ice: Perhaps Good News for Polar Bears?
http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/2006_12.html

Two days ago the mainstream media was lamenting
that polar bears should be listed as threatened
with extinction because of
<http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2520955,00.html>disappearing
sea ice all a consequence of global warming.

Today
<http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2006/12/29/1166895467195.html?page=2>the
media is reporting that a giant ice shelf the
size of 11,000 football fields has snapped free
from Canada's Arctic and has formed an ice
island. Furthermore, this ice island is likely to
end up as sea ice in the
<http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2006/1337/pdf/ofr20061337.pdf>very
places scientists are complaining there is not
enough of the stuff for the big bears...

"Within days, the floating ice shelf had drifted
a few kilometres offshore. It travelled west for
50 kilometres until it finally froze into the sea
ice in the early northern winter... Prevailing
winds could then send the ice island southwards, deep into the Beaufort Sea."

Well isn't this good news for polar bears?

It could be, if there was any truth to the story
that polar bears are threatened with extinction
from a reduced area of sea ice.

But the whole "disappearing sea ice threatens
polar bear's survival" story is in reality a farce.

While the area of sea ice has been declining over
the last couple of decades, the number of polar
bears has actually been increasing. That's right increasing!

So it is very wrong for the
<http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200612/s1819054.htm>Australian
Broadcasting Corporation to uncritically report
that: "The World Wide Fund for Nature says the
declining number of polar bears is a major
warning on the impact of climate change."

There were only about 5,000 polar bears in 1970,
numbers depressed by hunting. There are now about
25,000 polar bears. The increase a consequence of
agreements to restrict hunting under quota systems.

The biggest threat to discrete populations of
polar bears continues to be illegal hunting in
places like the Chukchi sea and Greenland's
failure to agree to the quota system.

If the extent of sea ice continues to decline in
places like Hudson Bay and the Beaufort Sea,
these populations of polar bears can move north
to where there is more sea ice with ringed seals,
or they might simply switch to hunting seals that prefer warmer weather.

As I have
<http://ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=591>previously
written, the two polar bears living happily at
Sea World, on Queensland's Gold Coast, enjoying
watermelons and museli bars, are evidence of the
capacity of this big bear to adapt, including to warm weather.

The mass of ice fell away 16 months ago but
scientists have ony just realised because it all
happened at a remote locality off the coast of
Ellesmere Island which is about 800 kilometres south of the North Pole.

The issue of environmentalists and scientists
taking advantage of the popularity of polar bears
and drawing ridiculous conclusions from the
available data all to progress their global
warming agenda is reviewed in a piece I wrote for
the IPA Review earlier this year entitled
<http://ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?pubid=591>'Polar
Bear [P-word]: Underestimating the survival capacity of one popular bear'.

There is an old blog post from 25th October 2005
<http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/000951.html>here
(Polar Bears on Thin Ice) and another from 3rd
May 2006
<http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001354.html>here
( 16,119 Species Threatened with Extinction?) and
I also wrote something on 30th May 2006
<http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/001398.html>here
(Polar Bear Politcs: Misrepresenting the Nature
of One Smart Bear). ~ Jennifer Marohasy

Bio: "... after a semester at the University of
Queensland I switched from a Batchelor of
Agricultural Science to a Bachelor of Science and
enrolled in everything from ethics to plant taxonomy.

Career

While at University I had a variety of jobs from
interpreter for the Asian Development Bank in
Indonesia to cotton scout on the Darling Downs, Australia.

On graduating I got a job with the Alan Fletcher
Research Station and within a couple of years I
was their field biologist in Madagascar.

I subsequently worked for seven years in remote
parts of Africa and Madagascar. The success of
the biological control project that I worked on
in Madagascar is documented in 'Reclaiming lost
provinces: A century of weed biological control
in Queensland' (Queensland Dept of Natural Resources and Mines, 2005).

During the 1990s, I published in Australian and
international scientific journals and completed a PhD.

In 1997 I switched from researcher to environment
manager with the Queensland sugar industry. In
2001, I started to develop an interest in
environmental campaigns and, in particular,
anomalies between fact and perception regarding
the health of coastal river systems and the Great Barrier Reef.

In July 2003, I became director of the
environment unit at the Institute of Public
Affairs (IPA). Then in July 2006 I signed a new
contract with the IPA and my title changed to
senior fellow but I have continued to research
and write on environmental issues of national significance.

I am a board member of the newly formed
Australian Environment Foundation, chaired by
television personality Don Burke. In 2005 I was
made a fellow of the Centre for International and
Comparative Law at the University of Queensland.

Publications [snip] More: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/about.php

~ Janice

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Received on Mon Jan 8 02:33:55 2007