Polar bear expert barred by global warmists

[GaryC 7]

Polar bear expert barred by global warmists

Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views 'are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker.

Christopher Booker

Published: 5:20PM BST 27 Jun 2009

Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Sharks threatened with extinctionDr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".

Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columni...l-warmists.html

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

The polar bear was previously considered to be in its own genus, Thalarctos.[13] However, evidence of hybrids between polar bears and brown bears, and of the relatively recent evolutionary divergence of the two species, does not support the establishment of this separate genus, and the accepted scientific name is now therefore Ursus maritimus, as Phipps originally proposed.[14]

More recent genetic studies have shown that some clades of brown bear are more closely related to polar bears than to other brown bears,[16] meaning that the polar bear is not a true species according to some species concepts.[17] In addition, polar bears can breed with brown bears to produce fertile grizzly–polar bear hybrids,[15][18] indicating that they have only recently diverged and are genetically similar.[19]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear

[nowhereman 1]

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/T/...w_polarbear.jpg

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

http://z.about.com/d/politicalhumor/1/0/T/...w_polarbear.jpg

Edited July 2, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[scandal 951]

Polar Bearz cannot wait for some seriuz warmin'

[nowhereman 1]

Polar Bearz cannot wait for some seriuz warmin'

I posted that pic, but was too much of a noob to do it right.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Typical loser environmentalists afraid of the truth.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

Typical loser environmentalists afraid of the truth.

Why do you hate the environment?

[nowhereman 1]

Typical loser environmentalists afraid of the truth.

Yea who the do they think they are? Everyone knows the environment is a stupid thing to care about!

[GaryC 7]

Typical loser environmentalists afraid of the truth.

Yea who the do they think they are? Everyone knows the environment is a stupid thing to care about!

And a popular thing to fear monger about also.