The sea change when the public catches on that we are cooling is going to be awesome.
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The push to have Polar bears listed as "endangered" is nothing more than a back-door attempt to apply the Endangered Species Act to force us to cut C02 emmissions to "stop global warming." It would employ the habitat presevation aspect of the ESA, stating that by allowing AGW, we are destroying the bear's habitat. Crafty buggers, wild-eyed those tree-huggers.

Unfortunately for them, facts are stubborn things.

damn Right-Wing polar bears are refusing to cooperate with the agenda!!!

It may become necessary to destroy the polar bears in order to save them.

You said it Justrand!! Who would have known they were global worming denialists?
They just hate living in the cold, they want us to heat the planet. Wake up sheeple!!

Next Newsflash:

Global warming increases polar bear population to dangerous levels.

You heard it here first. I expect acknowledgement when you see the real headline.

Man-made global warming is religion, not science. It cannot be falsified. If there is a drought, it is caused by global warming. If there is a flood, it is caused by global warming. If nothing spectatcular happens, it is caused by global warming- or the global warming dire consequences are just delayed.

"Global warming increases polar bear population to dangerous levels." Yup. The reports will soon surface of 'polar bear attacks on people' reaching crisis levels as they overpopulate their environment and begin moving to Toronto for the free health care and sizzling nightlife.

=

They did say 'by 2050' Paul. I mean, really, aren't you jumping the gun? Even if their population is swelling now, there's plenty of time still for global warming to wipe out most of them. Or something like that.

Hmmm, so...

"The USGS predicts a 2/3 decline in polar bear populations by 2050. After two weeks, we see that polar bear populations are just fine! Therefore, science is BS, QED!"

Something seems missing from this reasoning, but I can't put my finger on it.... Oh yeah, reason.

Mantis:

You prove the point of AGW as religion. Thank you. Although they have been harping about AGW for well over a decade, the polar bear population is increasing, not decreasing. Therefore simply state that the catastrophic consequences are delayed or occuring in the reverse direction (i.e global warming leads to dangerous increase in polar bear population).

manis,

so why is it that they are then predicting that number of bears will decline? hasn't global warming already been happening? why are the numbers going UP?

Gee, mantis, when the perceived TREND that the USGS based its 43 years hence prediction on turns out be in the OPPOSITE direction from the ACTUAL "trend"...some of us get skeptical.

He's not a fag, he has BDS, and insufficient skepticism over the thermodynamics of carbon dioxide greenhouse heat trapping, but there are signs that he is working his ass off on both problems.
==========================

The answer seems to be that we airdrop copies of the NY Times to the polar bears! Once they read up on how they are supposed to be extinct they'll get with the program!!

Ice, by the way, and ecological niches, are both bits of froth tossed up by the chaos we vainly like to call climate regulation. Here today, and gone tomorrow, even faster than global temperature change.
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hey mantis... how come the disappearing of ice in the ARCTIC is proof of global warming 300 years out but the fact we have too many polar bears means nothing?

Bullshit mantis. If contemporaneous data can be used to prove something it can be used to disprove it.

Take about cherry picking your data.

Polar bear populations have been increasing for decades, due primarily to hunting restrictions imposed in the early 1970s (the US Marine Mammal Protection Act and the International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears). Why have they not decreased to the levels predicted by 2050 due to shrinking summer ice? Because it's not 2050 yet, dipshits. It's a prediction.

how come the disappearing of ice in the ARCTIC is proof of global warming 300 years out but the fact we have too many polar bears means nothing?

The shrinkage in summer ice, if it continues as predicted, will impact polar bear populations. Whether the USGS prediction is accurate, I don't know (I can't see the future, yet). The fact that it has not yet shrunk enough to make a significant impact on the bears does not mean that the current bear population levels are evidence against warming, which is happening whether you like it or not.

So making wild predictions contrary to current verifiable data is okay?

I predict that in 2050 we'll have a Senate of 83 Republicans, 9 independents, and 6 Green, and 2 Democrats (Jesse Jackson III and Al Sharpton III).

It will have been the country's reaction to all the frothing stupidity of the left.

All of this is true, and cannot be proved untrue, even if there are 50 dems in the Senate in year 2049, because it's not 2050 yet.

Paul, why delete portions of nehemiah's comments?

thread cleaned up... I appreciate the person in question had second thoughts on his comment just seconds after he hit submit... next time having them BEFORE you hit submit is preferred. knowhatImean?

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>Polar bear populations have been increasing for decades, due primarily to hunting restrictions imposed in the early 1970s

You mean there are factors that the predictions don't take into account... say it ain't so.

>Paul, why delete portions of nehemiah's comments?

see above comment... I thought it did not add to the debate... Not to mention a rather egresious comment...

I started to call him out by name but my benevolent side won...

Decision made on the fly, you're welcome to disagree. Just calling like I sees them in real time.

BTW see also my deletion of Bush bashing below...

The decision was as much about thread drift as anything...

I know I've never complained (much) about thread drift before... so sue me, that last thread got under my skin.

P

The year, 2049...the head of the USGS convenes an emergency meeting to discuss a looming problem. Stacked against the wall are dozens of sniper rifles and boxes of ammunition.

"Folks, we've got a crisis. By this time next year there need to be 2/3 FEWER polar bears than there were in 2007. Now, since the polar bear population has been INCREASING since 2007, it means we need a whole lot FEWER polar bears than we've got right now! Since we at the USGS can't afford to look stooopid, I am suggesting a somewhat, uh, radical 'solution' to this 'problem'.

[makes a vague gesture towards the rifles]

Who's with me??"

You mean there are factors that the predictions don't take into account... say it ain't so.

Of course there are. But that doesn't mean that the globe ain't warming. It is.

Re: comments. Just curious. It ain't my thread, or blog.

No probs from my end. Your prerogative on determining acceptable content.

A serious comment: We wasted as a nation millions of dollars and also wasted much of the people's time from the y2k predictions. Global warming hype and false info is doing it much more so now on a much much grander scale. We laugh at the absurdity (like with the sailing dude and now this, and the record cold during Al Gore's speech in NY), but it's having a serious impact on policy and thought that is very very wasteful and non-necessary. It's an incredible shame that we've allowed a bunch of misinformants to spread this hype.

We need to continue to make people more aware, and humorous and attention getting info like the above is important.

How do we know that the global temperature is increasing? Because of aggregated temperature records like the GISS from NASA's Hansen. But what have we recently learned? That Hansen won't cooperate in examining the records that he produces, that those records are plagued with coding errors and unexplained "adjustments" that influence the claimed warming trend. And now that they have been shown to have such errors, they are going back and revising the records without notice and without explanation.

When the adherents to the AGW hypothesis start doing real science instead of propaganda, then I'll start paying attention to their claims.

Pretty much everything your wrote there was bullshit, SPQR.

BTW...it's cooler here today than it was yesterday! Though no polar bear sightings as of yet. Just keepin' ya'll posted on current events.

Hey, maybe I can get a GOVERNMENT GRANT to keep track of this???

We're not dying out. If the numbers appear to be decreasing, it's simply because some of us smartened up and moved to Southern California.

NZ

Ah, right, mantis, that's why they didn't announce a complete revision of the data in recent weeks ... oh, wait - they did.

And that's why Hansen's source code has been in public hands for years, because I'm writing bullshit. Oh, wait, Hansen didn't actually publish until just two weeks ago, in light of the embarrassment of being caught with a Y2K related error.

Mantis, when AGW adherents start doing real science, then you call bullshit, until then you are just a propagandist too.

Hey Mantis, you said:
"But that doesn't mean that the globe ain't warming. It is."

So, it's GLOBAL warming, right? And last I checked, Antarctica is part of the GLOBE, right? So, how do you spin away the fact (as reported in the NYTimes article and elsewhere) that the south pole has gained ice cover to record levels, and that it has been in a 30-year cooling trend (with the exception of the Antarctic Penninsula, which has warmed owing to circumpolar current changes)? It doesn't fit the models. Any of them.

It does, however, fit the Sun/Cosmic ray theory of climate control (see Svensmark, 2007). Spin away!

Oh, sorry, article in NYTime I referred to was Paul's post, three posts back. Sorry for the confusion. Although still applies.

Minor mathematical errors which result in very slight adjustments that in no way affect trends make something not "real science?" You don't know the meaning of the term.

You are being deliberately obtuse, mantis. Of course mathematical errors do not make something unscientific ( although the trends of the errors are interesting evidence - but that's a different argument ).

The issue is that the secrecy, manipulation of data sets without disclosure, concealment of methodology, lack of openness and meaningful review, indeed the intentional frustration of meaningful review - that is a clear indication that the AGW proponents are not practicing science.

Its propaganda.

If AGW adherents were serious scientists, they would be demanding that Hansen, Mann et al end this behavior. AGW adherents would be more outraged at this conduct than even I am.

If they were serious about the science.

So, how do you spin away the fact (as reported in the NYTimes article and elsewhere) that the south pole has gained ice cover to record levels, and that it has been in a 30-year cooling trend (with the exception of the Antarctic Penninsula, which has warmed owing to circumpolar current changes)?

Ice gain has been due in large part to increases in moisture in the southern hemisphere which settles on the continent. Where do you think this increase in moisture came from? (hint: not cooling)

It doesn't fit the models. Any of them.

You obviously don't know what you're talking about.

Oh, and by the way, the new Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment has shown that Antarctica is now losing mass.

Schmidt deals with many of the problems with Svensmark here.

SPSR, your outrage is manufactured. Serious scientists are under no obligation to submit to the demands of cranks.

Remember the "Y2K" bug in the NASA/GISS U.S. temperatures that was discovered by a Canadian blogger and embarassingly fixed by Dr. Hansen at GISS? The updated NASA/GISS website was forced to make 1934 the hottest 20th century year in the U.S.

Well, NASA's Dr. James Hansen has secretly made 1998 the hottest U.S. year in the 20th century again. He couldn't raise the 1998 temperature so he lowered the 1934 temperature.