Is Knut Kpoot
May 17, 2008Arctic seals may be the only creatures under the sun that are truly happy with Wednesday’s announcement placing the polar bear officially on the U.S. threatened species list. Canadian Inuits are unhappy because they sell their polar bear kill quotas to foreign hunters and “There’s more Americans who want to shoot polar bears than any other nationality,” Environmentalists and Animal rights activists are unhappy because the ruling didn’t go far enough: “the government has its eye firmly on the gas pump, and is far more concerned about the interests of big business. “ In particular because no critical habitat designation was made and because Dirk Kempthore, Secretary of the Interior said:
“[listing the polar bear as a threatened species] should not open the door to use of the Endangered Species Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, power plants, and other sources….That would be a wholly inappropriate use of the ESA law. The ESA is not the right tool to set U.S. climate policy.”
I think there is no doubt that a sizable portion of the anti-global warming community would like to leverage the Endangered Species Act as a legal wedge to force changes in global climate policy through court-mandated reductions in green house gas emissions.
On the other side of the issue, many skeptics note that we are potentially damaging the economies of Alaska, Canadian Inuits, and even the contiguous United States by placing an animal on the engagered species list when not only is not in decline, but the population has grown steadily over the past 30 years. Heritage Foundation President Edwin Feulner released a statement after the EPA announced the ruling and noted that “By any measure this species is thriving. It certainly doesn’t need further protection from the United States government.”
Where do I stand? The contrarian in me is inclined to be believe that if nobody likes the policy and everyone is compaining equally, then it’s probably about right. To be clear, I am not an expert on these matters and I am relying on what was said during the press conference when the designation was announced and the consensus facts presented by other bloggers. The net effect seems to be that a few American hunters won’t be allowed to pay 30k for the privilage of a new polar bear rug to put next to their fireplace. Other than that, oil will continue to flow from Alaska, ice will continue to melt, and polar bears may or may not start to decline in number over the next decade.
Let me tell you why I think this was a good ruling.
1) Any admission by a Republican administration that Global Warming is occuring and is having a measurable effect on the world in which we live is a step in the right direction.
2) The administration is correct, the Endangered Species Act is a terrible vehicle to use to set national and international climate policy including greenhouse gas emissions policy.
3) Advocates of updating our climage-change policies now have a face and a mascott around which to rally.
The reality is that regardless of the Polar Bear’s plight or even global warming, we need to change our energy policy in this country and that change will be disruptive, expensive, and painful for a lot of people. It should be done through an elective process where policy makers and policy can be judged by the people. Advocates for change now have a very persuasive mascott, and policy makers now have a face to show their constituents as they ask them to bear the burden of a new more sustainable and secure energy policy. That’s probably not going to help our friends the Polar Bears, but if you are an arctic seal, you have to think everything is working out just fine.
There are a ton of good blogs and articles out there covering this; I listed a few below that in combination present the two sides pretty well.
http://blog.heritage.org/2008/05/08/problems-with-the-polar-bearglobal-warming-link/
http://www.dailymantra.com/2008/05/a_hollow_victory_for_the_polar_1.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121089170579096819.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
The fact of the matter is that the seasonally adjusted global sea ice extent is above average at the moment.
The seasonally adjusted sea ice extent in the Antarctic is near its all time greatest extent (only slightly lower than the maximum extent ever reached, just several months ago, during the entire satellite observing era that started in 1979). The simple proof of this can be seen in NOAA satellite data for the Antarctic as presented by the University of Illinois Polar Research Group.
As for Arctic: The sad thing is tha listing of polar bears as an endangered species is clearly a political move foisted upon us by climate alarmists. Those regions that are homes to the five “declining” sub-populations of polar bears (out of a total of 19 sub-populations) are very close to thier average seasonally adjusted sea ice extents at this moment.
Addtionally, there is an abundance of evidence indicating that the polar bears have survived warmer climates in the past.
Best regards,
ClimateSanity
Thanks for the comment. I appreciate the links to both your blog and the Arctic extent data. A different view of the Arctic sea ice is offered by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Earth Observation Research Center. They reported last week that while the extent of sea ice is recovering through the winter months, the amount of perenial sea ice is rapidly declining. If you haven’t seen this report, it can be found at: http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/en/imgdata/topics/2008/tp080514.html. They further hypothesize that this loss in perennial ice results in both thinning and destabilization of the sea ice sheet making it more susceptible to rapid melting. Do you see a flaw in their reporting? or their conclusions?
I do agree that the administration had substantial pressure to deliver a ruling and it was clear based on their ruling that the overriding goal was to acknowledge the political situation without creating a restrictive policy change.
I also agree that evidence suggests polar bears have survived warmer times; although I don’t think that a historical argument is convincing in this case. If the “climate alamists” are correct, then the rapidity of the change will be the issue. A slower environmental change allows for more time for the polar bears to adapt and more importantly, it provides more time for different prey stock to adapt and flourish – which is ultimately at the heart of the issue. A bears gotta eat; whether it’s a seal on the ice or some furry critter on the land. Of course if the “climate alarmists” aren’t correct it’s a moot point.
Thanks again for commenting, I’d love to get your thoughts regarding the Japanese study I mentioned.
Thanks for the invitation to comment futher.
You asked me to look at Japan Aerospace page concerning perennial ice versus sea ice extent. Perennial sea ice is, of course, any sea ice that survives the melt season to cycle through at least one more year. Each year, the Northern Hemisphere cycles through a maximum of about 14 million square kilometers down to about a minimim of 5 million square kilometers, leaving only about 1/3 of the ice each year as perennial ice. As seen in figure 1 of one of my previous blog enteries, the minimum Northern Hemisphere sea ice extent has been steadily decreasing during the satellite observing era (since 1979). That is, the perennial ice has been decreasing. However, the major loss of perenial sea ice has been primarily along the Siberian coast (the East Siberian Sea, Laptev Sea, Kara Sea) This can be seen in the lower left corner of each of the yearly maps in Figure 2 of the Japan Aerospace web page that Davidoarr suggested.
However, as the graphs in my more recent post illustrate, subsequent to large drops in sea ice over the last few years, the areas that are homes to the only five subpopulations of polar bears that are listed as “declining” have made almost complete recoveries in the last few months. The other regions that saw large losses of perennial ice over the last few years have also, for the most part, made large recoveries of sea ice extent. If a large portion of this sea ice survives the summer melt season (ending around October), then it will become part of the newly important perennial sea ice. Present conditions in the Arctic seem to indicate that is what will happen. The nice thing about it is that we only have to wait a few months to see who is right or wrong on this question.
An increase in the perennial sea ice could actually be worse news for the Norwegian Bay subpopulation of polar bears. The reason this subpopulation was listed as “declining” is, according to the IUCN, “The preponderance of heavy multi-year ice through most of the central and western areas has resulted in low densities of ringed seals and, consequently, low densities of polar bears.”
As I mentioned above, the yearly minimum sea ice extent in the Northern Hemisphere has been declining during the satellite observing era. Doesn’t this essentially make the point that anthropogenic global warming is having a great impact on the Arctic and consequently the polar bears? Not necessarily. I think, based on your comments, that we agree that the bears have survived warmer times. Your concern was that “the rapidity of the change” may be greater than what they had experienced in the past. We know that conditions have constantly varied, but obviously we don’t have nice daily satellite data from the previous interglacial (the Eemian), back to glacial conditions, and into the present interglacial (the Holocene). Absence of evidence in not evidence of absence.
Here are a couple of quick examples of recent (Holocene) non-athropogenic rapid climate changes in the northern latitudes. It seems that conditions changed very rapidly (decadal time scale) for the the European inhabitants of Greenland, wiping them out in the 14 century. The Younger-Dryas event was a period after the end of the the last ice age (about 13,000 years ago) when temperatures rapidly dropped back down to ice age levels. The Younger-Dryas ended when “temperatures rapidly rose around 10° C in a very short time… most of the increase occurred in less than a decade.” Both of these events would have been much more profound the variations going on in the Arctic today.
Best Regards,
ClimateSanity
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation
Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Untalented!