‘Blatant nonsense’: Media hyped walrus climate scare stories debunked – Claims recycled year-after-year – A Climate Depot Rebuttal
Climate Depot Special Report
The October 1, 2014 Associated Press article linking the walrus gathering to melting sea ice, lacks historical perspective and contains serious spin that would lead readers to erroneous conclusions about walruses and the climate. [Update: Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford weighs in: Mass haulouts of Pacific walrus and stampede deaths are not new, not due to low ice cover – ‘The attempts by WWF and others to link this event to global warming is self-serving nonsense that has nothing to do with science…this is blatant nonsense and those who support or encourage this interpretation are misinforming the public.’ And Update #2 is here.]
First off, walruses are not endangered. According to the New York Times, “the Pacific walrus remains abundant, numbering at least 200,000 by some accounts, double the number in the 1950s.”
The AP article titled, “35,000 walrus come ashore in northwest Alaska”, claims “the gathering of walrus on shore is a phenomenon that has accompanied the loss of summer sea ice as the climate has warmed.” The AP even includes the environmental group World Wildlife Fund, to ramp up climate hype. “It’s another remarkable sign of the dramatic environmental conditions changing as the result of sea ice loss,” said Margaret Williams, managing director of the group’s Arctic program, by phone from Washington, D.C.
But the AP is recycling its own climate stories on walruses. See: 2009: AP: Walruses Gather as Ice Melts in the Arctic Sea (Sep 17 2009) Also see fact check on “melting” Arctic sea ice. See: Paper: ‘Myth of arctic meltdown’ : Stunning satellite images show ice cap has grown by an area twice the size of Alaska in two years – Despite Al Gore’s prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now
[Update Via Bishop Hill website: ‘A look at Cryosphere Today’s animation of historic Arctic sea ice and as far as I can see there is rarely any sea ice over the Chukchi Sea in the summer. This story is ecodrivel. We know that large haulouts take place in the Bering and Chukchi seas. We know that walruses have always visited Point Lay and that the sea ice at the time is far enough away that they haulouts must have been on the land.’]
The media and green groups are implying that walrus hanging out by the tens of thousands is a new …
Climate Depot Round Up: A New Climategate?! ‘UN IPCC Stands Accused Of Misleading World Leaders & The Public’
See earlier Climate Depot Round Ups of the New UN climate panel report here and here.
A New Climategate?! ‘UN IPCC Stands Accused Of Misleading World Leaders & The Public’ — ‘Did The IPCC ‘Fix The Facts’? ‘Discrepancy between climate models & observations was systematically hidden’ — ‘The full text of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report has been out for less than 24 hours and the tales of malfeasance are flowing already. Steve McIntyre has already blogged about some misleading behaviour by senior scientists involved in the review, but his post this morning is amazing, revealing how the discrepancy between climate models and observations was systematically hidden between the final review of the draft and the report issued to the public.’
Oh No! UN IPCC Co-chair Stocker warns about AGW: “In short, it threatens our planet, our only home’ — Change: How Long Will Earth Remain?
Climatologist Dr. Judith Curry calls for abolishing UN climate panel: ‘We need to put down the UN IPCC as soon as possible’ — ‘As temperatures have declined and climate models have failed to predict this decline, the IPCC has gained confidence in catastrophic warming’ — Judith Curry, Professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology: ‘Given the widespread nature of the infection and intrinsic motivated reasoning. We need to put down the IPCC as soon as possible’ — Key Points: There is a ‘growing realization that you can’t control climate by emissions reductions’As Temperatures Have Declined, The IPCC Has Gained Confidence In Catastrophic Warming — ‘With each successive decline in temperature, the IPCC has gained confidence that their exponentially increasing warming models are correct.’MIT Climate Scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen Rips UN IPCC Report: ‘The latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence’ — ‘It is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going’ — Former UN IPCC Lead Author Richard Lindzen: ‘In attributing warming to man, they fail to point out that the warming has been small, and totally consistent with there being nothing to be alarmed about’UN IPCC claim: ‘Since the 1950s, many