New study: Great mass extinction caused by ice age, not global warming

During the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago, the Earth was enjoying some of its warmest temperatures when it was interrupted by a catastrophic cooling event. The new discovery shows an #Ice Age forced a massive die-off of most marine life, and not global warming as once thought. It also shows the role geological events have played on our climate, specifically volcanic eruptions.

While the Earth has gone through a number of #extinction level events, the one that happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary was one of the deadliest. Over 95 percent of marine life vanished from the face of the planet. Scientists previously believed it was from a rise in temperatures that preceded #Climate Change, but researchers from the University of Geneva and University of Zurich discovered the die-off arose from a mini ice age.

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“The cold exterminated all of them” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170306091927.htm …
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Cold extermination: One of greatest mass extinctions was due to an ice age and not to Earth’s…
The Earth has known several mass extinctions over the course of its history. One of the most important happened at the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago. Over 95% of marine species…
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Dating the past
The researchers worked on sediment layers found at the Nanpanjiang basin in southern China. Bjorn Baresel, a University of Zurich scientist, said they made several cross sections of the basin sediments to determine the exact positions of ash beds in the marine sediments. Then they dated the sediments using the natural radioactive decay of uranium from the mineral zircon. Because it decays at a specific speed, they can be accurate to within 35,000 years.

Once they dated the various sediment layers, the scientists noticed a mass extinction at the Permian-Triassic boundary represented by a gap in the sediment layers. That gap correlates to a time when seawater level decreased. And sea levels only drop when it gets stored into ice. From there they could determine the ice age lasted about 80,000 years, time enough to kill off 95 percent of all marine life.
Scientists have long believed a mass die-off was caused by global warming. A new study shows differently.During the Permian-Triassic boundary 250 million years ago, the …

Science behind the video Polar Bear Scare Unmasked – updated paper now available

Announcing the publication today of Version 2 of my paper that tests the hypothesis that polar bear population declines result from rapid declines in summer sea ice, updated with recently available data. Version 2 provides the scientific support for the information presented in the GWPF video published yesterday, “ Polar Bear Scare Unmasked: The Sage of a Toppled Global Warming Icon ” (copied below). [The graphic above was created by me from the title page and two figures from the paper] Crockford, S.J. 2017 V2.

Source: Science behind the video Polar Bear Scare Unmasked – updated paper now available

DELINGPOLE: Polar Bears Are a Pest – Time to End Their ‘Threatened’ Status

By James Delingpole:

The world’s exploding polar bear population which has now reached record highs of 30,000.
30,000 polar bears is a lot. As someone else remarked (remind me where and I’ll link to it), when Al Gore was born the population was just 5,000. Even as recently as 2005 it was estimated at no more than 22,500.

When the population of something explodes six-fold in 70 years that’s a sign that it’s doing pretty well, right? In fact, frankly, at that point it ceases to be a species in any kind of danger and starts to look more like a pest.

So why do the greenies persist in treating it like it’s a rare and precious species on the verge of extinction due to man’s selfishness and greed (TM)?

This is the question asked and answered by the best short video you will ever see about the polar bear non-problem.

It has been made by Canadian polar bear expert Susan Crockford for the Global Warming Policy Foundation and it calls for the US Administration to reassess the polar bear’s (utterly bogus) classification as a “threatened” species.

As the film makes clear, the polar bear is not “threatened” and hasn’t been for many decades (not since hunting was mostly banned). When in May 2008 the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed it as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act this was a political gesture not a scientific one.

The flimsy justification for the polar bear’s “threatened” status was the dramatic decline in summer sea ice which – so the fashionable theory ran – would render polar bears unable to feed because whenever they pursued seals they’d collapse through the thin ice.

This is a plausible theory so long as you know nothing about the feeding habits, behaviour and seasonal cycle of polar bears.

Polar bears, it turns out, do most of their feeding in early spring when they consume 8 months’ worth of their total food needs.

Mostly, they eat ring seals which are abundant in spring but have largely disappeared from the bears’ hunting grounds by summer, leaving only the lest tasty and harder-to-catch adult bearded and harp seals.

To be clear, polar bears are not “threatened”, “vulnerable” or otherwise “endangered” – and have not been at any time during the long period in which they have been exploited by snake-oil-selling greenies as the poster child for man-made …

International Polar Bear Day Sees Population Pop 27% Despite ‘Global Warming’

By Craig Bannister | February 27, 2017 | 2:22 PM EST
Conservationists worldwide have cause to celebrate on International Polar Bear Day as the global population of this “endangered” animal is surging.

On International Polar Bear Day 2017, the world’s polar bear population is up 27% from 2005 – despite some environmentalists’ fears of global warming.

The day is intended to raise awareness to the supposed plight of the polar bear:

“Feb. 27 marks International Polar Bear Day, an annual event meant to raise awareness of polar bears and their conservation status. Polar bears are considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.”

Conservationists continue to warn of the polar bear’s doom because their claims are based on “unverifiable predictions,” not proof, ClimateDepot.com Publisher Marc Morano tells CNSNews.com:

“There is a lot to celebrate about polar bears today. The feared ‘global warming’ has failed to harm the species as their numbers continue to increase.

“It’s odd that a species whose numbers continue to escalate is still being hyped as being “endangered” based upon unverifiable predictions of the future.

“The greatest threat that polar bears face may only be from the electrons in the hard drives of the scientists predicting polar bear doom decades from now.”

Fake Polar Bear Scare Unmasked: The Saga of a Toppled Global Warming Icon

Guest essay by Dr. Susan Crockford

For more than ten years, we’ve endured the shrill media headlines, the hyperbole from conservation organizations, and the simplistic platitudes from scientists as summer sea ice declined dramatically while polar bear numbers rose.

Now, just in time for International Polar Bear Day, there’s a video that deconstructs the scare. It runs about 8 minutes, written and narrated by me, produced by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.…

Global polar bear population sees ‘significant increase’ – almost 30,000 bears – Up 27% since 2005

Via: http://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/23/global-polar-bear-population-larger-than-previous-thought-almost-30000

By Polar Bear Expert Dr. Susan J. Crockford:

The results of three recently-released studies that were not included in the last IUCN Red List assessment add more than 2,050 bears (on average)1 to the official 2015 global polar bear estimate, a point you won’t likely hear next Monday (27 February) from most polar bear specialists, conservation organizations, their cheerleaders and corporate sponsors on International Polar Bear Day.

This means the adjusted 2015 global estimate for polar bears should be about 28,500 (average), a significant increase over the official estimate of 26,500 (average) for 2015 — and an even larger increase over the 2005 estimate of about 22,500 (average)2, despite the dramatic loss of summer sea ice since 2007 that we hear about endlessly.

It is increasingly obvious that polar bears are thriving despite having lived through summer sea ice levels not predicted to occur until 2050 – levels of sea ice that experts said would wipe out 2/3 of the world’s polar bears (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2017a, b).

So when you hear, “Save the polar bears, their future is grim” next week, remember that polar bears are thriving right now because those future predictions were flawed: summer sea ice is not critical habitat for polar bears. Instead of a vacuous “vanishing species” polar bear T-shirt from WWF, buy Polar Bear Facts and Myths for the kids in your life – and Polar Bears: Outstanding Survivors of Climate Change for your home or community library. You’ll be glad you did.

Footnotes:

1. Total for all three estimate increases is 2054, or about 2050.
Barents Sea (BS) estimated at 3749 for entire region, up 42% (1109) since 2004 estimate of 2640, based on 42% Svalbard increase determined in 2015 (Norwegian Polar Institute 2015; Crockford 2017b) applied across the region. This is consistent with observations in 2004 that researchers found about three times (2.87) as many bears in the Russian sector than in Svalbard (Aars et al. 2009), and the stated expectation by Norwegian biologists that the population size would continue to increase despite declines in sea ice (Fauchald et al. 2014).

Baffin Bay (BB) estimate 2,826 (95% CI = 2,059-3,593) at 2013 (SWG 2016), up 752.

Kane Basin (KB) estimate 357 (95% CI: 221 – 493) at 2013 (SWG 2016), up 193.

2. USGS polar bear biologists (Amstrup …

Polar bear habitat update: Masie charts show more ice in 2017 than 2006

Polar bear habitat update: Masie charts show more ice in 2017 than 2006

http://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/20/polar-bear-habitat-update-masie-charts-show-more-ice-in-2017-than-2006

It’s just an observation but NSIDC Masie ice charts show 14.7 mkm2 of sea ice for 2017 at 19 February (Day 50) but only 14.3 mkm2 for 2006 (see them copied below). In contrast, the NSIDC interactive graph shows almost the opposite: 14.3 mkm2 for 2017 and 14.4 mkm2 for 2006 (but with both below 2 standard deviations of average). Different treatment of ice concentration values probably account for much of the differences and it doesn’t mean much. But it needs to be pointed out while sea ice is lower than average this year, sea ice coverage was also below average in 2006 – and there was not a huge die-off of polar bears that year as a result. There is no evidence that polar bears require “X” amount of sea ice in late winter or spring. Anyone who suggests otherwise is making things up. Here is Masie 2017 for day 50 (cropped), 14.7 mkm2: Below is Masie 2006 for day 50 (cropped), 14.3 mkm2:

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