Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

BBC Caught Peddling Baseless ‘Rapidly Warming Arctic’ Theory

BBC perspective on Arviat polar bears – those not included in the last mark-recapture study

By Susan Crockford | Polar Bear Science | October 16, 2015

In a polite but misleading article today in a BBC magazine (The polar bears are coming to town) about the relationship of polar bears and Inuit in Arviat, Western Hudson Bay, there is no mention of the on-going feud between Nunavut Inuit and Canadian polar bear scientists regarding invasive research.

Nor is there a mention of the fact that according to the most recent research, there has been no trend in sea ice conditions since 2001.

Find Arviat on the map of Western Hudson Bay study area provided by Lunn and colleagues (2013, 2014) in their mark-recapture study report (below) discussed in detail in my last post. Area “A” – where Arviat is located – was not included in the last mark-recapture survey because Nunavut won’t allow invasive research on polar bears.

Lunn et al. 2013, 2014. Map of study area.

Lunn et al. 2013, 2014. Map of study area.

The issue of the invasive research involved in polar bear mark-recapture studies around Churchill, Manitoba (chasing bears with helicopters, drugging them, extracting a tooth, tattooed, and attaching satellite radio collars or ear tags), has been so strenuously objected to by the Inuit of Nunavut that they have refused to allow the necessary field research permits for these activities (previous posts here, here, and here). See also the guest post by Kelsey Eliasson Invasive Research is Alive and Well in Canada

Arviat is in Nunavut and so mark-recapture work was not permitted there in 2011 – which is why Lunn and colleagues could not include those bears in their survey. Lunn et al. did not mention this conflict in their government report (2013) or in the version of it that is destined for publication (2014). They offered no reason why they did not survey in the Nunavut portion of Western Hudson Bay (Area A), which was included in the aerial survey conducted by Stapleton and colleagues (2014) and previous mark-recapture studies.

The author of today’s BBC essay (Irish anthropologist Martina Tyrrell) seems not to know about the invasive research issue or the lack of trend in sea ice conditions revealed in the mark-recapture study report (Lunn et al. 2013), because this is what she said about polar bear visits to Arviat:

“Over the past decade, however, encounters have been on the increase. Camping south of the community in summer is no longer safe, and autumn berry picking – an important subsistence activity usually undertaken by women and children – is now fraught with danger. Bears increasingly wander the streets of Arviat, particularly in late autumn.

At this time of year, regular announcements of bear sightings are made on local community FM radio, schools are sometimes closed early and the usually lively streets are eerily quiet. Halloween trick-or-treating, once so wild and fun-filled, has been all but wiped out, for fear of unwanted encounters not with ghosts or demons but with wandering bears.

What is driving this change in the polar bears’ behaviour?

Many Arviarmiut blame polar bear tourism in neighbouring Churchill – 250km to the south – for encouraging the animals to look for food in human settlements.

But there are other theories. Some Inuit think the bear population in the region is growing. Many scientists, on the other hand, put the blame on habitat loss – according to this theory it’s the desperation of hungry bears facing decreased ice seasons in a rapidly warming Arctic that leads them to approach the town. They have always gathered on the coastline at this time of year, awaiting the formation of the sea ice that is their winter hunting ground, but usually at a greater distance.” [my bold]

Read the rest here.

One of those “theories” is easily refuted by the Lunn et al. report (2013, 2014; Fig. 5): there has been no trend in sea ice breakup or freeze-up of Western Hudson Bay sea ice since 2001. Just the usual year-to-year variation, which can be fairly large:

Lunn et al 2013 breakup freeze up dates marked

[Observations since then have been consistent with that conclusion, for both breakup dates and freeze-up]

Therefore, there may simply be more bears than previously – or Arviat is being visited by more bears as a result of the increased polar bear tourism in Churchill or the increased vigilance of their Polar Bear Alert program. Either way, the sea ice “theory” (see graph below from Lunn et al. 2013) can be ruled out.

References

Lunn, N.J., Regehr, E.V., Servanty, S., Converse, S., Richardson, E. and Stirling, I. 2013. Demography and population assessment of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, Canada. Environment Canada Research Report. 26 November 2013. PDF HERE

Lunn, N.J., Servanty, S., Regehr, E.V., Converse, S.J., Richardson, E. and Stirling, I. 2014. Demography and population assessment of polar bears in Western Hudson Bay, Canada. Environment Canada Research Report. July 2014. PDF HERE [This appears to be the version submitted for publication]

Stapleton S., Atkinson, S., Hedman, D., and Garshelis, D. 2014. Revisiting Western Hudson Bay: using aerial surveys to update polar bear abundance in a sentinel population. Biological Conservation 170:38-47. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320713004618#

October 18, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science | , , | 2 Comments

Polar Bear Specialist Group says its global population estimate was “a qualified guess”

By Dr. Susan Crockford | Watts Up With That? | June 2, 2014

pbsg logoLast week (May 22), I received an unsolicited email from Dr. Dag Vongraven, the current chairman of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG).

The email from Vongraven began this way:

“Dr. Crockford

Below you’ll find a footnote that will accompany a total polar bear population size range in the circumpolar polar bear action plan that we are currently drafting together with the Parties to the 1973 Agreement. This might keep you blogging for a day or two.” [my bold]

It appears the PBSG have come to the realization that public outrage (or just confusion) is brewing over their global population estimates and some damage control is perhaps called for. Their solution — bury a statement of clarification within their next official missive (which I have commented upon here).

Instead of issuing a press release to clarify matters to the public immediately, Vongraven decided he would let me take care of informing the public that this global estimate may not be what it seems.

OK, I’ll oblige (I am traveling in Russia on business and finding it very hard to do even short posts – more on that later). The footnote Vongraven sent is below, with some comments from me. You can decide for yourself if the PBSG have been straight-forward about the nature of their global population estimates and transparent about the purpose for issuing it.

Here is the statement that the PBSG proposes to insert as a footnote in their forthcoming Circumpolar Polar Bear Action Plan draft:

“As part of past status reports, the PBSG has traditionally estimated a range for the total number of polar bears in the circumpolar Arctic. Since 2005, this range has been 20-25,000. It is important to realize that this range never has been an estimate of total abundance in a scientific sense, but simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand. It is also important to note that even though we have scientifically valid estimates for a majority of the subpopulations, some are dated. Furthermore, there are no abundance estimates for the Arctic Basin, East Greenland, and the Russian subpopulations. Consequently, there is either no, or only rudimentary, knowledge to support guesses about the possible abundance of polar bears in approximately half the areas they occupy. Thus, the range given for total global population should be viewed with great caution as it cannot be used to assess population trend over the long term.” [my bold]

So, the global estimates were “…simply a qualified guess given to satisfy public demand” and according to this statement, were never meant to be considered scientific estimates, despite what they were called, the scientific group that issued them, and how they were used (see footnote below).

All this glosses over what I think is a critical point: none of these ‘global population estimates’ (from 2001 onward) came anywhere close to being estimates of the actual world population size of polar bears (regardless of how scientifically inaccurate they might have been) — rather, they were estimates of only the subpopulations that Arctic biologists have tried to count.

For example, the PBSG’s  most recent global estimate (range 13,071-24,238) ignores five very large subpopulation regions which between them potentially contain 1/3 as many additional bears as the official estimate includes (see map below). The PBSG effectively gives them each an estimate of zero.

Figure 1. Based on previous PBSG estimates and other research, there are probably another 6,000-9,000 (perhaps less but perhaps more) bears living in the regions marked in black above, although suitably “scientific” population surveys have not been done. These bears are not included in the most recent PBSG “global population estimate” – a ‘rough guess,’ such as suggested here, has been deemed of no use to the PBSG, so their population estimate is “zero.” CS, Chukchi Sea; LS, Laptev Sea; KS, Kara Sea; EG, East Greenland; AB, Arctic Basin.

Based on previous PBSG estimates and other research reports, it appears there are probably at least another 6,000 or so bears living in these regions and perhaps as many as 9,000 (or more) that are not included in any PBSG “global population estimate”: Chukchi Sea ~2,000-3,000; East Greenland, ~ 2,000-3,000; the two Russian regions together (Laptev Sea and Kara Sea), another ~2,000-3,000 or so, plus 200 or so in the central Arctic Basin. These are guesses, to be sure, but they at least give a potential size

In other words, rather than assigning a “simple, qualified guess” for these subpopulations that have not been formally counted as well as those that have been counted (generating a total figure that is indeed a “global population estimate,” however inaccurate), the PBSG have been passing off their estimate of counted populations as a true global population estimate, with caveats seldom included.

more here: http://polarbearscience.com/2014/05/30/iucn-polar-bear-specialist-group-says-its-global-population-estimate-was-a-qualified-guess/

June 2, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment