26 November 2013

More warmists lack of grasp of science


Nine months ago warmist "aria" made a comment on a page about polar bears that claims:
"..polar bears are much smaller then they used to be since they have less food because of the global warming,"
Nine months ago is recent enough to be well aware that polar bear numbers have increased in recent years. The slight decrease in floating Arctic ice, that's often portrayed as a sign of Armageddon by warmists, actually enhances polar bear's main prey, seals (more below).
 
I should admit at first I thought she made that up herself, but it's just another wacky claim from warmist scientists to add to the long list of things global warming does.
 
The article is from HeaveMedia and is called:
 
 
It comes with the usual global warming propaganda, which claims that there are lots more polar bears hanging around human settlements forced to find food inland as a result of global warming. No realisation that the slight breakup of the ice, combined with less hunting, has seen polar bear numbers go up in the last few years and decades.
 
No clue that polar bear numbers are thriving, not suffering as a result of current climatic conditions, and that's the real reason they are hanging around. And the first commenter, "aria", knows no better. Seriously, she thinks smaller polar bears will result from global warming?
 
Is that really how a population would react to a low food supply in a few short decades? Some polar bears may be malnourished but that would usually result in death or the inability to reproduce. Surely "less food" is more likely to result in fewer numbers rather than smaller body sizes.
 
The kinds of changes that result in long term changes to the body size of a species takes many generations and potentially thousands or millions of years. Even on those timescales it's still not clear whether less food would result necessarily in smaller body sizes rather than just fewer numbers, or some other change.
 
I found a reference for this shrinking size of polar bears theory and it focused on invertebrates and ocean creatures that change their body size in response to temperature. Nothing concrete to show that polar bears will shrink as a result of global warming other than a vague observation that large animals do better in cold climates because of their larger body size.

What about elephants, they are close to the equator? It is true that animals in cold climates are usually bigger. But the effect of a slight warming over a few decades is very unclear in this regard. They are looking at shrinking insects during the PETM where earth heated 5 - 10C in a short period of time, and that's supposed to be applicable to polar bears today?
 
 
So, warming may shrink the size of polar bears....except that there has been no Arctic polar warming for decades. The sea ice loss is due to changes in wind, not global warming.
 
And what are the warmists going to do when all the north polar ice comes back naturally, as it may well do?! Then can we be free from this global warming madness?!
 
See more:
 
Why Less Summer Ice Increases Bear Populations
 
A few other links:

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323452204578288343627282034

http://news.discovery.com/animals/cellphone-saves-man-from-polar-bear-attack-13091.htm

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/healthy-polar-bear-count-confounds-doomsayers/article4099460/

http://polarbearscience.com/2013/11/05/challenging-save-the-polar-bear-propaganda/

No comments:

Post a Comment