Minimising the Climate

As a climate denialist you could try blank denial that anything is happening to the climate.  That’s a big ask given the evidence, but some people do attempt it.  Alternatively there is misdirection or misinterpretation, both of which are forms of distraction while remaining on topic but note that it is also possible to distract by simply changing the topic, a ploy which worked on me recently (although perhaps used only unintentionally).  After sending JP a series of graphs about the climate and I got, in return, a comment about how a grooming scandal in the UK isn’t being reported on by the BBC.  I provide a link just in case you were thinking about the wrong sort of grooming:

I do note that in the associated article (from News24) there is, yet again, no mention of muslims being involved.  Scandalous.

Now, if you, as a reader, find yourself triggered here – either by my apparent levity with respect to a horrendous example of organised sexual exploitation of children or my apparent attempt to distract from the fact that the majority of men involved in the horrendous example of organised sexual exploitation of children were muslims (or, more recently, in Newcastle), then you have an example of the effectiveness of distraction.  This article isn’t about that topic, as serious as it is – it’s about the third tool in the climate denialism toolbox … minimisation.

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First of all, it should be noted that when we talk of minimisation, we are talking about a mindset.  I suspect that minimisation is a gateway, both into climate denialism and, possibly, out as well.  Inherent in the notion of minimisation is an acceptance of climate change, even of anthropogenic climate change, also known as human-induced climate change or anthropogenic global warming, leading to the term AGW – which seems to be a favourite amongst climate denialists – and leads in turn to the more extreme CAGW, or catastrophic AGW, the climate denialist’s strawman friend.

The fundamental argument of the climate minimiser is that, okay, so there might be some climate change happening, but it’s not that much, it’s not that bad, it’s not caused entirely or that much by humans, the consequences aren’t as dire as “everyone” is making out or that the evidence isn’t that good or extensive or reliable or sufficiently long-term.  In supporting that position, the denialist will make use of the same sort of arguments as for blank denial and may also indulge in a little misdirection and misinterpretation.

In my discussion with JP on sea levels, there was a typical example of minimising the extent of climate change.  JP was not denying that sea levels are rising, but instead argued that sea levels weren’t rising that much and that there is no evidence of acceleration (spoiler – the evidence provided by JP indicated that the sea level as measured by Fort Denison is rising at rates consistent with global rates and is accelerating at a rate that is consistent with the global rate).

A variation of this is comparative minimisation – this has all happened before.  The level of atmospheric CO2, has in the past, been as high as or higher than it is now:

We only need to look back about sixteen to twenty-five million years (Miocene or Oligocene) to see a period when CO2 was consistently above 400 ppm (we’re now slightly above 410ppm).  So, sure, it’s happened before.  But back as recently as the mid-Pliocene, we had CO2 levels between 300 and 400ppm, global temperatures were within a couple of degrees or so of where we are today, and sea levels were about 20m higher.  While this does mean that sea level change has happened before, it’s not particularly encouraging:

Note that this image doesn’t take into account tides or storm surge.  (Interestingly, NOAA doesn’t give you the option to plug 10m into their version of the flood map, they only go to 3m.)

I have heard deniers say that the temperature rising by a degree or two won’t be that bad.  After all, there’s not much difference between 28 and 30C (annual average temperature in Djibouti) and surely Canada would appreciate shifting their average up from -5C to -3C?  If it were as simple as that, then sure, there would not be a problem – but it’s not that simple.  The effect of global warming is to decrease the stability of the climate, there is more energy in the system leading to more extreme storms, more extreme high temperatures, possibly more extreme droughts and weakening of the polar vortex allows colder air to move down from the Arctic which counterintuitively leads to instances of extreme cold temperatures.

Then there is minimisation of the influence of humans on the climate.  The primary effort in this area is to blame the sun – which is not overly surprising since the vast majority of energy reaching the Earth is from the sun (hence it’s warmer when the Earth is facing the sun [daily cycle], when the Earth is tilted towards the sun [ie summer] and when the Earth is closer to the sun [annual cycle, northern winter]).

Even if humans have some impact on the climate, these people argue, climate change is largely due to a blend of solar activity and precession of the Earth which are behind the cycle of ice ages and inter-glacial periods:

Some use data such as in the graph above to argue that an ice age in imminent, which is more of a blank denial tactic, but others are more nuanced and argue that CO2 levels and temperature changes are all part of the normal run of things.  That would be fine if the chart adequately showed the current CO2 level, but it doesn’t.  At the extreme right end, the CO2 level leaps up – from an already high point, which is inadequately represented – an additional 90ppm over the period of 60 years (since 1960) to 410ppm.  Given the scale that would be nigh on vertical.

The claim that things are not as dire as “everyone” is saying depends largely on who you define as “everyone”.  The media has much to answer for here, as do some of the more extreme activists.

A recent article in Nature (and commented on by Forbes) indicated some disquiet with the fact that RCP8.5 has been used as “a likely ‘business as usual’ scenario” when it was intended as an “unlikely high-risk future” with some rather unrealistic assumptions, including burning coal at an infeasible rate (ie – we would run out of coal to burn).  The RCP8.5 scenario which has radiative forcing hitting 8.5W/m² before dropping away, has us reaching a 5C anomaly by 2100.

A far more realistic scenario has us reaching 3C.  The argument, therefore, that things are not as bad as they could be, stands but it’s in the same category as having cut off half your grandchild’s leg rather than two thirds.  Neither option is attractive and, if you’re not a psychopath, you’d prefer not to have cut off any part of your grandchild’s leg – unless it were absolutely necessary or inconvenient not to, or you could see a short-term financial or political advantage in carrying out the amputation.

The fundamental tactic with minimisation is looking at an extreme claim in the past and pointing out that it has not come to fruition.  Sea ice is a common example.  The fact that the claim was not a hard one (ie “may be gone by year x” can be interpreted as “will be gone by year x”) or that the claim is an outlier can be easily ignored by the denialist.  The fact that more modest claims are still a possibility (or have in fact come to pass) are also easily ignored.

And then there is minimisation of the evidence, which is usually the claim that the evidence isn’t that good, or isn’t that extensive, or isn’t that reliable, or is insufficiently long-term.  A denialist doesn’t actually need to present evidence that the evidence for climate change is poor in some way, nor do they need to be comprehensive.  Sometimes they can even present raw data that indicates a symptom of climate change (ie sea level rise) and claim that it’s evidence of there not being climate change.

In other cases, they can engage in disinformation as the Union of Concerned Scientists have claimed.  It was particularly sad to see staff at the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) being directed to “highlight a lack of evidence that ties humans to climate change” despite there being studies, some from the EPA itself, providing that evidence.

In my discussions with JP, there has been a constant thread of “the models are unreliable” (they don’t seem to be from my look at them), “the temperature record is unreliable” (but get any historical temperature data that can be twisted into supporting the climate denialist position and it’s great!), and “there’s a confirmation bias on the part of the climate scientists” (see Climate Denial and Predatory Journals).  These sorts of claims, if taken at face value, all chip away at the legitimacy of climate related science.  In other words, when successful, these claims reduce our confidence in science, making us more receptive of the sorts of pseudoscience pedalled by climate denialists.

Glacial Retreat

A friend of mine, JP, started all of this when writing:

If you were to ask me 2 years ago what my key understandings were about climate change, I would have said the following:

Sea ice is rapidly shrinking (summer arctic sea ice to be gone by 2015)

Sea levels are rising and accelerating

Polar bear populations are under stress (have increased in the last 20 years)

The levels of glacial retreat around the world are unprecedented (similar retreats have been seen in the last century)

97% of scientists agree that global warming is real and an urgent problem

Any scientist who is skeptical about the claims made about climate change is a "denier" and is funded by oil/resource companies

We are seeing an increase in extreme weather events (they are actually getting less common)

Climate models are accurate in their predictions 

Every one of those things is either totally false, or a largely exaggerated claim.

This is the fourth in a series based on my response, which itself was split over a few emails.  The first was Sea Ice Challenge (in which I provided a little more context about JP), the second was Sea Levels Rising and the third was Polar Bears and Climate Change.  Some of the issues may also be touched on in a series of articles on the nature of climate denialism.  Please also note the caveat.

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JP’s Claim: The statement “levels of glacial retreat around the world are unprecedented” is either totally false or largely exaggerated and “similar retreats have been seen in the last century”

It is true that glaciers have been retreating quite some time.  This could be, in part, because the Little Ice Age ended, so it could be said that there was retreat through the 1800s and even through to the mid-1950s that was natural.  And yes, that would mean that there is an element of global warming that could be entirely natural.  However, there has been a noticeable acceleration in recent times:

Over a longer period, the change is quite significant:

Also:

Note that this is a selection of glaciers, across both hemispheres, but it is notable that the New Zealand glacier grew, significantly – by about a kilometre, from the mid-1980s to at least 2000.  This was certainly against the trend, but a glacier that is not in decline would likely attract the interest of a climate denialist).  Except:

All that length gained has been lost and the length gained was only about half that that had been lost since about 1940.

Even though they are still surviving at many kilometres in length (see the scales on each side), glaciers such as these are under attack at both ends.   The lower ends maybe melting slightly more quickly as the average temperature slowly rises, but more significant is the other end, the supply end, where less snow has been available to feed the glacier.

I draw the reader’s attention to the Stocking Glacier, the magenta line in the chart above.  Note that there was a decline to about the mid-1920s.

There wasn’t terribly much that I could find about glacier-based climate denial to justify JP’s claim.  Perhaps there is more out there, but what is out there appears to be based on the notion that “glaciers melted in the past” (Tony Heller (aka Stephen Goddard) and Anthony Watts).

Tony Heller was basing his claim on reports, as early as 1903, that glaciers were disappearing:

No-one is denying this.  There was what is known as the Little Ice Age from about 1300 until about 1850.  During that period the glaciers grew, with one of the Dauphine Alps glaciers, Glacier Blanc, extending down to 1874m above sea level (measured in 1815).  As of 2002, the glacier was just under six kilometres long with an area of 5.34 square kilometres.  This is what it looks like today (2020):

I’ve put on a measurement from Dôme de Neige (the source of the glacier -green) to its greatest extent at 1874m above sea level (blue).  Today the front (or terminus or snout or toe) of the glacier is at 2300m (red).  It’s actually about 250m longer today than it was in 2002 (and 2010) when it was at 2400m (yellow), when it was 5.9km long.  I have no idea how thick it is.

So, the question is, how much could it have been retreating back in 1903?  According to Hervé Cortot and Marcel Chaud in 2005, the glacier retreated one kilometre over the 20th century (Longueur : perte de 1 km au cours du XX^e siècle).  Note that they blame retreat, over the preceding 20 years, on both a lack of snow and strong summer melts.

Note also that in 1983, the terminus was advancing by 30m/year and it appears to have been at about 2500m above sea level:

Clearly there is some variation from year to year, because 30m/year since 1983 would make the glacier 1100m longer.  At 2500m altitude, the glacier would have been 5.5km long, and it’s not 6.6 kilometres long today, it’s about 400m shorter than that.  However, it is recorded that the glacier lost more than 200m in the 90s (1989 to 1999) and another 300m between 1999 and 2006, so there probably was swift advancement between 1983 and 1989 and another period of advancement after that to reach 2400m by 2010 and then another 250m advancement since then.

So yes, using this glacier as an example, there hasn’t been consistent retreat of the glaciers.  Some years they advance, quite quickly (perhaps as much as 50m a year), some years they retreat, quite quickly (about 50m a year from 1999 to 2006).   A consistent loss of fifty feet a day (as claimed in the article) seems a little much.  Perhaps it was meant that, under certain extreme conditions, such as when an ice pool breaks, or a cavity collapses, as much as 15m of glacier can be lost?

What we can say, however, is that – irrespective of the cause – glaciers are in retreat over longer periods of time, even if there might be instances where they advance over the period of a few years.

A recurring feature of certain climate denialists, including Tony Heller, is a great confidence in reporting from the 1800s and early 1900s, despite evidence that such confidence is misplaced.  In the Kansas City paper cutting shown above, it is blithely stated that French glaciers are disappearing at a rate of as much as 50 feet a day.  Four years later, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported that there has been “remarkable shrinkings … among the Swiss glaciers” with the Rhone glacier losing “anywhere from 20 to 40 feet” over a period of two years.  If this is “remarkable”, what word characterises 50 feet a day?  I’d suggest that there was a slight inaccuracy in the Kansas City reporting.  That hasn’t stopped Heller from reposting that cutting as recently as 10 Jan 2020 (the first posting referenced appears to be from early 2016).

Finally, Heller insists (as does Watts) on referring to “glaciers melting”.  As Heller says himself, glaciers have been melting for “a very long time” and I would go further to say as long as there have been glaciers, they have been melting.  A glacier is a river of ice that flows from a high (cold) spot to a lower (warmer) spot – especially for alpine glaciers.  An alpine glacier will flow downhill until it reaches an altitude where the air sufficiently warm to melt enough ice to prevent any further advancement (it’s not as simple as being above freezing, since you have the sun interacting with it during the day, and ice melting cools the air immediately around it so it sort of protects itself).

Note in the 1983 diagram above, the 250m deep section was advancing at 50m/year while the terminus was advancing at 30m/year and a section not far from that terminus was only 100m deep (about two thirds of what it was in 1971).  If the whole mass was moving at 50m/year (which is a big if), then there must have been considerable melting going on – 150m worth of thickness and 20m worth of length at a bit under a kilometre wide.  (Of course, it’s not quite as simple as that but the point is that something in the order of 150m*70m*800m ≈ 2.5 million cubic metres of ice was melting from the glacier each year even when it was advancing by 30m/year.)

In polar regions, glaciers calve icebergs which eventually float into warmer water and melt away (although they may spend some time fused into pack ice first – so this could conceivably be a very long time in a small number of instances, but the average lifetime of an arctic iceberg is two to three years, ditto for southern icebergs).

It’s not a problem of glaciers melting, it’s a problem of them retreating, which is indicative of a negative balance between rate of melting and rate of replenishment – so the amount of snow dumped at the source.  There isn’t linear relationship between the amount of snow and temperature – although it is possible for it to be too cold to snow.  The upshot is that, under some weather conditions, a slightly warmer climate may well provide better conditions for large dumps of snow and some glaciers may tend to advance rather than retreat as temperatures rise.  A climate denialist who isn’t too proud to cherry pick could then point at that glacier (and ignore those such as in NZ that are retreating) and say “Look, the climate alarmists are lying to you!”

Infectious Statistics

In A Worry of Climate Change Scientists (coming soon), I address a claim associated with the 97% consensus figure which the media, such as the Guardian, picked up and ran with.  It’s possible that they are using it ironically in the rubric “Climate Consensus - the 97%”, echoing the 99% quoted by the Occupy movement.

Any statistic, like the 97% figure, should be taken with a pinch of salt and an assortment of questions.  What does it actually mean?  What is it really measuring?  Were there any caveats associated with the figure?  And so on and so on and so on.

A recent example of a similar problem came to mind as I was developing that post, a time at which the novel coronavirus recently dubbed COVID-19 had been confirmed to have infected more than 60,000 people and killed more than 1300.  It’s a bit messy because China released additional figures based on a new detection technique, leading to a one day jump of more than 15,000 cases and the day after 100 people miraculously came back to life (that is during the early reporting hours, the numbers were adjusted down by 122 and later down by about 100).  For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to work from the basis of it being 12 February 2020 when the figures, although probably not accurate, were at least consistent.

There was a question occupying the minds of many people trying to work out whether they should be bothered by a virus that has, so far, killed in the order of 0.2-0.4% as many people as die each year from influenza.  Sure, the flu is everywhere, while COVID-19 had so far been largely contained to China, but it seemed unlikely that, by the end of the year, more than half a million people would die from it.

The question was: what is the mortality rate due to COVID-19?  An easy question, but not so easy to answer.  The official answer, to avoid any unnecessary concerns, is about 2%.  The figures are rubbery because we are unlikely to have a good idea of precisely how many have been infected until much later, we only knew the confirmed case numbers and these might have just been those who were sickest – sick enough to present to a medical clinic of some kind.

A simple way to calculate the mortality rate is to take the number of deaths and divide that by the number of (confirmed) cases (all figures taken from here with downloadable datasets here):

Deaths	Cases	Mortality Rate
12 Feb 2020	12 Feb 2020	D/C
1117	45206	2.5%

So that seems accurate, about 2% just like the authorities were telling us.

However, there is going to be a lag between a person presenting with symptoms, being confirmed as having COVID-19, getting progressively sicker and finally succumbing.  Surely the mortality rate should be compared not against the number of people confirmed to have the virus at the time of death, but at time of confirmation.  The question then is what is the lag between confirmation and death?

For the man who died in the Philippines, that lag was seven days.  There appears to be a six-day lag between the downturn in the rate of new cases (6 Feb) and the downturn in the rate of new deaths (12 Feb).   Let’s use six days:

Deaths	Cases	Mortality Rate
12 Feb 2020	6 Feb 2020	D/C
1117	30808	3.6%

But it could be worse than that, should we not consider it from the time that the virus was contracted, which is two to fourteen days prior to symptoms developing.  Let’s split the difference there and say eight days before being confirmed as having the virus and fifteen days before succumbing:

Deaths	Cases	Mortality Rate
12 Feb 2020	28 Jan 2020	D/C
1117	6082	18%

Whoa Nelly!

That would be something to be worried about.

Another way to calculate the figure is to consider those who had run the course of the disease.  Some recovered, some died which permits another calculation to be made, the percentage who run the course of the disease but succumb to it:

Deaths	Recovered	Mortality Rate
12 Feb 2020	12 Feb 2020	D/(D+R)
1117	5123	18%

My rounding here hides the fact that one 18% is actually 17.7% and the other is 18.3%, making them look precisely the same when they are different by more than half a percent.  Also, an interesting thing happens when you push back a couple of days and run the previous calculation (deaths/cases, fifteen-day lag):

Deaths	Cases	Mortality Rate
10 Feb 2020	26 Jan 2020	D/C
910	2829	32%

What?!

Another two days:

Deaths	Cases	Mortality Rate
8 Feb 2020	24 Jan 2020	D/C
725	941	77%

Of course, that can’t be right.  I’m conflating the notion of people who contract the virus on a particular day with figures reported as confirmed on that day.  Phew!

Note that the 18% for deaths divided by the number of people for whom the virus has run its course still stands, but if I go back in time and check the figures, the mortality appears to be worse the further back I go, so that doesn’t seem right either.

What about the seven-day lag figure?  If I do the same thing, pushing back a couple of days:

Deaths	Cases	Mortality Rate
10 Feb 2020	4 Feb 2020	D/C
910	24506	3.7%

It’s not as much of an increase, but as I push back further, the apparent mortality rate goes up – slowly, but inevitably, eventually getting into the 20% range in the early days of the outbreak.

So what I did was project into the future, assuming that the number of case and deaths increases linearly (which as of 12 Feb was worst case, given that there seemed to be a slowdown in both new cases and deaths), and found that the mortality rate based on cases, irrespective of the lag time, tended towards about 3%.  Mortality based on number of people who run the course of the viral infection, assuming a fifteen-day illness and borrowing case numbers from the previous projection, also tends towards about 3%.

So, as of 12 Feb and depending on whether my objective was to be accurate, informative, calming, inflammatory or some combination thereof, I could possibly justify saying that the mortality rate was:

2% (official)

2.5% (current deaths divided by current cases)

3% (long term trend)

3.6% (current deaths divided by cases six days ago), or

18% (current death rate divided by current number of people who have run the course of the viral infection, one way or the other)

That’s quite a spread.

The point that I am trying to make here, long-windedly, is that unless I went to some serious effort to explain to the reader how I arrived at whatever percentage I provided, my use of an apparently more accurate figure (3.6% versus 2% or 3%) should not be thought of as providing you with any more confidence that my figure was accurate, or that it gave you the information that you thought it was giving.

The same applies to the climate consensus 97% figure – for the most part, when quoted by a denialist, it’s being used as a distraction with the intent to keeping rational people engaged on minutiae and, therefore, not on the scientific evidence that is so damaging to the denialist cause.

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Note, since writing this, the topic came up on More or Less.  I am not “Ian” so someone else out there is maintaining a spreadsheet and arrived at a figure of 18%.

Polar Bears and Climate Change

A friend of mine, JP, started all of this when writing:

If you were to ask me 2 years ago what my key understandings were about climate change, I would have said the following:

Sea ice is rapidly shrinking (summer arctic sea ice to be gone by 2015)

Sea levels are rising and accelerating

Polar bear populations are under stress (have increased in the last 20 years)

The levels of glacial retreat around the world are unprecedented (similar retreats have been seen in the last century)

97% of scientists agree that global warming is real and an urgent problem

Any scientist who is skeptical about the claims made about climate change is a "denier" and is funded by oil/resource companies

We are seeing an increase in extreme weather events (they are actually getting less common)

Climate models are accurate in their predictions 

Every one of those things is either totally false, or a largely exaggerated claim.

This is the third in a series based on my response, which itself was split over a few emails.  The first was Ice Extent Challenge (in which I provided a little more context about JP) and the second was Sea Levels Rising.  Some of the issues may also be touched on in a series of articles on the nature of climate denialism.  Please also note the caveat.

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JP’s Claim: The statement “polar bear populations are under stress” is either totally false or largely exaggerated and “(the population size has) increased in the last 20 years”

(Kerstin Langenberger)

(National Geographic)

For some reason, there don’t seem to be any photos of starving polar bears, or polar bears on ice-free islands, or polar bears stranded on ice floes or ice bergs before 2007.  Here are a couple from 2007:

(Arctic Meltdown, October 2007)

(Photographer of the Year, 2007)

While I am not sure that polar bear populations are under stress, there does appear to be some stress being experienced by individual polar bears.  They will have to adapt as a species (and as individuals) if the amount of Arctic ice in summer continues to decrease.

Like many of these topics, there is a level of complexity to the issue.  According the WWF, based on figures from the Polar Bear Specialist Group, there are two regions where numbers are increasing (population 200-500 individuals in each region), four where there’s a decline (population 500-1000 individuals in each region), five regions where the population is stable (1500-2000 in two, 2000-2500 in three) and eight regions where there is insufficient data.

The latest estimate, according to the IUCN Red List (see the population section and Table 3 in the supplementary information for details), of the total polar bear population in 2015 was 22-31000 (with a 90% confidence interval).

There has been an increase in the population of polar bears since the 1973 International Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears when the estimates for the number of individuals across the Arctic ranged from 5000 (USSR) to 20000 (Canada).  According to the Wikipedia page (based on figures from Ian Stirling although in documents that I have not been able to access) there were as many as 40000 individuals in the 1980s.

So, it’s true that, due to conservation efforts and limits on hunting of polar bears (and their prey), there has been an increase in their numbers over what they might otherwise be.  However, the simplistic cherry picked numbers are misleading: “5000 bears in the 1970s to 31000 today” or “10000 or fewer in the 1960s to easily more than 40000 today” is not telling the whole story.

As Ian Stirling reports, there’s more to it, even aside from the questionable numbers, which seem to have declined from the 1980s.  Polar bears were trending towards being thinner in the mid-2000s (a 2018 report indicated that weight loss is still a problem):

And it wasn’t just starvation that female polar bears needed to worry about.  Melting ice is not strong ice, so ice dens can collapse:

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JP’s claim was that polar bear populations are not under stress and that number were increasing over the last 20 years.  Finding evidence on this, in either direction, that is not from originally from Susan Crockford or one of her reradiators (ie the Foundation for Economic Education), is hard.  There is this, for a subset of the global population:

(Demography and Population Status of Polar Bears in the Western Hudson Bay)

That can be compared to denialist data which they present as:

If Hudson Bay numbers are representative of global numbers then, since there was a slight increase in numbers between 2000 and 2005 and a 10% to 20% increase between 2005 and 2015, then it’s not unreasonable to say that there’s been an increase in polar bear numbers over the past 20 years.  They might be having a miserable life, but at least there are more of them.  There is one estimate (by Susan Crockford) that the current polar bear estimate (March 2019) is as in the range 26000 to 58000, implying the possibility of a near doubling of the population since 2015.  In 2017, Crockford was calling for the endangered species listing for the polar bear to be lifted.  It should be noted that Crockford has been criticised for not having any of her claims regarding polar bears peer reviewed and basically for being a denialist mouthpiece (with connections to denialist blogs and the Heartland Institute).  Put it this way, I’d prefer to wait on more reliable data on current polar bear numbers.

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So, was JP right?  If the meaning intended was “there is no incontrovertible proof at the moment that the reduction in summer ice extent will wipe out polar bears and in fact the numbers appear to be increasing” then JP is probably right.  However, to say that polar bears are not under pressure is misleading.  They are having all sorts of problems with their hunting range being reduced, their body mass decreasing on average and interactions with humans increasing (which will increase the number of them that are shot and will distort the perception with regard to numbers).  Nevertheless, climate activists are going to cause problems for themselves if they continue to promote the simplistic claim that polar bear numbers are decreasing due to climate change – unless someone can crunch the numbers to show that numbers would have increased significantly more as a result of preservation agreements, if it weren’t for climate change.  I’m not sure that that is anyone’s highest priority though.

I’ll give JP a caveated tick of approval for this one.

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Sadly, the major casualty of this research is a joke that I’ve always liked.

A family of polar bears are walking along the ice one day, pappa bear, mamma bear, big brother bear and little baby bear.  Little baby bear pipes up and asks his big brother; “Am I a polar bear?”

His big brother says, “Yes, pappa is a polar bear, mamma is a polar bear, I’m a polar bear, so you are a polar bear.”

After a while of trudging along the ice, little baby bear scoots past his big brother and asks his mum, “Mamma, am I polar bear?”

Mamma bear laughs and says, “Yes, your pappa is a polar bear, I am a polar bear, your brother is a polar bear, we’re all polar bears, so you are a polar bear.”

Little baby bear falls silent again and they continue walking along the ice but after a while, he runs forward to his father and asks: “Dad, am I really a polar bear?”

Pappa bear stops, turns around and glares at his youngest son.  “Look here son, I am a polar bear, your mother is a polar bear, your brother is a polar bear and you are a polar bear.  That’s how it works.  So, what’s all this about?”

Little baby bear looks up as his father, with a tear in his eye, and says: “I’m really f^<#ing cold!”

Not so cold now!  (Note also total absence of pappa bear.)