Jennifer Marohasy

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Polar Bear Politics: Misrepresenting the Nature of One Smart Bear

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Does the end ever justify the means?

Some activists concerned about global warming, and who want the rest of the world to be as concerned as they are, recognise people care about polar bears and want to exploit them as a ‘victim’ of climate change. But if I was a polar bear I reckon I’d rather be appreciated for my true nature.

Here’s an example of polar bear as victim in an article by Clifford Krauss in the New York Times :

“People care about polar bears — they’re iconic,” noted Kassie Siegel, a lawyer at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The reality of the threat to polar bears is helping to get the word out,” she said, about the effects of climate change.

Her group, along with Greenpeace and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed a petition with the United States government to list the polar bear as threatened as a way to push the American authorities to control greenhouse gas emissions, like carbon dioxide from cars.

The message has alarmed American polar bear hunters, who could be barred from bringing their trophies home from Canada, the only country from which they can legally do so. It has also run up against unbending opposition from local communities of Inuit, also known as Eskimos, and the Nunavut territorial government, which has expanded sport hunting in recent years.”

So Kassie Siegel is just an activist lawyer; making martyrs of everyone and everything is what activists do? But what about when scientists go along with the deal? What about when dubious claims are made by scientists to justify listing polar bears as a threatened species because of global warming?

The recent listing by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) includes the following paragraph:

“There is little doubt that polar bears will have a lesser AOO [area of occupancy], EOO [extent of occupancy] and habitat quality in the future. However, no direct relation exists between these measures and the abundance of polar bears. While some have speculated that polar bears might become extinct within 100 years from now, which would indicate a population decrease of >50% in 45 years based on a precautionary approach due to data uncertainty. A more realistic evaluation of the risk involved in the assessment makes it fair to suspect population reduction of >30%.”

The reference to “Area of occupancy” and “extent of occurrence” by the scientists is presumably just long hand for saying “the area of sea ice has reduced”.

So there is no direct relationship between measures of “area of occupancy” and “extent of occurrence” and polar bear abundance.

This paragraph (and a following paragraph that makes reference to shipping and oil exploration) was then summarized as follows to justify the listing which made headlines all over the world:

“The assessment is based on a suspected population reduction of >30% within three generations (45 years) due to decline in area of occupancy (AOO), extent of occurrence (EOO) and habitat quality.

Does it all seem very logical and scientific?

If we look at sea ice extent and area, well it has declined over recent decades, or at least since 1978, and was apparently at a 20 year minimum in 2002 (Serreze et al. 2003, Geophysical Research Letters, Vol 30, No. 3). Yet polar bear numbers might have increased over this same time period?

Why doesn’t the IUCN provide any data on actual numbers of polar bears?

I understand that not so many decades ago polar bear populations had been significantly reduced by hunters? In the article by Clifford Krauss in the New York Times it is suggested that the global population, now estimated at 20,000 bears, was just 5,000 only 40 years ago.

Then in the 1970s, Canada, Denmark, Norway, the United States and the Soviet Union all agreed to restrict hunting and perhaps as a consequence population numbers have increased.

Would numbers be even higher if there was more sea ice? Who knows? Do we want more polar bears?

If over the last 40 years population numbers have increased, while sea ice extent and area has decreased, then it would seem there is a correlation between global warming and polar bear numbers that runs counter to the argument present by the IUCN scientists?

But, someone is about to tell me, the IUCN argument is all about the future and an assumed inability of polar bears to adapt to climate change?

But, as Jane George explains in an article title ‘Global warming won’t hurt polar bears’ in the Nunatiaq News, polar bears are intelligent, quick to adapt to new circumstances and warmer temperatures could even increase food sources.

The bottomline is that while polar bears have more than sea ice to contend with, they are by nature resourceful and to quote from the display at Sea World, a theme park at Queensland’s Gold Coast, “polar bears are [probably] capable of flourishing in the wild under climatic conditions which are most un-Arctic”.

Indeed there are polar bears successfully living and breeding in zoos in Arizona, Singapore and just an hour’s drive from me at Sea World. The polar bears at the subtropical Gold Coast have their swimming pool cooled to just 15 degrees and their favourite food is apparently watermelon.

Suggesting global warming is a significant threat to polar bears is really telling lies about polar bears and misrepresenting their true nature. This continual rewrite of how things are on the basis we should worry more about global warming, is as sad as it is insidious. That’s not to say we shouldn’t care about global warming, but that we shouldn’t tell lies about polar bears! should tell it as it is.

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Changes were made (words crossed out, words added are underlined) at the request of Peter Corkeron. The blog post is intended to draw attention to the difference between the available data and IUCN statement justifying the listing of polar bears as a species threatened with extinction. It is not a personal criticism of particular IUCN scientists.

Australia Scuttles Opportunity for Whale Management Plan: Dr Graham Hall

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A new NGO called Species Management Specialists (SMS) has criticised Australia’s stance at the International Whaling Commission and called for a resumption of negotiations to complete a commercial whaling management regime. Following is their media release:

“In March this year, International Whaling Commission (IWC) negotiations to develop the Revised Management Scheme (RMS) for commercial whaling broke down and the impasse is unlikely to be bridged.

“The world’s whale populations are at greater threat with the current impasse at IWC than with an approved management and regulatory regime for commercial whaling, and Australia must take a lot of the blame for this result,” Dr Graham Hall, the Executive Officer of Species Management Specialists, said today.

The majority of the world’s population from more than 20 countries around the world continue to hunt whales, dolphins and other cetaceans for food.

“Our Government’s stance at the IWC is un-Australian – it is extremist and uncompromising and is ensuring the world’s whale populations remain at threat from illegal, unregulated and unreported activity.”

“We have a reputation of ensuring sound management of our fisheries and should be leading by example rather than pandering to right-wing environmental groups who provide nothing to this country’s economy. Japan is a nation with whom this country is very good friends but yet we continue to vilify them for their desire to sustainably hunt whales for food,” he said.

Dr Hall, an Australian game management expert, says the Government takes similar stances with crocodiles and sea turtles. “Ian Campbell would rather take wildlife advice from a crocodile entertainer [Steve Irwin from Australia Zoo] than look at detailed submissions from the most highly qualified reptile scientists in the world.
It’s time to take wildlife conservation seriously and not continue with the ignorant and puerile manner in which it’s dealt with now by the Federal Government.”

The Chairman of Species Management Specialists, Hank Jenkins, has worked on wildlife conservation and management issues throughout the world, including 9 years as Chairman of the main technical committee for the convention on international wildlife trade, CITES.

He says Australia’s stance at last year’s IWC meeting in Ulsan, Korea, was an embarrassment. “Australia’s wildlife management experts are as good as they come. Good science and management experience is often ignored in the interests of bad politics – politics that depends on ignorance rather than education in the community.”

“These are serious concerns in a nation committing itself to a knowledge economy, that promotes cutting-edge technology and knowledge as the answer to all problems,” Mr Jenkins added.

Charlie Manolis, an experienced scientist who works internationally, says many government advisers from nations around the world view Australia’s, and New Zealand’s, stance on whaling completely hypocritical given our stance on domestic wildlife populations that have a commercial value, such as kangaroos and crocodiles.

“Minke whales in the southern oceans are abundant. Yet the average Australian thinks they are endangered and the Government does nothing to educate them otherwise to maintain an indefensible political position.”

“The IWC was established in 1948 as the agency responsible for the sustainable management and commercial use of whales. It was not established as a whale protection agency or a whale-watching organisation, which is what Australia and New Zealand are conveniently forgetting,” Mr Manolis said.

SMS while having key spokesmen in Australia, is global in its reach and focus, with members on every continent in the world. The new organisation has published recommendations for CITES in English, French and Spanish at their new website, click here.

Investigate the Scientific Fraud: Rob Gourlay on Salinity Research & Funding in Australia

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Rob Gourlay from Environmental Consultants ERIC, is calling for an independent investigation by the Australian Government to get to the bottom of the claims in today’s Channel Nine Sunday Program:

“The Channel Nine Sunday Program on Salt Solutions (28 May 2006) was a wake-up call to public workers involved in dryland salinity science and administration in Australia.

There is evidence that points to possible scientific fraud and deceit in salinity science and management that is controlled and manipulated by Australian and State government agencies.

Public workers have used a rising groundwater model based on claims that land clearing causes the groundwater to rise and bring salts to the surface. Computer predictions by government agencies during the 1990’s promoted a dramatic spread of salinity across southern Australia.

Public workers have operated as a cartel to control public funds on dryland salinity and exclude private industry R&D, innovations and services from funding schemes. Evidence now suggests that the public science and predictions were hopelessly flawed.

Many government agencies attempted to suppress contrary evidence from private industry and published false information about the capability of industry technology, while promoting their own mapping technologies and engineering solutions to attract public funds.

Environmental Research and Information Consortium Pty Ltd (ERIC) was one of the companies with an award winning technology in salinity mapping affected by the lock out within government agencies. ERIC has answered questions raised by public workers during the investigation by Channel Nine. These papers are at http://www.eric.com.au/html/news.html.

ERIC, along with many other independent scientists and farmers have demonstrated that degradation in soil health is the primary cause of an increase in dryland salinity from natural levels. This includes a significant loss of soil carbon and microbes, soil compaction and loss of soil structure (eg. hardpans); caused by conventional methods of agriculture. This degradation has caused less rainfall/irrigation percolation to the groundwater, soil salts to be released into the soil water and increased lateral flows of salts into drainage lines and low lying areas.
Public workers have been provided with this alternative evidence to the rising groundwater model since the 1950’s.

ERIC produced conclusive evidence in 1994 and provided further evidence to the National Dryland Salinity Program in 1997, including the House of Representative Salinity Inquiry in 2004 and Senate Salinity Inquiry in 2006. However, public workers have continually failed to produce evidence to support a rising groundwater model and actively denigrated ERIC’s evidence without disproving the evidence.

The Australian public needs to know the extent of the cover-up and protection racket by these public workers. An independent investigation is now required by the Australian government to get to the bottom of the claims in the Channel Nine Sunday Program.”

A full transcript of the program is available, click here.

Brian Tunstall Talks Dryland Salinity

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It was not long after I started with the Institute of Public Affairs in July 2003, that Prof Bob Carter at James Cook University suggested I contact Brian Tunstall.

Bob knew I was struggling with dryland salinity issues, that I was feeling outraged by the methodology used by the National Land and Water Audit to propose that 17 million hectares of farmland in Australia was likely to become salt affected within 50 years. The actual area showing signs of salinity was estimated at 2 million hectares in 2002. This area was thought to be contracting. So government scientists may have overstated the aggregate dryland salinity problem by as much as 88 percent.

I contacted Brian Tunstall, and subsequently met his colleague Rob Gourlay. Both work for ERIC an environmental consulting company.

It was apparent to me back then, that government scientists had used a very simplistic and flawed methodology as a basis for successfully lobbying for $1.4 billion in funding. I didn’t have as much a problem with the model they were using, as the way they were applying it.

It was good to met Rob and Brian. They not only had a problem with the methodology but also with the actual rising groundwater model. Brian and Rob’s central thesis is that dryland salinity is really a soil health issue, a symptom of soil degradation not a result of rising water tables.

Brian is in the promo, click here, for tomorrow’s Channel 9 Sunday program. He’s the one saying, “It’s a disaster for farmers and its a disaster for science”.

Brian has put together some online articles that provide more background on dryland salinity, click here.

Following is an extract from one of articles at the ERIC website, explaining why one of the most publicised examples of dryland salinity in NSW is a consequence of overgrazing rather than rising groundwater. Obviously correctly diagnosing a cause, is usually the critical first step to finding and implementing an appropriate solution!

“The most publicised example of dryland salinity in NSW occurs at Dicks Creek just outside the ACT. This has long been used to illustrate the applicability of the [flawed] rising groundwater model and the seriousness of the dryland salinity problem.

The site is routinely visited by tours with the next stop being a site where the salinity problem is identified as having been solved through revegetation. Prince Charles has taken the tour and Mr Carr used the site as a backdrop for an announcement of new initiatives to address the environment.

salt tunstall.JPG

With the rising groundwater model, tree clearing on hills is said to increase the percolation to groundwater with the adverse salinity occurring through this water rising to the surface on the plains. The rising water is said to bring salt to the surface from sub-surface stores. The water and salt are generally said to move vertically upwards on the plains although it is seldom clear whether the rising relates to upward movement or a failure to drain. However, in drained landscapes upward movement is necessary for subsurface salt stores on the plains to be bought to the surface.

A photograph of the highly publicised site (see above) shows appreciable woody vegetation on the hills. Moreover, those familiar with landscape hydrology recognise that the water is draining down the hill slope over and through the soil. There is an incised drainage gully which drains water from the soil profile and prevents water from moving vertically upward. The water associated with the impact is not part of any groundwater system and the flow is primarilylateral with all vertical movement being down.

Further issues arise when measurements are obtained of salinity. The electrical conductivity (EC) of a 1:5 soil water suspension is around 2.9 ms/cm for the surface soil and 2.3 ms/cm for the subsoil. There is excess salt but the agricultural rating for such levels is slightly saline with yields of sensitive crops being affected.

The land degradation at the site has arisen through grazing. Livestock have disturbed the surface soil and the lateral flow of water down the slope has eroded the dispersible soil. It is a typical example of hill slope erosion where the erosion is occurring through seepage of water through the soil as well as surface runoff. Salt is an issue but in terms of composition rather than amount with sodium promoting the dispersion of clay.”

Brian goes on to ask the question, “Why the misrepresentation?”.

Brian then quotes from a paper by CSIRO scientist John Passioura titled ‘From propaganda to practicalities – the progressive evolution of the salinity debate’ (.Aust. J. Expt. Agric. 45, 1503-06).

This is perhaps the first paper in which a CSIRO scientist acknowledges the extent to which the rising groundwater salinity model has some major flaws. In the paper John Passioura suggests that, “Our only defence against the charge of charlatanry is that before deceiving others we have taken great pains to deceive ourselves.”

Tunstall comments,

“This identifies that the deceptions associated with dryland salinity have arisen from public research scientists.

The difficulty with the suggested defence is that self deceit is a fundamental characteristic of charlatanry. As self deceit is integral to charlatanry it is no defence and the comment attempts to justify the unjustifiable.”

I know of scientists within CSIRO who were not at all decieved, but they couldn’t see how to speak up. Afterall, to suggest the problem might not be as bad as suggested was to invite the wrath of many so-called experts.

‘Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis?’ ask Ross Coulthart & Nick Farrow

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“Unless you’re prepared to redo thirty years of scientific research yourself, the debate on this point [the salinity crisis] comes down to a pure question of comparative credibility,” wrote Professor John Quiggin in April 2004, click here. John Quiggin was suggesting that I had no credibility on Murray River issues because my thesis contradicted “thirty years of scientific research”.

In my discussions with John Quiggin over the Murray River, he has been reluctant to consider the evidence. For him, and many others, it’s been a case of backing the orthodox view, also known as ‘the consensus’.

Anyway, some months ago a producer at Channel 9’s Sunday program contacted me. Nick Farrow said that he had heard that I had information showing that salinity levels in the Murray River were falling, not rising. I sent him a copy of ‘Myth and the Murray’.

Some weeks later I was interviewed by Ross Coulthart, also from Sunday, and in the following video clip, click here, which is an advertisement for this week’s program, I am seen stating that we don’t have a salinity crisis, but rather an ‘honesty crisis’.

Peter Cullen (a Director of the National Water Commission), Wendy Craik (head of Murray Darling Basin Commission), John Passioura (CSIRO) and others, are quoted in the clip suggesting the Murray River is not dying and that the problem of salinity may have been grossly overstated. The television reporter, Ross Coulthart, describes it as, “Misguided pessimism”.

To John Quiggin, who has relentlessly attacked me, and my credibility, over this issues, I say:

Maybe I was just a bit ahead of my time.

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Following is the media release from Channel 9:

Australia’s Salinity Crisis: What Crisis?

The SUNDAY Program
Nine Network Australia
Sunday 28th May 2006 – 9am

Reporter: Ross Coulthart
Producer: Nick Farrow

It’s an apocalyptic story of environmental disaster we all know so well.

The Murray Darling basin is being poisoned by salt. Adelaide’s water supply is threatened, along with some of our most productive farmland – and our beautiful rivers are dying.

It’s a frightening scenario. But is it true?

In this week’s SUNDAY programme, reporter Ross Coulthart takes a look at the real threat posed by salinity – and finds things are going badly wrong in public science.

As Coulthart reveals, some of the claims being used to support calls for billions of dollars to be spent on fixing a ‘looming salinity crisis’ are simply not true.

Salinity is a problem. But it seems nowhere as bad as we’ve been told by environmental groups, government departments and many in the media.

Claims that an area of land twice the size of Tasmania is under threat are false. The reality is a fraction of that. Even top scientists now admit the predictions of a disaster have been exaggerated.

They say this may be because the theory about what causes salinity in non-irrigation areas is flawed.

Worse still, scientists suggest a cheaper and easier solution for salinity problems is being ignored – for very unscientific reasons.

“It’s a disaster for science. It’s a disaster for farmers,” one former CSIRO scientist tells SUNDAY.

Taxpayers have now given Government scientists billions of dollars to spend on efforts to understand and tackle salinity. But how solid is the science behind it?

Watch the SUNDAY Program this Sunday 28th May at 9am to find out.”

And here’s the link to the video promo: http://www.nextgenmedia.com/nine/promo/sunday_060528_vid_300.asx

Who Should Look After the World’s Whales?

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The next International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting is planned for St Kitts in the Caribbean from June 16 to 20. Rumor has it that the meeting will mark a change in the balance of power at the IWC from the antiwhaling to the prowhaling nations.

This would likely result in an eventual lifting of the ban on commercial whaling.

Given the IWC was established to manage whale stocks, and the whaling industry, rather than close it down, so the change may bring the Commission closer to its original purpose.

Interestingly, a recent essentially pro-whaling opinion article in the New York Times, suggested that having the IWC manage whaling was like having ‘the fox guarding the chicken coop’. The article went on to suggest that the responsibility for looking after the world’s whales should be transferred to the United Nations (1).

In the review of a book titled ‘Marine Mammals and Northern Cultures’ (2), Ian Stirling from the Canadian Wildlife Service asks the question:

“How did whales of all species become “a global resource”, thereby giving the international community license to tell local people what they could or should do (or not do).

Regardless of one’s personal views, this is not a trivial question and it applies to more resources than whales. Although not discussed [in the book], that question might also raise a parallel question about whether the international community should have a significant influence on the regulation of harvest of whales, cod, krill, large predatory fish, or a host of other marine species, especially given what the fate of many has been at the hands of various users, both commercial and non-commercial.”

What has the international community been good at managing? Where are the success stories in wildlife management and at what level were the programs developed and implemented?

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References

1. ‘ Save Your Whale and Eat It, Too’ by Philip Armour, published May23, 2006, New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/23/opinion/23armour.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

2. ‘Marine Mammals and Northern Cultures’ by A. Kalland and F Sejersen, with contributions from H. Beyer Broch and M. Ris. ISBN 1-896445-26-8. ($CDN $35.00 – see website for specifics on shipping costs). Canadian Circumpolar Institute Press, University of Alberta, Edmonton. 349 pp.
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/polar//pdfs/CCIPress-Kalland-MMNCFlyer.pdf