that's true and it may have been one sided but gW fanatics dont really disagree what has been argued, they just ignore it.
i never saw any data myself, so my opinion is pretty light weighted, but i found this solar chart over temperature quite convincing. though i have seen biased sales charts in length ... i am not easily bought in ... nevertheless the people in the docu (except for that canadian) seemed to be down to earth guys. ... and this chart ... almost too good to be true ... and it is bbc. could it be that due to large public interest the whole research just got off and that it is now difficult for each side to adopt a new stance? just feels like that. i need to susbcribe for "nature" ...
Hmmmm, it seems it is not a BBC documentary but rather a Channel 4 documentary http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2032575,00.html and be sure to read the accompanying letter from Carl Wunsch. Very revealing.
oh my goodness. but it was broadcasted via BBC right? i can't double check, since it is currently down on google ... this thing is already wose than 911 ... somehow exhausting ...
Good thing little schoolkids don't read Bolomberg: U.S. Wakes Up to Global Warming Impact on Polar Bears (Update1) By Mike Di Paola March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Polar bears are starving near the Arctic Circle. The unfolding tragedy may help highlight one of the planet's gravest threats, global climate change. The U.S. Department of the Interior has proposed to list the polar bear as ``threatened'' under the Endangered Species Act. Polar bears hunt their prey from sea ice, which has been declining steadily as the climate warms. Since 1978, the late summer Arctic sea ice area has been shrinking by 7 percent per decade, while perennial sea ice has dropped by 9.8 percent in that time, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's satellite measurements. With ice breaking up sooner each spring and freezing over later each autumn, bears have less space and time in which to hunt and they must swim farther to find food. In the western Hudson Bay in Canada, the southernmost range of polar bears, their numbers have dropped by 22 percent since the early 1980s. ``The declining survival rate seems to be directly related to the earlier sea-ice breakup that they're seeing in that part of the world,'' says Steve Amstrup, Polar Bear Project Leader for the Alaska Science Center of the U.S. Geological Survey. Bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea off Alaska are showing signs of malnutrition: smaller bodies in adult males and lower survival rates of cubs. Some animals are stranded on land, far from their food source, while others drown in the attempt to cross long stretches of open sea. There have even been instances of bear cannibalism in recent years, a phenomenon never before observed. Lawsuits While the U.S. government has taken the first step to protect the bears, it didn't exactly rush to their defense. Two years ago, the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, filed a petition with the U.S. Interior Department under the Endangered Species Act. When the agency was sluggish to respond, the center teamed up with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Greenpeace to sue. The parties reached a settlement in July 2006, which gave the government until Dec. 27 to act on the petition. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne's proposal, which honors the terms of the settlement, was published in the Federal Register on Jan. 9. The Center for Biological Diversity hopes to spur action on climate change by identifying animal species already falling victim to global warming. The group first tried to get Kittlitz's murrelet, a small diving seabird of coastal Alaska, listed. Those efforts fell flat, says the center's climate director, Kassie Siegel. ``We learned as we went along that the polar bear is the perfect species because it's iconic and people care.'' Recovery Plan If the bear is listed, federal agencies must ensure that any action they authorize will not further jeopardize the animal or its habitat. Better yet, the Fish and Wildlife Service would be required to prepare a detailed recovery plan. Polar bears roam the circumpolar Arctic, traipsing through Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Norway and Russia. The worldwide population is estimated to be between 20,000 and 25,000, up from around 10,000 in the 1960s, when unregulated hunting threatened to wipe out the great carnivore. Opposition to the proposal was lining up even before Kempthorne's announcement. In a letter to Kempthorne, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin wrote that listing polar bears could damage her state's oil-driven economy, ``without any benefit to polar bear numbers or their habitat.'' Some Canadian officials hope to keep bears off the list as well. Last week, Nunavut Environment Minister Patterk Netser appealed to Washington to forgo the move. The Endangered Species Act doesn't have legal power in Canada, but listing the polar bear could cut into a lucrative trophy-hunting trade. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has already determined that oil and gas development poses no threat to polar bears. That said, it will be interesting to see whether the agency connects obvious dots between increasing CO2 emissions and decreasing sea ice. Public Comment In the coming months, the defense council and others will be submitting technical comments on the federal proposal -- including polar bear biology, toxic contamination of the animals' habitat and, of course, the impact of global warming. Anyone can submit comments by e-mailing the Fish and Wildlife Service at Polar_Bear_Finding@fws.gov . The Endangered Species Act is one of the more successful environmental regulatory mechanisms. It would be quite a testament to its efficacy if it helped save the polar bear and a minor miracle if it prodded the U.S. government to act on climate change. (Mike Di Paola writes about preservation and the environment for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own.) To contact the writer responsible for this story: Mike Di Paola at mdipaola@nyc.rr.com . Last Updated: March 12, 2007 09:52 EDT
It was produced for Channel 4 and screened by Channel 4 http://www.channel4.com/science/microsites/G/great_global_warming_swindle/index.html and these are some of the things said about it by Carl Wunsch (one of the scientists interviewed) in a letter to Channel 4: "What we now have is an out-and-out propaganda piece, in which there is not even a gesture toward balance or explanation of why many of the extended inferences drawn in the film are not widely accepted by the scientific community. There are so many examples, it's hard to know where to begin, so I will cite only one: a speaker asserts, as is true, that carbon dioxide is only a small fraction of the atmospheric mass. The viewer is left to infer that means it couldn't really matter. But even a beginning meteorology student could tell you that the relative masses of gases are irrelevant to their effects on radiative balance. A director not intending to produce pure propaganda would have tried to eliminate that piece of disinformation." "At a minimum, I ask that the film should never be seen again publicly with my participation included. Channel 4 surely owes an apology to its viewers, and perhaps WAGTV owes something to Channel 4. I will be taking advice as to whether I should proceed to make some more formal protest."
i sympathise with him, but nevertheless think that he must be naive at best. what did he think a TV station will do with the hottest scientific topic on earth? poor judgement IMO. another "expert" who says something he does not mean that way, but still, and back and forth ... the other thing is that the film does not depend on one person. most of the people made statements that cannot be mistaken. independently of the context.
The parly bars is gonna be all jes fine. Pantagraph Publishing Viewpoint Saturday, January 27, 2007 11:55 PM CST By H. Sterling Burnett http://www.pantagraph.com/articles/2007/02/02/opinion/viewpoint/122919.txt Indeed, since the 1970s, while the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased dramatically from around 5,000 to as many as 25,000 today - higher than at any time in 20th century. And historically, polar bears have thrived in temperatures even warmer than at present - during the medieval warm period 1,000 years ago and during the Holocene Climate Optimum between 5,000 and 9,000 years ago. Polar bears have thrived during warmer climates because they are omnivores just like their cousins the brown and black bears. In addition, Dr. Mitchell Taylor, a biologist with Nunavut Territorial government in Canada, pointed out in testimony to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service that modest warming may be beneficial to bears since it creates better habitat for seals and would dramatically increase blueberry production, on which bears gorge themselves when available. Alaska's polar bear population is stable, and Taylor's research shows that the Canadian polar bear population has increased 25 percent from 12,000 to 15,000 during the past decade, with 11 of Canada's 13 polar bear populations stable or increasing in number. Where polar bear weight and numbers are declining, Taylor thinks too many bears competing for food, rather than Arctic warming, is the cause. That's right, the problem confronting polar bears may be overpopulation, not extinction! The World Wildlife Fund, while arguing that polar bears are at risk from global warming, presented data that actually undermine their fear. According to the WWF, there are 22,000 polar bears in about 20 distinct populations worldwide. Only two bear populations - accounting for 16.4 percent of the total number of bears - are decreasing, and they are in areas where air temperatures have actually fallen, such as the Baffin Bay region. By contrast, another two populations - 13.6 percent of the total number - are growing, and they live in areas where air temperatures have risen, near the Bering Strait and the Chukchi Sea. As for the rest, 10 populations - comprising 45.4 percent of the total number of bears - are stable, and the status of the remaining six populations is unknown.