{"id":307317,"date":"2024-03-12T07:53:34","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T06:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=307317"},"modified":"2024-03-12T07:53:36","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T06:53:36","slug":"arctic-sea-ice-polar-bears-and-great-barrier-reef-return-to-the-headlines-in-misinformation-blitzkrieg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=307317","title":{"rendered":"Arctic Sea Ice, Polar Bears and Great Barrier Reef Return to the Headlines in Misinformation Blitzkrieg"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From The Daily Sceptic<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

BY\u00a0CHRIS MORRISON<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Over the last month, it\u2019s been whack-a-mole time as alarmists pop no less than three poster scares of climate collapse back into the mainstream headlines. The Guardian<\/em> dusted down the old \u2018scientists say\u2019 favourite that there will be ice-free summers<\/a> in the Arctic \u201cpossibly\u201d within the next decade; billionaire foundation-rewarded<\/a> BBC activist Matt McGrath gave us the ever-popular<\/a> \u201cClimate change: Polar bears face starvation threat as ice melts\u201d story, while Peter Hess for the Daily Mail<\/em> and Reuters filed a pack of nonsense<\/a> reporting that the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was in grave danger of disappearing due to the Earth being on the \u201ccusp of the worst bleaching event in history\u201d. All very confusing given that Arctic sea ice has been recovering for over a decade and on January 8th recorded its highest level for 21 years<\/a>, polar bears are thriving across the Arctic and numbers are probably at record levels<\/a>, while coral on the GBR has bounced back from numerous recent natural bleaching events to hit a two-year period of record high cover<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Details, details. It seems the ice, the polar bears and the corals are far too valuable poster scares to be let go that easily. The mainstream media has been captured by a false catastrophist climate narrative that is programmed to report every click-bait doomsday science paper, every bad weather event and every biased report based on incomplete statistics and data that are open to less sensationalist interpretations. In the process, citizens are left in a state of fear about global \u2018heating\u2019 and climate \u2018collapse\u2019 \u2013 more easily pushed it would seem to accept the madness of the collectivist Net Zero project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest Arctic ice scare is\u00a0based on a paper<\/a>\u00a0published in\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0where the activist scientists used \u201chigh emissions\u201d climate model scenarios to predict ice-free conditions in September within six years. Gullible\u00a0Guardian\u00a0<\/em>writer Helena Horton suggests that the home of polar bears, seals and walruses could be mostly water for months as early as 2035 \u201cdue to fossil fuel emissions\u201d. In fact, summer sea ice has shown no significant decline since 2007, as the graph below shows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Compiled by the Danish scientist Allan Astrup Jensen, the red bar shows the monthly average for the lowest extent of summer sea ice invariably reached in September. The author notes that there has been no significant downward movement during the last 17 years<\/a>. In fact, it seems that for about a decade, overall Arctic sea ice has been slowly recovering from a previous fall. A line showing a decline is often drawn showing a linear trend downwards from a high point of 1979, when satellites first stared recording comprehensive data. However, records going back to the 1950s suggest much lower ice levels, and in the historical data, cycles of waxing and waning over 70-80 years can be clearly observed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year 1979 is a convenient starting point for Arctic hysterics since it marks the end of a four decade-long cooling period as the graph below demonstrates. The recent warming seen in the Arctic has taken temperatures back to those observed in the 1930s and 1940s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Inexplicably missing from the Guardian\u2019s<\/em> doom-laden prose is a note that high emission scenarios suggest a fanciful rise in global temperature of around 4\u00b0<\/strong>C in less than 80 years. The scenario called RCP8.5 is ubiquitous in attention-seeking climate model papers, but it is regarded by the International Panel on Climate Change as \u201clow likelihood<\/a>\u201d. Also missing from the copy is a note that \u2018ice-free\u2019 is not actually free of ice since an allowance is made for one million square kilometres of the stuff remaining. Sadly, this would appear to rule out the much anticipated summer swimming galas across the North Pole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

February 27th was \u2018International Polar Bear Day\u2019, so Matt McGrath of the BBC extended himself during this important fund-raising period with both the summer ice melting and the polar bears starving. Ring seals give birth to pups in the spring and the bears go hunting for the seals and their new-born who live on the ice for a few weeks before taking to the sea. Early sea ice melt means less pups for the bears, goes the long-running scare. \u201cAs the ice disappears in a warming world, many bears are spending greater amounts of time on shore eating bird\u2019s eggs, berries and grass\u201d, states McGrath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Except of course, as we have seen, the ice is not disappearing on cue. The March ice maximum extent graph above, compiled by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, shows the recent significant recovery going back nearly a decade. With hunting banned from the 1950s, polar bear numbers have soared with suggestions that they have grown to a record recent high of 32,000. There is still plenty of sea ice around in the spring and early summer when the bear gorge on seals, and can consume around two thirds of their annual food intake. As noted, there has been a decrease in overall ice cover since the 1979 high point and this has opened up a little more of the Arctic to sunlight. This appears to have benefited the overall aquatic food chain leading to an increase in the number of fatter ring seals \u2013 happy days for all the plump polar bears seen waddling around the far North.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1999, the budding Guardian<\/em> doomsday prophet George Monbiot noted that marine biologists had reported that 70-90% of the coral reefs they had surveyed in the Indian Ocean had just died. From this Monbiot concluded that \u201cat least one of the world\u2019s great eco systems is now on the point of total collapse<\/a>\u201d.  In October 2020, the BBC said that the Great Barrier Reef had lost more than half of its corals since 1995, \u201cdue to warmer seas driven by climate change<\/a>\u201d. Move barely a year on from the BBC report and coral at the GBR was at a 37-year high. What alarmists do, of course, is chance upon natural bleaching events caused by localised spikes in water temperature. With El Nino currently causing such spikes around the oceans, the corals have shown some bleaching, and the Daily Mail<\/em> goes into full Monbiot mode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tropical coral grows in waters between 24\u00b0<\/strong>C-32\u00b0<\/strong>C and will be unaffected by any gradual warming of the oceans. In fact, many varieties grow faster in the warmer waters near the equator. It is known however that they expel algae when temperatures move suddenly, but quickly recover when conditions stabilise. All of this is known, but apparently ignored by click-bait climate hucksters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The distinguished scientist Peter Ridd has studied coral on the GBR for 40 years, and he recently published a paper stating that the reporting of coral raised \u201cserious questions\u201d about \u201cintegrity in science institutions and in the media\u201d. He added: \u201cAn uncharitable observer might conclude that periodic mass coral mortality events, which are completely  natural, are exploited by some organisations with an ideological agenda and a financial interest\u201d. The full recovery is rarely reported, he observed<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris Morrison is the<\/em> Daily Sceptic\u2019s Environment Editor<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stop Press:<\/strong>\u00a0Our\u00a0recent article<\/a>\u00a0on the clearing of up to 120,000 trees in the ancient German forest of Reinhardswald, setting for mythical stories by the Brothers Grimm, to make way for a wind turbine park, attracted a wide social media readership. It was\u00a0reposted<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0Watts Up With That?<\/em>\u00a0science site where the cartoonist Josh was inspired to observe\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Details, details. It seems the ice, the polar bears and the corals are far too valuable poster scares to be let go that easily. The mainstream media has been captured by a false catastrophist climate narrative that is programmed to report every click-bait doomsday science paper, every bad weather event and every biased report based on incomplete statistics and data that are open to less sensationalist interpretations. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":307328,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Details, details. It seems the ice, the polar bears and the corals are far too valuable poster scares to be let go that easily. The mainstream media has been captured by a false catastrophist climate narrative that is programmed to report every click-bait","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691819671,691819134,691818056,691821787,691818251],"class_list":{"0":"post-307317","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"hentry","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-arctic-ice","9":"tag-climate-alarmism","10":"tag-climate-change","11":"tag-corals","12":"tag-polar-bears","14":"fallback-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/OIG.xIbeO_.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1hWJ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":293513,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=293513","url_meta":{"origin":307317,"position":0},"title":"The Narrative That Polar Bears Need Sea Ice To Catch Prey Has Collapsed As More Evidence Piles Up","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"02\/01\/2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Arctic regions with 6+ months of sea ice coverage today were ice-free nearly year-round 9,000 to 5,000 years ago (2\u00b0C warmer) and 130,000 to 115,000 years ago (7-8\u00b0C warmer). And yet polar bears survived these periods.","rel":"","context":"In \"Arctic\"","block_context":{"text":"Arctic","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=arctic"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-50.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-50.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-50.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/image-50.png?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":424041,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=424041","url_meta":{"origin":307317,"position":1},"title":"Polar bears on Norwegian islands fatter and healthier despite ice loss","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"31\/01\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"The Norwegian Arctic Archipelago of Svalbard have become fatter and healthier despite significant sea ice loss due to climate change. A study published in Scientific Reports on January 29, 2026, analyzed body condition data from 770 adult polar bears between 1992 and 2019.","rel":"","context":"In \"Climate change\"","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=climate-change"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/OIG-2023-10-23T132101.951.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/OIG-2023-10-23T132101.951.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/OIG-2023-10-23T132101.951.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/OIG-2023-10-23T132101.951.jpeg?fit=1024%2C1024&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":252219,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=252219","url_meta":{"origin":307317,"position":2},"title":"Winter sea ice habitat for polar bears still abundant enough to sustain a thriving species","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"10\/04\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"According to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center\u00a0report\u00a0(5 April 2023), the average ice extent for March was 14.44 mkm2, considered the \u201cwinter\u201dvalue (as compared to \u201csummer\u201d which is the average for September).","rel":"","context":"In \"Greenland\"","block_context":{"text":"Greenland","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=greenland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0polar-bears-147.jpeg?fit=1200%2C762&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0polar-bears-147.jpeg?fit=1200%2C762&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0polar-bears-147.jpeg?fit=1200%2C762&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0polar-bears-147.jpeg?fit=1200%2C762&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/04\/0polar-bears-147.jpeg?fit=1200%2C762&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":280246,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=280246","url_meta":{"origin":307317,"position":3},"title":"Polar Bear and Seal Biology Exposes the Utter Stupidity of Climate Alarmist Environmentalists!","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"24\/09\/2023","format":false,"excerpt":"As shown here, any critical thinking person knows the alarmist polar bear narratives are just totally false, ignorant and manipulative fear mongering. 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An understanding of seal biology reveals that less ice is good and more ice is bad for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Arctic Ocean\"","block_context":{"text":"Arctic Ocean","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?tag=arctic-ocean"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0F6pqrD8aAAIKDc6.jpeg?fit=1200%2C571&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0F6pqrD8aAAIKDc6.jpeg?fit=1200%2C571&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0F6pqrD8aAAIKDc6.jpeg?fit=1200%2C571&ssl=1&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0F6pqrD8aAAIKDc6.jpeg?fit=1200%2C571&ssl=1&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/09\/0F6pqrD8aAAIKDc6.jpeg?fit=1200%2C571&ssl=1&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":218640,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=218640","url_meta":{"origin":307317,"position":4},"title":"Frozen Planet II repeats Attenborough\u2019s climate change scaremongering that began in 2015","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"13\/09\/2022","format":false,"excerpt":"This is calculated \u2018climate change\u2019 propaganda marketed as \u2018entertainment\u2019. 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