Month: July 2020

Daily News 21 Jul 2020

New Model Of Predicted Polar Bear Extinction Is Simply Not Scientifically Plausible

News media hype the latest polar bear scare based on discredited RCP8.5 climate modelling.

A paper published in Nature Climate Change on Monday (20 July) presents yet another version of the ‘polar bears are going extinct unless we stop driving cars’ prediction the public has inundated with since 2007.

The outcome of this new model suggests that several polar bear populations in Canada (but especially Southern Hudson Bay, Western Hudson Bay, and Davis Strait), are particularly vulnerable to catastrophic decline over the next few decades and concludes that virtually all 19 subpopulations will be on their way to extinction by the end of the century unless the world drastically and immediately reduces its production of human-produced CO2.

The media have obliged by printing supportive accounts: the BBC offered “Climate change: Polar bears could be lost by 2100”, while the New York Times suggested “Global warming is driving polar bears toward extinction, researchers say”. The activist conservation organization Polar Bears International (where co-author Steven Amstrup works) put it this way (in a video): “When will polar bear populations collapse? The answer is up to us.”

However, zoologist Susan Crockford has pointed out that the creators of this new model incorrectly used the widely discredited RCP8.5 climate scenario. The RCP8.5 climate forecast was recently exposed in a peer reviewed paper published earlier this year by Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters as being an implausible ‘worst-case’ scenario that assumes an unrealistic 500% increase in coal and a 6⁰C rise in global temperature by 2100. This alone is enough to discount the polar bear prediction as scientifically implausible.

Crockford also notes that the paper uses only polar bear data from Western Hudson Bay (a subpopulation that is far from typical) as a proxy for all polar bear subpopulations worldwide. For example, even in the 1980s (the ‘good times’ for polar bears), Western Hudson Bay bears spent the longest time on land during the summer but most females still managed to produce three cubs per litter and wean them at one and a half years of age, whereas females in all other locations typically gave birth to twins weaned at two and a half years of age.

Crockford concludes:

The combination of inappropriately using Western Hudson Bay data as a proxy for the response of all other subpopulations of bears to future sea ice levels, coupled with the dependence of the model on the most extreme and now discredited RCP8.5 climate scenario, is all that’s needed to dismiss it as exaggerated-fear-mongering-by-proxy. Why would anyone believe that the output of this new model describes a plausible future for polar bears?”

The State of the Polar Bear Report 2019

The post New Model Of Predicted Polar Bear Extinction Is Simply Not Scientifically Plausible appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

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July 21, 2020 at 12:24AM

Daily News 21 Jul 2020

EU Leaders Cut Climate Funding To Save Coronavirus Recovery Plan

After four days of bitter wrangling, EU leaders have struck a deal on a coronavirus recovery package after they agreed to cut climate funding by more than half.

The Just Transition Fund which intends to wean member states of using fossil fuels will only receive 17.5 billion euros from the EU recovery fund and budget – down from the 37.5 billion euros set aside in a previous proposal.

The EU’s heads of government agreed on a €750bn package aimed at funding post-pandemic efforts to revive Europe’s economies which are facing mass unemployment and a deep recession.

According to news reports, nearly half of all climate funding from the EU’s 2021-2027 budget will be handed out to farmers.

In recent days, the European Court of Auditors has criticised the European Commission’s accounting tricks of so-called climate funding. It revealed that the Commission substantially overestimated the amount it spent on preventing global warming — by handing out billions of Euros in cash subsidies to farmers, and simply counting these agricultural subsidies as ‘climate funding’.

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Cuts to climate funding were on the menu as European Union leaders sat down to negotiate over dinner, aiming to clinch a deal after four days of summit wrangling over a huge stimulus plan to help rebuild their coronavirus-hit economies.

EU Council President Charles Michel presented a new proposal to the 27 leaders on Monday evening before talks resumed, tabling cuts to climate change schemes as part of a bid to rework the overall package into something all countries could agree to.

The proposal earmarked 30% of both the EU budget and a new 750 billion euro coronavirus recovery fund for climate protection, and said all spending must comply with a principle to “do no harm” to EU green goals.

But it slashed the size of the EU’s Just Transition Fund, its flagship pot of money to help wean countries off fossil fuels.

The Just Transition Fund will now receive a combined 17.5 billion euros from the EU recovery fund and budget – down from the 37.5 billion euros set aside in a previous proposal.