No worries – I don’t have time to look at it now but will do so when I get a chance.

I am most terribly sorry. I have wasted your time by giving you the wrong details.

Instead of the one you comment on above, I meant to direct you to paras: 197 – 202.

And it’s the methodology rather than the views on the issue that’s objectionable.

Thanks for that. I’ve looked at 176-187 and there are essentially two issues here.

Firstly, Monckton has used a graph comparing the temperature trend for the last decade to IPCC projections which shows a projected trend of 0.39C per decade. Abraham claims this is incorreect as the IPCC Summary for Policymakers projects 0.2C per decade. So I checked the Summary for Policymakers and it says

“For the next two decades, a warming of about 0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES emission scenarios.”

Monckton’s response is that the particular emissions scenario on which his projection is based shows an average of 0.39C warming per decade over the whole century and that this should be a linear trend whereas the IPCC shows slower warming in the earlier decades, so basicaly he is accusing the IPCC of getting its maths wrong.

“the IPCC’s detuning of its own projections to reduce the projected temperature change to just 0.2 C°/decade over the first couple of decades of this century has no basis in scientific reality or method?”

Now I see absolutely no reason why I should believe Monckton over the IPCC here but even if you are inclined to do so the fact remains that Abraham correctly cited the projection made by the IPCC.

Monckton’s second point is that in any case the above question avoids the real point he was making which is the IPCC predicted rising temperatures whereas in reality they fell over the period mentioned. I haven’t seen all of Abraham’s presentation, so I don’t know if he specifically addressed this point but that doesn’t invalidate the criticisms Abraham made regarding the projected trend.
Of course it would indeed be remiss of him if he didn’t address this point because it is so easy to dismiss. That’s not to say that Monckton’s data is incorrect, but no one expects temperatures to rise in a straight line – if you look at the temperature charts for the end of the 20th Century when there was a strong warming tend you can still see temperatures appearing to fall over shorter periods – for example 1980-87 shows a cooling trend. In the last decade we have seen low solar activity culminating in a strong solar minimum in 2008, at the same time as we has a la Nina which further reduced temperatures. These kind of natural variations can overcome the warming signal due to GHG emissions in the short term but tend to even out over time, which is why we have to look at longer periods to get a meaningful trend.
The irony here is that Monckton likes to make the “no staistically significant warming in the last 15 years” argument and yet he is making a claim of falling temperatures based on an even shorter trend which even less statistically significant.

I will try to look at your other reference later.

I sympathize. The first bit is so ranty and offputting, and the whole thing rather overcooked. ‘Less is more’ is something Monckton might adopt to his advantage.

There are two self-contained sections, not to do with complex science, that neatly encapsulate the dishonest methodology Abraham uses.

Numbered paras 203- 230 is one; 176-187 is another.

Can you point to the part of Monckton’s rebutal which highlights Abraham’s supposed deceitful behaviour which you mention above? I don’t have either the time or the willpower to look through the whole thing.

I came across the Abraham vs. Monckton material as a result f your post @ 1.

I was shocked that any academic could behave so deceitfully as Abraham appears to have done. Super-imposing one graph made up of the mean of 4 datasets upon another made up of only one, and then complaining that because they weren’t a perfect fit Monckton was either incompetent or dishonest was a particularly low and vile trick. So I’ve written to the uni to suggest they sack him.

So you are channelling Monckton after all. How embarrassing.

……are adapted to buffer the effects of seasonal
disruptions in feeding patterns owing to warming or cooling; that polar bears do not feed at constant rates all
year long; that most of their annual energy intake appears to occur as hyperphagia in the late spring and
early summer on juvenile ringed seals; that they are well adapted to this feast

…. are adapted to buffer the effects of seasonal
disruptions in feeding patterns owing to warming or cooling; that polar bears do not feed at constant rates all
year long; that most of their annual energy intake appears to occur as hyperphagia in the late spring and
early summer on juvenile ringed seals; that they are well adapted to this feast

This is becoming incredibly tiresome…

You gave the impression that you had read CM’s “magnificently bonkers” response to John Abraham’s mendacity. If you really had read it surely would not have escaped your attention that the 4 polar bears who figure in the Times news story you cite, notwithstanding its headline, were NOT the victims of global warming. They drowned in a storm – and no, the storm wasn’t the product of global warming. The author of the study merely uses the incident as a basis to speculate (or, if you prefer, predict) that maybe, one day, one or more polar bears might drown as a result of AGW. Now can you find me a documented instance of one that actually has?

The Eemian interglacial is very early in the evolutionary history of the Polar Bear and the species will have evolved subsequently.

True. But there have been warm periods at the North Pole subsequently, haven’t there?

They might survive warmer temperature as a species, but given that the ice is their habitat they are hardly going to thrive

Funny, your perusal of the Abraham/Monckton spat must have been so cursory that you also failed to notice the diagram that BOTH cite produced for the WWF by Norris and Rosenstrator, which shows that in the regions where the Arctic has warmed the population of polar bears has increased; that in the regions where there has been no change in temperature the population of polar bears has remained unchanged; and that in the regions where Arctic has cooled the population of polar bears has declined.

And you will further have missed the extensive citations that show that the evolution of the polar bear to which you refer suggests there is little risk of polar bears starving (… in warmist propaganda a polar bear is generally either drowning or starving):

are adapted to buffer the effects of seasonal
disruptions in feeding patterns owing to warming or cooling; that polar bears do not feed at constant rates all
year long; that most of their annual energy intake appears to occur as hyperphagia in the late spring and
early summer on juvenile ringed seals; that they are well adapted to this feast

In any case, arctic ice is on the up.

Oh no it isn’t.

This is becoming incredibly tiresome:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article767459.ece

The Eemian interglacial is very early in the evolutionary history of the Polar Bear and the species will have evolved subsequently. They might survive warmer temperature as a species, but given that the ice is their habitat they are hardly going to thrive.

Your quote does state “before harvest quotas were enacted”. The end of hunting and other conservation measures meant their numbers recovered, but the evidence is that numbers are now declining, and will decline further:

http://icb.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/44/2/163

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/special/polar_bears/docs/USGS_PolarBear_Amstrup_Forecast_lowres.pdf

The ‘twaddle’ is all yours.

you haven’t addressed the points made by Paul A in @8 and @10

Er…. that’s just what I did.

I’ll spell it out for you:

1. Polar bear numbers were estimated to have been 5000 (min) or 10,000 (max) in the 1950s-60s. They are now 20,000 to 25,000.

If you take the minimum estimates (5,000 and 20,000) they are now four times higher. Take the maximum, they are two and a half times higher.

My original statement was “The total population of polar bears is much higher today than 70 years ago. According to some estimates, several times higher.” Okay, let’s amend that to ’50 to 60 years ago’ if you really want to be pedantic.

2. saying “Polar bears lived through the Eemian interglacial” is meaningless. No, it isn’t. Temperatures during the EI were higher than today – particularly in the arctic in summertime.

No one has, so far as I can find, ever pointed to even one single polar bear that has died as a result of global warming or reduction in sea ice. It is all alarmism…. or, if you prefer, ‘prediction’. If you can link to any such reports, please do. The main cause of premature death among polar bears is (notwithstanding tough control) hunting. Polar bears survive and flourish in a range of temperatures. In any case, arctic ice is on the up.

Moreover, the link you posted contains all the usual Climate Change Denial headlines – “Global Warming ended in 1995″, “Benefits of CO2″, and so on.

And saying “Polar bears lived through the Eemian interglacial” is meaningless. Bit like the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance pretending that their assertion that speed cameras cause more casualties can be stood up by saying “hey, look, we’ve done some *regression analysis*, so we’re really really serious”.

The group {The Polar Bear Specialist Group} estimated that the total number of polar bears is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000. (Estimates of the population during the 1950s and 1960s, before harvest quotas were enacted, range from 5,000 to 10,000.)

http://www.examiner.com/x-32936-Seminole-County-Environmental-News-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/jul/14/monckton-john-abraham

Like Flowerpower, Monckton gives no source for this claim. Flowerpower might be correct, but I would good to see the evidence.

This is from the wikipedia entry and you can look up the references from there:

“Of the 19 recognized polar bear subpopulations, 8 are declining, 3 are stable, 1 is increasing, and 7 have insufficient data.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Population_and_distribution

A bit more reliable that the notoriously inaccurate National Post.

Source please?