BrianGarst.com

There is a fuss over the refusal of the administration to bow to their political games and place polar bears on the endangered species list, despite observed growth in some polar bear populations.

The call by special interests to place the polar bear on the endangered species list is not based on any evidence of declining polar bear populations. It is based on projections of future polar bear populations. That would be fine, if those projections were made through a rigorous scientific process. Sadly, they are based on sloppy methodologies and spurious assumptions:

Calls to list polar bears as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act are based on forecasts of substantial long-term declines in their population. Nine government reports were prepared to support the listing decision. We assessed these reports in light of evidence-based (scientific) forecasting principles. None referred to works on scientific forecasting methodology. Of the nine, Amstrup, Marcot and Douglas (2007) and Hunter et al. (2007) were the most relevant to the listing decision. Their forecasts were products of complex sets of assumptions. The first in both cases was the erroneous assumption that General Circulation Models provide valid forecasts of summer sea ice in the regions inhabited by polar bears. We nevertheless audited their conditional forecasts of what would happen to the polar bear population assuming, as the authors did, that the extent of summer sea ice would decrease substantially over the coming decades. We found that Amstrup et al. properly applied only 15% of relevant forecasting principles and Hunter et al. only 10%. We believe that their forecasts are unscientific and should therefore be of no consequence to decision makers. We recommend that all relevant principles be properly applied when important public policy decisions depend on accurate forecasts.

The report goes on to list the numerous scientific principles these reports violated. Contrary to the claims of the global warming fanatics, this process is not being driven by science. The call to put polar bears on the endangered species list is nothing more than an attempt to validate belief in global warming. Since they can’t prove the phenomenon is real to the extreme degrees that they claim, they just react to it as if it is real and then use their own reactions as proof of its existence. “Of course there’s global warming,” they’ll say in the near future, “its effects have put polar bears on the endangered species list!” Enough is enough of the polar bear politics.

environmentalists Global Warming