Having experienced perhaps the best of the BBC earlier today, I happened to pick up on the worst of it about half an hour ago. I was listening to 5 Live (I know, I deserve all I get) and there was yet another of the interminable “the polar bears are all dying out and it’s all OUR fault” stories. The programme, Weekend News, is presented by John Pienaar and Dalya Raphael and the new angle is that (some) polar bears are shrinking in size. This is proof how perilous their condition has become because of all that missing Arctic ice and it seems that US forecasts that Polar bears may be extinct by 2050 are too…optimistic! No mention of that fact that 11 out of the 13 polar bear populations in Canada are either stable or growing. The trash science and alarmism that 5 Live pumps out is very disappointing. I also see that as further evidence of 5 Live high standards, Vicky Pollard will be interviewing Paul Gascoigne tomorrow. Can’t wait!
THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING POLAR BEARS.
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There are two types of predictions: wrong ones and lucky ones.
In any half-decent academic setting such blatantly unscientific guff will get shot down quickly.
The BBC is the ideal home for conspiracy theorists, cranks and eco-weirdos.
5 live is a great listen!!!! It is the pinnacle of BBC leftism.
Nicki (puts the W in wanker)Campbell
Vicki (Pollard) Derbyshire
Simon (left is cool) Mayo
John 9Pinhead) Piennar
Richard (I hate Tories) Bacon
It goes on and on and on.
5 live is the voice of radical Islam. Need a ranting bearded twat? Radio 5 can rustle one up within a minute.
Let’s assume they’re right and the bears ARE shrinking in size.
Surely this is due to a lack of body fat, which to me suggests that they’ve used up more than usual over the winter because it’s been a colder than normal winter.
Which further suggests that MMGW is a pile of festering guano.
But can we expect the BBC to reason it that way? Answers on a post card please…
O/T but just seen the 9 o’clock news.
Lead story .. Ken Clarke says no to inheritance tax..Tory flagship policy in tatters!
Its even knocked Jade of the top of the agenda.
And..it isn’t true. i heard Ken on the Daily Politics, being questioned, saying that inheritance tax thresholds may not be able to be increased immediately in a first Tory parliament.
He did not say it would not, should not , could not be done. the question was about the horrendous budget deficit. Ken was simply saying the mess will be large.
So..is the reporting “Giant mess left by outgoing Labour administration implies massive tax rises and spending cuts in the future”
No.
watch it yourself. There’s even a classic bit of opportunistic Lord Mandelson spin, which I don’t begrudge, its his job to spin after all. The whole piece seems to have been penned by Lord M himself.
How pleased he must be sipping his wine tonight that the BBC released it unedited and unchecked as its been rubbished before the bloody program has even finished.
McNulty isn’t even going to feature above the Sport with his bending of the rules to maximise salary.
He made one line. One bloody line.
YOUR BBC. really? not mine it isn’t.
Shrinking polar bears lol should give the penguins a fair fight then!.
Polar bears do have their uses.They can be eaten.
The females will also have been “denned up” giving birth to their cubs.
mat,
lol!!
Bill Quango MP: The BBC are a total f**king joke. It isn’t a Troy priority anymore as the smelly fat unwashed one eyed jock has screwed up our economy.
I wonder why the BBC think that the latest escapade to measure Artic sea ice thickness will tell us anything?
We know what the BBC want to spin – but it will be meaningless.Surely – one measurement cannot tell you if its thicker or thinner than in the past.
Jon: It all depends on where you measure from. Remember how the BBC used to go on about global temperatures rising? Of course since 1998 temperatures have been falling and even the BBC had to admit that. Since they average these things out over 10 years, since 1998 has now been dropped they can’t use that spin any more.
The BBC swap between the north pole and the south pole depending on what suits them.
Another thing that strikes me is that this team is not made up of scientists but explorers.
“This scientific endeavour begins in early February 2009. The expedition is being led by highly experienced polar explorer Pen Hadow. Accompanying him will be Ann Daniels, one of the world’s foremost female polar explorers and Martin Hartley, leading expedition photographer. ”
Also their conclusions were already made before the expedition began.
“The melting of the sea ice will accelerate climate change, sea level rise and habitat loss on a global scale. Its loss is also a powerful indicator of the effects of human activity on our planet’s natural systems and processes. The Survey’s scientific findings will be taken to the national negotiating teams working to replace the Kyoto Protocol agreement at the UN Climate Change Conference of Parties in Copenhagen in December 2009. ”
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/
But surly the scientific method is:
Definition of the problem, Gathering of relevant data, Formulation of a hypothesis, Observation or experimentation to test hypothesis, Acceptance, modification, or rejection of the hypothesis.
This is a political stunt and not a scientific expedition.
On the bright side, Jon, the polar bears will be able to eat the three Global Warming Ice Monitors.
BTW, in the 1950s Canada’s polar bear population was estimated at 5,000 and today their numbers are estimated at 20,000+.
Also just look at the sponsers.
http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/sponsors
If a team of explorers went to the North Pole to show that the ice is getting thicker and was sponsored by the Oil companies – the BBC would rightly say it was biased.
And why is The Sick Chidrens Trust (a charity) sponsoring an “AGW” expedition?
Could it be that:
“Our Chairman is Stephen Catlin. Stephen has been involved for several years and is not only personally involved; his company, Catlin Underwriting, is now one of our most loyal corporate supporters.”
http://www.sickchildrenstrust.org/about_us.php
He is also Stephen Catlin Chief Executive of Catlin Group Limited.
http://www.catlin.com/cgl/about_us/group_management/
Now I don’t know if using a charity as a sponser for something which does not benefit the charity is legal or not but it does seem a bit odd.
It’s certainly one for fakecharities.org and, most probably, the Charities Commission, too.
Not that we can expect the BBC to investigate…
Their real agenda is population control.
In this article we see population control filtering into the globul warming mix.
Global crisis ‘to strike by 2030’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7951838.stm
far too many global warming deniers here
watch the video, all will be explained,and you will accept Al Gore as the messiah
The Catlin expedition was all set for huge BBC coverage, the expeditions findings were all worked out in advance, the high profile and valuable BBC airtime was reserved by the BBC but ‘best laid plans etc’ the expedition suffered from a large dose of actual reality, record cold temperatures,ice thickness near normal, sea ice levels near normal, ooops!
The myth that the expedition would measure the ice thickness in upnprecedented detail turned out to be a lie not least because the measurements have already been made by sattelites and US army automatic data bouys plus the expedition was a one off and meaurements were minimal, the measurements were made useless beacuse of ice shifting which meant the team couldnt make any headway towards their objective.
I suppose the Catlin sightseers could just fake their measurements, it wouldnt be the first time that the AGW believers have given up and faked up some fantasy figures!
So the whole expedition had no basis in actual science, it was a media showboating excersise that went wrong as these things so often do, other faked up anti science jollies will follow of course but at least we can enjoy the failure of one BBC propaganda’N’lies fairy tales.
The BBC will just have to use the reserved airtime to attack Tory splits eh?
Always difficult to make out quite what it is that animal slobbering eco-loons find attractive about polar bears. Polar bears do absolutely nothing but terrorise and rip to pieces every other species of animal they can get their jaws on. Rationally, animal slobberers ought to be over the moon to see the back of them, one would have thought.
andycanuck | 23.03.09 – 1:53 am
interesting point. i do not have a mathes degree but the formula is possibly as follows:
increasing numbers of polar bears divided by same amout of food equals short thin polar bears.
PB/SF=STPB
this is perhaps unacceptable and heretical thinking in the times we live in. in years gone by you would be put on the ducking stool for thinking less.
Are these muppets still out there?
Last item I read somewhere said that they were down to 1 day’s grub, that bad weather had grounded the supply plane and that the team was complaining about the “relentless” cold.
I had my suspicions that all was not well – no BBC reports crowing about thin ice and tropical temperatures.
What did they expect? A cool day at the beach? Even the f**king polar bears hide from the cold – and they are built for it.
I am not a “climate scientist” but I do not believe that lemonade bubbles (read CO2 for benefit of the eco-loons) can really make ice melt at minus 40+.
As a seal currently on holiday in Lime Regis I can say that the quicker you kill off those darned polar bears the better.
nice update on ten oclock news.
heroically they are struggling on with their sledges
meanwhile the aqua satellite with the AMSR – The Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer notices no changes since 2002.
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
but clearly the mitsubishi corporation know nothing as compared to pen hadow and his massive corkscrew device…yeah right what do nasa scientists know. pen hadow is on the bbc so what he says must be true
http://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/AMSR/
What was so incredibly telling was Shukman making the usual idiot of himself by not identifying why the team had gone there in the first place!
Small wonder as the imbeciles nearly died from the intense ‘global warming’.
Priceless comedy moments from the world’s finest clowns since the Keystone Cops!
It would seem they are having problems sending data!!!!
Or the data is not what they expected more like?????
They do not seem to be having problems getting the photographs sent out – So why the big problems in sending the ice data??????
hilarious ! the “data” is being gathered by a pen hadow and his heath robinson type corkscrew contraption when there is a perfectly good satellite packed to the gills with the latest technology in permanent low orbit above him. it has been there since 2002.
did anyone else think the pictures of the ice beaking up ( which I think was announced as “unusual”) was meant to be evidence of global warming ?
A closer inspection of their website has all sorts of live data – including heart rates – but NO ice data from these muppetts – desipte being there for over 3 weeks now?!
Anyone else smell a rat?
tim, the whole thing is very odd. sponsored by catlin insurance group.
anyone think of an industry which will do very well if people believe a catastrophe is about to happen but does not actually materialise ….? possibly the insurers ?
Thanks Jimbob, I think you have hit the nail on the head and the penny has dropped> Tim in The French Alps enjoying the best snow in living memory in our village here.
good for you – i am very jealous !