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Polar BEAR lawsuit

code problem?

8/18 other bears too

see also monnett

cf polarbear914

this now expands to arctic conditions in general, such as ice cover and polar bears, not just lawsuit 4/14

ebell, cei inhofe sues to suppress nat'l assess  horner sues clinton, NSTC and OSTP

cf eg dave ross UK e mail cited by US rep subcomm

cf cooling?  note constant confusion between climate and weather

 ==

https://moneytrails.org/issue/independent-petroleum-association-of-america-ipaa/

follow the money trails ipaa:

Other Interior Officials Have Also Met With IPAA

FWS Director Nominee And Former Monsanto Employee Aurelia Skipwith Has Been Involved In Sage Grouse Protection Rollbacks And Spoke At The IPAA.

Skipwith’s Calendars Show She Has Been Involved In The Rollback of Sage Grouse Protections And Spoke At The Independent Petroleum Association Of America (IPAA). “According to her publically released calendars, Skipwith has been deeply involved in the Trump administration’s rollback of habitat protections for the imperiled sage grouse and spoke at the oil and gas association Independent Petroleum Association of America’s (IPAA) regulators’ forum.” DailyKos, [:{09/11/19:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}:]

Current Deputy Solicitor for Parks and Wildlife Solicitor Karen Budd-Falen Met With The Oil Industry Lobbyists Who Helped “Rewrite” Obama-Era Sage Grouse Management Plans

On June 13, 2019, Karen Budd-Falen had a meeting with representatives from the Independent Petroleum Association Of America (IPAA). In a calendar event titled simply, “Meeting,” Karen Budd-Falen met with people with the email addresses mmiller@ipaa.org and dnaatz@ipaa.org. Karen Budd-Falen Calendar,[:{ :{06/13/19:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}::(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}:]

IPAA’s Lobbyists Were “Integrally Involved In Rewriting Sage-Grouse Conservation Plans.” “During the Trump administration, IPAA has been integrally involved in rewriting sage-grouse conservation plans. Documents obtained by the Western Values Project indicate that IPAA lobbyists secured numerous meetings with key Interior Department officials, providing an entré for specific companies to give input into sage-grouse plans. In one instance,IPAA arranged phone calls for Chesapeake Energy, ConocoPhillips, and EOG Resources to ask BLM for specific revisions to sage-grouse maps.During the process of amending the sage-grouse conservation plans, IPAA submitted formal comments recommending specific policy changes. It appears that certain IPAA recommendations — such as cutting requirements to offset habitat damage from development with conservation gains elsewhere — were accepted by the BLM:{, either partially or in full, as a part of the agency’s draft plans.” Center For Western Priorities,:(style="background-color:#faf8f5;"):}:[:{ :{03/14/19:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}::(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}::{]}:

Current Associate Deputy Secretary of the Interior James Cason Met With IPAA After Rumors Of Bernhardt’s Nomination To Be Secretary Began To Circulate

Cason Served as Acting Deputy Secretary of the Interior until Bernhardt’s Nomination was Confirmed. Rumors of Bernhardt’s nomination to Deputy Secretary began circulating in January 2017. Cason joined the Trump Administration as Associate Deputy Secretary on January 20, 2017, and served as Acting Deputy Secretary until David Bernhardt was confirmed in July 2017. ProPublica, [:{03/08/17:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}:; Washington Post, :{07/24/17:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}:]

Interior Chief Of Staff Todd Willens Met With IPAA

On April 26, 2018, Todd Willens had an external meeting with IPAA. They topics discussed at this meeting wereMBTA, Mitigation, and the proposed removal of blanket 4(d). In addition to IPAA staff, this meeting included an employee of Noble Energy, which is also on Bernhardt’s recusal list. :{Todd Willens Department Of Influence Profile, :(style="background-color:#faf8f5;"):}:[:{accessed:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}: :{10/16/19:(style="box-sizing:inherit;margin:0px 0px 0px -0.225em;padding:0px 0.15em;border-style:solid;border-width:0px;background-repeat:no-repeat;position:relative;display:inline-block;z-index:9"):}::{, Todd Willens Calendar, 04/26/18]}:

IPAA And Its Members Spend Millions On Campaign Contributions

==

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no lnx

==

Study predicts polar bears will die off within 80 years: ‘The poster child for climate change’

Igor Derysh / SalonJuly 27, 2020

Polar bears could face extinction by the end of the century as a result of shrinking sea ice in the Arctic caused by climate change, according to a new study published in…

==

Yellowstone’s Grizzlies Are Wandering Farther from Home and Dying in Greater Numbers

BY: JOHNATHAN HETTINGER

Climate change has fueled the devastation of one of the grizzly bear’s key food sources, and more of its Yellowstone habitat is at risk as temperatures rise.

==

Russian Polar Bear 'Invasion' Is a Sign of Something Much Bigger ew

==

9/15

http://ecowatch.com/2015/09/14/polar-bear-photos-climate-change

==

Obama used his tour of Alaska last week to highlight the human faces of climate change in the Arctic.

At the same time, representatives of the five nations with territory above the Arctic Circle—all signatories to a 1973 treaty to preserve polar bears—were grappling with how to stop climate change from decimating the iconic predator.

At their meeting in Ilulissat, Greenland, this week, Canada, the United States,Denmark, Norway, and Russia agreed to a new 10-year plan for protecting the species and its habitat across the entire Arctic.

“After 40 years of cooperation, this is the first time when parties came together to agree on one circumpolar action plan for polar bears,” said Alexander Shestakov, director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Global Arctic Program.

“It doesn’t mean for 40 years they weren’t doing anything,” he added. “But there was a real need for a pan-Arctic approach.”

Under the plan, scientists will collaborate to get a better estimate of current polar bear numbers; assess the impacts of climate change, pollution, and disease on their survival; and meet every two years to report on their progress.

“It is positive from our point of view that they established some mechanism for reporting and accountability,” Shestakov said.

When the five nations signed the first polar bear conservation treaty in 1973, uncontrolled hunting was the biggest threat to the bears’ survival.

In 2015, the major threat is warming temperatures across the Arctic, caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. The sea ice that is the primary habitat of polar bears and the only habitat of their preferred prey, ice seals, is melting, and it will continue to thaw for decades if not centuries to come.

Diminishing Arctic sea ice has stranded polar bears on land, far from the ice seals that are their main prey, for longer periods of the year. The situation has driven more polar bears to risk human settlements in search of food. “A polar bear can be a danger for people,” Shestakov said, “but in recent years people have become much more dangerous to bears.”

The five nations this week committed to jointly tracking and analyzing these encounters in what Gert Polet of WWF-Netherlands described as “the first range-wide database for any species” in the hope of devising ways to curb them.

Ocean habitats important to polar bears and other wildlife, areas that were once almost inaccessible to humans for most of the year, are now seeing increased industrial activity such as transnational shipping traffic, as well as new oil and gas prospecting.

Shell Oil’s summer drilling expedition in the Chukchi Sea, near an important marine feeding ground called Hanna Shoal, would have been impossible at the time the polar bear conservation treaty was signed.

http://www.alternet.org/environment/polar-bear-gets-protections-us-russia

==

Polar bears are now eating dolphins thanks to climate change

The polar bears are even saving frozen dolphin for later. 6/15 grist

==

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/30/AR2008083001538.html

Correction to This Article

Oil Group Joins Alaska in Suing To Overturn Polar Bear Protection

By Kari Lydersen

Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, August 31, 2008

CHICAGO -- The American Petroleum Institute and four other business groups filed suit Thursday against Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director H. Dale Hall, joining Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's administration in trying to reverse the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species.

This Story

On Aug. 4, the state of Alaska filed a lawsuit opposing the polar bear's listing, arguing that populations as a whole are stable and that melting sea ice does not pose an imminent threat to their survival. The suit says polar bears have survived warming periods in the past. The federal government has 60 days from the filing date to respond.

One of the plaintiff in Thursday's lawsuit, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), lauded the choice of Palin as the Republican vice presidential nominee for reasons including her advocacy of Alaskan oil and gas exploration, which many fear could be affected by the bear's protected status.

NAM and the petroleum institute were joined in the lawsuit by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Mining Association and the American Iron and Steel Institute. They object to what they call the "Alaska Gap" in relation to the special rule the federal government issued in May in conjunction with the polar bear's protected status. The rule, meant to prevent the polar bear's status from being used as a tool for imposing greenhouse gas limits, exempts projects in all states except Alaska from undergoing review in relation to emissions.

==

heartland "experts";Coming in with a lower profile and a lower monthly retainer ($750 a month) areAnthony Lupo, and Canadian “Terrestrial Animal” specialists Crockford (the dog expert from the University of Victoria) and   Mitch Taylor, a contract lecturerat the Lakehead University who has argued that polar bears are in no danger from climate change.

===

botkin cites  

Fri, 2012-04-06 13:29BRENDAN DEMELLE

Brendan DeMelle's picture

Heartland Payments to University of Victoria Professor Susan Crockford Probed

University of Victoria adjunct professor Susan Crockford doesn't seem interested in discussing the monthly payments she appears to receive from the climate denying Heartland Spinstitute.

“Crockford would not respond to emails, and refused to speak with the Martlet,” reports a UVic student newspaper attempting to probe the payments.

The Heartland Institute's Denialgate documents indicate that the spinstitute gives Crockford $750 per month. She is one of three Canadian university professors on the denier dole at Heartland, along with Madhav Knandekar and Mitch Taylor.

Greenpeace contacted the University of Victoria to raise conflict of interest questions relating to Heartland's payments to Crockford, who has a history of denying climate science as a speaker for its anti-science International Climate Science Coalition. See Greenpeace's letter to the University of Victoria.

But apparently the University isn't interested in investigating the matter, stating that, because Crockford is “not a member of regular faculty,” it won't probe allegations of conflict of interest.

“She is a member as a non-remunerated appointment as an adjunct, a professional zooarcheologist associate,” a university spokesperson told The Martlet correspondent Mark Worthing.

But one of Crockford's colleagues at UVic had plenty to say about the disconnect between the university's science-based position and the spin emanating from the Heartland Institute.

“It is regrettable that anyone affiliated with the University of Victoria participated in the activities of an organization like the Heartland Institute,” says Dr. Thomas F. Pederson, Executive Director of the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) at UVic. “The University prides itself on being an institution of higher learning that deals with facts and that is nowhere more true than in the field of science. Those who deny that the planet is warming as a direct result of human activity are denying facts.

…

“The Heartland Institute is one of a collection of so-called think tanks that have been extensively supported by elements within the American fossil fuel industry,” says Pederson. “Their mission is quite clearly not to think, but instead to sow confusion with respect to the global warming issue.”

Susan Crockford's actual expertise is far removed from climate science, but that's never proven to be an obstacle to receiving invitations to speak at Heartland Institute events.

According to a description of her work by The Martlet, Crockford is “a sessional adjunct professor in Archaeozoology in the Pacific Rim with research focuses on the domestication and breed development, evolutionary theory and the evolution and history of the domestic dog.”

What the what? An expert in canine evolution - already tricky territory for certain science deniers - knows what exactly about climate change science?

What does Heartland's Denial-a-Palooza audience see in Crockford's dogged ability to provide $750 per month woof - ehem, worth - of climate confusion?

Is anyone else doggone confused here? Canine get an explanation? (Sorry, it's Friday, brain is mush!)

Tags: Heartland InstituteUniversity of VictoriaInternational Climate Science Coalitionclimate denialSusan Crockfordanti-scienceconflict of interestdenialgateDenierGatethe martletmark worthingspinstitutecanadian climate science

‹ PREVIOUS

S.E. Cupp Attacks Climate Science and Climate Scientists on MSNBC

To drill or not to drill in a nationally protected arctic wildlife habitat and polar bear breeding ground? That is the question heading to court.

On Friday, the state of Alaska launched a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Department of the Interior and some of its directors, claiming they wrongfully rejected the state’s application to look for oil and gas on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. According the the lawsuit, the agencies didn’t even consider the plan — an act that “deprived” Alaska of “its right to provide adequate opportunity for the satisfaction of the economic and social needs of the State.”

The application rejected by the U.S. government was not for actual drilling. Rather, it was a seven-year seismic program that would have provided a more specific estimate of the oil and gas resources within the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain — commonly referred to as the 1002 Area. That estimate, the lawsuit says, would help “to inform future decisions by Congress” on whether to drill there.

The U.S. government contends that Alaska’s authority to look for oil in the nationally protected area has expired. Alaska contends it has not.

The Arctic Refuge’s oil has been an ongoing political controversy since 1977, when a British Petroleum geologist named Roger Herrera testified to Congress that he believed there was enormous potential for production. In 2000, the U.S. Energy Information Administration called the area “the largest unexplored, potentially productive geologic onshore basin in the United States.”

Indeed, the area’s oil potential could be enormous. The United States Geological Service estimates that anywhere from 5.7 to 16 billion barrels of oil is technically recoverable from the 1002 area. Taken at its mean, that means the 1002 area could produce about one million barrels of oil per day — about 20 percent of America’s daily domestic production, according to the Institute for Energy Research.[BS]

However, there are still uncertainties regarding the importance of the area’s oil. Despite its estimates for production, the EIA has also said that the 1002 area’s oil would probably not have a large impact on world oil prices. “Additional oil production resulting from the opening of the Arctic Refuge would be only a small portion of total world oil production, and would likely be offset in part by somewhat lower production outside the United States,” the agencysaid.

There are also myriad environmental issues. Located within the Arctic circle, the 1002 area has no sunlight for 56 days of the year, and temperatures are often as low as below 30 degrees Fahrenheit. This makes it extremely difficult to figure out how to clean up an oil spill if one were to occur, according to the Sierra Club, whose recent report on the issue noted that there are no proven technologies to clean up spills in Arctic waters.

“Trying to clean oil out of frigid water, covered in sea ice, in the perpetual darkness of winter would be impossible,” the report reads. “The closest help, a Coast Guard station, is 1,000 miles away.”

In addition, The Arctic Refuge itself is a beacon of wildlife. It is one of only two areas within the National Wildlife Refuge System that are home to all three species of North American bear — black, grizzly, and polar. The 1002 area’s polar bear population is especially important considering its high possibility of global extinction due to climate change — a fact that the Sierra Club noted in its report.

“Burning the fossil fuels found in the Arctic will only accelerate global warming and hasten the disappearance of animals like the polar bear,” the report reads.

A larger-than-expected number of pregnant females come to the 1002 area every year to dig maternity dens, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The area is the only national conservation area where polar bears regularly den, and is the most consistently-used polar bear land denning area in Alaska. In the 2008 Presidential election, both President Obama and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) expressed oppositionto drilling in the pristine area.

Alaska’s Republican Governor Sean Parnell is touting the lawsuit, calling it “disappointing and disturbing” that the Obama Administration does not want to look for oil in the polar bear breeding ground. The stance is not unexpected for Parnell, who has expressed a desire to keep the Environmental Protection Agency out of the state, and immediately disbanded his state’s Climate Change Cabinet upon taking office in 2009.

Parnell — a former ConocoPhillips executive — is seeking reelection in 2014.

Tags:

new site: industry/investment oriented? still has anto AGW bs :

http://www.energydepot.us/

cites blog 1st name;

Too Much Spring Ice Threatens Alaskan Polar Bears

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/barbara-hollingsworth/alaskan-polar-bears-threatened-too-much-spring-ice-0

multiple errors, not sure how serious: http://polarbearscience.com/2014/04/25/my-interview-with-cns-news-alaskan-polar-bears-threatenedby-too-much-spring-ice/#more-4945

her blogroll includes FoS and ross mcKittick  UBC

---

https://wattsupwiththat.wpcomstaging.com/2015/06/23/dr-willie-soon-on-the-vaticans-repeat-of-its-galileo-debacle/

no lnx

Dr. Willie Soon on the Vatican’s repeat of its Galileo debacle

Alec Rawls / June 23, 2015

Putting papal authority behind yet another failed scientific paradigm

GalileoTrial_1633 pix]

Guest post by Alec Rawls

As Galileo insisted about the perversity of his persecution by the Catholic Church: “[I]t is impossible for a conclusion to be declared heretical while we remain in doubt as to its truth.”

Now 400 years later, with the Pope’s new Laudato Si’ encyclical, Dr. Soon notes that the Vatican is again engaged in this same error, lending papal authority to highly uncertain scientific views that lie well outside of the Church’s sphere of moral authority.

Willie’s op-ed can be found at the Breitbart News website. I’ll just post a trio of fair-use excerpts here:

The verdict is clear: Any attempt to stop the use of available fossil fuels for life and all human activities will cause far more harm and lead to more deaths than the theological belief in future catastrophic disasters endorsed by the encyclical. Even worse, the church knows that many of the predicted catastrophic disasters from the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide are highly exaggerated if not outright fraudulent. Yet Laudato Si’ gives credence and praise to these predictions by relying on climate models scenarios that have been proven to be false.

Plus:

I fear that this encyclical is driven not by science, but by social motivations and political yearnings.

And again from Galileo:

“[C]ertainly no one doubts that the Supreme Pontiff has always an absolute power to approve or condemn; but it is not in the power: of any created being to make things true or false, for this belongs to their own nature and to the fact.”

June 23, 2015 in Papal Climate Encyclical.

Related posts

Is the Pope Backing Away from the Climate Issue?

Papal Global Warming Encyclical Continues to Split the Church

Climate Insanity on steroids!

Post navigation? Wild Claim: ‘climate change…could wipe out health progress over the past 50 years’A shift in climate ‘forcing’ led to demise of Laurentide ice sheet 9000 years ago ?

177 thoughts on “Dr. Willie Soon on the Vatican’s repeat of its Galileo debacle”

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/04/14/a-conversation-with-dr-willie-soon-on-polar-bears-the-sun-and-earths-climate/

MANY lnx grafs

a conversation with Dr. Willie Soon – on polar bears, the sun, and Earth's climate

Guest Blogger / April 14, 2018

Science, Philosophy and Inquiry on a Galactic Scale

Contributed by Grégoire Canlorbe © 2017 Publised at WUWT by request of Mr. Canlorbe.    These are the opinions of the author and interviewee.

Dr. Willie Soon is an independent solar physicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who has been studying the Sun and its influence on the Earth’s climate for more than a quarter of a century. A short while ago, he had a conversation with Mr. Grégoire Canlorbe, an independent journalist who is also vice president of the French Parti National-Libéral (“National-Liberal Party,” conservative, nationalist, and free-marketist). Here Dr. Soon speaks for himself.

Canlorbe: You say polar bears are far less endangered by global warming than by environmentalists dreading ice melt. Could you expand?

Dr. Soon: Yes, indeed. I have argued that too much ice will be the ultimate enemy for polar bears. Polar bears need less sea ice to be well fed and to reproduce. Why? Think about this for a minute: Polar bears eat a lot. Any large colony will need a great deal of food. The bears’ staple diet is seal blubber. But seals are a long way up the food chain. So a fully functional and healthy eco-system is required. And that means oceans warm enough to support the lower links in the food chain from plankton all the way up to seals.

Indeed, a good puzzle for polar-bear science is to answer the question how polar bears survived during the ice ages, when ice covered coastal zones and large parts of the global ocean. Ice was piled miles deep on land, making it extremely difficult for eco-systems to provide enough food. Of course, areas of relative warmth, which population biologists call refugia, always exist. They may well be the key to explaining how polar bears survived the Last Glacial Maximum about 21,000 years ago.

The so-called “environmentalists”, who seem to allow unreasoning emotion and political prejudice to stand in place of rational thought and sound science, became very angry when I asked them whether they would prefer to see a billion polar bears instead of the 20,000–30,000 living now. The real threat to polar bears was unregulated hunting, which reduced the population to perhaps as few as 5,000 bears in the early 1970s.

After the November 1973 agreement to regulate hunting and outlaw hunting from aircraft and icebreakers, the polar bear population rebounded. By 2017 it was approaching 30,000. In 2016 a survey by the Nunavut government found a vulnerable population in the western Hudson Bay region to have been stable for at least five years.

I should say categorically that this polar bear fear-mongering is evidence of mass delusion promoted by group think. As a physical scientist rather than a biologist, I am generally reluctant to get involved in such topics as the influence of climate on polar-bear population, health and biology. But in 2002, Markus Dyck asked me to examine independently these strange and insupportable claims by environmental extremists that polar bears are threatened with extinction by global warming.

Consider the facts. From 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, the Earth was considerably warmer than today. Yet the polar bears survived. In fact, they had evolved from land-based brown bears some 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, and to this day they rear their cubs in land-based dens burrowed into the snow.

Four dead bears found in an aerial survey of the Beaufort Sea (Monnett & Gleason, 2006)]

Readers curious about Al Gore’s false statement that a scientific survey had found polar bears drowning because they could not find ice should see my talk on how environmentalists are the real threat to polar bears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmoKRz5VcbI. The survey cited by Gore in his sci-fi comedy horror movie in fact found that just four polar bears had drowned, three of them very close to land, and they had died because of high winds and high waves in an exceptional Arctic storm. The authors of the paper were later victimized by their academic colleagues at the instigation of environmental extremists because they had stated – correctly – that it was the storm, and not global warming, that had killed the bears.

What is more, in the dozen years before the survey, the sea ice extent in the Beaufort Sea, where the survey took place, had actually increased slightly. At no point was Al Gore’s story true. In 2007 the High Court in London condemned Gore for his false statements about polar bears, whose Linnaean classification is ursus maritimus – the Bear of the Sea. It is now known that they can swim for more than 100 miles over periods of several days. Al Gore could not even ride a pushbike that far.

One positive aspect of my work in science is that I have befriended many seekers after truth. A polar bear expert, Professor Mitch Taylor of Lakehead University, told me late in 2017:

Just finished up in Davis Strait with 275 DNA samples. The bears were in better condition this year than they were during the 2005–2007 study years. The Wrangel Island bears in the photo are in good condition, but the Davis Strait bears were even fatter. Markus [Dyck] has found the same in the Cape Dyer area. Local people confirm the bears are very fat this year and are also reporting a big increase in ringed seals (immigration, not local productivity).

Keen readers who may want solid information and frequent scientific updates about the overall health and trends of all 19 subpopulations of polar bears should visit the website of another friend of mine, Dr. Susan Crockford: http://polarbearscience.com.

Is climate change naturally cyclical?

Canlorbe: Climate change is surely nothing new. It is a long-established, cyclical behavior of our planet, which has long been oscillating between glaciations and interglacial warm periods. Should we diagnose Mother Nature with a bipolar disorder?

Dr. Soon: Earth’s climate system dynamically oscillates between icehouse and hothouse conditions in geological time or, to a lesser degree, between the glacial and interglacial climates of the last 1–2 million years. But, as with many interesting questions about the Earth’s climate, there is no certain answer. The data do not support over-simplistic accounts.

Sea level rise – mother of all scares

I was fascinated to discover that changing sea levels, including extremely high global sea levels 65–250 feet (20–75 m) above today’s mean, occurred during the “hothouse Earth” era. One does not need an enormous ice sheet for sea level to be high, chiefly because the Earth’s coastal zones and ocean basins may be more porous and capacious than one would imagine. Indeed, deep geological studies proffer good evidence to support my position. I included this empirical evidence in an essay I recently co-wrote with Viscount (Christopher) Monckton of Brenchley. 404 -->  https://web.archive.org/web/20181204045824/https://www.nas.org/images/documents/NAS_insideDivestment_forum.pdf

In addition to the ever-changing shape and depth of the ocean basins and coastal zone boundaries, one must also bear in mind the “leaky Earth”: There appears to be a continuous exchange of water between the ocean bottom and the Earth’s crust, as Professor Shige Maruyama of Tokyo Institute of Technology has shown.

Sea level has risen by 400 feet over the past 10,000 years. For the past 200 years it has been rising at about 8 inches per century, and that rate may well continue. It has very little to do with global warming and much more to do with long-term climate cycles. In fact, so slowly has sea level been rising that environmental-extremist scientists have tampered with the raw data by adding an imagined (and imaginary) “global isostatic adjustment”, torturing the data until they show a rate of sea-level rise that has not in reality occurred.

The Earth in the solar system in the galaxy in the universe

ebell, cei inhofe sues to suppress nat'l assess wm horner sues clinton, NSTC and OSTP

??

palin api and oil co polar bear suit, also nam

 ==

Dr. Charles Monnett, who had been under investigation with respect to his 2006 paper documenting polar bear mortality and with his administration of a cooperative study of polar bears carried out jointly with the University of Alberta, appears to have been un officially vindicated. Yesterday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), who have been representing Monnett, released emails showing that he had not acted improperly in any way.

They also noted that, unfortunately:

Finally, the fact of the investigation has subjected Dr. Monnett's family to harassment, especially from climate-change skeptics who have, for example, posted his wife’s work email address on the web and invited readers to flood her inbox at her workplace which lead to a number of hateful and threatening messages.

Sadly, they are correct. I personally verified on 9/15/2011 that Climate Depotwebsite had indeed done just that. Their post, date-stamped August 1, 2011, repeated the false claim that Dr. Monnett's wife (a respected scientist in her own right) had served as peer reviewer to her husband's paper, and publicly posted her work email address.

The post also commanded readers to:

Contact Monnett's wife [name redacted] with questions/comments about the Polar Bear paper: [email redacted.]

The reaction of some climate change denialists was apparently as predictable as it was regrettable, but PEER has drawn a merciful veil over the specific threats and insults that were hurled.

... State of Alaska (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352)

Safari Club International; and Safari Club International

Foundation (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5219; D.D.C. No. 08-1550)

California Cattlemen’s Association; and :{Congress of

Racial Equality}: (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5221; D.D.C. No. 08-

1689) (also Intervenor-Plaintiffs-Appellants in State of

Alaska cases (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352))

Conservation Force; Inuvialuit Game Council; Arviat

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Resolute Bay

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Louie Nigiyok d/b/a

Arctic Hills Tour Company; Nanuk Outfitting, Ltd.,

Canada North Outfittings, Inc.; Ameri-cana Expeditions,

Inc.; Webb Outfitting Nunavut, Ltd.; Henik Lake

Joseph Verni d/b/a Natura Spot;

USCA Case #11-5219 Document #1393180

Filed: 09/06/2012 Pag

age 4 Dallas Safari Club; Houston Safari Club; African Safari

Club of Florida, Inc.; Mark Beeler; Timothy Decker;

Chris Hanks; Don Hershey;Steve Hornady; William

Keene; Rob Kreider; Allyn Ladd; Ethel Leedy; Everett

Madson; Aaron Neilson; Major Roger Oerter; Bradley

Pritz; Kevin Reid; Robert Remillard; Jeff Sevor; Steve

Smith; Ted Stallings; Larry Steiner; Darwin J. Vander

Esch; Tim Walters (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5222; D.D.C. No.

09-245)

Federal Defendants-Appellees:

United States Fish and Wildlife Service; Daniel M. Ashe,

Director, United States Fish & Wildlife Service; and Ken

Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior

Intervenor Defendants-Appellees:

Center for Biological Diversity; Greenpeace, Inc.; and

Natural Resources Defense Council (all of which were

Plaintiffs in D.D.C. No. 08-2113, but have not appealed,

and were Intervenor-Defendants in D.D.C. Nos. 08-1352,

08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-0245)

Humane Society of the United States; International Fund

for Animal Welfare (both of which intervened in D.D.C.

No. 09-0245)

Defenders of Wildlife (which intervened in D.D.C. Nos.

08-1352, 08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-245

August 2006. Hippo I took in on the Njamesembe River in Mozambique. Hunting with Bahati Adventures - Mike Thorne

update 10/12

Polar Bears' Threatened Species Designation Contested In U.S. Appeals Court

Reuters  |  Posted: 10/19/2012 1:28 pm EDT Updated: 10/19/2012 4:27 pm EDT

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Polar bears' designation as a threatened species was challenged in a U.S. appeals court on Friday, with a lawyer for Alaska and other parties arguing that regulators had failed to back up the listing.

Alaska and other plaintiffs that include hunters and the California Cattlemen's Associationare appealing a federal court ruling last year that upheld the Interior Department's 2008 designation of the bears as threatened because their icy habitat is melting away.

Murray Feldman, a lawyer for Alaska and other appellants, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the government had failed to show how the big white bears likely would be nearing extinction at the middle of this century.

The department's decision on the Arctic mammals was "arbitrary and capricious" since it was based on flawed models, Feldman said in oral arguments before a three-judge panel.

Katherine Hazard, a lawyer for the department's Fish and Wildlife Service, said that the designation relied on decades of research and long-term trends underpinned it.

"The agency needs to make a determination based on the best available science, which the agency did here," she said.

A designation that a species is threatens means that it is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future in all or a significant part of its range.

Bruce Woods, a Fish and Wildlife spokesman, said the listing drew more attention to the bears' plight and also triggered funding for programs including patrols to limit contact with humans and a recovery plan for the bears.

Arctic sea ice shrank to a record low of 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million square km) by mid-September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency reported this month.

A decision by the appeals court is not expected for months.

Alaska and oil companies have argued that Endangered Species Act protections for polar bears diminish opportunities for Alaska energy development.

The state has said in its appeals court filing that bears have survived previous warming periods and most populations have grown or remained stable despite shrinkage of ice.

The case is Safari Club International et al v. Ken Salazar et al and Center for Biological Diversity et al, No. 11-5219. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Paul Simao)

 ---

2008 suit: aei, nam, US CoC, Nat'l mining assoc, Am Iron and Steel Inst. 196 joined palin 2007 ltr to kemptheorne, ref'd soon paper a week before it was published 197  april 9  kempthorne did not want to list, tho his asst Hall (B2 appt) said no doubt about problem 197 foolme2x

legates and soon had worked together before ; not new data, just cherrypick

2003 soon paper ~ Mann by GCMI; sci figuted out how to use tree ring density crrelated to temp; mann extended: blue reconstructed, w/ red for actual and grey to show margin of error 199

greenpeace2010 on koch:

Case Study 2: Polar Bear Junk Science

In 2007, several prominent climate denial scientists published

a non-peer reviewed article,35 (Dyck, Soon et al, 2007 ??Polar

bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are

warming spring air temperatures the ‘??ultimate????? survival

control factor?”) concluding that polar bears are not being

threatened by anthropogenic global warming. One of the

paper???s authors, Dr. Willie Soon, disclosed in the acknowledgements

section that he had received direct corporate

funding for the work, stating ???

W. Soon’s effort for the

completion of this paper was partially supported by grants

from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American

Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.” (Exxon

grants to Soon’s organization are detailed below. The exact

amount received from the Koch foundation was not found

on its 990 forms. The American Petroleum Institute does

not disclose the multiple grants it has made to such climate

denial organizations over the years.)

The paper, which did not include any new scientific research,

but drew from other published work, appeared in the journal

Ecological Complexity as a “Viewpoint??? piece. This article

declared Arctic sea ice decline was less severe than recent

well founded conclusions in peer-reviewed literature.36 The

authors question the climate science of Arctic warming and

the scientific modeling that indicates climate change as a

threat to polar bear populations. Leading polar bear and

Arctic ice scientists criticized the article for containing “no

new research” and drawing erroneous conclusions from

existing research. Two polar bear experts, Dr. Ian Stirling37

and Dr. Andrew Derocher38, published a response to the

paper, stating that the 2007 article did not adequately

support the claim that non-climate factors were causing the

polar bear population decline. Stirling and Deroucher wrote,

???[The article’s authors] suggest that factors other than climate

warming are responsible for a decline in the polar bear

population of Western Hudson Bay… In our examination

of their alternative explanations, and the data available to

evaluate each, we found little support for any.???39

Oil interests and their allies likely realize that polar bear

protections might hinder oil exploration in the Arctic. In

addition, because polar bear decline is an iconic symbol of

the climate crisis, undermining the scientific proof of polar

bears in peril would potentially delay overall climate policy

measures that will reduce oil consumption.

:{The co-authors of the paper include long time climate

deniers: Sallie Baliunas,40 David Legates41 and Tim Ball42.}:

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have a documented history

of receiving money from oil interests. ExxonMobil Foundation

tax records and company documents confirm a series

of grants to the Center for Astrophysics, which employs

both Soon and Baliunas. In 2008, ExxonMobil contributed

$76,10643 to Soon and Baliunas’ institute, the Smithsonian

Astrophysics Observatory, with funding totalling over

$340,000 in four grants since 2005.

Soon and Baliunas were the authors of another controversial

climate “junk science” report in 2003, funded by the

American Petroleum Institute. The paper, “Lessons & Limits

of Climate History: Was the 20th Century Climate Unusual?”,

published by another industry-funded think tank, the George

Marshall Institute,44 attacked the research of climate scientist

Michael Mann, who has also been a prominent target in the

“Climategate” controversy detailed above. Soon, Baliunas and

Legates teamed up on a version of the same paper, published

in a small journal Climate Research, which generated

such an uproar that the Editor in Chief and several others

resigned in protest.45 46 Both Soon and Baliunas have been

associated as spokespeople, advisors and board members

of multiple Koch-funded climate denial groups over the past

decade.

The 2007 polar bear junk science paper prompted a letter to

ExxonMobil from :{North Carolina Representative Brad Miller,47

Chair of the US House Subcommittee on Investigations

and Oversight, }:which raised a key question about Exxon???s

funding, which could well have been asked of Koch and API:

“To people outside the scientific community, one PhD may

seem like another. Certainly Exxon knows better, however.

Yet according to Dr Soon, an astrophysicist by profession,

ExxonMobil funded the development of his ???opinions” on

global warming and its potential impact on polar bear

populations???The Congress and the Public have a right to

know why ExxonMobil is funding a scientist whose writing

is outside his area of expertise to create the impression that

expert scientists have conducted vigorous, peer reviewed

work that says the problems with polar bears [and climate

change] are unproven or unserious.”48

Exxon responded,49 denying responsibility for Soon’s research

and claiming that the paper had undergone a ??lengthy

peer review process.”

The Koch-funded climate denial groups kicked into gear

before the paper was published. Regardless of the non-peer

reviewed status of the Ecological Complexity paper, it gave

the appearance of a peer reviewed paper:{. Multiple Koch and

Exxon-funded groups rebroadcast the story through their

websites and other media outlets,}: emphasizing the paper

and its ??findings’ that polar bears are not endangered by

climate change. When the Bush Administration was forced

to consider listing the polar bear under the Endangered

Species Act (by a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and other

environmental groups), Sarah Palin and her officers in the

Alaskan government referenced the 2007 Dyck, Soon et al.

polar bear paper in its formal protest of government action

to protect the polar bear, even before the paper was even

published.50

:{Additional Koch-funded groups and industry groups threatened

to sue the Federal government for listing the polar bear

under the Endangered Species Act, including the American

Enterprise Institute51, the Heritage Foundation52, and National

Association of Manufacturers}:

==

greenpeace 2010 on koch: Case Study 2: Polar Bear Junk Science

In 2007, several prominent climate denial scientists published

a non-peer reviewed article,35 (Dyck, Soon et al, 2007 ??Polar

bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are

warming spring air temperatures the ‘??ultimate????? survival

control factor?”) concluding that polar bears are not being

threatened by anthropogenic global warming. One of the

paper???s authors, Dr. Willie Soon, disclosed in the acknowledgements

section that he had received direct corporate

funding for the work, stating ???W. Soon’s effort for the

completion of this paper was partially supported by grants

from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American

Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.” (Exxon

grants to Soon’s organization are detailed below. The exact

amount received from the Koch foundation was not found

on its 990 forms. The American Petroleum Institute does

not disclose the multiple grants it has made to such climate

denial organizations over the years.)

The paper, which did not include any new scientific research,

but drew from other published work, appeared in the journal

Ecological Complexity as a “Viewpoint??? piece. This article

declared Arctic sea ice decline was less severe than recent

well founded conclusions in peer-reviewed literature.36 The

authors question the climate science of Arctic warming and

the scientific modeling that indicates climate change as a

threat to polar bear populations. Leading polar bear and

Arctic ice scientists criticized the article for containing “no

new research” and drawing erroneous conclusions from

existing research. Two polar bear experts, Dr. Ian Stirling37

and Dr. Andrew Derocher38, published a response to the

paper, stating that the 2007 article did not adequately

support the claim that non-climate factors were causing the

polar bear population decline. Stirling and Deroucher wrote,

???[The article’s authors] suggest that factors other than climate

warming are responsible for a decline in the polar bear

population of Western Hudson Bay… In our examination

of their alternative explanations, and the data available to

evaluate each, we found little support for any.???39

Oil interests and their allies likely realize that polar bear

protections might hinder oil exploration in the Arctic. In

addition, because polar bear decline is an iconic symbol of

the climate crisis, undermining the scientific proof of polar

bears in peril would potentially delay overall climate policy

measures that will reduce oil consumption.

The co-authors of the paper include long time climate

deniers: Sallie Baliunas,40 David Legates41 and Tim Ball42.

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have a documented history

of receiving money from oil interests. ExxonMobil Foundation

tax records and company documents confirm a series

of grants to the Center for Astrophysics, which employs

both Soon and Baliunas. In 2008, ExxonMobil contributed

$76,10643 to Soon and Baliunas’ institute, the Smithsonian

Astrophysics Observatory, with funding totalling over

$340,000 in four grants since 2005.

Soon and Baliunas were the authors of another controversial

climate “junk science” report in 2003, funded by the

American Petroleum Institute. The paper, “Lessons & Limits

of Climate History: Was the 20th Century Climate Unusual?”,

published by another industry-funded think tank, the George

Marshall Institute,44 attacked the research of climate scientist

Michael Mann, who has also been a prominent target in the

“Climategate” controversy detailed above. Soon, Baliunas and

Legates teamed up on a version of the same paper, published

in a small journal Climate Research, which generated

such an uproar that the Editor in Chief and several others

resigned in protest.45 46 Both Soon and Baliunas have been

associated as spokespeople, advisors and board members

of multiple Koch-funded climate denial groups over the past

decade.

The 2007 polar bear junk science paper prompted a letter to

ExxonMobil from North Carolina Representative Brad Miller,47

Chair of the US House Subcommittee on Investigations

and Oversight, which raised a key question about Exxon???s

funding, which could well have been asked of Koch and API:

“To people outside the scientific community, one PhD may

seem like another. Certainly Exxon knows better, however.

Yet according to Dr Soon, an astrophysicist by profession,

ExxonMobil funded the development of his ???opinions” on

global warming and its potential impact on polar bear

populations???The Congress and the Public have a right to

know why ExxonMobil is funding a scientist whose writing

is outside his area of expertise to create the impression that

expert scientists have conducted vigorous, peer reviewed

work that says the problems with polar bears [and climate

change] are unproven or unserious.”48

Exxon responded,49 denying responsibility for Soon’s research

and claiming that the paper had undergone a ??lengthy

peer review process.”

The Koch-funded climate denial groups kicked into gear

before the paper was published. Regardless of the non-peer

reviewed status of the Ecological Complexity paper, it gave

the appearance of a peer reviewed paper. Multiple Koch and

Exxon-funded groups rebroadcast the story through their

websites and other media outlets, emphasizing the paper

and its ??findings’ that polar bears are not endangered by

climate change. When the Bush Administration was forced

to consider listing the polar bear under the Endangered

Species Act (by a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and other

environmental groups), Sarah Palin and her officers in the

Alaskan government referenced the 2007 Dyck, Soon et al.

polar bear paper in its formal protest of government action

to protect the polar bear, even before the paper was even

published.50

Additional Koch-funded groups and industry groups threatened

to sue the Federal government for listing the polar bear

under the Endangered Species Act, including the American

Enterprise Institute51, the Heritage Foundation52, and National

Association of Manufacturers

int Appellants:

State of Alaska (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352)

Safari Club International; and Safari Club International

Foundation (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5219; D.D.C. No. 08-1550)

California Cattlemen’s Association; and Congress of

Racial Equality (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5221; D.D.C. No. 08-

1689) (also Intervenor-Plaintiffs-Appellants in State of

Alaska cases (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352))

Conservation Force; Inuvialuit Game Council; Arviat

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Resolute Bay

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Louie Nigiyok d/b/a

Arctic Hills Tour Company; Nanuk Outfitting, Ltd.,

Canada North Outfittings, Inc.; Ameri-cana Expeditions,

Inc.; Webb Outfitting Nunavut, Ltd.; Henik Lake

Adventures, Ltd.; Joseph Verni d/b/a Natura Sport;

USCA Case #11-5219 Document #1393180

Filed: 09/06/2012 Page 3 of 117

Page 4

ii

Dallas Safari Club; Houston Safari Club; African Safari

Club of Florida, Inc.; Mark Beeler; Timothy Decker;

Chris Hanks; Don Hershey; Steve Hornady; William

Keene; Rob Kreider; Allyn Ladd; Ethel Leedy; Everett

Madson; Aaron Neilson; Major Roger Oerter; Bradley

Pritz; Kevin Reid; Robert Remillard; Jeff Sevor; Steve

Smith; Ted Stallings; Larry Steiner; Darwin J. Vander

Esch; Tim Walters (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5222; D.D.C. No.

09-245)

Federal Defendants-Appellees:

United States Fish and Wildlife Service; Daniel M. Ashe,

Director, United States Fish & Wildlife Service; and Ken

Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior

Intervenor Defendants-Appellees:

Center for Biological Diversity; Greenpeace, Inc.; and

Natural Resources Defense Council (all of which were

Plaintiffs in D.D.C. No. 08-2113, but have not appealed,

and were Intervenor-Defendants in D.D.C. Nos. 08-1352,

08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-0245)

Humane Society of the United States; International Fund

for Animal Welfare (both of which intervened in D.D.C.

No. 09-0245)

Defenders of Wildlife (which intervened in D.D.C. Nos.

08-1352, 08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-245

After getting past the initial shock of hearing about John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I quickly honed in on two particularly salient aspects of her environmental views: her belief that climate change is not man-made and her opposition to the polar bear's listing as a threatened species. Now while I may not yet know much about Palin's overall record in office (what little there is), I thought these positions were telling -- especially given the McCain campaign's strenuous efforts to play up its candidate's environmental bona fides.

Which is why I'm sure the McCain campaign won't be too thrilled with the news that the American Petroleum Institute (gee, what a surprise) and several other industry groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers (yup, these guys) and the National Mining Association, are joining the Palin administration's efforts to overturn the polar bearlisting, as the WaPo's Kari Lydersen reports.

Polar bears are doing just fine, thank you very much

Palin's team and the industry groups have complained that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to list the polar bear would create an "Alaska Gap" by only subjecting the state's businesses to onerous greenhouse gas limits. Other states would be able to skirt such controls since they wouldn't have to make conservation a priority. A fair contention, perhaps, but this is where the lawsuit's argument really breaks down:

On Aug. 4, the state of Alaska filed a lawsuit opposing the polar bear's listing, arguing that their populations as a whole are stable and that melting sea ice does not pose an imminent threat to their survival. The suit says polar bears have survived warming periods in the past.

Lawsuit seeks to reverse decision by Bush administration

It's one thing to argue that the listing would impose burdensome regulations on your state; it's quite another to argue that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, polar bear populations are not being harmed by climate change and that they have survived such incidents in the past. The important thing to remember here is that the decision would only list the polar bear as a threatened species (not endangered), and that it is being proposed by the Bush administration.

The easiest way to circumvent all this legal tussling would be for the federal government to actually impose greenhouse gas emission limits nationwide -- or, at the very least, allow individual states to do so themselves -- effectively negating the industry groups' argument that the listing would unfairly target Alaska. Of course we all know what the likelihood of that ever happening is.

Via ::The Washington Post: Oil Group Joins Alaska in Suing To Overturn Polar Bear Protection (news website)

More about polar bears

::US Department of Interior Lists Polar Bear As Threatened

::Follow the Ice and Save the Polar Bears

::The Next Polar Bear: Pacific Walrus

old version: ebell, cei inhofe sues to supress nat'l assess

palin api and oil co polar bear suit, also nam

 ==

Dr. Charles Monnett, who had been under investigation with respect to his 2006 paper documenting polar bear mortality and with his administration of a cooperative study of polar bears carried out jointly with the University of Alberta, appears to have been un officially vindicated. Yesterday, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), who have been representing Monnett, released emails showing that he had not acted improperly in any way.

They also noted that, unfortunately:

Finally, the fact of the investigation has subjected Dr. Monnett's family to harassment, especially from climate-change skeptics who have, for example, posted his wife’s work email address on the web and invited readers to flood her inbox at her workplace which lead to a number of hateful and threatening messages.

Sadly, they are correct. I personally verified on 9/15/2011 that Climate Depot website had indeed done just that. Their post, date-stamped August 1, 2011, repeated the false claim that Dr. Monnett's wife (a respected scientist in her own right) had served as peer reviewer to her husband's paper, and publicly posted her work email address.

The post also commanded readers to:

Contact Monnett's wife [name redacted] with questions/comments about the Polar Bear paper: [email redacted.]

The reaction of some climate change denialists was apparently as predictable as it was regrettable, but PEER has drawn a merciful veil over the specific threats and insults that were hurled.

pacific legal fdn:

int Appellants:

State of Alaska (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352)

Safari Club International; and Safari Club International

Foundation (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5219; D.D.C. No. 08-1550)

California Cattlemen’s Association; and Congress of

Racial Equality(D.C. Cir. No. 11-5221; D.D.C. No. 08-

1689) (also Intervenor-Plaintiffs-Appellants in State of

Alaska cases (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352))

Conservation Force; Inuvialuit Game Council; Arviat

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Resolute Bay

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Louie Nigiyok d/b/a

Arctic Hills Tour Company; Nanuk Outfitting, Ltd.,

Canada North Outfittings, Inc.; Ameri-cana Expeditions,

Inc.; Webb Outfitting Nunavut, Ltd.; Henik Lake

Joseph Verni d/b/a Natura Spot;

USCA Case #11-5219 Document #1393180

Filed: 09/06/2012 Pag

age 4

ii

Dallas Safari Club; Houston Safari Club; African Safari

Club of Florida, Inc.; Mark Beeler; Timothy Decker;

Chris Hanks; Don Hershey; Steve Hornady; William

Keene; Rob Kreider; Allyn Ladd; Ethel Leedy; Everett

Madson; Aaron Neilson; Major Roger Oerter; Bradley

Pritz; Kevin Reid; Robert Remillard; Jeff Sevor; Steve

Smith; Ted Stallings; Larry Steiner; Darwin J. Vander

Esch; Tim Walters (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5222; D.D.C. No.

09-245)

Federal Defendants-Appellees:

United States Fish and Wildlife Service; Daniel M. Ashe,

Director, United States Fish & Wildlife Service; and Ken

Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior

Intervenor Defendants-Appellees:

Center for Biological Diversity; Greenpeace, Inc.; and

Natural Resources Defense Council (all of which were

Plaintiffs in D.D.C. No. 08-2113, but have not appealed,

and were Intervenor-Defendants in D.D.C. Nos. 08-1352,

08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-0245)

Humane Society of the United States; International Fund

for Animal Welfare (both of which intervened in D.D.C.

No. 09-0245)

Defenders of Wildlife (which intervened in D.D.C. Nos.

08-1352, 08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-245

update 10/12

Polar Bears' Threatened Species Designation Contested In U.S. Appeals Court

Reuters  |  Posted: 10/19/2012 1:28 pm EDT Updated: 10/19/2012 4:27 pm EDT

WASHINGTON, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Polar bears' designation as a threatened species was challenged in a U.S. appeals court on Friday, with a lawyer for Alaska and other parties arguing that regulators had failed to back up the listing.

Alaska and other plaintiffs that include hunters and the California Cattlemen's Association are appealing a federal court ruling last year that upheld the Interior Department's 2008 designation of the bears as threatened because their icy habitat is melting away.

Murray Feldman, a lawyer for Alaska and other appellants, told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the government had failed to show how the big white bears likely would be nearing extinction at the middle of this century.

The department's decision on the Arctic mammals was "arbitrary and capricious" since it was based on flawed models, Feldman said in oral arguments before a three-judge panel.

Katherine Hazard, a lawyer for the department's Fish and Wildlife Service, said that the designation relied on decades of research and long-term trends underpinned it.

"The agency needs to make a determination based on the best available science, which the agency did here," she said.

A designation that a species is threatens means that it is likely to become endangered within the foreseeable future in all or a significant part of its range.

Bruce Woods, a Fish and Wildlife spokesman, said the listing drew more attention to the bears' plight and also triggered funding for programs including patrols to limit contact with humans and a recovery plan for the bears.

Arctic sea ice shrank to a record low of 1.32 million square miles (3.41 million square km) by mid-September, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency reported this month.

A decision by the appeals court is not expected for months.

Alaska and oil companies have argued that Endangered Species Act protections for polar bears diminish opportunities for Alaska energy development.

The state has said in its appeals court filing that bears have survived previous warming periods and most populations have grown or remained stable despite shrinkage of ice.

The case is Safari Club International et al v. Ken Salazar et al and Center for Biological Diversity et al, No. 11-5219. (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Paul Simao)

2008 suit: aei, nam, US CoC, Nat'l mining assoc, Am Iron and Steel Inst. 196 joined palin 2007 ltr to kemptheorne, ref'd soon paper a week before it was published 197  april 9  kempthorne did not want to list, tho his asst Hall (B2 appt) said no doubt about problem 197 foolme2x

legates and soon had worked together before ; not new data, just cherrypick

2003 soon paper ~ Mann by GCMI; sci figuted out how to use tree ring density crrelated to temp; mann extended: blue reconstructed, w/ red for actual and grey to show margin of error 199

greenpeace 2010 on koch: Case Study 2: Polar Bear Junk Science

In 2007, several prominent climate denial scientists published

a non-peer reviewed article,35 (Dyck, Soon et al, 2007 ��Polar

bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: Are

warming spring air temperatures the ‘��ultimate����� survival

control factor?”) concluding that polar bears are not being

threatened by anthropogenic global warming. One of the

paper���s authors, Dr. Willie Soon, disclosed in the acknowledgements

section that he had received direct corporate

funding for the work, stating ���W. Soon’s effort for the

completion of this paper was partially supported by grants

from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American

Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.” (Exxon

grants to Soon’s organization are detailed below. The exact

amount received from the Koch foundation was not found

on its 990 forms. The American Petroleum Institute does

not disclose the multiple grants it has made to such climate

denial organizations over the years.)

The paper, which did not include any new scientific research,

but drew from other published work, appeared in the journal

Ecological Complexity as a “Viewpoint��� piece. This article

declared Arctic sea ice decline was less severe than recent

well founded conclusions in peer-reviewed literature.36 The

authors question the climate science of Arctic warming and

the scientific modeling that indicates climate change as a

threat to polar bear populations. Leading polar bear and

Arctic ice scientists criticized the article for containing “no

new research” and drawing erroneous conclusions from

existing research. Two polar bear experts, Dr. Ian Stirling37

and Dr. Andrew Derocher38, published a response to the

paper, stating that the 2007 article did not adequately

support the claim that non-climate factors were causing the

polar bear population decline. Stirling and Deroucher wrote,

���[The article’s authors] suggest that factors other than climate

warming are responsible for a decline in the polar bear

population of Western Hudson Bay… In our examination

of their alternative explanations, and the data available to

evaluate each, we found little support for any.���39

Oil interests and their allies likely realize that polar bear

protections might hinder oil exploration in the Arctic. In

addition, because polar bear decline is an iconic symbol of

the climate crisis, undermining the scientific proof of polar

bears in peril would potentially delay overall climate policy

measures that will reduce oil consumption.

The co-authors of the paper include long time climate

deniers: Sallie Baliunas,40 David Legates41 and Tim Ball42.

Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas have a documented history

of receiving money from oil interests. ExxonMobil Foundation

tax records and company documents confirm a series

of grants to the Center for Astrophysics, which employs

both Soon and Baliunas. In 2008, ExxonMobil contributed

$76,10643 to Soon and Baliunas’ institute, the Smithsonian

Astrophysics Observatory, with funding totalling over

$340,000 in four grants since 2005.

Soon and Baliunas were the authors of another controversial

climate “junk science” report in 2003, funded by the

American Petroleum Institute. The paper, “Lessons & Limits

of Climate History: Was the 20th Century Climate Unusual?”,

published by another industry-funded think tank, the George

Marshall Institute,44 attacked the research of climate scientist

Michael Mann, who has also been a prominent target in the

“Climategate” controversy detailed above. Soon, Baliunas and

Legates teamed up on a version of the same paper, published

in a small journal Climate Research, which generated

such an uproar that the Editor in Chief and several others

resigned in protest.45 46 Both Soon and Baliunas have been

associated as spokespeople, advisors and board members

of multiple Koch-funded climate denial groups over the past

decade.

The 2007 polar bear junk science paper prompted a letter to

ExxonMobil from North Carolina Representative Brad Miller,47

Chair of the US House Subcommittee on Investigations

and Oversight, which raised a key question about Exxon���s

funding, which could well have been asked of Koch and API:

“To people outside the scientific community, one PhD may

seem like another. Certainly Exxon knows better, however.

Yet according to Dr Soon, an astrophysicist by profession,

ExxonMobil funded the development of his ���opinions” on

global warming and its potential impact on polar bear

populations���The Congress and the Public have a right to

know why ExxonMobil is funding a scientist whose writing

is outside his area of expertise to create the impression that

expert scientists have conducted vigorous, peer reviewed

work that says the problems with polar bears [and climate

change] are unproven or unserious.”48

Exxon responded,49 denying responsibility for Soon’s research

and claiming that the paper had undergone a ��lengthy

peer review process.”

The Koch-funded climate denial groups kicked into gear

before the paper was published. Regardless of the non-peer

reviewed status of the Ecological Complexity paper, it gave

the appearance of a peer reviewed paper. Multiple Koch and

Exxon-funded groups rebroadcast the story through their

websites and other media outlets, emphasizing the paper

and its ��findings’ that polar bears are not endangered by

climate change. When the Bush Administration was forced

to consider listing the polar bear under the Endangered

Species Act (by a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and other

environmental groups), Sarah Palin and her officers in the

Alaskan government referenced the 2007 Dyck, Soon et al.

polar bear paper in its formal protest of government action

to protect the polar bear, even before the paper was even

published.50

Additional Koch-funded groups and industry groups threatened

to sue the Federal government for listing the polar bear

under the Endangered Species Act, including the American

Enterprise Institute51, the Heritage Foundation52, and National

Association of Manufacturers

int Appellants:

State of Alaska (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352)

Safari Club International; and Safari Club International

Foundation (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5219; D.D.C. No. 08-1550)

California Cattlemen’s Association; and Congress of

Racial Equality (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5221; D.D.C. No. 08-

1689) (also Intervenor-Plaintiffs-Appellants in State of

Alaska cases (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5223; D.D.C. No. 08-

1352))

Conservation Force; Inuvialuit Game Council; Arviat

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Resolute Bay

Hunters and Trappers Organization; Louie Nigiyok d/b/a

Arctic Hills Tour Company; Nanuk Outfitting, Ltd.,

Canada North Outfittings, Inc.; Ameri-cana Expeditions,

Inc.; Webb Outfitting Nunavut, Ltd.; Henik Lake

Adventures, Ltd.; Joseph Verni d/b/a Natura Sport;

USCA Case #11-5219 Document #1393180

Filed: 09/06/2012 Page 3 of 117

Page 4

ii

Dallas Safari Club; Houston Safari Club; African Safari

Club of Florida, Inc.; Mark Beeler; Timothy Decker;

Chris Hanks; Don Hershey; Steve Hornady; William

Keene; Rob Kreider; Allyn Ladd; Ethel Leedy; Everett

Madson; Aaron Neilson; Major Roger Oerter; Bradley

Pritz; Kevin Reid; Robert Remillard; Jeff Sevor; Steve

Smith; Ted Stallings; Larry Steiner; Darwin J. Vander

Esch; Tim Walters (D.C. Cir. No. 11-5222; D.D.C. No.

09-245)

Federal Defendants-Appellees:

United States Fish and Wildlife Service; Daniel M. Ashe,

Director, United States Fish & Wildlife Service; and Ken

Salazar, United States Secretary of the Interior

Intervenor Defendants-Appellees:

Center for Biological Diversity; Greenpeace, Inc.; and

Natural Resources Defense Council (all of which were

Plaintiffs in D.D.C. No. 08-2113, but have not appealed,

and were Intervenor-Defendants in D.D.C. Nos. 08-1352,

08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-0245)

Humane Society of the United States; International Fund

for Animal Welfare (both of which intervened in D.D.C.

No. 09-0245)

Defenders of Wildlife (which intervened in D.D.C. Nos.

08-1352, 08-1550, 08-1689, and 09-245

After getting past the initial shock of hearing about John McCain's selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, I quickly honed in on two particularly salient aspects of her environmental views: her belief that climate change is not man-made and her opposition to the **polar** bear's listing as a threatened species. Now while I may not yet know much about Palin's overall record in office (what little there is), I thought these positions were telling -- especially given the McCain campaign's strenuous efforts to play up its candidate's environmental bona fides.

Which is why I'm sure the McCain campaign won't be too thrilled with the news that the American Petroleum Institute (gee, what a surprise) and several other industry groups, including the National Association of Manufacturers (yup, these guys) and the National Mining Association, are joining the Palin administration's efforts to overturn the polar bear listing, as the WaPo's Kari Lydersen reports.

alaska governor sarah palin photo

Polar bears are doing just fine, thank you very much

Palin's team and the industry groups have complained that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's decision to list the polar bear would create an "Alaska Gap" by only subjecting the state's businesses to onerous greenhouse gas limits. Other states would be able to skirt such controls since they wouldn't have to make conservation a priority. A fair contention, perhaps, but this is where the lawsuit's argument really breaks down:

On Aug. 4, the state of Alaska filed a lawsuit opposing the polar bear's listing, arguing that their populations as a whole are stable and that melting sea ice does not pose an imminent threat to their survival. The suit says polar bears have survived warming periods in the past.

Lawsuit seeks to reverse decision by Bush administration

It's one thing to argue that the listing would impose burdensome regulations on your state; it's quite another to argue that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, polar bear populations are not being harmed by climate change and that they have survived such incidents in the past. The important thing to remember here is that the decision would only list the polar bear as a threatened species (not endangered), and that it is being proposed by the Bush administration.

The easiest way to circumvent all this legal tussling would be for the federal government to actually impose greenhouse gas emission limits nationwide -- or, at the very least, allow individual states to do so themselves -- effectively negating the industry groups' argument that the listing would unfairly target Alaska. Of course we all know what the likelihood of that ever happening is.

Via ::The Washington Post: Oil Group Joins Alaska in Suing To Overturn **Polar** **Bear** Protection (news website)

More about polar bears

::US Department of Interior Lists **Polar** **Bear** As Threatened

::Follow the Ice and Save the **Polar** Bears

::The Next **Polar Bear**: Pacific Walrus