The CAGW fraternity are not into admitting very much about the ice extent currently in the Arctic, concentrating instead on a big batch of walrus huddled together on one small island. They say this is due to ongoing ice loss with walrus forced to become landlubbers, assuming they prefer to squat on ice floes. However, once the issue is investigated a little more it quickly becomes obvious they are huddled on the island because there is so much sea ice in the Chukchi Sea – but not only that, it is also a fact that walrus numbers have increased enormously over recent years – but your average young environmental activist wouldn't know that as they don't read books or printed articles. If it can't be reached by clicking on their i-phone then it don't exist. Its like 1930s warming. If you want to know anything about it you have to read some out of date books and articles – such as the hefty tomes of Hubert Lamb. They don't do things like that and that is why they have the wool pulled over their eyes. If it's not in soundbites it ain't real. The story is at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10.06/global-sea-ice-overview-walrus-gat… … and is all part of the Sea Ice pages on Anthony's web site, which uses orthodox data from orthodox sources and not some kind of magic stuff he conjures out of a hat, as activists seem to think. However, the piece itself is predictable. It was some of the comments that caught my eye.
A lot of the plots used by Anthony came from Cryosphere Today, a comment alleges, which is the same group that publishes a plot of 20th century ice history in which the 1900-1950 period is untruthfully made a flat line, hockey stick style. The plot is in utter contradiction to other sources of the period. Hence, Anthony is forced to work with data that has been manufactured – for whatever reason, and yet it still contradicts the CAGW alarm bell. Henry Clark adds, 'people often have a naive assumption that a source like Cryosphere Today should be assumed accurate but that assumption is really based on (a) extrapolation from the honesty rates of a general populace, which is inapplicable as hardcore activists are not a random sample, and/or (b) presuming there would be net govermental or academic penalty for fudging, when no historical examples of that ever happening in the case of CAGW convenient subtle fudging are the given, when many of corresponding enviro-political alignments would jump up to aid them if it even started to happen …' and so on.
However, the most damning comment comes from Jim Steele at 8.54pm 'thousands of walruses on Alaskan beaches was typical before ivory hunters drove them from the shores. Captain Bernard published two papers in the 1920s about how wise hunting regulations allowed the walrus to return to the shores of Siberia and he lobbied to create preserves to encourage the return of the walrus to the Alaskan shore. The sight of 10,000 walrus would have made his heart leap with joy. That the return of large numbers has been hijacked as an example of climate catastrophe would make the good captain turn in his grave, especially in a year when sea ice witnessed a 60 per cent recovery'. His source is Bernard (1923) 'Local Walrus Protection in NE Siberia', in the Journal of Mammology, 4:4 (november, 1923) pages 224-227. See also the 1982 publication by the US Fish and Wildlife Service titled 'Ecology and Biology of the Pacific Walrus, Odobenus Rosmarus Divergens Illiger' by Francis H Fay. He documents how hunting drove many walruses from traditional land haul outs. He reports how polar bears in the Laptev Sea dig pits and hide behind piles of driftwood waiting for the walrus to come ashore. A high percentage of the male walruses in the Bering Sea do not follow the receding ice northward but migrate southward to Bristol Bay and the Aleutians. Sea ice is not a critical factor. In fact before the 1980s a Russian biologist wrote that sea ice was detrimental because it prevented access to the shallow bottoms needed for foraging. I wrote a whole chapter on the history of walrus hunting and their recovery. The larger the population the greater the numbers that come ashore. This is another example of climate change advocates hijacking a conservation success story to create climate fear.' He adds that less Arctic ice has been a boom to the whole food web, quoting a professor from Stanford University (rather than an enviro) – see http://landscapesandcycles.net/less-arctic-ice-can-be-beneficial.html and http://climategrog.wordpress.com/2013/09/16/on-identifying-inter-decadal…