Climate change panel’s ice melt forecast challenged

ONCE again we are confronted with yet another dishonest article on climate change (‘Climate change is far worse than anyone imagined’, July 28). Where does one start?

Firstly, the picture with the two polar bears off the coast of Alaska is misleading. The bears in question are surely more recognisable than Che Guevara at this stage, such is the ubiquity of this photo. This picture was taken by an Australian marine biology student, Amanda Byrd, in August 2004 (that’s summer time in the northern hemisphere) and found its way to Associated Press via the Canadian Ice Service and Environment Canada.

She took the picture because she liked the way the wind had sculpted the ice. But were the bears in any danger? Well not according to Denis Simard of Environment Canada who said “you have to keep in mind that the bears are not in danger at all. This is a perfect picture for climate change. You have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die ... But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim ... They are still alive and having fun”. Also, the statement that Arctic sea ice melt is well ahead of what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) forecast is just incorrect. This can be seen by examining sea ice extent from satellite data from, for example, Arctic ROOS (Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre, Norway) which, as of June of this year, was within one standard deviation of the 30-year mean (30 years being the length of time that satellites have been used for this purpose).