Same scare. Different species.
The BBC reports,
Warming oceans and melting sea ice may have a major impact on harp seals, the doe-eyed animals that are the prime target for Canada’s annual seal hunt.
Researchers from Duke University in the US found that sea ice in the seals’ breeding grounds has shrunk by about 6% per decade over the last 30 years.
In some recent years, they say, entire years’ broods of cubs may have died.
The species is abundant; the Duke team says its future depends on how it can adjust to new climatic conditions…
There are plenty of polar bears. There are plenty of harp seals. Nevertheless, any pup that fails to reach maturity has been done in by manmade climate change?
Niko, just one more question to you, before I sign off:
You quoted among other things, that you shall continue to live a happy, STRESS-FREE live, thus why are you so worried about a melting ice-cover and disappearing perma-frost? That is a contradiction in itself. I do not worry about climate-change, as it is a natural cycle and nobody can do anything about it, but what I am concerned about is zealotry from charlatans and the loss of our own freedom to those zealots. Among the many hypocrites, who tell us how to live, are billionaires and multi-milllionaires, like a Warren Buffett, Al Gore, Richard Branson etc. They made their huge fortunes from all kinds of “air-polluting businesses”, still leave huge “carbon foot-prints” by either owning large fleets of jumbo-jets, like Richard Branson, or own 5 mansions plus one jumbo-jet like Al Gore (who also tries to become richer by trading in carbon-credits, plus 5 large chauffeur-driven SUV’s) and tell the ordinary people not to “foul the air”! Tens of thousands of environmental “NGO’s” and “Green” bureacrats fly to every overseas’ conference in jumbo-jets, drive SUV’s and enjoy first-class hotel-accommodation (air-conditioned) at tax-payers’s expense to blab about how to stop climate-change, while quaffing expensive drinks and gorging on expensive food. Their message is simple: “do not live the way, that we live in, as we only have the right to do so”.
Niko, with all the “Texas side-steps”, you have not shed your strong believe in the flawed theory of
our planet being in dire strait, like when you pointed out, that due to AGW, masses of ice-cover are lost, including your theory about the tundra. Ask NASA and they will confirm to you, that their latest probe in the health of our bioshpere showed that it is very, very positive. You have avoided the fact, that global warming would actually be a boon to our earth and it is a fact, that CO2 levels at current levels of 392p.p.m. are still approx. 18 times lower, than when flora and fauna first appeared on earth some 600 million years ago. The hundreds of thousands of green-growers, who grow their crops of plants, flowers and vegetables in their glass-houses, increase the heat to obtain some 1,000 p.p.m. of CO2 in order to reap rich crops. I am concerned about the health of our atmosphere and water like every one else, but adequate filtering-processes have made huge steps towards the clean-up, as I can still remember, when for example, the German Rurhgebiet, was full of soot in the early 1950’s, when I was stationed there. Now the air is totally free of that soot and the Thames in London is again full of fish, and the terrible London Fog, that used to kill many thousands of people each winter, has disappeared too. Thus, sensible processes can work and there is no reason for scare-mongering and spreading lies, like the environmental zealots can not cease in order to rule our lives. Just ask yourself, why is it, that Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace, has distanced himself from that group? He became saddened by the corrupt way the environmentalists have moved to. I have always believed in the middle road and detested zealots, who keep intruding in peoples’ lives. If they wish to live that way, that is fine with me, but they should not push their brain-dead ideas on others, who wish to live in a democracy and not in a totalitarian society. Honesty should always be the priority in our lives.
Please also read f.e. just a few of the many dozens of articles on the Internet, such as http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/23/lawrence-solomon-supreme-skeptics/ and http://www.petitionproject.org.
The first one shows, that the U.S. Supreme Court in June of 2011 ruled, that CO2 is a totally harmless gas, which is vital to life on earth and thus should not be targeted as a threat. The second one shows, that the so-called “consensus” among scientists (a claim too often made by the environmentalists and Left Wing media and bureacrats) is totally false, as out of the 51,000 registered scientists in the U.S., more than 31,000 are skeptics of AGW, thus over 20,000 more skeptics, than believers in the U.S. alone.
The list of articles which debunk AGW is too long to quote, but if you wish more proof, then please let me know. But it is very tragic, that too many true scientists are either threatened with dismissal, or have lost their careers because they dared to stand up for the truth. The most telling dismissals
are of Dr. Robert Tennekens, a Professor Emeritus in Climatology, who after a 10 year stint as a university-lecturer in the U.S., and was asked by the Dutch government to lead their Royal Netherlands Institution of Meteorology in the Bilt, was sacked by the board of directors, after he started to clean up the corrupt processes of measuring true temperatures. The institution was following the flawed “computer modelling” processes instructed to them by the I.P.C.C. Unfortunately for him, some board members had powerful friends in the then Socialist Dutch government. The same happened to Dr. Bellamy, the famous botanist, who after initially being a believer of AGW, changed his mind and told this on his B.B.C. programme in London. He too was sacked because he dared to air his different view. And we are supposed to live in an “open society”! Be proud of your “happy and stress-full life” as long as you can, but also try to be more sympathetic to the masses of people, who are not in such a lucky position, especially when bureacrats through flawed “advice” from “experts” cause those problems for them.
Why do you assume I don’t like nuclear power? It’s a great power source. The waste management is difficult, but only because nuclear non-proliferation agreements make it virtually impossible to refine waste, as weapons-grade plutonium is a a byproduct (though you can also use it to generate power). I’d love to see more reactors, uranium, plutonium, thorium, whatever burns best at the lowest cost. It doesn’t matter if so many oppose Obama’s policies, he’s still their president as much as anybody’s, and he still is working to make their lives better (unless you think he’s taking America down from the inside, trying to establish a palace economy like in the Soviet Union).
It would not be better for any country to rely on its own resources, because some countries are better equipped to certain tasks than others, and lower costs are better for the consumer. It’s capitalism, the more competitive business makes the sale. I’m a capitalist, I prefer American products, but have gotten many excellent things from around the world, including China. I focus on build quality when I buy things rather than cost, but I don’t buy tons of things, so it isn’t so expensive. I live within my means, and invest my money in low yield, stable stock (mostly American) that pays dividends, I then reinvest the dividends. I won’t get rich doing it, but I pay my bills and have a good credit score. The high unemployment rate is due to what’s know to economists as structural unemployment. An economic crisis, such as 2008’s can force a shift in the demand curve a businesses layoff and cut costs. By the time the dust settles (and it mostly has here), the jobs have shifted elsewhere, so the jobless rate can’t just go back to the way they were. I don’t have time to type out a lesson on freshman level macroeconomics, but there are plenty of good case studies of economies in recession. I lean towards the Austrian School of economic thought, but I ground that with more modern monetary theory, putting me on the border between Austrian and Chicago school, well away from Keynes. I have a liberal arts education in the Jeffersonian tradition, and I care about the environment because I’ve taken the time to study it, rather than ways to discount its value. I spend a great deal of time outside hiking and fishing and the like, but I also have a great interest in industrial processes and industrial history. I don’t appreciate the assumptions you and other comments seem to make about me (pegged as some granola eating socialist or something) So I think I let you all have a victory here while I get on with my life and apply my work ethic and education to solving problems, and because I have the self-control to stick to a budget, and have decent job security, I’ll continue to live a happy, stress-free life. I hope you can say the same, but if not, good luck.
Niko, you obviously missed a number of points, that I made.
1/ It would be better for any country, to use its own resources, instead of racking up huge
trade-deficits and making other countries rich, while attempting to kill-off jobs for your
own people. California will benefit from improved wealth in other states of the U.S., but you rather
see more cheaper imports from f.e. countries like China (with inferior products, than locally produced ones) and keep the unemployment rates higher, than necessary. I guess, it is always easy to make judgements from one’s ivory tower, as long as it does not involve oneself.
To rely on imports from the Middle East, for your oil is a very costly and now a very insecure proposition, with Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz.
2/ Your quote: “the White House represents every man woman and child in the USA”. If so, why then are there so many people opposed to Obama’s failed policies? Do you remember, when he promised, that wind-power would create many tens of thousands of jobs in the U.S. and instead those jobs went to China, where the majority of turbines are manufactured and as has been proven everywhere, for 1 job created in “clean energy”, 2-1/2 jobs are lost in the traditional fossil-fuel generated business, plus “clean energy” requires enormous amounts of tax-payers’ dollars to set up. If “clean energy” is so good, why does it need propping up at tax-payers’ expense and why are there so many wind-farms standing idle and rusting away? Cracks also started to show in the solar-power and electric vehicles businesses, but it is obvious, that you still believe in the “Green mantra”. Who else, but the tax-payers have to fork out the money and not “green slaves”, like Mr. Obama, or Al Gore etc.
3/ “Europe is failing because they guaranteed low interest loans to people with bad credits etc. etc.”.
That was only part of their problems, but while the stronger economies could weather the banking-collapse, the weaker ones, like Greece and Spain especially, suffered more, because of the extra burden of “clean energy” put on them by gullible governments over the last 8 years. Even the Netherlands, which is still in one of the strongest positions in Europe, has under its new government recently decided to cut their funding to the wind-turbine businesses by 30 percent with more to come, plus are going to invest in nuclear energy instead. They have not been “sucked in” by the doomsday hype of Fukushima, like f.e. Germany. They knew, that the phobia for nuclear energy is not warranted, because f.e. just the one dam in China, the Bao dam, that burst in 1972 as a result from an explosion in one of the generators, had caused 171,000 lives compared to not one in Fukushima. It was the Left Wing media, that milked every dollar out of the nuclear plant “disaster”, caused by the tsunami and immorally, there was not much headline news about the huge loss of live, as it was not as sensational as the doomsay about nuclear energy and would not have earned the media enough money. France has happily used nuclear energy for electricity production since the 1950’s and now generates 80 percent of their total output by that technology and sells huge surpluses to many countries in Europe, including Germany, were Angela Merkel had her knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima and decided to de-commission nuclear power-stations alltogether! We’ll see, what the electorate thinks, when their electricity bills keep rising and rising.
I bring malaria up every time I meet someone who praises Carson’s book. DDT has a practical use, I wish more people used it to fight malaria. Good for North Dakota, and anybody else with small populations and steady mining jobs. It’s honest work. California has a huge population that’s not geared toward mining or industry. (nor should they be when a cargo ship full of cheaper goods can pull into the port of LA). Obama isn’t just mine, he’s the president of every American whether they like it or not, as was Bush, as was Clinton, as were all the rest of them, even when they cheat, even during the civil war, regardless of how sweet or bitter life here gets, the White House represents every man woman and child in the USA. Europe is failing because they guaranteed low interest loans to people with bad credit, just like the banks did before the housing market collapsed.
Re: Anon I never said that humans are bad. Humans are good and powerful. If we’ve influenced our planet in a negative way, it shows we can exert a positive influence. That’s something to be proud of, but before pursuing any major action, it’s a good idea to exercise precaution, because little things can have large effects.
I don’t need to go up there and take measurements, because scientists have braved arctic conditions to do so, and operating independent of one another gathered similar data. I am a skeptic myself, and I used to entertain the hope that things weren’t so bad, but because I’ve worked hard and gone to good schools where I have full access to raw data, and have put my nose to the grindstone reading journals (all that for a minor focus, yeesh!), I’ve been able to draw what I think are pretty damn good conclusions.
My religion has nothing to do with my science, and if you reject hard numbers that confirm straight forward theories then I sincerely doubt you have a lot to do with science either! What? The greenhouse effect is made up, so that climatologists can take over the world, enslaving people in the pursuit of cleaner more efficient industries using fuel supplies that last, and healthier diets? Those four-eyed intelligenciates will shackle us to communism and fascism and socialism and sharia law and atheism, and lord knows what, so that we invest in the 3rd world instead of America? it makes no sense! You think people CAN’T influence their environment or something? Human history has been ABOUT influencing it (that time the USSR drained the Aral Sea to irrigate the Central Asian Steppes), and not always intentionally (the Irish Potato Famine). Small mining operations poorly run have given whole towns heavy metal poisoning, and you think great burning mountains of coal, millions upon millions of years of stored carbon, formerly stored as fast a the earth could vent it, will have no effect worse than a little smog and some ash heaps?!? What will you tell your children, that you discounted chemistry, physics, and empirical observation because an economy based on sustained population growth, the combustion of a limited resource, and lots of beef made more sense? And you suggest that I want to kill all humans? For shame! Study the both sides of this thing and read carefully (but since I told you too, of course you always have, and I’m a dogmatic fool!). Use the brain that God gave you, and make a choice, ask yourself if you are the master of the Earth, or if it’s the master of you!
The deforestation and stripping of vegetation was suggested by the readings I seem not to have read, highlighting that doing so removes an insulating layer from atop the permafrost. I find that explanation unsatisfactory, but I made an acknowledgement to it as an alternative explanation, something required in a succinct argument. I made a note that the world has been warmer in the past because it has, but that in no way means that it should be right now, it’s also been colder, but again, there’s no reason we should expect to wake up to 10,000 years of snow. What sort of moron would say that the Earth’s temperature has been regular until the present age. Any child know’s about mastodons and saber-toothed tigers trudging through the snow.
Sea ice minimums refer to the least area covered by floating arctic ice from one year to the next. For obvious reasons, these minimums are a summer thing.
In the sense that I attribute equal rights and privileges to both men and women, I am a feminist. If by feminist, you mean someone who thinks women should have dominance over men, then you have an odd definition.
As far as facts and refutation go, I said the arctic is warmer and that people and animal’s lives have been disrupted because of this. I didn’t shout or try to convince anybody that people were doing this, I said there’s less ice, because there is less Ice. You might not agree that there is less ice than when you were a child, or that when our children grow up the arctic will be open sea four months of the year, and the great thing is you don’t have to agree, because this is one of those cases where time will tell. When you refute an argument you disprove it, which would require proving that my claim that there is less and less arctic ice false by proving there is as much or more than ever, all you did was editorialize some quotes from me. Say whatever you want.
Niko, just a simple question: why are you so afraid of global warming? Ask the people of Greenland, or Canada, or Russia and other countries, where frozen areas stop any growth of vegetation, which is vital for food, not only for animals, but also humans. While the tropical countries can grow and reap crops up to 3 times a year, no such thing is possible in Greenland f.e., where descendants of the Vikings would love to have their Green land restored to when it was, during their first colonisation of that land. Don’t be such a doomsayer and don’t believe in the corrupt lies of so-called “scientists”, or one of the foremost liars in history: Rachel Carson in her book “Silent Spring” of 1962. Because she claimed that D.D.T. not ony harmed some bird-species, like the Bald Eagle, she falsely claimed, that it also causes cancer in humans. There has never been one proven case of that claim since D.D.T. was first introduced in 1942 and until it was banned by the U.S. EPA in 1972, it had saved the lives of some
1/2 billion rpt 1/2 billion lives around the globe. But since the ban, approx. 58 million people in the 3rd World Countries have died, with the majority of the vicitims being foetuses still in their mothers’ wombs, babies and infants. Stop believing in charlatans and doomsayers and try to use more commonsense. Idologies, like communism, that promised the masses the world and has sofar caused approx. 110 million lives, are just destructive and should be avoided like the pest and not followed slavishly, like one does not have any brains at all. It is a fact, that too many academics during the 1960’s and 1970’s brain-washed hundreds of thousands of gullible students to believe, that communism was the way to go. You would think, that those “educated” people had any integrity and
commonsense, but people like f.e. Hitler, Staling, Mao tse Tung and other world-leaders with higher, than average i.q.’s turned out to be mass-murderers, so give me the honest, hard-working farmers and down-to-earth people any time, because one can trust them with one’s lives.
By the way, I received a letter from one of the EPA’s managers on behalf of Ms. Lisa Jackson, after I questioned the department’s decision not to rescind the ban on D.D.T. The weak explanation was, that eventhough there has been no proof of cancer in humans caused by D.D.T., the W.H.O. deems it as a “probable” cause of cancer and now allows a few countries in Africa to spray homes under controlled supervision. But those half-baked measures, including the issue of mosquito-nets, are way too insufficient and some 1-1/2 million people still die from malaria each year! Thus “probable” and not “factual” causes, allow them to continue their genocide, without any International Court’s intervention! One does not always need weapons to commit mass-murder, as blocking avenues for survival, by banning life-saving substances, will give the same result. And that is immoral and totally corrupt. I have always believed in facts and not fallacies. Nobody has the right to decide, how people should live or die!
At least the communists showed their true face, but the environmental zealots use corrupt/brain-washing tactics akin to fundamentalist Imams.
Also, think of the 7.5 million Americans, who are job-less and would love to have the Federal Government allow to open up all the natural resources in locked-up areas, instead of relying on imports from Middle Eastern countries and other mineral rich ones. North Dakota, which happily utilises their mining-resources, enjoy just a 3.1 percent in unemployment, compared to the “Green” state California, where the figure lies at 11.3 percent! Your current president, Obama, is just oblivious to the plight of the job-less and home-less masses, while he and his family live very comfortably and it is all, because he is also infatuated by the siren-songs of his EPA and other green groups. His visions of “clean energy” i.e. wind- and solar-power, have already been proven to be a total white elephant, which has cost (and is still costing) many billions in wasted tax-payers’ money and electricity prices keep rising all the time and for what? Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy now are counting the cost of their foolish dream to “lead the world” in wind-power, after those countries squandered hundreds of billions of Euros on that very expensive and totally inefficient technology! What idiots! And your Mr. Obama still refuses too see the facts.
Perhaps the Harp Seal hunters can be a little more efficient and put the species out of its misery.
TL;DR Humans are bad. Kill them all I say. – Niko
So you are denying real facts because it goes against your religion. You are deaf to logic, I see. Instead of debating the users who ever so kindly pointed out some articles detailing ears history, you stick you fingers in your ear and go “LALALALALA CAN’T HEAR YOU CAN’T HEAR YOU”.
Now you are suggesting deforestation rather than climate change. You are going around in circles and avoiding the main point. You don’t want to admit you’re wrong. I highly doubt you read those articles, because it just makes you squirm in disapproval.
“It got pretty warm and wet in the past too, but the landscape was different as well” – You just admitted that there /has/ been warming in the past. You just admitted the error in your already error-ridden logic.
At what area is this “minimum of sea ice” at, I ask? What it during the summer? The winter? Better check the season. “The arctic is irrefutably thawing” in the summer. Of course it thaws. That’s climate. There’s nothing you can do to change it. What you mention is weather, and this is not climate.
You are no different from a feminist! Ha! It’s hilarious to see warmists present these ‘facts’, and label it as ‘irrefutable’. Well, kind sir, I am afraid that this has been refuted.
You are preaching the dogma that is recited by environmentalists. What are these “observed facts” that you mention? Climate changes, and species change along with it. This has been going on since the beginning of time. Ice has melted, rethawed, grown and shrunk over the course of hundreds of thousands of years.
Your claim of “there used to be a lot of sea ice” is weak. There was less ice, and none at all, during the time of the dinosaurs. Was this a cause for an alarm? No. What about the “Snowball” era, where Earth was completely covered in ice and life ceased to survive? An eternity of ice limits life. Your “facts” are based on myth and you disregard the simple fact of life: things change. Life changes with it. When something dies, something else takes its place and flourishes.
What your religion suggests is the extinction of humanity and the (painful) attempt of science and control of climate. There are documented findings of receding ice, yes, but there are also documented sources that show the Arctic had no ice at several points in Earth’s history – and have returned, just as the cycle continues.
Why don’t you practice what you preach? Go to the Arctic circle or Antarctica and stay there for a year, and take ice core samples and note solar cycles. You will find that receding ice is a natural cycle. Humans have little to no part in changing climate. That is, if you count ice breakers, which is induced by humans. Based on your religion, why don’t you ban ice breakers, as it is breaking the poor, precious ice? Why don’t you get off the computer and experience it for yourself, instead of trying to justify your tired logic? You are no different from conspiracy theorists and feminists, both who have a similar religion (ironically, warmists call skeptics of Climate Change conspiracy theorists. I reject this, because unlike CTs, skeptics actually want facts and criticisms).
Russia, along with Greenland, has experienced great economical advantages with less ice. There are more goods to sell, and life can flourish once again.
In the 1970’s we heard of an oncoming ice age. Now it is a forthcoming firey apocalypse. With these dire predictions, science has proven to be as unstable as the people who are behind environmentalism. What to choose? Is this how the world works? Nope. Best go outside and cut the lawn, then.
That resurgence was a hope extrapolated from the 2008 and 2009 minimums that never materialized. 2011’s sea ice had the second lowest minimum on record, with the majority of the 10 lowest minimums falling in the last decade. Anecdotal evidence for this is the increased navigability of the Northwest Passage.
The building explanation would make sense except that the permafrost is receding evenly throughout the arctic not just around warm buildings; furthermore, even buildings properly designed for permafrost (up on stilts) are settling.
You are partially right but not totally. Much of the sea ice that was lost less than a decade ago is resurging. As to buuildings in the arctic circle receeding? It is mostly due to the buildings being more comfortabel to live in (Warmer) now not due to any thawing of the permafrost.
Re: Dennis,
Good Reading, but it doesn’t discount permafrost thaw in non-developed areas, such as Alaskan wilderness and traditional villages. Arctic Temperatures are up, and the minimum area of sea ice is down to half of what it used to be, and new records for minimums are being set almost every year. The same melt is going on on land with, with a greater portion of northern roadways being washed out by flooding during flaws (though you could chalk that up to bad maintenance and poor design, I suppose). It’s a warmer, wetter place, even if some of the thaw is due to deforestation rather than climate change. It got pretty warm and wet in the past too, but the landscape was pretty different then as well.
Mr. Hundnall,
You should work on your critical reading skills, and your writing as well. My “it doesn’t matter” was not that it doesn’t matter in general (it makes a world of difference). I was stating succinctly that whether or not you accept the presence of man-made global warming, the arctic is irrefutably thawing. Supposing I said, “It doesn’t matter if you think the cause of mange is mites or ghosts, your dog has mangy bald patches,” would you beat me up over the philosophical implications of ghosts and tell me why I should care, or would you agree with me that your dog has mange? As to your use of elision to string fragments of my sentences together into a new sentence with different meaning, well that’s just plain stupid. I wouldn’t quote you as saying “Niko, … I think you … should be concerned about whether… morality dictates we should try stopping… environmentalists.” It’s too absurd to do such things.
(orange you glad I didn’t focus on how your weird patchwork sentence hewn from my sentences couldn’t be used as a definition of a religion and that I, further, decided not to elucidate on the structural differences between movements such as environmentalism and religions)?
Re: Niko
“buildings in the arctic circle have been sinking into the permafrost for more than a decade” Just a little longer than that I think. Much of permafrost melting occurs because of development, where houses, road ways, etc are built and insulating vegetation is stripped away during construction. Thousands of years ago there was little permafrost, but there was no IPCC then to claim that it was because of CO2 from human activity. You might care to have a look at this 1998 article from the Alaska Science Forum: “Ancient Clues from a Frozen Forest”
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF14/1409.html. Here are a few snippets:
“Troy L. Péwé once discovered an interesting patch of woods near Ester, about nine miles east of Fairbanks. The spruce and birch trees of this forest were underground, sandwiched between layers of earth. Each tree was 125,000 years old. Because the trees were buried about 45 feet below the present-day forest at Eva
Creek, Péwé knew they were old. How old he didn’t find out until 50 years later, after methods of finding the age of extremely old things had been developed.
(He) said the frozen forest at Eva Creek thrived at a time that was up to 5 degrees Celsius warmer than it is today, when there was little-to-no permafrost. Because the frozen forest is full of charred trees, Péwé suspects there were a lot of forest fires 125,000 years ago. Insect galleries carved into the bark of some of the frozen spruce indicate that the spruce bark beetle was also here then.”
You could also have a glance at http://www2.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF9/983.html, with commentary on a paper entitled “Climatic Indications from Growth Rings in Fossil Woods,” by G.T. Creber and W.G. Chaloner. “It explains why forests once grew at far higher latitudes than they now do. Real forests, with big trees, did grow at very high latitudes indeed. An abundance of fossil wood, including rooted stumps, lies in the high Arctic and
even in Antarctica to prove it.”
It seems there really is nothing new under the sun…..
“It doesn’t matter if you think it’s good or bad, or if you think it’s a natural cycle rather than man-made. . . . people. . . . should spend time speculating on ways to. . . do something about it.”
Niko, I think you have defined the religion of Environmentalism.
1) We should be concerned about whether it’s “good or bad.” If it’s “good,” what logic or morality dictates we should try stopping it?
2) If it’s natural rather than human-caused: a) what likely success are we going to have; and b) by interfering in the natural process aren’t we intentionally doing (modifying natural climate) that which environmentalists are accusing us of now doing unintentionally (modifying natural climate)?
There are many bears and seals; however, that does not mean they are not at risk. Ice is well known to be an important if not essential part of their natural habitat, and there is less and less of it where they live every year. That’s not conjecture. It is an empirical observation gained by comparing satellite imagery year over year. There used to be a lot of arctic sea ice, now there is less, including in areas that have not melted in thousands of years. It’s hurting business for Russia’s fleet of icebreakers, and affecting the lives of arctic tribes around the world by destroying many of their hunting areas (by no coincidence breeding grounds for arctic mammals). These are documented economic effects of receding ice, and if sea ice is receding, adjacent land ice is too; although there’s no need to make that speculation, because buildings in the arctic circle have been sinking into the permafrost for more than a decade, forcing whole communities to resettle. There is no scientific debate as the whether or not the arctic is thawing out. It doesn’t matter if you think it’s good or bad, or if you think it’s a natural cycle rather than man-made. Facts are facts. If you take a core sample one year containing particles from an ancient or prehistoric volcanic eruption, and the next year the whole field of study is open sea, then some very old ice has melted. If year over year seal harems have gathered on seasonal ice to breed, and they can no longer reach that ice, you can be sure it will affect them, just like highways have affected some deer populations by isolating populations from their breeding grounds. Teddy Roosevelt understood the need to protect nature, and wasn’t afraid to say that people were damaging it. It seems to me you should spend time speculating on ways to preserve these places, rather than denying observed facts or pretending that people can’t do something about it.