By Joe D’Aleo, ICECAP

A series of reports by the USGS were released Friday predicting tough sledding ahead for the world’s polar bear populations. More than two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will be killed off by 2050 — including the entire population in Alaska — because of thinning sea ice from global warming in the Arctic, government scientists forecast Friday. See in this blog why the evidence does not suggest that rising temperature endangers them or will cause their extinction but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good cause.

Jeff Masters in his Wunderground blog yesterday projected the decrease in arctic ice the last few decades will continue, eventually leaving the arctic ice free by 2030. He gets there by comparing the ice in 1979 to the ice cover in 2007 and noting it was disappearing faster than the climate models showed it would. He notes that although this will have little effect on sea level it will mean we have to reevaluate the melting of the Greenland icecap and revise its demise sharply upwards. This he notes would have a much greater effect on sea level. Again Jeff and the researchers he quotes have little regard or understanding of the history nor understanding of the true factors at play in the cyclical changes in the arctic and Greenland (and the globe for that matter). See more here.