I’m a longtime supporter of the Endangered Species Act
(ESA). When properly abided by, it seeks to prevent extinctions and requires
humanity to seek a win-win scenario where both humans and all the other species
can thrive. Unfortunately, some organizations like the Center for Biological
Diversity have weaponized the ESA in order to manipulate the debate on energy
policy and climate change by petitioning the courts to designate perfectly
robust species as endangered or threatened from future climate change. Such
abuse has understandably caused a growing backlash that ultimately threatens
the ESA’s original mission. The listing of the polar bear is a case in point. Despite
Center for Biological Diversity assertions that “Arctic sea ice melt is a
disaster for the polar bears”, research shows polar bear populations have continued
to thrive and increase.
The Center for Biological Diversity also petitioned to list
thriving populations of Bearded Seals as threatened or endangered by melting sea
ice. In response to their petition, the National Marine Fisheries Service
(NMFS) assembled a Bearded Seal Biological Review Team (BRT). The BRT’s report can
be read here. Oddly, despite promoting a
threatened designation, the BRT reports Bearded Seals have existed for over 1-2
million years, surviving far greater bouts of climate change as the earth
bounced between several ice ages and warmer interglacials.
On average, every hundred thousand years for the past half
million years, the earth has descended into an ice age. Ice accumulation on
land lowered sea level by about 400 feet (120 meters). The Arctic’s presently
bountiful shallow seas were left high and dry and passage from the Pacific
Ocean to the Arctic Ocean was completely blocked by the resultant Beringia land
bridge. Any seals trapped in a frozen Arctic were likely extirpated. During the
last ice age, seals also experienced far more rapid changes than they are
experiencing now or that are predicted in the future. Despite the extreme cold
of the last ice age, the BRT reported “more than 20 so‐called Dansgaard‐Oeschger
oscillations have been documented … each with rapid warming to near
inter‐glacial temperatures over just a
few decades.”
Melting ice during our recent interglacial, known as the
Holocene, has been good for seals. Sea levels rose and flooded coastal areas to
create what is now the seal’s prime shallow-water habitat. Our best scientific
data has determined Arctic temperatures between 9,000 and 6,000 years ago were
a few degrees warmer than today, eliminating remnant glaciers and minimizing Arctic
sea ice. Sea levels peaked around 6000 years ago, allowing an increased flow of
warm, nutrient-rich “Pacific Water” across the shallow Bering Strait into the western
Arctic. Our best scientific evidence
reveals periodic warm water inflows coincide with peak marine productivity.
Unaffected by a slight increase in CO2 concentrations, sea
levels began to fall as glaciers began to expand over the past 5000 years, the Neoglacial. Glaciers
reached their greatest extent during the Little Ice Age 150 years ago. During
the Neoglacial, average Pacific Water inflows subsided, average sea ice has increased,
and marine productivity decreased. During this cooling trend, there were
several warm spikes, usually associated with life-enhancing inflows of both warm
Pacific and Atlantic water. High inflows
consistently correlate with reduced sea ice and greater marine productivity. If the hypothesized warming from
greenhouse gases proves to be true and if it can prevent further descent into
another ice age or another little Ice Age, it is more likely than not such a
warming effect would benefit the entire Arctic food web that sustains “threatened”
bearded seals.
The state of Alaska and the Alaskan Oil and Gas Association correctly
challenged the “threatened” designation as an “arbitrary, capricious abuse of
discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law”. A district court agreed
concluding that the listing indeed violated the Administrative Procedure Act. In
that decision, the court reported it was troubling that the Beringia population
of bearded seals was listed as threatened simply based on threats predicted by
climate models that would not manifest until the end of the 21st century. However,
that ruling was quickly appealed and now reversed, as the courts upheld the “threatened” designation.
The judge wrote the court was required to “defer to the
agency’s [NMFS] interpretation of
complex scientific data so long as the agency provides a reasonable explanation
for adopting its approach.” The court also ruled that the ESA requirement for
proving an imminent threat in the “foreseeable future” only required a scenario
that it was “more likely than not” seals could be endangered.
The court ruling maintained that “as long as the agency
states a rational connection between the facts found and the decision made [for
listing] it must be upheld.” Unfortunately
judges who decide the validity of a Center for Biological Diversity claim, rarely
have any background in biology or climate science. Those judges must rely on what
lawyers assert are “the best available scientific data”. But lawyers and
advocacy scientists only present the “best available scientific data” that
supports their arguments, and ignore equally valid scientific data that contradict
their claims. Unfortunately all the known facts were not presented. So even
though 2 million years of climate history illustrated bearded seals are highly
resilient, the court was swayed by a limited selection of models and untestable
predictions. So, as Paul Harvey would say, here’s the rest of the story.
Defining Sea Ice as Critical Habitat
Although the Biological Review Team acknowledged “there is
ample evidence that bearded seals have
adapted successfully many times to both large and rapid
ecological changes” they argued “history is not, on its own, an assurance that
bearded seals can adapt to the changes projected for the foreseeable future.”
To make the case bearded seals were threatened, the BRT argued sea ice is a critical
habitat required for birthing, nursing, molting and for resting while over
prime foraging habitat. Because global climate models predict critical sea ice habitat
will disappear as CO2 concentrations rise, they argue the seals are ultimately endangered.
However ample evidence suggests sea ice is not a survival requirement.
When Bearded Seals do haul out onto sea ice, they prefer
tiny floes of thin first-year ice. Climate change, whether natural or
anthropogenic, will not eliminate that first-year ice. As the BRT reported,
“sea ice will always persist from late fall through mid‐summer due to cold and
dark winter conditions.” Much of the
Bearded Seal’s habitat encompasses seasonal ice zones where first-year sea ice
is renewed every winter but melts completely every summer. The Bering Sea,
Barents Sea, Baffin Bay, the Sea of Okhotsk, and Hudson Bay are all seasonal
ice zones. Renewed winter ice reaches its maximum in late March about the time
of the solar equinox. Simultaneously whelping (giving birth) begins in March
and peaks in April followed by 2 to 3 weeks of nursing, a time with plenty of
ice. The loss of thick multi-year ice over the deep Arctic basin in September
has no effect on bearded seals survival.
Heavy sea ice is a bigger threat to bearded seals, so they
avoid regions where sea ice cover is more than 90%. Heavy sea ice acts as a
barrier that prevents access to their feeding grounds. Each winter bearded
seals in the Pacific sector migrate southward as winter ice prevents access to
their favored feeding grounds. As sea ice recedes with increasing spring and summer
insolation, feeding grounds once again become available. Bearded seals are in
competition with other benthic (sea floor) feeders, walrus and gray whales, who
likewise migrate into the Arctic as the ice melts. Due to the advantage of
accessing the sea floor as soon as dwindling sea ice permits, bearded seals are
frequently associated with 70 to 90% sea ice concentrations. Although resting
on floating ice above their feeding grounds imparts a small energetic benefit, it
is not a life-saving requirement.
For example, although the sample size has been very small,
studies of radio-collared seals in the Bering and Chukchi Seas observed those
seals rarely hauled out at all, on
land or sea ice, even when occupying ice covered areas. The BRT concluded that “at
least in the Bering and Chukchi Seas, bearded seals may not require the
presence sea ice for a significant part of the year”.
The BRT then manufactured an untested sea-ice threshold based
solely on circumstantial evidence to assert whelping and nursing required sea
ice concentrations over 25%. As the BRT stated, “Research suggests that, during
the time of whelping and nursing, bearded seals prefer areas where the percent concentration of sea ice is >25%.
Lacking
a more direct measure of the
relationship between bearded seal vital rates and ice coverage, the BRT assumed
that this preference relationship
reflects the species requirements
for sea‐ice coverage.” Based Solely on that assumption wherever climate
models projected ice falling below 25% concentration, they deemed it “inadequate
for whelping and nursing.” [all emphasis mine]
But breeding seals’ ice association is not a matter of preference
or a requirement! To maximize the time spent over accessible
foraging grounds, pups are born in the spring when winter sea ice begins its
retreat. As the BRT reported, bearded seals prefer foraging in open ice cover
where the sea floor is less tan 100 meters deep. Thus, to whelp in April and still
remain for over shallow feeding grounds, seals are coincidentally surrounded by
extensive winter sea ice. Figure 1 below illustrates the Pacific sector’s
potential foraging grounds. White regions mark shallow areas, typically 50 to
100 meters depth. Because bearded seals cannot forage in deep waters
(illustrated by the dark blue color), they cannot breed in ice free waters located
south of the shallow Bering Sea.
The illustration’s colored lines represent the “ice front” position
each month. In March, sea ice concentrations less than 15% are found to the
south of the light green line. By peak whelping time in April, heavy sea ice
concentrations (turquoise line) largely remain as in March. Thus, during the optimal
season for whelping, 99% of their foraging habitat is covered by ice
concentrations greater than 15% and as high as 100%. Seals do not prefer to
breed in this heavy ice! They are forced to if they want access to required shallow
feeding grounds. Consistent with this analysis, the BRT reports during the
spring in the eastern and northern Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea, and the Laptev
Sea, where much of the first-year sea ice is heavily compacted, breeding bearded
seals are not found in any significant numbers.
On the other hand, bearded seals are definitely adapted to
survive in ice free waters. Mating always happens in the water. Native Arctic
hunters observe seals giving birth in the water. Furthermore, bearded seal pups
are well adapted to enter the water immediately
after birth. Harp Seals for example require weeks of development on the ice. To
thermo-regulate harp seal pups are born with a white fur called the lanugo. The
lanugo provides excellent protection from cold air, which is why baby Harp
seals were heavily hunted for the fur trade. But the lanugo provides little
insulation when wet. So after a few weeks, Harp seals molt their lanugo and
gain a protective layer of fat so they can enter the sea. In contrast, most
Bearded Seal pups amazingly molt their lanugo within the uterus. They are also born
with a thicker layer of blubber and begin foraging in the sea right after
birth. So, birthing on an ice floe is more likely a convenience, but not a
requirement.
Although it has not yet been reported, newborn pups are
probably capable of nursing underwater as well. Based on the amount of time
spent in the water right after birth this seems likely. Marine mammals such as
whales and manatees must nurse underwater. And although California Sea lion
pups primarily nurse on land, they too have been observed nursing underwater.
In habitat where sea ice either melts completely or recedes
beyond the limits of shallow-water feeding grounds, bearded seals simply come
ashore. Observations of seals on dry land have been documented for the White
and Laptev Seas, the Bering, Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, for Svalbard, the
Hudson Bay and the Okhotsk Sea. The Okhotsk and Kamchatka populations thrive in
the most southerly part of the seal’s range where ice melts completely each
summer. There, bearded seals form numerous shore rookeries comprised of tens to
hundreds of individuals, during a time that overlaps with molting.
Finally, their preferred small ice floes do not offer
protection from the seals’ 2 major predators. Polar bears are well adapted for
surreptitiously swimming up to floating ice and snatching an unwary seal.
Killer Whales readily grab a seal from floating ice or tip that ice over, dumping
the seal into the water where it is no match for the Orca. Thus, many lines of
evidence suggest it is “more likely than not” that observations of bearded
seals resting on sea ice platforms is only evidence of a convenience, not a survival
requirement.
Small ice floes do not protect bearded seals from their predators |
The IPCC Models
The Biological Review Team included one climate scientist,
James Overland and he predicts the Arctic
will be ice free within the next decade or two. (By “ice free” he means September
ice will be reduced to about 1 million square kilometers.). Although there is a
general consensus among models that rising CO2 will drive warming and continued
ice melt into the future, IPCC models failed to predict the current level of rapid
sea ice reduction. Because IPCC models projected currently observed sea-ice reduction
would not occur until 2070, Overland believes IPCC models were simply too
conservative. However other evidence suggests the models are flawed because
they did not accurately incorporate natural variability. Nonetheless, Overland
used a select group of 6 IPCC models to convince the courts rising CO2
concentrations threatened to destroy and modify the seals’ sea ice habitat.
For the BRT analysis, Overland culled the most flawed IPCC models.
His chosen models had to simulate the seasonal changes in ice cover to
demonstrate an accurate sensitivity to changes in solar insolation. In addition,
chosen models had to simulate (hindcast), within 20% accuracy, September sea
ice extent observed from 1980 to 1999. The number of IPCC models fitting this
selection criteria was reduced to six. However, the time span to accurately
test the models’ reliability was far too short. IPCC models attempting to replicate
20th century Arctic air temperatures have failed to reproduce the
rapid warming from 1920 to 1940. Furthermore, those 6 models failed to
accurately simulate observed sea ice extent for individual Arctic basins.
Of Overland’s 6 best models, all 6 only simulated past sea
ice correctly in the Chukchi and Siberian seas. Four models correctly simulated
sea ice in the eastern Bering seas. Only
one model could simulate recent sea ice in the western Bering and Barents sea.
None of the models satisfactorily simulated sea ice in the Sea of Okhotsk,
Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay, the Canadian Archipelago, or Greenland, Kara and
Laptev Seas. As the BRT correctly cautioned, “loss of summer sea ice in the
Arctic cannot be extrapolated to the seasonal ice zones which are behaving
differently than the Arctic. For example, the Bering Sea has had 4 years of
colder than normal winter and spring conditions from 2007‐2010, with near record sea‐ice extents,
rivaling the sea ice maximum in the
mid‐1970s, despite record retreats during summer in the Arctic.”
As seen in the graph above from Gillett 2008, IPCC model simulations based
solely on known natural factors (the blue line labeled NAT), erroneously
reported no change in 20th century Arctic temperatures. Observations
revealed (the black line labeled OBS) temperatures had naturally oscillated.
Actual temperatures compared to model results were as much as 0.6 C degrees
higher in the 1930s and 40s but then lower after the 1960s. More disconcerting,
when models added the effects of CO2 and aerosols to natural factors (the red
line labeled ALL), discrepancies between models and 1940s observations
worsened. A modeling study by Johannessen 2004
failed similarly. In contrast to flawed CO2-driven models, it is
well-documented that warming from 1920-1940 as well as the current sea ice loss
is more parsimoniously attributed to changes in atmospheric and ocean
circulations that pump warm southerly air and water into the Arctic. Although
judges believed they were presented with the “best scientific models”, those
best scientific predictions had failed to simulate past natural climate change.
The BRT did not inform the courts of research that shows a small Arctic cooling
trend for the period 1901 to 1997, a trend contrary to the CO2 global warming
hypothesis. A similar cooling trend was reported in the 1993 paper, “Absence of Evidence for
Greenhouse Warming over the Arctic Ocean in the Past 40 years”. Nor did the BRT
discuss research detailing how the loss of
sea ice in the 1990s was not caused by warmer air, but by a shift in the Arctic
Oscillation resulting in below-freezing winds that pushed thick insulating ice
out into the Atlantic.
Furthermore, it’s not obvious that the BRT advised the judges
that our best scientific data has observed that past and recent reductions of
sea ice have coincided with intrusions of relatively warm Atlantic and Pacific
waters. Fishery data shows warming in the 1930s
coincided with the arrival of fish normally found further south. Recent analyses show similar northward fish
migrations are associated with intruding warm Atlantic waters, driven by
natural shifts in the North Atlantic Oscillations and Atlantic Multidecadal
Oscillation. In the Atlantic sector, the greatest loss of Arctic ice occurs in
the Barents Sea and associated with the pathways of intruding warm water.
Intruding dense salty warm water also generates a reservoir
of Arctic heat stored between 100 and 900 meters depth. That heat reservoir can
melt all Arctic sea ice several times over. Indeed, the most recent scientific research reveals that warm
reservoir has been rising closer to the surface and thinning sea ice. Researchers
called this dynamic the atlantification of the Arctic Ocean.
In 2007, the greatest reduction of sea ice happened in the
Chukchi Sea. Research by Rebecca Woodgate using
mooring and satellite data, documented that the volume and heat content of
intruding warm water. She reported Pacific water passing through the Bering
Strait into the Chukchi had doubled since 2001. The inflowing Pacific Waters
spread across half the Arctic Ocean with a heat equivalent equal to, and up to
twice as great, as possible heat estimated from CO2 back-radiation. The amount
of heat carried by those intruding waters was comparable to the solar heating
of the entre Chukchi Sea.
The resulting enhanced loss of summer and winter sea ice
resulted in feedbacks, associated with Arctic Amplification, which has raised
Arctic air temperatures at a rate twice the global average. Less insulating ice
allows the heat reservoir to more easily ventilate, cooling the ocean but
warming the air. Furthermore, researchers
show the loss of sea ice reconnects the oceans with the winds causing a
stirring effect that brings warmer water to the surface. Less ice lowers the
ocean’s albedo allowing more solar heat to be absorbed. Finally, the re-formation
of lost ice, releases more latent heat. All those warming effects caused by
increased inflows, have been myopically attributed to rising CO2.
Less ice benefits the food web. As outlined by Grebmeir 2015, the productivity in the Chukchi
Sea (and likely the entire Arctic ocean) depends on the inflows of nutrient
rich waters. The same intrusions of warm water through the Bering Strait that
reduces sea ice, also bring vital nutrients that increases productivity, as
well as bringing warmth that enhances faster growth. Our best scientific evidence suggests that if the
Arctic becomes ice free by mid-21st century, more open water will
enhance photosynthesis so that marine productivity will increase by 67%. Thus,
it is “more likely than not” that the dynamics that are now reducing Arctic sea
ice are also increasing the food supply, not just for bearded seals but for the
whole food web. Because bearded seals currently consume a huge variety of fish
and invertebrates, it is highly likely bearded seals will easily adapt to any
foreseeable changes in the food web.
When the “rest of the story” is told, it seems highly
unlikely bearded seals will be endangered by reduced sea ice or warming
temperatures. It is the Endangered Species Act itself that is endangered
because the Center for Biological Diversity and their ilk abuse the ESA to
promote climate fear. Instead what should rightfully evoke our greatest concern
is how climate change alarmism is eroding objective science, allowing untestable
hypotheses and flawed models to become codified in our legal system.