A new (open access) paper published yesterday in Oxford’s Bioscience looks at the difference between how denial blogs and science blogs write about polar bears. One of the authors, Bart Verheggen, has a concise write-up of the paper on his blog. Over at the Guardian, Dana Nuccitelli uses his regular column to explain an interesting aspect of the study: the “keystone domino” denial strategy.
The research in the Bioscience paper examined the differences between how 45 regular science blogs and 45 denial blogs talk about the risk polar bears face from a changing climate--specifically, risks from the melting Arctic sea ice. The results are clear: peer-reviewed science shows a melting Arctic presents a huge risk for polar bears, while denier blogs deny that risk.
A key finding from the study is that in contrast to the generally peer-reviewed-paper-based science blogs, around 80 percent of the denier blogs researchers examined used Susan Crockford’s blog Polar Bear Science as the single source for their arguments. The paper notes that “as of this writing, Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on polar bears.” Crockford has published plenty for other denier shops like GWPF, but for some reason can’t seem to break into the peer-reviewed literature. (We wonder why.)
While the Bioscience paper doesn’t get into the scientific weeds of why Crockford’s work is a crock, her core argument is essentially that since polar bear populations are growing, they’ve got to be safe. What Crockford and her denier fans never mention, of course, is the reason polar bear populations appear to be growing: the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 made it illegal to hunt them, and a similar 1973 agreement did the same internationally. Part of the justification for that law was the imminent threat of extinction, so the population rebound since then has been significant, if not perfectly quantified.
Crockford’s claims overlook the obvious fact that even though hunters can no longer kill polar bears, hunting doesn’t mean the bears are not going to suffer from an increasingly ice-free Arctic. That’s why peer-reviewed science considers them still an at risk species, despite the numbers rebound.
As polar bears have increasingly become a symbol of climate change, they’ve also become a prime target for dumb denier logic, making them what the study terms a “keystone domino.” Like how a keystone species is at the center of an ecosystem, polar bears are considered a poster child for warming, and are therefore presented as a proxy for the entire body of science. If bears are fine, the flawed argument goes, then it’s because Arctic sea ice must be doing fine. If ice isn’t melting than it must not be warming, so what is everyone worked up about? Knock down the polar bear scare, a keystone of the theory, and it topples the rest of the hoax like dominos.
Of course, actual climate science is built on multiple independent lines of evidence. Even if one particular species in one habitat were doing better than expected, that still wouldn’t invalidate and replace all the other pillars of the theory.
But if you’ve been waiting for a peer-reviewed indication of how intellectually shallow and empty denier arguments are, consider this polar bear study to be ursine.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories:
