Media: crossing the line

By Richard North - January 2, 2022

I’m keeping a very close eye on the Covid situation. It appears to be at an interesting stage where, according to the Telegraph, it’s reaching a political make-or-break situation as it reports: “Frightening new Covid data shows Boris Johnson’s omicron gamble may be about to implode”.

In my view, though, some of the comments surrounding the latest data, and especially those on hospital admissions, are verging on the misleading – in terms of indicating the degree of pressure to which the NHS is exposed. However, it is too early yet to judge. The situation may be clearer by later today, when I will revisit the issue and see if it is possible to offer an informed comment.

Meanwhile, having written at a little length about media reports of a record temperature in Kodiak Island, Alaska, I am drawn to a piece in today’s Telegraph headed: “Polar Bears forced to migrate from America to Russia because of climate change”.

The piece is written by Jamie Johnson, described as the paper’s US Correspondent, with a dateline in Utqiagvik, the most northern town in Alaska, from which he is reporting, with his sub-heading reading: “On Boxing Day, temperatures soared to a record 19.4ºC on the island of Kodiak – the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska”. As readers might imagine, it was this comparison between Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) and Kodiak Island, which drew my attention.

As an aside, it is interesting at this point to pose a question as to what relevance a report on the temperature levels in the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall, might have to the weather in John O’ Groats on the very northernmost tip of mainland Scotland, over 600 miles away.

With any putative answer in mind, one might then address the relevance of the Kodiak weather report to a town on the northernmost coast of Alaska, which is 941 miles away, 320 miles north of the Arctic Circle. This might be especially pertinent when the New York Times, referring to the same date, told us that the south-eastern city of Ketchikan was “on track to have its coldest December since 1933”, while the town of Nuiqsut, just over 100 miles east of Utqiagvik, was registering a temperature of -40 degrees.

A separate report on Ketchikan for the Saturday and Sunday of Christmas actually registered zero degrees. Both days were record-breaking cold. We are told: “the old records were 6 degrees in 1964 on Saturday and 5 degrees all the way back in 1917 on Sunday”.

Yet all of these cold-weather details, none are mentioned by Jamie Johnson who is quite clearly fixated by global warming, offering a “take” which is quite evidently unchallenged by his editors.

You can see how Johnson handles this as he tells us that, in this part of America, the average annual temperature has risen by 4.8°C in the last 50 years. And one of the most visible signs of global warming is “the mass exodus of polar bears”. Asserting that data from 2001-2010 show a 40 percent population drop from 1,500 to 900 polar bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea – which stretches across the top of America and Canada – he tells us that:

Global warming has caused sea ice to melt, depriving bears of their homes and hunting grounds. This September, there was an average of 1.9 million square miles of sea ice in the Arctic ocean. That’s 575,000 square miles less than the average between 1981 and 2010.

This is where the Kodiak Island temperature comes in, as he then says: “The problem is immediate: on Boxing Day, temperatures soared to a record 19.4°C on the island of Kodiak – the highest December reading ever recorded in Alaska”, failing to tell us that this was over 900 miles to the south.

To bolster his report, Johnson calls in aid Herman Ahsoak, a whaling captain from Utqiagvik, who was acting as a guide. “It wasn’t always like this”, Ahsoak says. He adds:

Back in the late 1990s there were 127 here. I had never seen so many in my life. We had a dedicated patrol team to keep watch and protect the town. But when the sea ice really started to retreat, we stopped seeing them so often. I’m sure there is still a healthy population, but they have mostly moved on from here.

And yet, it has always been like this. Utqiagvik marks the dividing line between the South Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, the latter describing the area immediately north of the Bering Straight (of Deadliest Catch fame), taking in Wrangel Island on the north coast of Russia and stretching west until it meets the East Siberian Sea. And, for as long as records have existed, it has been known that the polar bear population migrates from the South Beaufort to the Chukchi Sea.

There, in the Chukchi Sea, a recent joint US-Russia aerial survey reports that the Chukchi population is rather more robust than earlier estimated, ranging from a very healthy 3,435 to 5,444 animals.

Polar bears are animals legendary for their long-distance travel, the survey report says. A bear in the Southern Beaufort Sea population, for example, was found to have travelled all the way from northern Alaska, where it was collared in 1992, to Greenland. That bear had travelled 5,256 kilometres in the first year after she had been collared. The Chukchi bears are no exception to the travelling behaviour.

Then, the more one reads into this fascinating subject, the more complex it becomes. From this extremely comprehensive, 285-page paper dated 1989, one can infer that the Southern Beaufort Sea is a marginal habitat for polar bears.

One of the problems – especially recently when we have seen the beginnings of a resurgence of the Arctic ice pack – is too much ice. The Beaufort Sea is covered for longer periods than the Chukchi, so primary production of food sources are reduced, unlike Chukchi, where polynyas occur along the continental shelf, which are teeming with marine life.

In the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, winter habitat is relatively limited due to extensive unbroken heavy drifting ice. During summer the most favourable bearded seal habitat (the primary food source of the polar bears) is found in the central or northern Chukchi Sea along the margin of the pack ice.

Then, the continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea is relatively wide, and is ice covered 7-8 months of the year, or less. In the Beaufort Sea though, the shelf is relatively narrow and when the ice extends over it, polar bears are forced to hunt in deeper water, where there are fewer seals.

Thus, decreased annual ice cover in the north-eastern Chukchi Sea, the presence of polynyas, plus ice-scouring of the sea floor in the Beaufort Sea – which impacts negatively on marine life – make the Chukchi Sea a more favourable habitat for polar bears.

To be fair to Jamie Johnson in his piece, he brings in Dr Robert Suydam, a senior wildlife biologist for the North Slope Borough, in Utqiagvik. He is allowed to tell us that: “What is portrayed in the press and what is promoted by environmental groups creates a lot of stress because it is not an accurate picture”. He adds: “So frequently they are estimating that the populations in the Beaufort Sea have declined substantially but they are not taking into account how many bears have moved to other areas”.

Suydam continues: “Without a doubt, polar bears are struggling and will struggle with the change in ice. They have to adapt and they are. But unfortunately, some of these groups that are promoting that bears are in trouble aren’t giving the bears enough credit for how they can adjust to the change in environment”.

What we are not allowed to know from this, though, is that too much ice in the Beaufort Sea is as harmful to the polar bear population dynamics as too little. Either will trigger migration.

On that basis, therefore, Jamie Johnson doesn’t really have a story. The Telegraph is giving a journalist a platform to produce a confection of half-digested factoids without the broader context, supporting a climate change link which is tenuous at best and largely irrelevant. His message could be summed us as: “polar bears are continuing their traditional migration from the Beaufort to the Chukchi Sea, where the population is in robustly good health”.

In my view, this story tips the balance between shoddy journalism and propaganda. Johnson’s intent to support the climate change narrative is not supported by fact, and he leaves his readers ill-informed. We deserve better from the media.