At the end of each chorus in "I am the Walrus," the Beatles' 1967 song, John Lennon sings what is more likely than not a nonsense line: "Goo goo g'joob."
Apparently, Margaret Williams, managing director of the World Wildlife Federation's Arctic program, interpreted that line as "cuckoo-ca-choo," and has gone cuckoo in talking about real walruses in the real world, blaming a large gathering of them on global warming (which hasn't been occurring for 18 years). The Associated Press's Dan Joling apparently left his cuckoo detector at home in reporting on what Ms. Williams had to say. Following the jump, readers will see what resulted from this cuckoo convergence (bolds are mine throughout this post):
35,000 WALRUS COME ASHORE IN NORTHWEST ALASKA
Pacific walrus that can't find sea ice for resting in Arctic waters are coming ashore in record numbers on a beach in northwest Alaska.
An estimated 35,000 walrus were photographed Saturday about 5 miles north of Point Lay, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
... The enormous gathering was spotted during NOAA's annual arctic marine mammal aerial survey, spokeswoman Julie Speegle said by email.
... The gathering of walrus on shore is a phenomenon that has accompanied the loss of summer sea ice as the climate has warmed.
... Walrus in large numbers were first spotted on the U.S. side of the Chukchi Sea in 2007. They returned in 2009, and in 2011, scientists estimated 30,000 walruses along 1 kilometer of beach near Point Lay.
... The World Wildlife Fund said walrus have also been gathering in large groups on the Russian side of the Chukchi Sea.
"It's another remarkable sign of the dramatic environmental conditions changing as the result of sea ice loss," said Margaret Williams, managing director of the group's Arctic program, by phone from Washington, D.C. "The walruses are telling us what the polar bears have told us and what many indigenous people have told us in the high Arctic, and that is that the Arctic environment is changing extremely rapidly and it is time for the rest of the world to take notice and also to take action to address the root causes of climate change."
This is complete rubbish, according to Dr. Susan Crockford, who has the distinct advantage of possessing actual scientific knowledge and background (links are in original; HT Climate Depot):
Mass haulouts of Pacific walrus and stampede deaths are not new, not due to low ice cover
Large haulouts of walruses — such as the one making news at Point Lay, Alaska on the Chukchi Sea (and which happened before back in 2009) — are not a new phenomenon for this region over the last 45 years and thus cannot be due to low sea ice levels. Nor are deaths by stampede within these herds (composed primarily of females and their young) unusual, as a brief search of the literature reveals.
The attempts by WWF and others to link this event to global warming is self-serving nonsense that has nothing to do with science.
... At least two documented incidents like this have occurred in the recent past: one in 1978, on St. Lawrence Island and the associated Punuk Islands and the other in 1972, on Wrangell Island (Fay and Kelly 1980 ...).
... (The WWF's climate change claim) is blatant nonsense and those who support or encourage this interpretation are misinforming the public.
Walrus numbers are up considerably from the 1960s, although they are notoriously difficult to count (Garlich-Miller et al. 2011).
How does nonsense such as this get past fact-checkers and editors? Part of the answer may often be that neither are actually involved before a story goes up. But the more important point is that anything that can be blamed on global warming is blamed on global warming, while normally expected journalistic skepticism goes out the window, because — well, global warming must be the explanation for something which a naive, inexperienced and ignorant reporter has noticed, or been made to notice. That's how "cuckoo-ca-choo" reports such as these get as far they do.
There is apparently going to be no attempt on the part of the AP to correct Joling's five day-old September 30 missive. That's inexcusably cuckoo — but sadly typical.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
