UEA's Saffron O'Neill: Not part of a team of warmists trying to foist off political propaganda, just an honest, straight-shooting person planning to "operationalise the polar bear icon"

Email 2348

At 18:06 26/09/2006, Saffron O'Neill wrote:
Thanks for all your individual comments so far on operationalising the
icons. To update:

Irene has suggested that a produce a quick intro to how I plan to operationalise the polar bear icon. At the moment, the plan is to use an expert elicitation.

Email 2853

From: "Xiangdong Zhang" To: "Saffron O'Neill" Cc: "Xiangdong Zhang" Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 12:19 AM Subject: Re: Arctic model simulations for A1B to 2050?

Dear Saffron,

Thanks for your email and glad to learn your interesting work. It is important to build an effective bridge between climate change study and general public/policy-maker.

...On Mon, Sep 25, 2006 at 05:18:24PM +0100, Saffron O'Neill wrote: Dear Xiangdong Zhang

I am a PhD researcher supervised by Prof. Mike Hulme and Dr. Tim Osborn at the Tyndall Centre, UEA.

My research is centred around finding more salient methods of communicating climate change to the lay-public. My PhD is interdisciplinary, and aims to harness the emotive and visual power of 'icons' with a rigorous scientific analysis of possible changes under SRES A1B to 2050.

...I am interested in the results of your paper 'Towards a seasonally ice-covered Arctic Ocean'. I see here you have used a large number of model simulations to 2100. I was wondering if you had analysed or plotted the results of the models with scenario A1B to 2050? - as one of the icons chosen was the polar bear, and consequently I am searching for sea-ice area models.

I would greatly appreciate any assistance with this.

Regards,

Saffron O'Neill

Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research Zuckerman Institute for Connective Environmental Research School of Environmental Sciences University of East Anglia

Email 3592- Peter Molnar "disappoints" Saffron by telling her that gunshots through bears' vital organs are actually more harmful to them than trace amounts of CO2 

>> Unfortunately, I have to disappoint you as far as publications are
>> concerned. I'm currently finishing up the first paper of my thesis, which
>> deals with the mating system of polar bears. Polar bears are not only
>> threatened by climate change, but more acutely by possible sex-selective
>> over-harvest, which might reduce the number of males to a point where
>> there will be too few males to impregnate all females.

Email 3855

[Saffron O'Neill, 2008] I have just received the review from the polar bear paper. Unfortunately,
it's been rejected...[Report from referee] The pretext of this project seems to be that O’Neill et al are interested in resolving the apparent discrepancy between what may be viewed as an alarmist general media impression of impending disaster for polar bears, a current (as opposed to a projected) worldwide population which may be in pretty good shape, and views of at least one global warming naysayer.