[myshpa]

It seems that AVHRR was launched in 1978 [0], with fairly continuous global coverage since June 1979 [1].

So it was not in early 1970s, it was in the late 1970s, and it was not in early 1980s. You both were pretty close.

> Polar bears are doing fine, by the way.

Good to hear. For now at least. If true.

"In 2004, biologists discovered four drowned polar bears in the Beaufort Sea. Never before observed, biologists attributed the drowning to a combination of retreating ice and rougher seas. As a result of rapid ice melt in 2011, a female polar bear reportedly swam for nine days nonstop across the Beaufort Sea before reaching an ice floe, costing her 22 percent of her weight and her cub. As climate change melts sea ice, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that two thirds of polar bears will disappear by 2050." [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_very-high-resolution_... [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210426213549/https://www.usgs.... [2] https://nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Mammals...

[revelio]

From your wiki link:

"AVHRR data have been collected continuously since 1981"

ChatGPT was off by a decade!

I hope nobody will confuse an anecdote about a handful of bears from 2004 with robust science.

[myshpa]

Robust science? You mean NY Times or Chicago Tribune?

[revelio]

No, with the work done by people actually observing and counting polar bear populations.

At any rate, going back to the original non-bear related claims that you're picking a fight with, those outlets were in both cases reporting measurements and claims made by scientists.

Indeed, you could argue that they aren't reliable and the reality was different, but then you'd have to concede that in the past "consensus climate science" has been wrong across the board and thus that this is also a possibility today.

I think in reality the claims made about basic weather stats back then were probably true, or at least as true as they could get at the time. Climatology was too new and too small to have been politicized in the same way it is today. And newspapers had a different ethos around trying to present facts neutrally, they also were less politicized than today. But by all means, argue that the global consensus of scientists (both US and Soviet no less) was wrong.

[myshpa]

> But by all means, argue that the global consensus of scientists (both US and Soviet no less) was wrong

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_consensus