Search Results for “Polar bear”

Analysis: Polar Bears & Coral Reefs Are Doing Just Fine

March 13, 2024

Polar Bears and Coral Reefs Are Doing Just Fine By Linnea Lueken We live on a beautiful planet, filled with a dizzying assortment of interesting creatures and living organisms. The vast majority of people want to see that life flourish, so it is no wonder that particularly attractive species like cute (usually) polar bears and colorful corals are often used to promote climate alarmism. Corals and polar bears are two very different kinds of animals in all ways but one: climate alarmists love to claim they are particularly threatened by the modest warming that has occurred since the end of the Little Ice Age. Those claims are false. For coral reefs, changes in ocean pH and temperature can cause bleaching, and sometimes death. Therefore, a change over time in both of those variables due to increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) supposedly will lead to mass elimination of corals around the world. It is true that sudden changes in temperature and other water conditions can cause bleaching, which occurs when the symbiotic algae that gives coral structures their color is killed or jettisons itself. However, what is not true is that this phenomenon always or even usually leads to coral death. In reality, decades of research have shown that corals often bounce back from these events, including in cases where scientists had previously labeled the reef as a total loss. Such was the case with Coral Castles reef, which was bleached by a 1998 El Niño event. When scientists returned to take another look in 2015, they were stunned to find it thriving. This occurred despite the fact that they had predicted the reef would take 100 years to recover. Later, the researchers stated in a press release that “[o]ur projections were completely wrong.” Coral polyps, the anemone-like animals that actually build the reef structure, can struggle in “too much” heat. But corals typically thrive in warmer waters, not cold, and have survived for the past 60 million years through periods where temperatures and carbon dioxide levels were far higher (and lower) than they are today. The vast majority of corals exist in tropical or subtropical waters, near the equator, and rather than disappearing, have been expanding their range slightly towards the poles amid recent modest warming trends. The Great Barrier Reef (GBR), subject of frequent climate alarmist propaganda, is also doing fine. Recent bleaching events, especially around 2012, in the GBR were hailed as the permanent end of the reef by climate doomsayers. However, the GBR had other plans. In 2022, the GBR saw the highest coral extent on record. That’s the tropics; now we put on the long underwear and look to the far North, to probably the most famous animal poster child for the supposed threat of climate change: the polar bear. Polar bears are threatened, we are told, because summer sea ice is melting, and soon the polar bears will not have access to their traditional hunting grounds and prey. This sounds like common sense, but even common sense is sometimes wrong, as with the polar bears. Far from dying off from a little warming, polar bear numbers have substantially increased since the 1960s, when they were protected from overhunting. Recent estimates put their population somewhere around 32,000 individual bears, three times as many as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service counted in the 1960s. While some subpopulations have seen declines, new subpopulations are still being discovered. Polar bears have survived during periods of Earth’s history when summer sea ice was basically nonexistent, like during the much warmer Eemian period, about 125,000 years ago. Photographs of starving, sickly bears circulated in the media are intentionally misleading. They are meant to paint a picture that is very different than reality. Data show that polar bears are carrying more fat into the winter months than they did in decades prior, and they have better rates of cub survival and more stable litter sizes. The overall outlook for polar bear welfare looks highly promising. In short, real-world data show that both polar bears and coral reefs are doing far better than alarmists would have you believe is the case based on flawed climate models. Stick to the data, and you will find good news for animal and nature lovers everywhere. Photo by Marko Dimitrijevic. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic. Linnea LuekenLinnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy.

New Study that Claims it Can Directly Link GHG Emissions to Polar Bear Cub Survival is Poppycock

September 1, 2023

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/09/01/new-study-that-claims-it-can-directly-link-ghg-emissions-to-polar-bear-cub-survival-is-poppycock/ From Polar Bear Science By Susan Crockford A global warming miracle has happened. While no scientist worldwide has ever drawn a straight line between greenhouse gas emissions and population declines in a species considered at risk due to climate change, a new paper just published in Science Magazine claims to have performed this unlikely feat for polar bears. It’s called “Unlock the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions.” Polar Bear and Cubs Note this analysis has not been peer reviewed: as a “Policy Forum” contribution, it’s considered by the journal to be a public interest commentary, not a research paper. One might be forgiven for asking whether this work represents solid, reproducible science or simply well-timed, sciency-looking rhetoric ready-made for the litigious Center for Biological Diversity to pressure the US government to increase protections for polar bears before the 2024 US election. It is surely no coincidence that this paper made its appearance near the seasonal low for Arctic sea ice as well as during the 15-year anniversary of the ESA listing of polar bears as ‘threatened’ and the 50th anniversary of the ESA itself. Moreover, knowing this paper was in the pipeline might explain why the 2022 government report on the most recent Western Hudson Bay polar bear decline, which I discussed yesterday, has been kept secret for so long: the results of that report are cited in this new Science paper as supporting evidence that sea ice declines are responsible for recent population declines, which Reuters said in December was clearly not the case for the period 2017-2021. Background Polar bear specialist Steven Amstrup and climate modeller Cecilia Bitz previously collaborated on a 2010 paper that aimed to show polar bears, added to the US Endangered Species List on the basis of a US government report by Amstrup and colleagues in 2007 (as reported in Nature, above, in May 2008). It predicted 2/3 of the world’s polar bears were on track to disappear by 2050 but could be saved if GHG emissions were curtailed (Amstrup et al. 2007, 2010; Courtland 2008). That 2007 Amstrup prediction failed miserably, but that’s another story: actually, a rather big one (Crockford 2017, 2019). Undeterred, the pair have teamed up again to push the same dead horse in a different direction (Amstrup and Bitz 2023), based on a 2016 paper claiming an apparent linear relationship between GHG emissions and sea ice decline (Notz and Stoeve 2016). In a University of Washington press release, Amstrup stated: “In this paper, we reveal a direct link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and cub survival rates.” While Amstrup’s long-standing association with activist organization Polar Bears International (which helped fund the paper) and his impatience with the lack of ‘action on climate change’ means his biases on global warming are well-known, co-author Bitz also seems to have strong opinions about fossil fuel emissions that similarly raise questions about her scientific impartiality: “I hope the U.S. government fulfills its legal obligation to protect polar bears by limiting greenhouse gas emissions from human activity,” Bitz said. “I hope investments are made into fossil fuel alternatives that exist today, and to discover new technologies that avoid greenhouse gas emissions.” [University of Washington [press release, 31 August 2023] The paper The idea of linking all GHG emissions directly to cub survival in polar bears sounds pretty bizarre. But if no one else has ever done this before, why would the authors choose to publish their results as a non-peer-reviewed commentary paper, which gives readers no assurance their work is anywhere close to being a plausible scientific analysis? If peer-review is considered essential for any scientific work to be considered ‘legitimate,’ as many prominent polar bear scientists — including Amstrup himself — have insisted (e.g. Harvey et al. 2018), this paper deserves to be dismissed as irrelevant. Moreover, the entire claim that GHG emissions can be linked directly to polar bear cub survival (i.e., more emissions, more cub deaths) falls apart with the knowledge that documented incidents of poor cub survival in Western Hudson Bay in the 1980s, which I mentioned yesterday, were not included in the 2020 baseline model used to model results for this new paper. The 2020 model (Molnar et al. 2020) not only uses the discredited RCP8.5 “business as usual” climate change scenario to generate it’s scary-sounding results, it also depends almost completely on base-line data from Western Hudson Bay from 1989-1996 only, which conveniently ignores published data on poor body condition of WH females and poor cub survival in the early 1980s when sea ice wasn’t an issue (Derocher and Stirling 1995; Ramsay and Stirling 1988). Cub survival was so bad in the 80s that a number of females lost entire litters (see abstract for Derocher and Stirling 1992 below): 1983 was particularly bad. In addition, the sea ice data used for the Notz and Stroeve paper only go to 2015, while the 2020 Molnar paper uses ice data only to 2016, which conveniently ignores the lack of a declining trend in summer sea ice (September average) with increasing GHG emissions documented from 2007 to 2022, as well as recent sea ice conditions that have been like the 1980s in Western Hudson Bay. Conclusion All this means the 2023 Amstrup and Bitz paper is just as flawed as the 2020 Molnar paper and the 2007 Amstrup prediction and should be ignored. References Amstrup, S.C. and Bitz, C.M. 2023. Unlock the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions. Science 381(6661):949-951. pdf here. Amstrup, S.C., DeWeaver, E.T., Douglas, D.C., Marcot, B.G., Durner, G.M., Bitz, C.M. and Bailey, D.A. 2010. Greenhouse gas mitigation can reduce sea-ice loss and increase polar bear persistence. Nature 468: 955–958. Amstrup, S.C., Marcot, B.G. & Douglas, D.C. 2007. Forecasting the rangewide status of polar bears at selected times in the 21st century. US Geological Survey. Reston, VA. Pdf here Atkinson, S., N., , J. Boulanger, M. Campbell, V. Trim, J. Ware, and A. Roberto-Charron. 2022. Aerial survey of the Western Hudson Bay polar bear subpopulation 2021. Final Report.,Igloolik, NU. Courtland, R. 2008. Polar bear numbers set to fall. Nature 453:432-433. Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 19 January 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/ Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats. Derocher, A.E. and Stirling, I. 1992. The population dynamics of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. pg. 1150-1159 in D. R. McCullough and R. H. Barrett, eds. Wildlife 2001: Populations. Elsevier Sci. Publ., London, U.K. See abstract below: Abstract: Reproductive output of polar bears in western Hudson Bay declined through the 1980’s from higher levels in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Age of first reproduction increased slightly and the rate of litter production declined from 0.45 to 0.35 litters/female/year over the study, indicating that the reproductive interval had increased. Recruitment of cubs to autumn decreased from 0.71 to 0.53 cubs/female/year. Cub mortality increased from the early to late 1980’s. Litter size did not show any significant trend or significant annual variation due to an increase in loss of the whole litter. Mean body weights of females with cubs in the spring and autumn declined significantly. Weights of cubs in the spring did not decline, although weights of both female and male cubs declined over the study. The population is approximately 60% female, possibly due to the sex-biased harvest. Although estimates of population size are not available from the whole period over which we have weight and reproductive data, the changes in reproduction, weight, and cub mortality are consistent with the predictions of a densitydependent response to increasing population size. [my bold] Derocher, A.E. and Stirling, I. 1995. Temporal variation in reproduction and body mass of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Canadian Journal of Zoology73:1657-1665. http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/z95-197 Harvey, J.A., van den Berg, D., Ellers, J., Kampen, R., Crowther, T.W., Roessingh, P., Verheggen, B., Nuijten, R. J. M., Post, E., Lewandowsky, S., Stirling, I., Balgopal, M., Amstrup, S.C., and Mann, M.E. 2018. Internet blogs, polar bears, and climate-change denial by proxy. Bioscience 68: 281-287. DOI: 10.1093/biosci/bix133 Open Access, available here. Supplementary data file available here and the data for the principal component analysis is available here and (h/t to R. Tol), the R code is available here Corrigendum here (issued 28 March 2018). Molnár, P.K., Bitz, C.M., Holland, M.M., Kay, J.E., Penk, S.R. and Amstrup, S.C. 2020. Fasting season length sets temporal limits for global polar bear persistence. Nature Climate Change. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0818-9 pdf here. Notz, D. and Stoeve, J. 2016. Observed Arctic sea-ice loss follows anthropogenic CO2 emmission. Science 354(6313):747-750. pdf here. Ramsay, M.A. and Stirling, I. 1988. Reproductive biology and ecology of female polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Journal of Zoology London 214:601-624. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1988.tb03762.x/abstract

Conservation officers misleading the public about polar bear problems in Churchill

August 27, 2023

https://polarbearscience.com/2023/08/16/conservation-officers-misleading-the-public-about-polar-bear-problems-in-churchill/ Canadian government-funded media outlet CBC ran a story this morning about problem polar bears in the town of Churchill, Manitoba, the self-described “Polar Bear Capital of the World” that contains some very misleading statements from Manitoba Conservation officers. (also see here) Breakup of sea ice on Hudson Bay was earlier this year than it has been in more than a decade (17 June) and some people are trying to hype the significance of this phenomenon to support a tenuous link to human-caused climate change, even though bears out on the ice this spring were reportedly in good condition and one of the problem bears captured on 8 August was also in good condition (a male weighing 910 lbs, photo above). Unfortunately, reports for similar early breakup years in the early 2000s have not been made public. However, I’ve been keeping track of these Polar Bear Alert Program Reports since 2015 and have read the available literature about their history: these records simply do not corroborate the statements in this CBC account. From the CBC article (16 August 2023): “Churchill on track for record number of polar bear reports this season, conservation officers say” [my bold]: As of Aug. 15, Manitoba Conservation officers had responded to 76 calls about polar bears in and around Churchill and were forced to move three of the large carnivores into a holding facility east of the town. That compares with 18 calls by the same date a year ago. And officers didn’t have to capture, sedate and house any of those bears in the former military facility — a catch-and-release program that normally does not start until October. “There are so many polar bears in and around the town of Churchill we are looking at record numbers this year and that’s heavily influenced by where the last ice in the Hudson Bay melts,” said Churchill conservation officer Chantal Maclean, speaking in her office on Tuesday. History of the Polar Bear Alert Program The Churchill Polar Bear Alert Program to deal with problem bears has been in place since 1969, although the modern approach that attempts to temporarily incarcerate or fly out of the area the worst problem bears rather than shoot them (or send them to zoos) started in the fall of 1984, after two polar bear attacks (one fatal) occurred in 1983 and another in August 1984 (Kearney 1989; Stirling et al. 1977). As far as I know, these weekly Alert reports have only been made available online to the public since July 2015 and the earlier reports exist only as hard copies in a file cabinet in Winnipeg. Contrary to the narrative that early breakup of sea ice is correlated with more problem bear reports over the entire season (Stirling and Derocher 2012; Stirling and Parkinson 2006; Towns et al. 2009), 1983 was significant in having one of the latest breakup dates but the highest number of problem bears in the 20th Century. The Alert program season is not a set period but begins when polar bears appear on the landscape near town and cause problems, so the date of the first report varies widely from year to year. Stirling and colleagues detailed discussion for 1974 and 1975 makes it clear that Alert reports typically began in mid-September during the 1970s, not in October as stated by the CBC article (Stirling et al. 1977:18). In 1983, polar bear specialists noted that the program kicked into gear in late August (Calvert et al. 1986:19 and 24). In the last 8 years, the first reports have varied from late April, due to an anomalous record in 2023 (with the second report not published until mid-June) and late August in 2020. The number of bears around Churchill every year also varies, and this was true even in the 1970s, when Ian Stirling and colleagues noted that there were a lot fewer bears around in 1973, which could not be entirely explained by the earlier-than-usual freeze-up that saw most bears gone by 8 November (Stirling et al. 1977:17). Recent Alert Reports It is important to note that the Alert program seems to have instituted a “zero-tolerance” policy for bears near Churchill after a near-fatal attack on 1 November 2013 in the town itself, which by 2016 increased the number of problem bears reported compared to all previous years. However, the notion that 76 bear reports by 15 August is an unprecedented number is impossible to confirm, since details for so many years are unavailable. Furthermore, the date itself is not particularly important: rather, the number of weeks that bears have been onshore is a better metric for comparison. This year, 15 August was two days past the 9 week mark: the last report in 2023 was issued 14 August for the week ending 13 August. This means that incidents for two full days were cited by conservation officers that would not have been included in the weekly report, copied below, when the total number of incidents was 70. You only have to go back to 2021 to find similar numbers of incidents and bears in the holding facility at the end of week 9, see below: some years there were many more than 2023. In addition, having three bears in the holding facility (PBHF) at mid-August is far from the maximum at mid-August: the reports for 2016 and 2018 show that there were five bears in holding those years even though it was only week 5 of each of those seasons! 2023, week 9: 2022 week 9: Coming at September 19-25, the week 9 report was five weeks later in the season than 2023 because the bears left the ice much later. Note there is no published report for 15 August last year, for unexplained reasons but 18 incidents, as mentioned in the CBC article for last year, seems about right. Unlike 2023, conditions in 2022 were similar to what they had been in the 1980s. 2021, week 9 Week 9 (August 23-29) came two weeks later in the season than this year, but had 69 incidents and saw three bears in holding: 2020, week 9: In 2020 most bears left the ice so late that the first Alert report came out the last week of August, with only 28 incidents and no bears in holding. However, by week 9 near the end of October there had been 68 incidents and only one bear in holding: 2020 was a very short season, similar to the 1980s. 2018, week 9: In 2018, week 9 (September 4-9) came four weeks later in the season than 2023 due to bears leaving the ice so much later, but there were a whopping 107 incidents and four bears in holding: 2016, week 5: In 2016, the second week in August was week 5, but there had already been 56 incidents and 5 bears in holding; by week 9, there were many more (see next entry). 2016, week 9: In 2016, by the time week 9 rolled around in September, there had been 107 incidents and 11 bears were in holding: ReferencesCalvert, W., Stirling, I., Schweinsburg, R.E., et al. 1986. Polar bear management in Canada 1982-84. In: Polar Bears: Proceedings of the 9th meeting of the Polar Bear Specialists Group IUCN/SSC, 9-11 August, 1985, Edmonton, Canada. Anonymous (eds). Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge UK, IUCN. pg. 19-34. Kearney, S.R., 1989. The Polar Bear Alert Program at Churchill,Manitoba. In: Bromely, M. (Ed.), Bear–People Conflict: Proceedings of a Symposium on Management Strategies, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories Department of Renewable Resources, pp. 83–92. [courtesy M. Dyck, Gov’t of Nunavut] Pdf here. Stirling, I. and Derocher, A.E. 2012. Effects of climate warming on polar bears: a review of the evidence. Global Change Biology 18(9):2694-2706. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2012.02753.x/abstract [paywalled] Stirling, I., Jonkel, C., Smith. P., et al. 1977. The ecology of the polar bear (Ursus maritimus) along the western coast of Hudson Bay. Canadian Wildlife Service Occasional Paper No. 33. pdf here. Stirling, I. and Parkinson, C.L. 2006. Possible effects of climate warming on selected populations of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in the Canadian Arctic. Arctic 59:261-275. http://arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/issue/view/16. Towns, L., Derocher, A.E., Stirling, I., Lunn, N.J. and Hedman, D. 2009. Spatial and temporal patterns of problem polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. Polar Biology 32(10):1529-1537. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00300-009-0653-y

Climate activists are silent on polar bears because their doom-mongering blew up in their faces

August 9, 2023

https://twitter.com/StormSignalSA/status/1689215787003678720 https://polarbearscience.com/2023/08/08/climate-activists-are-silent-on-polar-bears-because-their-doom-mongering-blew-up-in-their-faces/ A Grist article last week pandered to activist polar bear specialists over their failed climate change agenda as it tried to minimize why the climate movement doesn’t talk about polar bears anymore. Apparently, the Arctic icon has “largely fallen out of fashion” through “overexposure” resulting in polar bear images invoking “cynicism and fatigue.” But that isn’t really true, is it? While there is an admission that the over-hyped lies about starving bears promoted by National Geographic in 2017 and 2018 were a factor, there is no mention in the article of the well-known, documented evidence of scientists’ own failed assumptions that polar bears require summer sea ice for survival have had any impact on public opinion (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2015, 2019, 2022, 2023; Lippold et al. 2019; Rode et al. 2021). Thriving populations in the Chukchi Sea and elsewhere amid low summer ice levels have busted the myth that polar bears need ice year-round. Andrew Derocher was also allowed to repeat, unchallenged, the ridiculous narrative he and his activist supporters have peddled before, that insists the polar bear had become a climate change icon by accident rather than design, a lie I addressed in detail last year. Some excerpts from that 2022 post are copied below. Excerpts from “Polar bears became global warming icons because biologists promoted a narrative of doom since 1999: it didn’t happen by accident,” originally published 1 September 2022. “The polar bear became an ‘accidental icon’ of climate change“, claims a recent CBC Radio interview with ardent global warming promoter and polar bear catastrophist Andrew Derocher. Derocher’s insistence that the polar bear became a climate change icon “by accident” is historical revisionism. While such a statement may be attractive now that polar bears are not dying in droves as he and his colleagues predicted in 2007, that doesn’t make it true. In the summer of 1999, polar bear biologist Ian Stirling helped produce a short doomsday film spectacular for the biggest news outlet in Canada at the time, in which he hyped his ‘climate warming’ fears about Hudson Bay polar bears, yet we are expected to believe Derocher that on September 4, 2000, Time Magazine put polar bears on its “Arctic Meltdown” cover because they ‘just happened’ to hear about an academic paper Stirling had written the year before. Ian Stirling (Derocher’s Ph.D. supervisor) arranged for a team of CBC reporters to accompany himself and colleague Nick Lunn during their tagging of Western Hudson Bay bears. His paper had been just been published in January that year. Perhaps someone from the CBC just happened to be reading that particular scientific journal and saw his paper, or perhaps Stirling just happened to make a phone call and gave them a heads-up, especially when sea ice breakup came earlier than expected that summer. The ensuing video feature (originally called “The shrinking polar bears of Hudson Bay”, now “Climate change threatens polar bears”, see link below), was shown on CBC television’s nightly news program (The National) on the 23rd of September, and was probably picked up by other news outlets around the world. As I wrote about in 2015, it included Stirling voicing his dire warning that these polar bears would soon disappear if nothing was done about human-caused ‘climate warming’. That was 1999, remember: based only on a just-published academic paper (Stirling et al. 1999) that showed a statistically-insignificant correlation between polar bear survival and sea ice coverage in Western Hudson Bay only, and which did not mention that declines in survival had been happening since the early 1980s without any changes in sea ice (more on that below). The News Feature: “Climate change threatens polar bears” Broadcast date 23 September 1999, Duration 16:40 Disappearing ice in Hudson Bay in 1999 means polar bears can’t build up their fat reserves and nourish their young. The basis for the Stirling hype and its consequences What Derocher failed to explain to the CBC Radio host that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ian Stirling was struggling to explain why polar bear survival in Western Hudson Bay in the 1980s (especially 1983) had taken such a nose-dive (Derocher 1991; Derocher and Stirling 1992, 1995; Stirling 2002; Stirling and Lunn 1997) or that he and Derocher (his student at the time) embraced climate scientist James Hansen’s notion of human-caused global warming and expeditiously dropped their previous explanation that the population was approaching carrying capacity — even though it fit their observations perfectly. Both researchers had to have known that asking the government for research grants to document this new ‘climate warming’ threat to polar bear survival would be more likely to get funded than a request to study polar bears reaching a peak of abundance (Crockford 2019). 1983 was a worrying year for polar bear biologists working in Western Hudson Bay: this female weighed only 99kg when captured that year. Many others were in similar condition, a phenomenon that hasn’t been seen since, yet sea ice breakup had not been earlier than usual. Derocher also fails to mention the fact that polar bear specialists so hated the ‘least concern’ Red List classification the bears were given by the IUCN in 1996 after their swift recovery from over-hunting (achieved through international treaty protection) that these science-trained advocates — encouraged by Stirling and egged on by aggressive conservation organizations — worked tirelessly to create an apparent connection between predictions of declining sea ice due to global warming and a possible future threat to polar bear health and survival (Crockford 2019). By 2006, polar bear biologists got the IUCN classification changed back to ‘vulnerable’ based on predictions of future sea ice loss due to human-caused global warming and by 2008 were successful in having the bears classified as ‘threatened’ on the US Endangered Species List, also based on future threats due to human-caused global warming (Stirling and Derocher 2007). This had never been done for any other animal by either agency and none of it would have been possible without the scientific studies undertaken expressly to support this agenda. In other words, far from being “accidental”, polar bear specialists (and Ian Stirling in particular) used the fledgling global warming agenda for their own ends: they employed emotionally manipulative narratives about starving and dying animals to boost funding for their field and ensure their job security. Polar bear specialists fed the climate change beast by providing it with an icon, and then sat back to reap the rewards. I have no doubt Ian Stirling knew exactly what the media and climate activists would do with that short documentary for the CBC back in 1999. References Amstrup, S.C., Marcot, B.G. & Douglas, D.C. 2007. Forecasting the rangewide status of polar bears at selected times in the 21st century. US Geological Survey. Reston, VA. Pdf here Castro de la Guardia, L., Myers, P.G., Derocher, A.E., Lunn, N.J., Terwisscha van Scheltinga, A.D. 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Series564: 225–233. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p225-233/ Crockford, S.J. 2015. The Arctic Fallacy: Sea Ice Stability and the Polar Bear. Global Warming Policy Foundation Briefing Paper 16. London. Pdf here. Available at http://www.thegwpf.org/susan-crockford-the-arctic-fallacy-2/ Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats. Crockford, S.J. 2022. Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception. Amazon Digital Services, Victoria. Available in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0991796691 and https://www.amazon.com/dp/0991796691 Crockford, S.J. 2023. Polar Bear Evolution: A Model for How New Species Arise. Amazon Digital Services, Victoria. Available in hardcover, paperback and ebook formats https://www.amazon.com/dp/1778038328 and https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1778038328 Derocher, A.E. 1991. Population dynamics and ecology of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. Alberta, Edmonton. Derocher 2005. Population ecology of polar bears at Svalbard, Norway. Population Ecology 47:267-275. http://www.springerlink.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/content/765147518rp35613/fulltext.pdf Derocher, A.E. and Stirling, I. 1992. The population dynamics of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. pg. 1150-1159 in D. R. McCullough and R. H. Barrett, eds. Wildlife 2001: Populations. Elsevier Sci. Publ., London, U.K. Abstract. Reproductive output of polar bears in western Hudson Bay declined through the 1980’s from higher levels in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Age of first reproduction increased slightly and the rate of litter production declined from 0.45 to 0.35 litters/female/year over the study, indicating that the reproductive interval had increased. Recruitment of cubs to autumn decreased from 0.71 to 0.53 cubs/female/year. Cub mortality increased from the early to late 1980’s. Litter size did not show any significant trend or significant annual variation due to an increase in loss of the whole litter. Mean body weights of females with cubs in the spring and autumn declined significantly. Weights of cubs in the spring did not decline, although weights of both female and male cubs declined over the study. The population is approximately 60% female, possibly due to the sex-biased harvest. Although estimates of population size are not available from the whole period over which we have weight and reproductive data, the changes in reproduction, weight, and cub mortality are consistent with the predictions of a density dependent response to increasing population size. [my bold] Derocher, A.E. and Stirling, I. 1995. Temporal variation in reproduction and body mass of polar bears in western Hudson Bay. Canadian Journal of Zoology 73:1657-1665. http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/z95-197 Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., et al. 2019. Temporal trends of persistent organic pollutants in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to changes in feeding habits and body condition. Environmental Science and Technology 53(2):984-995. Ramsay, M.A. and Stirling, I. 1988. Reproductive biology and ecology of female polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Journal of Zoology London 214:601-624. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1469-7998.1988.tb03762.x/abstract Rode, K. D., Regehr, E.V., Bromaghin, J. F., et al. 2021. Seal body condition and atmospheric circulation patterns influence polar bear body condition, recruitment, and feeding ecology in the Chukchi Sea. Global Change Biology 27:2684–2701. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15572 Stirling, I. 2002. Polar bears and seals in the eastern Beaufort Sea and Amundsen Gulf: a synthesis of population trends and ecological relationships over three decades. Arctic 55 (Suppl. 1):59-76. http://arctic.synergiesprairies.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/issue/view/42 Stirling and Derocher 1993. Possible impacts of climatic warming on polar bears. Arctic 46(3):240-245. Open access https://arctic.journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/arctic/index.php/arctic/article/view/1348 Stirling, I. and Derocher, A.E. 2007. Melting Under Pressure The Wildlife Professional, Fall: 24-27, 43. pdf here. Stirling, I. and Lunn, N.J. 1997. Environmental fluctuations in arctic marine ecosystems as reflected by variability in reproduction of polar bears and ringed seals. In Ecology of Arctic Environments, Woodin, S.J. and Marquiss, M. (eds), pg. 167-181. Blackwell Science, UK.

15 years after ESA listing as ‘threatened’ due to sea ice loss polar bears are abundant & thriving

March 23, 2023

https://polarbearscience.com/2023/03/20/15-years-after-esa-listing-as-threatened-due-to-sea-ice-loss-polar-bears-are-abundant-thriving/ Dr. Susan Crockford Experts who used the American Endangered Species Act (ESA) to list polar bears as ‘threatened’ in May 2008 were mistaken: sea ice authorities got their predictions wrong about future ice extent and polar bear specialists erroneously declared that two-thirds of polar bears would disappear if summer sea ice declines continued unabated. By 2007, there was even less summer sea ice than computer models of the day had predicted (Stroeve et al. 2007, see red line on graph below) and in 2012, it dropped to just above 3 mkm2. Simplified Arctic sea ice predictions vs. observations up to 2007 by Stroeve et al. 2007 (courtesy Wikimedia). Sea ice hit an even lower extent in 2012 and all years since then have been below these predicted levels. Updated sea ice predictions published in 2014 by the Stroeve team (see below) went to the other extreme, using totally implausible RCP 8.5 scenarios to predict a virtually ice-free Arctic (< 1 mkm2 ice extent) before 2040, which seem just as likely to be just as wrong as their 2007 attempt (Hausfather and Peters 2020; Pielke and Ritchie 2021; Stroeve et al. 2007, 2014; Swart et al. 2015). From Stoeve et al. 2014, courtesy NSIDC January 2015. In fact, for 12 years out of the last 15, summer ice extent has been below 5.0 mkm2 (often well below), which polar bear experts had not anticipated would happen until at least 2050 (Amstrup et al. 2006). In 2012, NOAA sea ice experts summarized this sea ice loss as “reduced by nearly 50%” since 1979: Despite this dramatic decline in sea ice, polar bears are still abundant and thriving because polar bear specialists got it wrong about the bears’ need for this habitat in summer (Crockford 2017, 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018). Polar bear turned out to be more flexible and resilient than predicted and many subpopulations are better off than before. Davis Strait and Chukchi Sea bears are doing very well: Barents Sea bears in particular are thriving despite by far the most sea ice loss of any Arctic region (e.g. Conn et al. 2021; Frey et al. 2022; Haavik 2022; Lippold et al. 2019; Peacock et al. 2013; Regehr et al. 2018; Rode et al. 2014, 2018, 2021, 2022). This was not what had been predicted when the bears were listed as ‘threatened’ in 2008. Conclusion: Despite the Arctic warming four times as fast as the rest of the world with rising CO2 levels and almost 50% less summer ice than there was in 1979, polar bears are no closer to extinction than they were 15 years ago, according to the results of field studies. There is no existential emergency for polar bears or any other Arctic sea mammals due to declining summer sea ice, despite continued messages of doom from remorseless experts. References Amstrup, S.C., Marcot, B.G. & Douglas, D.C. 2007. Forecasting the rangewide status of polar bears at selected times in the 21st century. US Geological Survey. Reston, VA. Pdf here Conn, P.B., Chernook, V.I., Moreland, E.E., et al. 2021. Aerial survey estimates of polar bears and their tracks in the Chukchi Sea. PLoS ONE 16(5): e0251130. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251130 Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 19 January 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/ Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats. Crockford, S.J. and Geist, V. 2018. Conservation Fiasco. Range Magazine, Winter 2017/2018, pg. 26-27. Pdf here. Frey, K.E., Comiso, J.C., Cooper, L.W., et al. 2022. Arctic Ocean primary productivity: the response of marine algae to climate warming and sea ice decline. 2022 NOAA Arctic Report Card, https://doi.org/10.25923/0je1-te61 Haavik, E. 2022. ‘Svalbard’s polar bears persist as sea ice melts — but not forever. The World, 21 July. Hausfather, Z. and Peters, G.P. 2020. Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00177-3 Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., et al. 2019. Temporal trends of persistent organic pollutants in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to changes in feeding habits and body condition. Environmental Science and Technology 53(2):984-995. Pielke, R., and Ritchie, J. 2021. How climate scenarios lost touch with reality. Issues in Science and Technology 37(4): 74-83. https://issues.org/climate-change-scenarios-lost-touch-reality-pielke-ritchie/ Pielke Jr, R., and Ritchie, J. 2021. Distorting the view of our climate future: The misuse and abuse of climate pathways and scenarios. Energy Research & Social Science72: 101890. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629620304655 Regehr, E.V., Laidre, K.L, Akçakaya, H.R., Amstrup, S.C., Atwood, T.C., Lunn, N.J., Obbard, M., Stern, H., Thiemann, G.W., & Wiig, Ø. 2016. Conservation status of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to projected sea-ice declines. Biology Letters 12: 20160556. http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/12/20160556 Supplementary data here. Rode, K.D., Regehr, E.V., Douglas, D., et al. 2014. Variation in the response of an Arctic top predator experiencing habitat loss: feeding and reproductive ecology of two polar bear populations. Global Change Biology 20(1):76-88. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12339/abstract Rode, K.D., Olson, J., Eggett, D., et al. 2018. Den phenology and reproductive success of polar bears in a changing climate. Journal of Mammalogy 99(1):16-26. here. Rode, K. D., Regehr, E.V., Bromaghin, J. F., et al. 2021. Seal body condition and atmospheric circulation patterns influence polar bear body condition, recruitment, and feeding ecology in the Chukchi Sea. Global Change Biology 27:2684–2701. https://doi.org/10.1111/gcb.15572 Rode, K.D., Douglas, D.C., Atwood, T.C., et al. 2022. Observed and forecasted changes in land use by polar bears in the Beaufort and Chukchi Seas, 1985-2040. Global Ecology and Conservation 40: e02319. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gecco.2022.e02319 Stroeve, J., Holland, M.M., Meier, W., Scambos, T. and Serreze, M. 2007. Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast. Geophysical Research Letters 34:L09501. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2007GL029703 Stroeve, J.C., Markus, T., Boisert, L., et al. 2014. Changes in Arctic melt season and implications for sea ice loss. Geophysical Research Letters 10.1002/2013GL058951. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2013GL058951 Swart, N.C., Fyfe, J.C., Hawkins, E. et al. 2015. Influence of internal variability on Arctic sea ice trends. Nature Climate Change 5:86-89.

Live Science Misleads on Extreme Weather, Tipping Points, & Polar Bears, Among Other Topics

January 6, 2023

https://climaterealism.com/2022/12/live-science-misleads-on-extreme-weather-tipping-points-and-polar-bears-among-other-topics/?vgo_ee=XQZTM02jxyWNqK1SDKHp%2FHwFoqDlMHNmyq65fGLdufk%3D By Linnea Lueken Live Science misleads readers with a recently posted “listicle” discussing ten types of extreme weather events which it says became further proof in 2022 that climate change is causing an impending climate “disaster.” The claims therein are either false, incomplete, or misleading. Three claims Live Science made in its list stand out as particularly egregious: that the Earth is seeing worse and more unpredictable weather patterns; that polar bears are starving and desperate for food; and that we are rapidly reaching climate tipping points that spell doom for the world. None of these claims has any basis in data or historical evidence. The article, “10 signs we got closer to climate disaster in 2022,” written by Live Science managing editor Tia Ghose, claims that the Earth is warming dramatically, and this warming is causing a plethora of negative effects that prove “Earth’s climate is out of control.” While the article is full of climate fallacies, three are particularly egregiously mistaken or misleading. Number four on Ghose’s list of an impending climate disaster is “climate chaos” which she described as “[u]nchecked greenhouse gas emissions will not only warm the planet; they will make weather patterns more erratic and unpredictable.” Number six, on Ghose’s list is closely tied to number four, “worse weather.” No real-world data exists supporting the claim that the Earth’s climate is suffering from some type of “weather whiplash.” Indeed, as explored in Climate Realism, here, here, and here, for example, data do not provide evidence of any significant change in how quickly the weather can turn. Additionally, no type of extreme weather event has a measurably worsening trend over the past thirty years, the time period over which “climate change” is measured. This is not the first time Live Science has made the claim that weather is worsening globally, despite the fact that weather data shows nothing of the sort. Hurricanes, cold snaps, tornadoes, and other commonly cited weather events, show no sign of increasing in frequency or intensity. Live Science has been refuted on this exact point before in a Climate Realism post, here. Number five on Ghose’s listicle claims polar bears are suffering from climate change, causing them to forage on trash: “Dumpster-diving polar bears.” Ghose claims that, because of sea ice losses, polar bears are forced to scavenge closer to human settlements, including landfills. The claim that polar bear hunting grounds are suffering massive losses is at best exaggerated. In Western Hudson Bay, for example, Canada’s “polar bear capitol,” has seen no significant decline in sea ice or a trend towards late in the season freezes, as discussed in the Climate Realism post, “Wrong BBC – No Evidence for Your Claim that Churchill is Simply Getting Too Warm for Polar Bears.” Research done by Arctic scientists, including Susan Crockford, shows that polar bear populations have been increasing, and possibly 6,000 bears have been added to the population since just 2016. In regions where summer sea ice has declined, the hypothesis that seals would decline and cause bear starvation has not panned out—the opposite actually occurred in a study region in Chukchi. Larger populations of bears and humans in the same regions would logically cause more human-bear contact, no catastrophic climate change required. Polar bears, like black and brown bears, are opportunistic feeders. When edible trash is available, they take advantage of it. Availability and delectability, not lack of other options, is the reason some polar bears are dumpster diving. Ninth on the Live Science list is the impending “Point of no return,” with “[t]ipping points beyond which the climate begins irreversibly breaking down could be reached at much lower temperatures than past models suggested,” Ghose writes. “All tipping points will be reached if Earth’s temperature rises 2.7 F (1.5 C) above preindustrial levels.” The doomsday value appears to have already been surpassed in Europe, with no disastrous results, as discussed in Climate at a Glance: Tipping Point – 1.5 Degrees Celsius Warming. (See figure below) Figure 1: Berkeley Earth average European temperature. (http://berkeleyearth.lbl.gov/regions/europe) Predictions of tipping points are convenient because they happen at unspecified times in the future, rely on computer model projections rather than hard data, and can’t be falsified easily because of the inherent chaotic properties of the Earth’s climate over time. None of the catastrophic climate predictions of the past have come to pass, even as the planet has warmed and people have added carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Evidence actually points to the contrary, as pointed out in this Climate Realism post, here, one paleoclimate study from the University of Washington actually shows that the buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide is actually very unlikely to cause rapid change. Most rapid changes in global climate appears to be driven by shifts in oceanic circulation patterns. Live Science seems to shoot from the hip on their climate and weather related articles, with dozens of posts claiming individual storms, threats to species, and public health issues, are caused by climate change. In reality, available hard data shows: no trend in worsening weather; polar bear experts acknowledge that polar bears are thriving, despite some ice loss in certain regions; and climate tipping points are mere exercises in computer simulations of disaster scenarios, from models that even climate scientists have been forced to acknowledge are seriously flawed. Contrary to recent claims, it is impossible to attribute any particular instance of extreme weather to long-term climate change. Live Science would serve its readers better if it stuck to discussing fact-based science, instead of engaging in alarmist activism when discussing climate change or any other issue of ongoing scientific debate. Linnea Lueken https://www.heartland.org/about-us/who-we-are/linnea-lueken Linnea Lueken is a Research Fellow with the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy. While she was an intern with The Heartland Institute in 2018, she co-authored a Heartland Institute Policy Brief “Debunking Four Persistent Myths About Hydraulic Fracturing.”

Newly-discovered SE Greenland polar bear subpopulation: another assumption proven false – Polar bear numbers increased despite ‘impending doom based on implausible climate models’

June 24, 2022

https://polarbearscience.com/2022/06/16/newly-discovered-se-greenland-polar-bear-subpopulation-another-assumption-proven-false/ Researchers have discovered that the 300 or so polar bears living in SE Greenland (below 64 degrees N) are so genetically distinct and geographically isolated that they qualify as a unique subpopulation, adding one more to the 19 subpopulations currently described by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group. NASA photo, SE Greenland glacier-front habitat with a polar bear and two cubs. Previously, polar bear researchers simply assumed all of the bears in East Greenland were part of the same subpopulation but no field work had been conducted in the extreme southern area until 2015-2017. When they included this region, they got a big surprise: now they are spinning it as significant for polar bear conservation (Laidre et al. 2022). From a new paper by Kristin Laidre and colleagues today in the journal Science, the map below shows this newly-defined population in red in SE Greenland (south of 64 degrees N), which is known as the King Frederick VI Coast: Background Apparently the few bears found on the southwestern tip of Greenland, near the former Norse ‘Eastern Settlement’ (dark blue in the above map) do not belong to this new subpopulation, which means that recent problems on the SW tip of Greenland–including a horse that was killed in the winter of 2016–cannot be blamed on members of this new subpopulation. My own work on ancient polar bear remains did not reveal any archaeological specimens from that region (Crockford 2022). There are only a few known ancient Inuit sites in the area, primarily around Timmiarmiit. Danish naval officer Wilhelm August Graah explored the SE coast in 1828-30 while looking for the lost Norse Eastern Settlement and, having rounded the tip at Cape Farewell, described the now-extinct SE Greenland Inuit (Graah 1837). In 1929, he named the region the King Frederick VI Coast but was prevented from travelling further than the area of Koge Bay (see map above) by thick pack ice. Currently, the largest community on the SE coast is further north, at Tasiilaq, but the realm of SE Greenland polar bears is currently uninhabited by humans. Few hunters venture so far south, even temporarily. The New Population Thomas W. Johansen NASA photo. This newly-discovered population of SE Greenland bears apparently uses marine-terminating glacier fronts (including calved pieces of freshwater glaciers) that exist in deep coastal fjords as platforms to hunt ringed seals when the land-locked fast ice disappears. As they also do in Svalbard, some ringed seals use glacier-front habitat year round, likely because the presence of ice generates upwelling of nutrients and thus, fish to eat (Hamilton et al. 2016, 2017). In other words, ringed seals and polar bears throughout the Arctic are almost certainly capable of utilizing glacier-front habitats where ever they occur, as they have been doing in SE Greenland. According to the authors: Southeast Greenland bears appear to have adapted their movements to the region’s specific physical geography. The high-velocity East Greenland Coastal Current (12) seasonally brings a narrow band of low-concentration pack ice south of 64°N and around the southern tip of Greenland (figs. S8 to S10) (13). All tracked Southeast Greenland bears that moved out of the fjords (n = 11) became caught in this current’s drift ice and were transported southward toward Cape Farewell, drifting an average of 189 km in <2 weeks (fig. S4). Notably, all swam ashore and walked via land to their home fjord within 1 to 2 months, demonstrating high site fidelity. Bears in Southeast Greenland must remain inside fjords or risk export to human inhabited areas of South Greenland or into the North Atlantic. Lairdre et al. 2022:1333. The map above from the Laidre paper shows the genetic distinctiveness of this subpopulation (‘SEG’). Evidence of some immigration from the north indicates the group is not totally isolated and the authors mention that new immigrants soon learn to live in this glacier-front environment (Laidre et al. 2022:1337). However, the genetic data also indicate the subpopulation has been separate for only about 200 years (189-264). This suggests to me the possibility that the thick ice at around 65 degrees N that stopped the northward travel of Graah in 1829 mentioned above may have been a decades-long phenomenon that also trapped polar bears on the SE coast and kept them entirely separate from NE Greenland bears until very recently. The authors did not mention this as a possibility: in fact, they didn’t provide any explanation at all for why the populations became separated about 200 years ago or comment why such distinctive genetic signatures would be evident after such a short period of evolutionary time. Of course, the authors suggest this new subpopulation–although unnoticed by them for decades while easily surviving an ice-free period similar to conditions predicted for the High Arctic in the late 2100s–must be conserved to protect the genetic diversity of the species (Peacock 2022). In other words, they see it primarily as welcome additional pressure to protect polar bears from global warming. Peacock concludes [my bold]: It is unclear whether the Agreement [1973 International Agreement to Protect the Polar Bear], which had been so successful in bringing back the global populations from overharvest, will be an adequate mechanism to protect polar bears in the face of reduced habitat due to climate change. The population of southeast Greenland is a small, genetically distinct group of bears with a distinctive ecology. In the conservation of this polar bear population, we find an explicit test of the modern influence of the half-century-old international Agreement on the Conservation of Polar Bears. Peacock 2022: 1268 I truly appreciate Lily Peacock’s acknowledgement that polar bear numbers have indeed increased since the 1960s, as I have been criticized for pointing that out (Crockford 2017, 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018). Leaving aside all the pointless hand-wringing about impending doom based on implausible climate models, the existence of this new subpopulation is interesting but hardly a game-changer. In two papers and several press releases, there is no mention of the fact that polar bears in general were savvy and flexible enough to have survived through several warm interglacials that were warmer than today (Cronin et al. 2014; Cronin and Cronin 2015) or that many Svalbard bears recently moved onto the sea ice or to Franz Josef Land when sea ice on the west coast of the archipelago became scarce (Aars et al. 2017; Andersen et al. 2012; Crockford 2019). Bottom line: I’m OK with 20 subpopulations of polar bears and satisfied that adding SE Greenland to the mix, separate from NE Greenland, is the right thing to do. I’m thrilled to see evidence that glacier-front habitat can support a small polar bear population even without summer sea ice. Now let’s see the population size estimate for all of East Greenland we’ve been waiting to see for more than ten years (Laidre et al. 2012). Are there only about 600 bears (as one PBGS estimate put it) or about 2,000 (the ball-park estimate used by the 2015 Red List assessment)? Or are there even more? References Aars, J., Marques,T.A, Lone, K., Anderson, M., Wiig, Ø., Fløystad, I.M.B., Hagen, S.B. and Buckland, S.T. 2017. The number and distribution of polar bears in the western Barents Sea. Polar Research 36:1. 1374125. doi:10.1080/17518369.2017.1374125 Andersen, M., Derocher, A.E., Wiig, Ø. and Aars, J. 2012. Polar bear (Ursus maritimus) maternity den distribution in Svalbard, Norway. Polar Biology 35:499-508. Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 2 March 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Open access. https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v3 Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats. Crockford, S. J. 2022. Polar bear fossil and archaeological records from the Pleistocene and Holocene in relation to sea ice extent and open water polynyas. Open Quaternary 8(7): 1-26. https://doi.org.10.5334/oq.107 Crockford, S.J. and Geist, V. 2018. Conservation Fiasco. Range Magazine, Winter 2017/2018, pg. 26-27. Pdf here. Cronin, M.A., Rincon, G., Meredith, R.W., MacNeil, M.D., Islas-Trejo, A., Cánovas, A. and Medrano, J. F. 2014. Molecular phylogeny and SNP variation of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), brown bears (U. arctos), and black bears (U. americanus) derived from genome sequences. Journal of Heredity 105(3):312-323. http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/01/28/jhered.est133.abstract Cronin, T. M. and Cronin, M.A. 2015. Biological response to climate change in the Arctic Ocean: the view from the past. Arktos 1:1-18 [Open access] http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41063-015-0019-3 Graah W.A. 1837. Narrative of an Expedition to the East Coast of Greenland, Sent by Order of the King of Denmark, in Search of the Lost Colonies, Under the Command of Captn. W. A. Graah (J. W. Parker, 1837). Hamilton, C.D., Kovacs, K.M., Ims, R.A., Aars, J. and Lydersen, C. 2016. Coastal habitat use by ringed seals Pusa hispida following a regional sea-ice collapse: Importance of glacial refugia in a changing Arctic. Marine Ecology Progress Series 545:261-277. Hamilton, C.D., Kovacs, K.M., Ims, R.A., Aars, J. and Lydersen, C. 2017. An Arctic predator–prey system in flux: climate change impacts on coastal space use by polar bears and ringed seals. Journal of Animal Ecology 86:1054–1064. Laidre, K.L., Born, E.W., Gurarie, E., Wiig, O., Dietz, R. and Stern, H. 2012. Females roam while males patrol: divergence in breeding season movements of pack ice polar bears (Ursus maritimus). Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280: 1-10. DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2012.2371 Open access http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/280/1752/20122371 Laidre, K.L., Supple, M.A., Born, E.W., et al. 2022. Glacial ice supports a distinct and undocumented polar bear subpopulation persisting in late 21st century sea-ice conditions. Science 376(6599):1333-1338. Supplementary pdf here. Peacock, E. 2022. A new polar bear population: Can the international conservation agreement protect these bears? Science 376(6599):1267-1268. SHARE THIS: Twitter Facebook Pinterest2 Tumblr Reddit Email Loading… RELATED New polar bear subpopulation update: more background facts and details from the paperJune 19, 2022In “Advocacy” East Greenland polar bears – said to be the most polluted but appear to be doing just fineFebruary 4, 2015In “Life History” Global population size estimates for polar bears clash with extinction predictionsOctober 31, 2021In “Advocacy” This entry was posted in Life History, Population, Sea ice habitat and tagged genetically distinct, genetics, glaciers, Greenland, IUCN, movements, new subpopulation. Bookmark the permalink. Comments are closed. Search for: SUPPORT POLAR BEAR SCIENCE CLICK IMAGE TO BUY

STUDY: Polar bears continued to thrive in 2021 – Bear population increases to 32,000, up from about 26,000

March 2, 2022

https://mailchi.mp/e8dc45d9f585/the-gwpf-newsletter-0pazn5cm4e-187338?e=0b1369f9f8 London, 26 February – Polar bears are thriving, says prominent Canadian zoologist. In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2021, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) ahead of International Polar Bear Day tomorrow, zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) promotes the impression that polar bear population numbers are declining, the results of recent studies indicate otherwise. Crockford further clarifies that the global population estimate used by the PBSG has not been updated since 2015, even though the results of numerous surveys have been published since then. These additions bring the global population total to almost 32,000, up from about 26,000, albeit with a wide range of potential error. This modest increase is consistent with a species recovering from low numbers brought about by overhunting after focused international protection was introduced in 1973. In 2021, results of an aerial survey of the Chukchi Sea in 2016 generated a population estimate of 5,444 (range 3,636–8,152), about 2,500 greater than a previous survey but within its range of error. This estimate is in line with other evidence that conditions for polar bears in the area have been excellent. Results from a 2017–2018 survey of the Davis Strait subpopulation published in 2021 revealed numbers were stable, although the bears were fatter than they had been in 2005-2007, with good cub survival indicating a thriving population. Dr. Crockford reports that there were three serious attacks by polar bears on people in 2021 but no fatalities. She explains that there were no reports of widespread starvation of bears, acts of cannibalism, or drowning deaths that might suggest bears were having trouble surviving the ice-free season. “The current health and abundance of polar bears continues to be at odds with predictions that the species is suffering serious negative impacts from reduced summer sea ice blamed on human-caused climate change.” Key Findings • Recent survey results bring the average global population estimate to at least 32,000, with a wide range of potential error. • Results from the 2017–2018 survey of the Davis Strait subpopulation revealed numbers are stable at about 2,015 bears (range 1,603–2,588), but bears were found to have been fatter than they had been in 2005–2007, with good cub survival. • An aerial survey of the Chukchi Sea in 2016 generated a population estimate of 5,444 (range 3,636–8,152), about 2,500 greater than a previous survey, which plausibly reflects the excellent conditions for polar bears in this area. • Reports that polar bears seem to be moving from Alaska to Russia in a ‘mass exodus’ may describe a real phenomenon that reflects the excellent feeding conditions for bears in the Chukchi Sea compared to Alaska, fueled by continued increases in primary productivity across the Arctic. • Spring research in Svalbard, Norway in 2021 showed body condition of male polar bears was stable and litter size of family groups was the same as it had been in 1994 but lower than 2019. • A new paper reported that more polar bears in Svalbard seem to be killing and eating reindeer during the summer than they did during the 1970s but the phenomenon was not exclusively tied to reduced sea ice. • Markus Dyck, a renowned Canadian polar bear biologist, died tragically 25 April 2021 in a helicopter crash near Resolute Bay along with two crew members while doing a survey of the Lancaster Sound subpopulation for the government of Nunavut • There were three serious attacks by polar bears on people in 2021 but no fatalities: Foxe Basin (Canada) in August, Svalbard (Norway) in March, and northeast Greenland in August. Susan Crockford: The State of the Polar Bear 2021 (pdf) Contact Dr Susan Crockford e: [email protected]

Climate Activists Are Wrong, Polar Bears Aren’t Dying Out, Arctic Ice Is Stable

January 5, 2022

https://lidblog.com/polar-bears-arent-dying-out/ by Jeff Dunetz Over the New Year’s weekend, it felt like this ad was on my TV during every commercial break. The commercial was from the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF). It began with sad-looking Polar Bears walking on a small chunk of ice. Then came the sad part. “arctic sea ice is melting at an alarming rate. Without ice, mothers may struggle to find food and keep their cubs alive if we don’t act now, species worldwide could lose their homes forever. The commercial says that if you donate $12/month to the WWF, you get a plush baby polar bear cub and a polar bear Christmas Tree ornament. My first reaction was, Gee, those moms struggle to find food for their cubs? Who thought that bears were hurt by Bidenflation like humans. But I eventually realized Polar bears aren’t affected by inflation. But then three questions came into my mind: Is the ice really melting to the point that polar bear moms can feed their cubs? If the cubs aren’t eating, does that mean the polar bear species is dying out? And the most personal question is, How the heck are Polar Bear dads getting away with making the moms do all the work, and will their strategy work for humans? My friend Marc Morano sent me links to many articles to help me research and find the answers to the questions. As usual. Marc, who runs the excellent site Climate Depot and has written books on flawed climate change hypotheses, came through with links to help my research and find answers to the questions. Well, not ALL the questions. Marc didn’t have any links to help me with n the third question, the one about the polar bear dads. But allow me to share answers to the first two questions: One doesn’t have to be a scientist to realize the “arctic sea ice is melting at an alarming rate” can only be true if the sea ice is melting. Note, polar bears only live in the arctic, not the antarctic. I have don’t know why the bears aren’t living on the southern ice cap. Perhaps there is no internet, and the cable TV sucks. Therefore we will concentrate on the Arctic ice only. First, in a peer-reviewed study, the University of Cambridge conducted research that reported: The Arctic Ocean has been getting warmer since the beginning of the 20th century—decades earlier than records suggest—due to warmer water flowing into the delicate polar ecosystem from the Atlantic Ocean. An international group of researchers reconstructed the recent history of ocean warming at the gateway to the Arctic Ocean in a region called the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Svalb The University issued a press release that said in part: “When we looked at the whole 800-year timescale, our temperature and salinity records look pretty constant,” said co-lead author Dr. Tesi Tommaso from the Institute of Polar Sciences of the National Research Council in Bologna. “But all of a sudden at the start of the 20th century, you get this marked change in temperature and salinity—it really sticks out.” I have often posted that the models used to tie mankind to climate change were bogus and impossible to be correct. There is no way for the model designers to understand all the factors influencing Earth’s climate. And they start by basing their predictions on the computer models instead of what’s really happening. It’s as if they are saying it’s raining outside without looking out the window to see if it’s really happening. So far, the climate models about the Arctic do not consider that the Artic started warming much earlier than believed. The models say the Arctic ice extent (a measure of all the ice in an area) is melting. In fact, in Dec.2008, before he complained to a masseur about his second chakra, former VP Al Gore used those climate models that the Arctic Ice Cap would be gone in five years. That didn’t happen—the ice cap part. Thankfully Marc didn’t send me research links about Al’s chakra. That’s the definition of TMI. James Hansen, a former NASA scientist, is often called the “father of climate change,” based on the information he released from his throne at NASA. Hansen predicted, If the world continues with a ‘business as usual’ scenario..temperatures will rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius. And on “that warmer planet, ice sheets would melt quickly, causing a rise in sea levels that would put most of Manhattan under water. Hansen used the old tricks of melting Arctic sea ice and a reduction in polar bear numbers to try and pile pressure on world governments: “It is not too late to save the Arctic, but it requires that we begin to slow carbon dioxide emissions this decade,” Wow, that is scary—the guy worked for NASA. But if one does a little research, they learn Hansen’s work is ruled by one motto: “If God deals you bad numbers–fudge them.” Mr. Hansen has been caught reporting bogus numbers more than once. What has happened since then? Is the ice melting, leading to starving baby bears? That’s not happening either. Depending on which study you read, Arctic ice extent has been rising or falling by a very tiny amount in recent years. In July 2021, the Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI) revealed that temperatures ran below the average of the 2021 season. “Climate alarmists have their beliefs grounded in dogma –whether they know it or not– and this is the reason that their “tipping point” prophesies continue to uneventfully pass by, year after year, decade after decade.” These colder than average Arctic temperatures mean any losses in ice ‘extent” this year can only be attributed to other causes –such as wind direction/speed, etc. Norwegian Data shows the September minimum trend has contradicted Al Gore’s predictions of an ice-free Arctic. Whether sea ice has turned the corner and will start a recovery still remains to be seen. A paper by meteorologist Professor J. Ray Bates says Arctic ice extent may have decreased slightly, but they’ve been pretty stable for the past 15 years. Stability is more than one can say about Green New Deal author Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who believes that people who disagree with her do so because they want to date her. A new paper by an eminent meteorologist says that trends in polar sea-ice levels give little cause for alarm. The paper, by Professor J. Ray Bates, has just been published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation. According to Professor Bates, climate model simulations indicate significantly decreasing sea ice levels in both hemispheres, with the greatest decreases occurring in September each year. However, the observed September trend in the Antarctic is actually slightly upwards, and while observed levels in the Arctic have fallen over the last 40 years, they have been quite stable since around 2007. Using data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), a U.S.governmet agency, ice extent has been up very slightly (+0.368%) during the past 14 years. Putting this all together, we learn that humans will not be wiped out from rising seawater, and the polar bears won’t be wiped out because of melting ice. Polar bears have been doing much better than the U.S economy since inauguration day. Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford, an expert on polar bears, wrote State of the Polar Bear Report 2020. Dr. Crockford reported that 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest were either stable or increasing, despite significant reductions in sea ice. As a result, the global population of polar bears is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015. For the population to grow that fast, the baby bears must be eating well (and male polar bears are getting lucky). Polar Bear Science, a site whose editorial is 100% about polar bears, wrote, “Compared to last year, polar bear habitat at 15 December 2021 is way up in the Barents and Bering Seas but way down in Hudson Bay but nothing any polar bear has to worry about.” An article by CNN in January 2021 buried this information in the 20th paragraph “Jon Aars, a senior researcher at the Norwegian Polar Institute: “Polar bears are optimistic animals,” Aars says. “It seems that they are quite resistant, and they are doing quite well despite the fact that they’ve lost a lot of their habitat.” Despite the odds, Svalbard’s polar bear numbers do not appear to have decreased in the last 20 years, he says.” As for the third question, Marc didn’t have the answer, so I asked my wife, who said if the polar bear dads weren’t helping, the moms would have killed them–just like humans. What I learned about question number one is who knows? But any change in arctic ice extent is tiny either way. As for question two, the cubs must be eating because the polar bear population is growing. And for number three, If I don’t watch the kids— it’s gonna hurt real bad. Unless you really want a cute plush bear cub, I’d ignore the commercial and donate to a different organization.

BUSTED: ‘Polar bear eating reindeer seen as evidence of climate change’ Proven False

December 8, 2021

https://climaterealism.com/2021/12/busted-polar-bear-eating-reindeer-seen-as-evidence-of-climate-change-proven-false/ By Anthony Watts In yet another failure of basic journalism, dozens of media outlets around the world have been parroting the claim that a video of a polar bear hunting, catching, and eating a reindeer is evidence of climate change. It isn’t, and the claims don’t stand up to even the simplest probing of scientific reasoning. For example, the India Times trumpeted this headline: Climate Crisis May Be Pushing Polar Bears To Drown Reindeer For Food And This Rare Footage Is Proof In another ludicrous example, published on Agence’ France-Presse, Philip Andrew Churm writes: Rare footage of a polar bear chasing a reindeer into the water and killing it could be another stark indication of climate change. … Eating reindeer has become a matter of both necessity and opportunity for polar bears. But it is largely being seen as yet further evidence of a changing climate. Reporters such as Churm rarely bother to check any facts before making such claims. Polar Bears, and bears in general are all omnivores. They eat what is available to them. Watching the video, it is apparent the reindeer simply made a tactical blunder while being chased, and went into the one environment where ursus maritimus (aka sea bear) excels. I highly doubt the reindeer could be caught on land, bears can’t run as fast as them, but they are excellent swimmers and can swim for several hours at a time over long distances. Reindeer, not so much. And, this is not new behavior, it is documented as far back as 1968, and the behavior likely has been going on for centuries before we arrived in the Arctic; so it is not likely to be an indication of climate change over a long period. Zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford also noted the video and wrote about it on her website Polar Bear Science, Caught on film: polar bear stalks, kills and eats a Svalbard reindeer but climate change is hardly to blame. Crockford points out that the claim is hype, not science, The possibility that a polar bear somewhere in the Arctic might occassionally be successful at stalking and killing a reindeer (aka caribou) shouldn’t surprise anyone, let alone a biologist on Svalbard. But having video footage of the event makes it immediately newsworthy, especially when the researchers vaguely suggest that global warming might be to blame. The title of the scientific paper that has generated the latest polar bear hype is called ‘Yes, they can: polar bears Ursus maritimus successfully hunt Svalbard reindeer Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus’ (Stempnlewicz et al. 2021). Would any serious scientist really think they couldn’t? Crockford also correctly points out that other issues are in play, most notable being the fact that there are more bears, more reindeer, and more humans with cameras in the Arctic than 50 years ago. She adds, The UK DailyMail story played up the climate change angle, even though the paper presents reduced summer sea ice as only one of two options for more polar bears hunting reindeer on Svalbard over the last 20 years: the other option being more bears and more reindeer. Population numbers of polar bears and reindeer in the early 1970s were so low that protections were put in place and surprise (!), numbers of both species are much higher today (Aars et al. 2017; Prop et al. 2015;Stempnlewicz et al. 2021). More bears and more reindeer mean more possible encounters and more potential reindeer kills. … I would have added that there are also more people with cameras across the Arctic than there were in the 1970s, which is highly relevant to the current example. More people with smart phones and video cameras means a higher likelihood that someone, somewhere, will capture polar bear behaviour no one has ever been able to document. Just like we see more tornadoes, hurricanes, flash floods, and other disasters on the news due to more people with cameras (storm chasers) and 24/7/365 news coverage where anyone can upload a video to a news outlet and within minutes be seen worldwide, so has the ability to capture videos of polar bears, doing what polar bears do; hunt and kill prey. Dr. Crockford continues with her pragmatic analysis, Polar bears would not be successful apex predators in one of the harshest environments on Earth if they were not this smart and opportunistic. However, it does not mean that polar bears in general are eating a “more terrestrial diet” because of reduced summer sea ice, as the authors of this paper suggest (a very few bears do; most don’t). It does indicate that conservation practices initiated in the 20th century that were meant to bolster reindeer and caribou numbers (similarly true for beluga, walrus, and geese) have resulted in more chances for polar bears to be successful in the 21st century despite reduced summer sea ice. Oddly, this seems to have caught some biologists by surprise. Nature always finds a way, and these “smarter than the average bears” also seem to be smarter than the biologists and the reporters that rush to blame anything polar-bear related on global warming, aka “climate change.” Anthony Watts Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.

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