Monthly Archives: August 2017

Video: Death of a Climate Icon, the polar bear’s demise as a useful poster child

Posted on August 31, 2017 | Comments Off

Last week I asked: “What’s causing the death of the polar bear as a climate change icon?”

I was echoing the conclusion of a commentator at the Arctic Institute (22 August 2017) who lamented: “The polar bear is dead, long live the polar bear” and climate scientist Michael Mann, who told a lecture audience a few months ago that polar bears are no longer useful for generating “action” on climate change.

This is slide 15 from my presentation at ICCC-12 in Washington, D.C. in March 2017.

Now here’s the video. Watch “The Death of a Climate Icon” (31 August 2017):

The video was made possible with the assistance of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

Kind of makes you wonder: is Al Gore’s recent climate change movie, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, tanking at the box office because he couldn’t include polar bears as an example of the effects of human-caused global warming as he did in his award-winning 2007 effort? Did too many polar bears doom Gore’s 2017 movie?

Conclusions in the video about the predictions of polar bear decline vs. the current status of polar bears and sea ice are documented in my 2017 published paper:

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/

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat, Summary

Tagged advocacy, climate change, facts, fat bears, global warming, Gore, icon, population, poster child, science, sea ice, status, video

Polar Bear Facts & Myths translations in French and German coming soon

Posted on August 29, 2017 | Comments Off

Translations of my popular polar bear science book Polar Bear Facts & Myths — suitable for readers aged seven and up — are almost complete. Versions in French and German will be available soon through Amazon.

FM French and German covers_10 Sept 2017

These translations have been done by native French and German speakers. They are particularly suitable for Canadian French immersion science classes and home school science lessons worldwide. But most importantly, they offer the chance for young children whose first language is French or German to read a sensible book about polar bears loaded with fabulous colour images.

Ours Polaire Faits et Mythes — Bientôt disponible!

Eisbären Fakten und Mythen — Bald erhältlich!

These translated versions of Polar Bear Facts & Myths will delight children of all ages as well as adults: they have the same question and answer format and are based on the most up-to-date science.

Please pass this notice along to teachers and parents you think might be interested.

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Posted in Book review, Summary

Tagged books, children's books, education, Eisbär, Facts and Myths, Faits et Mythes, Fakten und Mythen, French, French immersion, German, home schooling, Ours Polaire, polar bear, resource, science, teachers, translation

Pacific walrus haulout two weeks early, US gov’t agency blames “earliest” ice loss

Posted on August 24, 2017 | Comments Off

Walrus 2012 July USGS This year’s baseless media frenzy over walrus survival and loss of summer sea ice blamed on human-caused global warming was initiated by a press release from US Fish and Wildlife last week (16 August 2017, pdf here: “Pacific walruses haul out near Point Lay earlier than in previous years“). Quote below, my bold:

In the first week of August, several hundred Pacific walruses were observed on a barrier island near the Native Village of Point Lay, a small, Iñupiaq community on the northwest coast of Alaska. This is the earliest date yet for the haulout to form…This year, sea ice has retreated beyond the continental shelf earlier than in previous years

But is this all true? In a word, no — and it didn’t take much research to uncover the truth.

UPDATE 24 August 2017: A few minutes after this post was published, I became aware that just yesterday, 20 conservation activist organizations, lead by the Center for Biological Diversity (who led the polar bear listing charge) issued a press release regarding a letter (pdf here) pressuring the US Fish and Wildlife Service to list Pacific walrus as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act. Apparently, a decision must be made by the end of September on whether to actively list walrus or not. The text below has been amended to reflect this development.
Continue reading

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Summary, walrus

Tagged Alaska, Chukchi Sea, climate change, earliest, endangered, ESA, fact check, facts, global warming, haulout, hype, Point Lay, sea ice, summary, US Fish and Wildlife Service, video, walrus

Fat polar bears [and lots of them] drive public confidence in future of the species

Posted on August 23, 2017 | Comments Off

What is causing the death of the polar bear as a climate change icon? Fat bears are part of it, but mostly it’s the fact that polar bear numbers haven’t declined as predicted.

Western Hudson Bay polar bears around Churchill, Manitoba appear mostly in good shape this summer despite the very late freeze-up last fall, including the very fat bear caught on camera below (see more great pictures here):

Not only have we been seeing pictures of fat bears rather than starving bears in recent years but there are lots of them, in Western Hudson Bay and other seasonal sea ice regions where there should be none (if the models had been correct). No wonder polar bears are falling out of favour as an icon for catastrophic human-caused global warming.

[Here’s another picture of a fat bear, this one from Svalbard]

The real beauty of form and shape#visitsvalbard #longyearbyen #svalbard #polarbear #gjestehuset102 #home_away_from_home #svalbardwildlife pic.twitter.com/bff6kufnoT

— gjestehuset 102 (@Gjestehuset102) August 13, 2017

Excuses for why the public is no longer worried about the future of polar bears include a recent claim by climate scientist Michael Mann that “by making polar bears and penguins the poster child for climate change, we have wrongly conveyed that this is some exotic problem far off.”

But none of these apologists acknowledge the simple truth: the models that predicted catastrophe for polar bears due to diminished summer sea ice turned out to be wrong. The sea ice declined but polar bears flourished. Polar bears in seasonal sea ice ecoregions like Western Hudson Bay and Baffin Bay didn’t die off due to climate change as people were told would happen — why should they believe any of the other scare stories?

In and around Churchill, where tourists flock to see Western Hudson Bay polar bears up close and personal, one bear in good condition recently ran through town:

No visible #eclipse in #Churchill today, but we had a grand view of other stellar action!! #polarbear @ChurchillNSC @TravelManitoba #travel pic.twitter.com/g9W6eD9Mfx

— Claudia Laroye (@travelling_mom) August 21, 2017

Overall, there have been fewer problems or conflicts this year in Churchill compared to last (after 6 weeks of onshore living), see below.

Polar bears are no longer a useful global warming icon because they are thriving despite diminished sea ice: Churchill area polar bears are a good example.

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Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat

Tagged alert, catastrophe, Churchill, climate change, conflicts, facts, global warming, icon, Michael Mann, polar bear, population decline, population estimate, poster child, problem bears, seasonal ecoregion, western hudson bay

Churchill polar bear reports still showing fewer problems than last year

Posted on August 15, 2017 | Comments Off

Churchill, Manitoba’s Polar Bear Alert Program is still reporting many fewer problems with polar bears onshore than it did last year at the same point in the ice-free season (week 5, 7-13 August):

Churchill PB reports_week 5_ Aug 7-13_2017

Compare to week five last year (2016), when bears came ashore in excellent condition:

2016 Aug 8-14_week 5

Although it’s been warmer than average recently (25.4 degrees C yesterday, expected to reach 29 degrees C today and 28 degrees C tomorrow), according to Environment Canada weather records, that’s not even close to an August record-breaker temperature for Churchill. Continue reading

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Posted in History, Life History, Polar bear attacks

Tagged alert, attacks, Churchill, encounters, facts, heat wave, history, ice-free, jail, onshore, polar bear, problems, temperature

Churchill polar bear reports to 6 August show fewer problems than last two years

Posted on August 8, 2017 | Comments Off

Churchill, Manitoba Polar Bear Alert Program problem bear reports for weeks 3 (24 July – 30 July 2017) and 4 (31 July – 6 August 2017) show much less activity and fewer problems in this Western Hudson Bay location than were reported for the last two years (2016 and 2015) at the same time (relative to the first reports of the season):

Churchill PB reports_week 4_ July 31- Aug 6_2017

Compare 2017 to last year (2016) at this time, where the problem bear report claims numbers were similar to 2015 (for which I don’t have a week 4 report), with more bears handled and placed in “jail”:

2016 Aug 1-7_week 4

But most Western Hudson Bay bears are at their highest body weight when they come off the ice in early summer and present little risk to humans who keep their distance — few bears cause any real problems this time of year. Compare the above problem bear reports to the blog post from Seal River Lodge, just north of Churchill (5 August 2017, from Churchill Wild Eco-Lodge), which reports seeing 11 bears in one day of viewing. Great photos at this post confirm those bears are in good physical condition and interacting with each other without bothering people.

Seal River polar bear report for 2017 Aug 5