Monthly Archives: February 2018

State of the Polar Bear Report 2017 shows polar bears are thriving

My new report reveals that polar bears are doing well despite recent reductions in sea-ice. It shows in details why this is so, with summaries of critical recent research.

Press release and pdf below. And read my op-ed in the National Post here.

State of Polar Bear Report cover_12 Feb 2018 image with bottom
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Histrionics over Arctic temperatures & sea ice extent: implications for polar bears

Panic over Arctic temperatures got smeared across news networks last week, so I think a bit of perspective is in order, including an assessment of what this means for polar bears and their prey (because some of the hysteria is being amplified from that corner).

The region causing all the kerfuffle is at the northernmost tip of Greenland (see map below), where there is a weather station at Cape Morris Jesup. Next-nearest stations are at Alert, Canada (to the west) and Longyearbyen, Svalbard (Norway, to the east).

Cape Morris Jesup location Greenland_Google map

Arctic temps spike over 30 degrees in the midst of winter (The Weathern Network, Friday, February 23, 2018) included the tweet below, showing a fracture of sea ice north of Greenland so transient that it does not show up on daily sea ice maps:

“Along with those spikes in temperature, Lars Kaleschke’s tweet, above, also shows the large rift in the sea ice that opened up just north of Cape Morris Jesup, at the same time. Kaleschke is a professor of sea ice remote sensing at the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability, at the University of Hamburg, in Germany.

Summary: Temperature and sea ice “abberations” in northern Greenland are transient phenomena that have clearly happened before (e.g. 2011) without major consequences except perhaps through impacts on eastern Arctic and subArctic weather conditions (including the UK).

Lack of sea ice north of Svalbard in the Barents Sea occuried last year and in 2012 in Februrary. But by mid-to-late March, when seal are beginning to give birth on the ice and polar bears are busy hunting them, ice had again covered the region. This year is likely to be the same. However, we won’t know until the end of March or ealry April if a recovery will or won’t happen, so any alarm-ringing about impacts on Arctic fauna surival have no foundation in fact until then.

East Greenland Scorsby Sound March 2011 on Kap Tobin_Rune Dietz_press photo

Scorsby Sound, East Greenland bear in March 2011. Rune Dietz, press photo.

In the Bering Sea, ice extent is well below average for this time of year but studies show the one consistent feature of Bering Sea ice is its variability. Low ice levels have distressing impacts for St. Lawrence island seal and whale hunters. However, there is certainly enough ice in the Bering Sea/Chukchi Sea region for polar bears and Arctic seals to do what they do this time of year (which is try to survive until early April, at which time seals start giving birth to their pups and polar bears start to eat them, with gusto). And the ice season isn’t over: maximum extent of ice in the Bering sea doesn’t usually come until late April or May, and the dramatic decline of mid-February already shows signs of reversing.

Details below this ice map for 24 February 2018, courtesy NSIDC Masie:

masie_all_zoom_4km 2018 Feb 24

PS. I’m off within hours to Toronto for the launch of my State of the Polar Bear Report in honour of International Polar Bear Day, 27 February. Watch for reports in the news and for my op-ed 27 February at the Financial Post.

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My Polar Bear Facts & Myths book for kids is being translated into Dutch & Norwegian

In celebration of International Polar Bear Day on Tuesday 27 February, I’m pleased to announce the up-coming publication of Dutch and Norwegian translations of my popular childrens’ science book Polar Bear Facts & Myths.

Lying bear shutterstock_244419640_Cropped_web size

Ijsberen Feiten en Mythen

Isbjørn Fakta og Myter

This means my powerful little book that provides the straight goods for kids on polar bear science will soon be available in five languages: English, French, German, Dutch and Norwegian.

Watch for them!

Coffee house discussion about polar bear science & conservation in Toronto on Tuesday

In conjunction with the launch of my State of the Polar Bear Report in Toronto next week, Benny Peiser (from the Global Warming Policy Foundation) and I will be participating in a coffee house discussion about polar bear conservation and survival issues on the evening of Tuesday, 27 February 2018 at 8:30 pm.

If you’re in town, come and celebrate International Polar Bear Day with a frank discussion about polar bear science.

Grounds for Thought at GreenBeanery_Feb 27 2018

I am very much looking forward to meeting the public at this evening discussion and to chat with media representatives and colleagues at the press luncheon in the early afternoon. Journalist/opinion writer Terry Corcoran recently billed the luncheon as part of a Polar Bear Battle since conservation organization Polar Bears International (where biologist Steven Amstrup, co-author of the Harvey et al. Bioscience paper and developer of the failed 2007 polar bear survival model, is employed as chief scientist) is holding a gala fundraiser dinner the same night, just a block away.

In addition to Benny Peiser from GWPF, a number of familiar names will be at the State of the Polar Bear launch and press luncheon, including Terry Corcoran,  Larry Soloman, Joe Oliver and Conrad Black (all journalist/opinion writers at the Financial Post and/or National Post), journalist/writer Donna Laframboise who blogs at No Frakking Consensus, as well as science colleagues Chris Essex, Ross McKitrick, and Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit fame. Details below.

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Russia confirms Chukchi Sea polar bears not at risk from climate change or poaching

A statement yesterday from Yegor Vereshchagin, wildlife conservation manager from Chukotka, Russia  (Polar Bears Adjust to Climate Change, 20 February 2018) confirms that Chukchi Sea polar bears are currently doing extremely well.

Rode and Regehr 2010_Chukchi_report2010_Fig1_triplets_labelled

Contrary to previous reports and predictions (e.g. Amstrup 2011; Amstrup et al. 2007, 2008; Durner et al. 2009), there appears to be no threats due to recent declines in summer sea ice (Rode and Regehr 2010; Rode et al. 2013, 2014, 2018) or from poaching.
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State of the Polar Bear Report 2017 to be released Feb 2017 at press lunch Toronto

My “State of the Polar Bear Report 2017” will be unveiled at a Global Warming Policy Foundation press conference and luncheon in Toronto on Tuesday, 27 February, in celebration of International Polar Bear Day. There will be a video presentation as well.

State of Polar Bear Report cover_12 Feb 2018 image

The report summarizes clear, reliable and concise information on the current state of polar bears relative to historical records. It highlights up-to-date data and research findings in a balanced and factual format that avoids hype and exaggeration, all in one place. It is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in polar bears and Arctic ecology.

The launch will be held on Tuesday 27 February at 11:00am at the Toronto Public Library, Founders’ Room, 789 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M4W 2G8.

Programme

* Welcome (Dr Benny Peiser, Director of the GWPF)
* Introduction: Prof Chris Essex (Chairman of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council)
* Short video screening
* Presentation: Dr Susan Crockford (author of the report)

For further information and to schedule interviews, please contact Harry Wilkinson (harry.wilkinson@thegwpf.org)

A copy of the report will be posted on Polar Bear Science Tuesday.

New Scientist prints a more reasoned polar bear article but myths persist

New Scientist has an article coming out next week takes a fairly reasoned approach to the polar bear conservation issue. It acknowledges that polar bear numbers have not declined in recent years even though summer sea ice dropped dramatically but goes on to perpetuate a number of myths that might not have happened if the author had done his homework or quizzed his other experts as thoroughly as he did me.

New Scientist headline_10 Feb 2018 issue 3164 photo

The survivors: is climate change really killing polar bears? Rapid global warming is said to be ringing the death knell for polar bears, by melthing their icy hunting grounds. But the reality is more complex. Fred Pearce, New Scientist 10 February 2018. Online now.

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BioScience pushback update and plea for a virtual beer

Writing this blog takes a lot of time and effort but it gives me immense personal and professional satisfaction. I get emails from readers all over the world saying how much they appreciate what I do for science. The fact that my colleagues felt threatened enough to publish a malicious hit piece attacking my scientific credibility tells me I’m reaching a wide and influential audience that are convinced by the science I present.Crockford and Polar bear_0245 sm

My books are getting good reviews. I discount the few Harvey et al. supporters that showed up in the days after the BioScience paper appeared in late November to write some Harveyesque comments in the Amazon review section for my Polar Bear Facts & Myths kids’ science book. A thuggish stunt but predictable given the nasty tone of the paper.

I’m not worried, though: book sales over the last couple of months have been very good, even though my university didn’t issue a press release to promote my kids book like Penn State did today for Harvey et al. co-author Michael Mann. I know that folks will head to Polar Bear Facts & Myths for a child-appropriate science book about polar bears, and to Mann’s Tantrum book if they want their kids to be petulant activists before they finish elementary school.

You might be interested to know I’ve decided not to take legal action against the Harvey cabal responsible for the defamatory BioScience paper.  I’m not backing down. I will definitely be pushing back (already started) but doing so will take time away from my paid work.

Beer clipart-3706-freeSo if you’d like to buy me a virtual beer to help defray costs, it would be much appreciated. I’ll keep you posted on progress.  My new donate button is upper right on the sidebar: “Support Polar Bear Science” — it takes credit cards or PayPal.

Cheers!

 

Polar bear specialists double-down on message of future starving bears

The really significant content of a new paper being heavily-hyped by the media1 is what wasn’t said rather than what the authors discovered about metabolic rates and weight maintenance of a small sample of nine Southern Beaufort Sea bears in 2014 to 2016 (Pagano et al. 2018; Whiteman 2018).

Pagano et al. 2018 photo released to press 2

This paper does not document starving or dying bears but merely found some (5/9) that lost weight when they should have been gaining, given that early April is the start of the ringed seal pupping season (Smith 1987) and the intensive spring feeding period for polar bears (Stirling et al. 1981).

The question is, why were Southern Beaufort Sea polar bears off Prudhoe Bay (see map of the study area below), still hunting and capturing only adult and subadult ringed seals from sea ice leads when newborn ringed seal pups and their mothers should have been plentiful and relatively easily available in their birth lairs on the sea ice (see below)?

Ringed seal lair_snow and ice thickness_PolarBearScience_sm

“Using video collar data, we documented bears’ hunting behavior and foraging success. Bears used sit-and-wait tactics to hunt seals 90% of the time, and stalking comprised the remaining 10% of hunts (movies S1 to S4) (19). Bears that successfully killed and ate adult or subadult ringed seals either gained or maintained body mass, whereas bears that only scavenged or showed no evidence of eating lost mass.”

There was no discussion in the paper of ringed seal birth lairs, or sea ice conditions at the time of the study, but several mentions about what might happen in the future to sea ice and potential consequences for polar bears. The press release did the same.

However, as you’ll see by the sea ice thickness maps below, there may be good reason for the lack of ringed seal lairs, and a general lack of seals except at the nearshore lead that forms because of tidal action: the ice just a bit further offshore ice looks too thick for a good crop of ringed seals in all three years of the study. This is reminiscent of conditions that occurred with devastating results in the mid-1970s and mid-2000s (Burns et al. 1975; Cherry et al. 2009; Harwood et al. 2012, 2015; Pilfold et al. 2012; Stirling 2002, Stirling et al. 1987). Those events affected primarily bears in the eastern half of the Southern Beaufort and were almost certainly responsible for the recorded decline in SB bear numbers in the 2001-2010 survey (Bromaghin et al. 2015; Crockford 2017; Crockford and Geist 2018).

It seems very odd to me that Pagano and colleagues suggested no reasons for the unexpectedly poor showing of polar bear hunting success during their study except a bit of hand-waving about higher-than-we-thought metabolic rates in the bears. For years, I’ve worried that the inevitable next episodes of thick Southern Beaufort spring ice would cause problems for polar bears and seals but we wouldn’t know it because whatever effects were documented would be blamed on reduced summer ice: I suspect that time may have come.

Pagano et al. 2018 polar bear fat and energy fig 1

Figure 1 from Pagano et al. 2018 cropped to show only the study area off Alaska.

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