anecdotal evidence | polarbearscience

Tag Archives: anecdotal evidence

Cannibalism update and insight on the timing of media hype

Posted on April 19, 2013 | Comments Off

In my last post, I went over some of the spin and misrepresentation of fact contained in the claim by leading polar bear biologists Steven Amstrup, Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher (Amstrup et al. 2006; Stirling and Derocher 2012) that cannibalism is on the increase because of the effects of global warming on Arctic sea ice.

I’ve had an opportunity to follow up on three points that puzzled me. Three relate to the Amstrup et al. paper that described three cases of cannibalism in the southeastern Beaufort Sea in 2004 and one to the incidents in western Hudson Bay in 2009. In the process, I found at least three more misrepresentations of fact and gained some insight on why these incidents of cannibalism were hyped so enthusiastically when they were. Continue reading

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Posted in Advocacy, Cannibalism, Life History

Tagged advocacy, Amstrup, anecdotal evidence, arctic sea ice, body condition, cannibalism, CDC, CITES, Daniel J. Cox, Derocher, ESA, hype, IPCC, Kassie Siegal, media, misrepresentation, nunatsiaq news, PBI, rogue bear, spin, starvation, starving polar bears, Stirling, UN Climate Conference, western hudson bay

Collapse of polar bear snow dens – Stirling and Derocher’s anecdotal evidence

Posted on April 5, 2013 | Comments Off

In their summary of facts supposedly supporting the premise that global warming is already having an impact on polar bear populations (discussed previously here, here, and here), biologists Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher (2012:2700) include a list of incidents of warm winter weather and/or “rain on snow events” that have led to the collapse of polar bear maternity dens and ringed seal birthing lairs.

Stirling and Derocher state that both polar bears and ringed seals (their primary prey) have a demonstrated

“high vulnerability …to increased mortatily resulting from warm temperatures and rain. Such rain on snow events are predicted to increase as the climate warms in the Arctic (Hansen et al. 2011).”[my bold]

However, their so-called evidence for polar bears and ringed seals having a proven vulnerability to these events comes not from scientific studies but what they admit outright are anecdotal reports.

They describe four incidents, including one case of a maternity den collapse (involving a 6 yr old, probably first-time mother and two, 3-4 week old cubs) in the southern Beaufort in 1989, apparently caused by a bit of warm weather followed by heavy snow in late January (a picture of the dead bear is included, see below, just so we don’t forget that a bear died).

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Posted in Advocacy, Cannibalism, Life History

Tagged advocacy, anecdotal evidence, den collapse, Derocher, rain on snow events, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., snow, Stirling, threatened, warm weather