Since early December, a group of 52 polar bears have terrorized the Russian village of Belushaya Guba on southern Novaya Zemlya. The aggressiveness of some of the bears, their boldness in entering local buildings and fearlessness in the face of the usual deterrents has caused the local government to call a state of emergency to help the town residents. Global warming is blamed for the problem but as is so often the case, that claim does not stand up to scrutiny.
Large group of polar bears at the Belushya Guba town dump on Novaya Zemlya, Russia. From the 11 Feb. 2019 story at The Daily Mail.
Belushaya Guba is located on the southwest coast of Novaya Zemlya in the eastern Barents Sea. It is a town of mostly military personnel and their families:
The predictable claims that this situation is due to global warming are confounded by the fact that the region has not had abundant sea ice by December in more than 30 years, yet this is the first time the town has had such a problem with polar bears. Polar bears in winter can be very dangerous, as they are often lean and desperately hungry. [except these ones are not, see update below]
UPDATE 11 February 2019: The international media have gone mad for this story and some photos are now available. Best series of photos and video is at The Daily Mail, UK (11 Feb 2019: State of emergency is declared after more than 50 polar bears invade Russian town and ‘chase terrified residents’). No new information is available on the story itself but plenty of hyperbole has been added. The photos show how fat and healthy these so-called ‘desperate’ bears are, which makes the claims that global warming is to blame for the crisis even more ludicrous (see the ice charts below). So far, the most over-the-top take on this goes to the Washington Post (11 Feb 2019: A ‘mass invasion’ of polar bears is terrorizing an island town. Climate change is to blame): they went to the most trouble to make the link to climate change and bring up the vilified ‘starving polar bear’ video that National Geographic was forced to apologize for last August and the debunked 2007 prediction that 2/3 of the world’s bears would be gone by 2050 (Crockford 2017). The Guardian‘s effort is weak by comparison, as is CNN‘s. The news outlet (not a blog) Daily Caller has some quotes from this page. Competition amongst bears for scarce natural resources in winter makes dump sites and stored food available around Arctic communities all the more attractive. When polar bear numbers are high, as they are now, this competition can get fierce. It’s no wonder the bears don’t want to leave.
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