This is the most important time of year for Arctic marine mammals that spend time above the ice: birthing, breeding, and feeding. And there is plenty of the right kind of ice available for those activities this year, as there was two years ago at the same time.
Comments Off on Earth Day sea ice habitat during critical spring season for Arctic seals, polar bears, and walrus
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged bearded seal, Earth Day, East Greenland, Hudson Bay, ice thickness, polar bear, ringed seal, sea ice, Svalbard, walrus
In a move that echoes the collaboration of activist organization World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with Netflix that brought us Sir David Attenborough’s walrus deception in ‘Our Planet’ that I chronicled in my latest book, ‘Fallen Icon’, streaming service DisneyNature has joined with activist organization Polar Bears International (PBI) to create a polar bear ‘documentary’ (called ‘Polar Bear’) that we can tell is propaganda because they’ve chosen to release the “cute and worrying” film on Earth Day (Friday 22 April 2022). In fact, the two films have a producer in common: Alastair Fothergill.
In the case of ‘Our Planet’, WWF bankrolled the film series for Netflix to ensure the content they desired; in ‘Polar Bear’, the tables are turned: DisneyNature is paying PBI for their assistance getting the polar bear film shots and providing their biased content, via money they are calling a research grant. I think you know by now what to expect. However, here are the facts about polar bear conditions in Svalbard, where the film was shot, and some good news from Western Hudson Bay this year, courtesy of Mike Reimer and his team at Churchill Wild. In short, there is still no climate emergency for polar bears: the hype is based on old models that failed spectacularly and new ones which depend on old data and totally improbable climate scenarios (Crockford 2017, 2019; Hausfather and Peters 2020; Molnar et al. 2020).
Continue readingComments Off on Dispelling the doomsday propaganda in DisneyNature’s new polar bear ‘documentary’
Posted in Advocacy, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged advocacy, body condition, Churchill Wild, Earth Day, misinformation, Nanuk Lodge, Polar Bears International, polar berar, Svalbard
Late April is the height of the most important polar bear feeding and mating season and there is abundant sea ice habitat across the Arctic for doing both.
Sea ice charts below. Compare to 2018 conditions here; 2015 here; and 2014 here. Sea ice maximum this year was apparently “uneventful” according to the folks at the NSDIC because it didn’t even come close to setting a new low record.
Comments Off on Earth Day 2021: celebrate abundant sea ice habitat for polar bear feeding and mating
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Earth Day, feeding, mating, polar bear, sea ice
Shot during the 2015 Arctic GEOTRACES expedition aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy. The lack of narrated misinformation makes this video suitable for young children.
This looks to be a different bear than the one I discussed in 2015 here but was undoubtedly taken on the same cruise, because reports at the time (August 2015) said that ‘several’ bears were spotted. Video attributed to ‘Bill Schmoker, PolarTrek teacher 2015’, launched on the Woods Hole Youtube channel 1 April 2020 (no other info provided).
Comments Off on Earth Day surprise: video of fat polar bear on Arctic sea ice contains no false facts
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic basin, Coast Guard, Earth Day, fat bears, GEOTRACES, Healy, polar bear, sea ice, thin ice, video
Oddly, activist organization Polar Bears International recently updated their website and now suggest there is still time to save polar bears and sea ice – even though the IUCN Red List documented more polar bears alive in 2015 than at any time in the last 50 years, despite the recent decline of summer sea ice – and even more bizarrely, call for a public uprising.
Polar Bears International (with three polar bear scientists on staff and other as active advisors) suggest that people who love polar bears should march the streets on Earth Day with scientists to demand (as concerned and engaged citizens) that world leaders take them seriously.
Wow. I’ve been a career scientist for more than 40 years and I have to say, this is the oddest phenomenon I’ve encountered being advanced in the name of science. To me, it shows how disconnected these people are from what science is meant to be and what scientists are meant to do. Not just the polar bear scientists but the others like them that are behind this proposed march.
I recommend this blog post by Willis Eschenbach – an excerpt below.
Comments Off on Listen to the evidence: polar bears are thriving in current sea ice habitat
Posted in Advocacy, Population, Sea ice habitat
Tagged climate, Earth Day, Eschenbach, facts, habitat, March, polar bear, protest, save our sea ice, save the polar bear, sea ice
The air is thick with desperation on the polar bear front:
“[Andrew] Derocher said the polar bear population in the Beaufort Sea has fallen more than 50 per cent in the past 10 years.
“So it is a concern that this is probably one of the factors associated with the population decline,” he said.
As the CBC report in which this quote appears states immediately afterwards, there is no evidence for such a thing in the paper under discussion:
“The study found no direct evidence of that – all polar bears appeared to survive the swims recorded in the study.”
There is no truth to Derocher’s first statement either. Desperation – you don’t have to be a scientist to sense it. And the media wonder why people don’t trust them…
Comments Off on No evidence that long-distance swimming contributed to Beaufort Sea polar bear population crash of 2004-2006
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Beaufort Sea, Derocher, desperation, Earth Day, facts, hype, Michaels, polar bear, population crash, sea ice, swimming
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