A few days ago I had the pleasure of talking with Anthony Watts from WUWT as part of his new podcast series. Listen to it here.
Below, I’ve copied a post from earlier this year that summarizes some misconceptions about polar bear conservation status and population size. I reiterate here (with links added for convenience) what I said last month:
The polar bear data are contradictory: contrary to predictions, several polar bear subpopulations (at least four of them) are indeed thriving despite much reduced summer sea ice [Chukchi Sea, Barents Sea, Kane Basin, M’Clintock Channel, as well as Foxe Basin and Davis Strait]. I have chosen to emphasis that good news, while Stirling and Derocher choose to emphasize the data that seem to fit their predictions [Western Hudson Bay and Southern Hudson Bay]. This is a classic conflict that happens all the time in science but presents no proof that I’m wrong or that the PragerU video is inherently ‘false’.
Note that Western Hudson Bay bears were last counted in 2016 but have had five good sea ice seasons in a row now, including this year by the look of it, so if ‘lack of sea ice’ is really the cause of the statistically-insignificant decline, then population numbers should be back up. And here is my video about the National Geographic video of the starving polar bear blamed on climate change mentioned by Anthony in the interview:
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