Tag Archives: June sea ice extent

PBI Facebook posts on Stirling’s polar bear that “died of climate change” have disappeared

It seems the two PBI Facebook posts about polar bear expert Ian Stirling’s bear that supposedly “died of climate change” last summer, which included some scathing comments and links to this blog, were removed sometime between late August 2013 and yesterday, when I happened to look for them.

See the screen-caps below. The first one, posted August 6, linked to the original Guardian article on the Svalbard bear and added some activist spin for good measure!

Polar Bears International Facebook_Aug 6

The second one, posted August 8, linked to an PBI news item that introduced a PBI blog post written by Stirling, in which he attempted some damage control.1

PBI link to Stirlings blog post on the bear that died of climate change_with activist spin_Aug 8 2013

[Reprise: Stirling speculated that a 16 year old bear found emaciated and dead in Svalbard, three months after it had been captured by researchers in good condition, had died of starvation due to lack of sea ice caused by global warming. Guardian writers transformed this into a bear that “died of climate change.” No mention from in the original story that 16 years is near the maximum life expectancy for male bears in the wild, that death by starvation is the usual cause of death for very old bears, or that other bears in the area were doing just fine (based on the fact that the Norwegian team working that area had just posted their data online). See my original post here, followup here, Featured Quote #44, here and footnote below]

Stirling himself (a “scientific advisor” to Polar Bears International, PBI), and the-polar-bears-are-dying message generally, took a big hit over that incident. But attempting to rewrite history? See the screen-cap below, taken yesterday (pdf here):

PBI_Fan Photo Day Aug 6 to Aug 13 gap_Svalbard bear story gone_April 29 2014

The deletion of these two entire entries suggests that PBI and Ian Stirling would rather their faithful Facebook followers and donors not have a chance to revisit the scathing comments and links to this blog. I assume it is the comments and links that were the offending parts, since Stirling’s blog post at PBI is still there, and of course, the news stories carried elsewhere are still out there. So instead of deleting comments, they removed the entire posts.

Good thing I saved screen caps of many of the more critical comments, from at least two PBI Facebook followers I’ve never heard of — have a look. [August 6th post was also captured by the cache machine]
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September sea ice ballyhoo and why it doesn’t matter to polar bears

The end of September sea ice summary from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) finally became available late last week (October 3, “A better year for the cryosphere”).

The summary figure NSIDC provides are the average ice extent for the month (not the maximum achieved at the end of the month), which are compared to previous years.

[There has been considerable ice growth since the end of September (updated daily here].

Here is why the September extent doesn’t matter to polar bears: it is the extent in June that is important to polar bear survival. June is the end of the critical spring feeding period for polar bears (see previous post here) – healthy bears eat more seals over a shorter period of time from March to June than any other time of year. After the end of June, most bears have enough fat to survive a fast of 4 months or more.

In contrast to September – when many bears are taking a time-out on shore – ice extent for June over the last 30 years or so provided an extensive hunting platform for polar bears throughout the Arctic. To show you how extensive, I’ve constructed a composite of ice maps from selected years (Fig.1, below).

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