Tag Archives: polar bear

Big difference between National Geo’s starving polar bear and Attenborough’s falling walrus

Posted on January 28, 2022 | Comments Off on Big difference between National Geo’s starving polar bear and Attenborough’s falling walrus

In Fallen Icon, I included a chapter about that infamous National Geographic video that falsely claimed an emaciated polar bear was starving because of climate change. Although I really thought at first that Attenborough’s falling walrus fiasco was the same over-zealous promotion of animal tragedy porn we were all used to seeing from activists, digging deep showed how wrong I was.

It was important to document these phenomena, in print, for the historical record. But on top of that, I bring the science and the hidden facts to light in Fallen Ichttps://atomic-temporary-38650637.wpcomstaging.com/2022/01/18/fallen-icon-sir-david-attenborough-and-the-walrus-deception-is-now-available/on and reveal the difference between the two campaigns.

See if you agree. And please do take the time to leave a review on Amazon for the benefit of future readers.

Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception

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Posted in Advocacy, Book promotion, science, walrus

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Polar bears at Kolyuchin Island weather station provide a rare photographer’s treat

Posted on January 24, 2022 | Comments Off on Polar bears at Kolyuchin Island weather station provide a rare photographer’s treat

Russian wildlife photographer Dmitry Kokh took some photos and video last year of polar bears hunkered down at an abandoned weather station on the Chukchi Sea coast and he apparently won a prize for one of them, shown below. The shots are very cool, so I’ve provided some context for the story and posted the video here.

‘Summer Season’ by Dmitry Kokh
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Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat

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False starving polar bear meme from 2019 making social media rounds with Greenland added

Posted on January 17, 2022 | Comments Off on False starving polar bear meme from 2019 making social media rounds with Greenland added

I have discovered that an entirely false meme has been circulating social media. For the record, here it is with an explanation of what’s wrong with it, which is everything.

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East Coast sea ice so far similar to last year

Posted on January 13, 2022 | Comments Off on East Coast sea ice so far similar to last year

Davis Strait ice pack is slowly moving south this year just as shorefast ice is developing in-place along the Labrador shoreline, similar to last year. East Coast harp seals that give birth in the region in March depend on this ice and so do many Davis Strait polar bears that feed on those newborn seals. In contrast, in 2017 the ice off Labrador was broader by mid-January (even more so by mid-February) and that seems to have made a huge difference by April, when ice north of Newfoundland was thick and extensive.

Compared to last year at this time, there was somewhat less ice along the Labrador coast but the difference is really negligible. By April, ice extent was well below average, especially in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and there were few sightings of polar bears along the Labrador and Newfoundland coasts.

Back in 2017 at the same time (below), the band of ice along the southern Labrador coast was much broader, indicating more movement of Davis Strait ice from the north. This resulted in so many polar bear sightings in Newfoundland and Labrador by March and April that I could hardly keep up reporting them (Crockford 2019:32):

East coast conditions could change significantly over the next few weeks however, especially if weather conditions bring more north winds.

References

Crockford, S.J. 2019. State of the Polar Bear Report 2018. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 32, London. PDF here.

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Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat

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Remembering the terrorizing Belushya Guba polar bears: lots of Barents Sea ice cover this year

Posted on January 6, 2022 | Comments Off on Remembering the terrorizing Belushya Guba polar bears: lots of Barents Sea ice cover this year

Three years ago, the Russian village of Belushya Guba on southwest coast of Novaya Zemlya on the Barents Sea got international attention for the dozens of polar bears that had invaded the local dump and some aggressive bears were terrorizing local residents. The phenomenon was of course blamed on climate change by virtually all media outlets largely because there was no sea ice on that coast at the time (as had been true many years before without bear trouble).

This year is a different story completely. It’s only early January and already there is abundant ice along the west coast of Novaya Zemlya; ice in the Barents Sea in general is well up over recent averages and the pack is already converging on Bear Island (Bjørnøya) to the south of the Svalbard archipelago. Ice this far south often brings polar bear visitors to the weather station there but that doesn’t usually happen until March or April.

You’ll find references in previous posts linked here.

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A ‘mass exodus’ of polar bears from Alaska to Russia has taken place, local residents claim

Posted on January 2, 2022 | Comments Off on A ‘mass exodus’ of polar bears from Alaska to Russia has taken place, local residents claim

An article in a UK newspaper yesterday contains a claim made by local residents that polar bears which used to hang around Utqiagvik (formerly known as Barrow) in western Alaska, are ‘moving to Russia’ (i.e. the Chukchi Sea) in a ‘mass exodus’. It’s certainly possible but if so, it should come as a surprise to no one and is good news for polar bears.

If the allegation is upheld by scientific evidence, polar bears will not have been pushed out of Alaska by lack of summer sea ice (i.e. ‘forced to migrate’) but rather pulled into the Chukchi Sea by abundant food resources that did not exist when summer ice cover was more extensive. It’s a big difference and it speaks to the benefits of less summer sea ice that no one wants to discuss.

Moreover, moving temporarily to where conditions suit them best is what polar bears do all the time: it’s not a new phenomenon, it’s a prominent feature of their biology (Crockford 2019).

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Posted in Life History, Population, Sea ice habitat

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How to build an igloo: was the snow house designed in part to protect against polar bears?

Posted on December 31, 2021 | Comments Off on How to build an igloo: was the snow house designed in part to protect against polar bears?

When I came across this fascinating National Film Board video from 1949 on how to build an igloo, it reminded me of a conversation I had with a colleague about whether the design of the Inuit snow house was originally developed in part as protection against marauding polar bears?

Such a dome of tightly-fitted snow blocks, when properly consolidated with a thin layer of ice inside, must have been virtually impenetrable to even the hungriest bears – and defendable at the narrow entrance tunnel. The image below is from Frobisher Bay, Baffin Island around 1865, which lies within the boundaries of the Davis Strait subpopulation of polar bears.

A link to ‘How to Build an Igloo‘ is included in my free ‘Arctic Sea Ice Ecosystem Teaching Guide‘ for home schooling found here. The igloo film is 10 minutes long and suitable for all ages.

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Posted in Book promotion, home schooling, Polar bear attacks

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Mid-December polar bear habitat update

Posted on December 16, 2021 | Comments Off on Mid-December polar bear habitat update

Compared to last year, polar bear habitat at 15 December 2021 is way up in the Barents and Bering Seas but way down in Hudson Bay but nothing any polar bear has to worry about.

Here’s what the ice charts look like.

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Promoters of polar bear catastrophe in Hudson Bay gloss over recent good ice conditions

Posted on December 8, 2021 | Comments Off on Promoters of polar bear catastrophe in Hudson Bay gloss over recent good ice conditions

Hudson Bay has been oddly slow to freeze this year, which has led to a predictable bit of hand-wringing from certain biologists reiterating prophesies of polar bear population collapse. However, since 2009, the last time that freeze-up was anywhere near this late was 2016. In other words, far from this years’ late freeze-up being a picture of ‘the new normal,’ conditions in 2021 are actually unusual compared to the last twelve years.

Perhaps the last bear leaving Cape Churchill for the sea ice, 4 December 2021.

Moreover, considering that 2021 fall ice formation for the Arctic in general is well ahead of 2016 (and every year since, except 2018), it’s hard to see why human-caused global warming caused by ever-increasing CO2 emissions explains the slow freeze-up of Hudson Bay. Timing of Hudson Bay freeze-up has always been highly variable from one year to the next (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017: Fig. 3, copied below). The average freeze-up date in the 1980s was 16 November ± 5 days, while from 2005-2015 this had shifted about a week to 24 November ± 8 days (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017:230). This year freeze-up was later than usual but last year and the three years before that the ice froze as early as it did in the 1980s. Cue the zombie apocalypse.

UPDATE 11 December 2021: see chart below from Andrew Derocher on the position of tagged WH bears at 10 December.

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Higher than average Svalbard sea ice extent in November 2021 has implications for birth of cubs

Posted on December 1, 2021 | Comments Off on Higher than average Svalbard sea ice extent in November 2021 has implications for birth of cubs

Early last November, sea ice around Svalbard was the lowest it had been since 1967 and pregnant females were simply unable to den on the eastern islands of the archipelago and instead had to make their dens and give birth in the pack ice or the Franz Josef Land archipelago further east, as they have done before. However, the ice is back this fall with a vengeance: even Hopen Island in the south of region was surrounded by ice well before the end of the month but whether it will attract a few pregnant females remains to be seen.

Results of polar bear health monitoring in the spring of 2021 indicated the bears are doing just fine after last year’s low ice levels. Despite this evidence, a single bear photographed killing a reindeer in August 2020 was falsely blamed on climate change. The narrative never seems to change.

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