Tag Archives: victim of climate change

Polar bears have not been harmed by sea ice declines in summer – the evidence

Posted on August 18, 2013 | Comments Off

The polar bear biologists and professional activists of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) continue to insist that since 1979 increasingly smaller amounts of Arctic sea ice left at the end of summer (the September ice minimum) have already caused harm to polar bears. They contend that global warming due to CO2 from fossil fuels (“climate warming” in their lexicon) is the cause of this decline in summer ice.

In a recent (2012) paper published in the journal Global Change Biology (“Effects of climate warming on polar bears: a review of the evidence”), long-time Canadian PBSG members Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher (both of University of Alberta) summarized their position this way:

“Climate warming is causing unidirectional changes to annual patterns of sea ice distribution, structure, and freeze-up. We summarize evidence that documents how loss of sea ice, the primary habitat of polar bears (Ursus maritimus), negatively affects their long-term survival”

I’ve spent the last year examining their evidence of on-going harm, but in addition, I’ve looked at the evidence (much of it not mentioned in the Stirling and Derocher paper¹) that polar bears have either not been harmed by less sea ice in summer or have thrived in spite of it.

This is a summary of my findings. I’ve provided links to my original essays on individual topics, which are fully referenced and illustrated. You are encouraged to consult them for complete details. This synopsis (pdf with links preserved, updated; pdf with links as footnotes, updated) complements and updates a previous summary, “Ten good reasons not to worry about polar bears” (pdf with links preserved; pdf with a foreword by Dr. Matt Ridley, with links as footnotes).

Update 8 September 2013: to include links to my post on the recently published Chukchi population report; updated pdfs have been added above.

Update 22 January 2014: added figure comparing March vs. September sea ice extent using the same scale, from NOAA’s “2014 Arctic Report Card,” discussed here.
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Posted in Conservation Status, Population, Sea ice habitat, Summary

Tagged Arctic, Barents Sea, Beaufort Sea, body condition, breakup dates, cannibalism, Chukchi, climate change, climate warming, Davis Strait, death spiral, Derocher, global warming, harm to polar bears, heavy sea ice, Hudson Bay, hybridization, ice-free, negative effects, polar bear, polar bear numbers increasing, Polar Bear Specialist Group, Polar Bears International, prolonged ice-free season, ringed seals, sea ice, sea ice decline, September ice minimum, Stirling, summary, summer ice minimum, victim of climate change

Ian Stirling’s howler update: contradicted by scientific data

Posted on August 11, 2013 | Comments Off

Following up on my last post (Ian Stirling’s latest howler: “the polar bear who died of climate change”), I tracked down some details contained in the original Norwegian news report but which were left out of the articles that spread the story around the world. I also found some pertinent research posted online that appears to be the work of the researchers who captured this bear in April.

Figure 1. The Norwegian newpaper, The Local (Aug. 7, 2013), identifies the location that the bear was found as “a small island near Texas Bar” (marked by the square on the above map) in the very north of Spitsbergen and states it was found on July 7 – details other reports did not bother to include. To have been 250km south of that position in April (when he was tagged), he must have left the ice near the southern tip of Spitsbergen when there was still lots of ice further north.

Figure 1. The Norwegian newspaper, The Local (Aug. 7, 2013), says the bear was found on “a small island near Texas Bar” (marked by the square on the above map) in the very north of Spitsbergen, and states it was found on July 7 – details other reports did not bother to include. [“Texas Bar” is a hut built by a Norwegian hunter in 1927]. To have been 250km south of that position in April (when he was tagged), he must have left the ice near the southern tip of Spitsbergen when there was still lots of ice further north.

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Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Ashley Cooper, body condition, climate change, Environmental Monitoring of Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Jon Aars, Magnus Andersen, male polar bears, norwegian news, pertinent research, Spitsbergen, spring ice conditions, starvation, Stirling, Svalbard, Texas Bar, victim of climate change

Ian Stirling’s latest howler: “the polar bear who died of climate change”

Posted on August 7, 2013 | Comments Off

Will wildlife biologist and Polar Bear Specialist Group member Ian Stirling now say anything – no matter how unscientific – to garner more sympathy and media attention for polar bears? It appears so. [see followup post published Aug. 11, here]

A tabloid-style picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words article appeared in the environment section of the UK newspaper The Guardian yesterday (August 6, 2013) with a picture of a dead polar bear meant to wring your heart. The picture is a vehicle for statements from Ian Stirling and others that this polar bear died from climate change. A longer article was alongside.

The caption below the photo of a dead polar bear (animal tragedy porn) is this:

“This 16-year-old male polar bear died of starvation resulting from the lack of ice on which to hunt seals, according to Dr Ian Stirling.”

Many folks have been asking questions about this and so have I.

I suggest this is what really happened: the polar bear biologists working in Svalbard earlier this year knew this bear was going to die back in April when they captured him – they simply waited, with a photographer on hand, until he died. It was an orchestrated photo-op.

[Update, Aug. 8, 2013: I suggest it was not necessary for anything more to happen to “orchestrate” this photo than for the researchers who captured the bear in April to tell colleagues and local tour boat operators (who always have avid photographers on board) to “keep an eye out for a dead bear, we don’t think this guy is going to make it.” However, very little real information is provided. Who knows when (or from whom) we’ll get the whole story — if ever? That’s why anecdotal accounts like these aren’t “evidence” of anything, in the scientific sense. That’s the real take-home message here. If this dead bear was being presented as scientific evidence, we’d have been given all the details, including necropsy results, local ice conditions, precise dates, locations, and photos of any other bears that were seen that were in poor condition. In other words, a proper scientific report. ]

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Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat

Tagged Ashley Cooper, cannibalism, death by climate change, dying of old age, fasting, media manipulation, mortality, old age, oldest polar bears, Polar Bear Specialist Group, Polar Bears International, starved to death, starving polar bear, Stirling, Svalbard, The Guardian, tragedy porn, victim of climate change