At 11:30 am ET, I will be talking to Glenn Beck on his radio program about the lies and misinformation that Netflix and WWF are spreading via their ‘Our Planet’ documentary sequence on Pacific walrus, aided and abetted by narrator Sir David Attenborough.
See my previous posts on this issue here and here. The video I produced with help from the Global Warming Policy Foundation last month is copied below:
I will post a link to the podcast as soon as I am able.
Comments Off on Today: Talking with Glenn Beck later this morning about the Netflix walrus fiasco
Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, walrus
Tagged activists, climate change, documentary, facts, interview, radio, science, sea ice, video, walrus
This time National Geographic’s ‘Hostile Planet’ series laughably claims a fat polar bear that’s caught a beluga calf off the coast of Western Hudson Bay has been saved from starvation! The message: here is a prime example of climate change pushing a species to its limit. This is nonsense, of course: polar bears hunting beluga whales from rocks has nothing to do with climate change or desperately hungry bears. More importantly, there is a much better video of the action that is both more informative and truthful.
See both below and decide which you’d prefer your kids or grandkids to watch.
Comments Off on More starving polar bear nonsense from National Geographic & a better video to watch
Posted in Advocacy, Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged beluga, calves, CBC, climate change, desperate, Hostile Planet, hungry, hunting, National Geographic, polar bear, propaganda, rock, Rolling Stone, sea ice, Seal River, starving, Suzuki, video, western hudson bay, whale
In case you missed it: The real story behind the famous starving polar-bear video reveals more manipulation (29 August 2018).
Comments Off on The politics of starving polar bears: my op-ed in the National Post last week
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat
Tagged advocacy, apology, climate change, Mittermeier, National Geographic, Nicklen, opinion, polar bear, Sea Legacy, Somerset Island, starving, tragedy porn, video
Early on Sunday 5 August 2018, Brian Ladoon died at the age of 65 in Churchill, Manitoba — and so far, the media have said nothing. Brian dedicated his life to the preservation of the Canadian Eskimo Dog — which often attracted polar bears to his property — but he was also an accomplished artist.
In the early days, (Norbert Rosing photo.
As a lover of Arctic dogs, I remember hearing of Brian’s work decades ago but only that “someone” was working hard to save the breed. I never dreamed I’d come to know so much more about his work through my research on polar bear ecology and evolution.
I never met the man. But he has clearly been an icon of Churchill for decades and because of that, the place will not be the same without him. He is on the right in the photo below, for the TV series “Polar Bear Town” that ran in 2015 (some episodes below).
UPDATE 9 May 2019: A reader asked what happened to Brian’s dogs and because I wondered myself, I asked around. Kelsey Eliasson responded:
“Penny his ex-partner is taking care of them with a small team of helpers… they are trying to formalize a board/non-profit for long-term needs”
Comments Off on Brian Ladoon, saviour of Canadian Eskimo Dogs, has died in Churchill
Posted in Polar bear attacks, Uncategorized
Tagged attractants, Brian Ladoon, Canadian Eskimo Dog, Churchill, dogs, obituary, polar bear, Polar Bear Town, video
Remember that video of an emaciated Baffin Island Somerset Island polar bear that went viral last December?1 In an unexpected follow-up (“Starving-Polar-Bear Photographer Recalls What Went Wrong“; National Geographic, August 2018 issue), photographer Cristina Mittermeier makes some astonishing admissions that might just make you sick.
It turns out they didn’t just come across the dying bear the day it was filmed: it was spotted at least two days earlier by Paul Nicklen. He must have had a satellite phone with him when he saw the bear but the only call he made was to his film crew — he made no attempt to find a local conservation officer to euthanize the bear, which would have been the right thing to do.
ADDED July 27 2018: Calling a conservation officer to euthanize the bear would have been the right thing to do not only out of compassion (and to know the cause of illness, because a necropsy would have been done), but because a starving bear is especially dangerous: it would have been a potential danger to any unsuspecting person who set foot on the island (he was strong enough to swim away, so was probably strong enough to kill a child, if not an adult).
The bear’s emaciated, near-death stagger2 was simply too tantalizing to pass up (video needs action: an emaciated dead bear would not been nearly as effective). Mittermeier claims they knew when they filmed the bear that he was sick or injured, but Nicklon presented it as an effect of climate change regardless. Mittermeier now says National Geographic simply “went too far” with their video caption (“This is what climate change looks like“), that she and Nicklan “lost control of the narrative.”
Actually, what they lost was their humanity.
Comments Off on The truth behind the Baffin Bay starving polar bear video is worse than we thought
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status
Tagged Baffin Island, climate change, Mittermeier, National Geographic, Nicklen, photographer, polar bear, sea ice, SeaLegacy, tragedy porn, video
Polar bears in virtually all regions will now have finished their intensive spring feeding, which means sea ice levels are no longer an issue. A few additional seals won’t make much difference to a bear’s condition at this point, except perhaps for young bears that haven’t had a chance to feed as heavily as necessary over the spring due to inexperience or competition.
The only seals available on the ice for polar bears to hunt in early July through October are predator-savvy adults and subadults. But since the condition of the sea ice makes escape so much easier for the seals to escape, most bears that continue to hunt are unsuccessful – and that’s been true since the 1970s. So much for the public hand-wringing over the loss of summer sea ice on behalf of polar bear survival!
Polar bears in most areas of the Arctic are at their fattest by late June. They are well prepared to go without food for a few months if necessary – a summer fast is normal for polar bears, even for those that spend their time on the sea ice.
Putting on hundreds of pounds of fat in the spring to last through periods of food scarcity later in the year (at the height of summer and over the winter) is the evolutionary adaptation that has allowed polar bears to live successfully in the Arctic.
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Comments Off on Spring feeding for polar bears is over – sea ice levels are now largely irrelevant
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Arctic, bearded seal, ecosystem, facts, feeding, harp seal, ice loss, polar bear, research, ringed seal, save our sea ice, sea ice, sea ice day, spring, summer, video
The first report I’ve seen this season of a polar bear onshore has come in and ironically, it comes from northern Newfoundland, the setting of my polar bear attack thriller, EATEN. Only time will tell if this year will be as active as 2017’s record-breaker for polar bears ashore in Newfoundland.
Update: 6 March 2018. A couple of hours after posting this, CBC News Newfoundland published a story on this incident, providing a bit more detail and video footage of the bear wandering around local houses.
Comments Off on Polar bear sighted onshore in northern Newfoundland at St. Lunaire-Griquet
Posted in Life History, Polar bear attacks, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Davis Strait, harp seal, ice warning, Newfoundland, polar bear, problem bears, sea ice, sightings, St. Lunaire-Griquet, video
In contrast to 2016, when freeze-up along Western Hudson Bay was about as late as its ever been (early December), ice is already forming along the shore of northern Hudson Bay. There is much more ice than usual for this date, indicated by the dark blue in the latest weekly ice chart below:
The ice is still thin, as the chart below indicates, but that’s how freeze-up starts. As long as strong winds don’t blow the ice away (as it sometimes does at this stage), the ice gets thicker day by day — and advances further and further off shore. Polar bears get out on the ice as soon as they are physically able, when the ice is about 3-4 inches thick (about 10 cm) or less.
Below is a video of a bear traversing that thin ice yesterday (1 November 2017), near Churchill. Is this a portend of a freeze-up date as early as occurred in the 1980s?
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Comments Off on Early freeze-up in progress on Hudson Bay – what a difference a year makes
Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat
Tagged Churchill, freeze-up, Hudson Bay, hunting, ice thickness, polar bear, sea ice, video, western hudson bay
You could call it karma — the death of the polar bear icon after the shameful hubris of polar bear experts back in 2009.
That year, the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group booted 20-year member Mitch Taylor out of their organization, explaining that his skeptical views on human-caused global warming were “extremely unhelpful” to their polar bear conservation agenda.
Said chairman Andrew Derocher in his email to Taylor: “Time will tell who is correct.”
It’s now clear that Mitch Taylor was right to be skeptical of sea ice models based on pessimistic climate change assumptions; he was also right to be more optimistic than his PBSG colleagues about the ability of polar bears to adapt to changing sea ice conditions (Taylor and Dowsley 2008), since the bears have turned out to be more resilient than even he expected.
Fat polar bears — not starving ones — dominate photos taken in recent years. The total failure of polar bear numbers to crash as predicted in response to the abrupt decline in summer sea ice in 2007 and persistent low summer sea ice levels since then (Crockford 2017), is vindication for Mitch Taylor. It’s time someone said so.
More on the 2009 incident below.
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Comments Off on Death of the polar bear as climate change icon validates Mitch Taylor’s skepticism
Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat
Tagged advocacy, climate change, Derocher, fearmongering, global warming, icon, karma, Mitch Taylor, PBSG, Polar Bear Specialist Group, predictions, sea ice, video
State of the Polar Bear Report 2017 to be released Feb 2017 at press lunch Toronto
My “State of the Polar Bear Report 2017” will be unveiled at a Global Warming Policy Foundation press conference and luncheon in Toronto on Tuesday, 27 February, in celebration of International Polar Bear Day. There will be a video presentation as well.
The report summarizes clear, reliable and concise information on the current state of polar bears relative to historical records. It highlights up-to-date data and research findings in a balanced and factual format that avoids hype and exaggeration, all in one place. It is intended for a wide audience, including scientists, teachers, students, decision-makers and the general public interested in polar bears and Arctic ecology.
The launch will be held on Tuesday 27 February at 11:00am at the Toronto Public Library, Founders’ Room, 789 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M4W 2G8.
Programme
* Welcome (Dr Benny Peiser, Director of the GWPF)
* Introduction: Prof Chris Essex (Chairman of the GWPF’s Academic Advisory Council)
* Short video screening
* Presentation: Dr Susan Crockford (author of the report)
For further information and to schedule interviews, please contact Harry Wilkinson (harry.wilkinson@thegwpf.org)
A copy of the report will be posted on Polar Bear Science Tuesday.
Comments Off on State of the Polar Bear Report 2017 to be released Feb 2017 at press lunch Toronto
Posted in Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat, Summary
Tagged commentary, facts, polar bear, report, research, review, status, summary, synthesis, unbiased, video