Guest essay by Dr. Susan J. Crockford of polarbearscience.com * see update below on the % number
Survey Results: Svalbard polar bear numbers increased 30 42% over last 11 years
Results of this fall’s Barents Sea population survey have been released by the Norwegian Polar Institute and they are phenomenal: despite several years with poor ice conditions, there are more bears now (~975) than there were in 2004 (~685) around Svalbard (a 30 42% increase) and the bears were in good condition.
Oddly, in a September report right after the count, biologist Jon Aars reported them in “excellent” condition, with some of them “as fat as pigs.” I guess “good” is the same as “excellent.”
Bears in the Russian portion of the Barents Sea were not counted this year because the Russians would not allow it; the previous total count, from 2004, was 2,650 (range ~1900-3600) for the entire region.
In the map above (courtesy the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group), the Svalbard archipelago is on the left (Norwegian territory) and the archipelagos of Franz Josef Land and Novaya Zemlya on the right (Russian territory).
Oddly, the comments made by lead researcher Jon Aars to a Norwegian newspaper (in English), which picked this up yesterday (“Polar bears make a comeback” ), were far more positive than those in the press release (which is likely all that western media will see).
Here is what Aars stated in the press release (pdf here):
“A rise in the population does not come as a big surprise, as population numbers previously have been low due to the fact that these bears were hunted until 40 years ago, Dr. Aars added.”
[Except that polar bear specialists have been saying the population has almost certainly declined because of sea ice conditions, yet despite the poor conditions in recent years, the bears are doing better than ever]
But here is what local reporters (NTB: News in English from Norway, published 23 December 2015), who were able to contact him for an interview, had to say:
“Researchers from Norsk Polarinstitutt in Tromsø have conducted their first census of sorts since 2004 regarding the polar bear population on Svalbard and in the Norwegian portions of the Barents Sea. “The population has increased,” project leader Jon Aars of the polar institute told NTB. “The Norwegian polar bear population is now calculated to include around 975 bears, compared to 685 11 years ago.”
Aars stressed that there’s a degree of uncertainty in the numbers, but he thinks the researchers have the necessary basis to claim that there’s been an increase in the total.
He also said the polar bears spotted and counted were in “good shape.” He said the ice “came early in the fall of 2014 and lasted a long time.” That means a lot for the bears, he noted.
Ice conditions in the Barents have been poor in most years since 2000, and researchers have been extremely worried about the state of the polar bear population. “It’s positive to see that the polar bears have managed well, under conditions that have been worse for several years,” Aars told NTB.” [my bold]
So again, despite the recent declines in summer sea ice that polar bear specialists, in their expert opinions, insist spell doom for polar bears, the bears are doing just fine. Make up your own mind what that means.
The evidence is now very strong that recent declines in summer/fall sea ice have little to no negative impact on polar bear populations: the real threat to polar bears is thick spring ice (Crockford 2015).
References
Crockford, S.J. 2015. “The Arctic Fallacy: sea ice stability and the polar bear.” GWPF Briefing 16. The Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Pdf here.
*UPDATE 24 December 2015: The new population survey number for Svalbard is
actually a 42% increase over the 2004 number. Thanks to Arvid Oen, a WUWT
reader, for alerting Anthony Watts to the error, and to Anthony for passing
it along. Title and text fixed accordingly, apologies to any others who have
picked this up. Cheers and Merry Christmas.
Obvious, I say; less ice longer seal hunting season. Protect poor seals from these vicious predators!
Vuk, Protect the poor seals?
Northern Fur sea eats 10/30 pounds per day (small fish and invertebrates)
What about the poor fishyss?
DD
[Apologies, and off thread, but in my youth, DD referred to Double Diamond, a draft beer of about 2.1% ABV, that failed, marginally, to be classified as a soft drink, and which had a head induced [per my dentist] by a washing-up liquid substitute . . . ]
I feel for the poor fishyss – but what do they eat, the ravenous beasties?
Auto – emoting all over the compass.
In some areas seals eat more than a few “little fish” ( maybe not the Northern Fur seals) but Harbor seals eat a huge amount of salmon trying to get back up river all along the west coast of Northern America (as I am sure on all coastal areas where salmon spawn). But hey, they are so cute when they are little.
you mean…Kittens of the sea?
rofl
Polar bears are no more. The past says so.
• Polar bears survived an ‘ice-free’ Arctic during the Holocene Hypsithermal between 9,000 to 5,000 years ago. Eemian epoch? Jaw jaw, I saw, but no more.
Polar bears just cannot swim. They will not know what swimming is.
• In 2008 a radio collard polar bear was clocked making a continuous swim of 687 km over 9 days.
It was cold up in the Arctic.
• Polar bears survived the Medieval Warm Period which lasted a couple of hundred years. But the Arctic was bloody freezing!
I am a denie*r of these basic points. The poly bears will be laughing long after we have gone, goodnight.
PS, they may be as fat as pigs because of…………………….. of more food? Surely not!
Why is it that a warming arctic should lead to the demise of polar bears? Polar bears will not know what food is! They like garbage Churchill food though.
PPS, CLARIFICATION for the mental folks, the fish are eaten by the seals, the polar bears eat the seals.
@ jimbo, Merry Christmas! It seems like you were gone for awhile, glad to see you are back!
I would like to second asybot.
Obviously climate change is devastating the polar bear population as it is leading to over eating, resulting in late-onset diabetes and heart disease. Governments should be encouraged to set up salad bars and treadmills for the bears within their traditional hunting regions.
The fact that they are the white supremacists of the Arctic should give us cause for concern too. We should move some Black Bears and Brown Bears to join them to ensure cultural diversity
This is my first reply to this forum. I’ve been lurking for a long time, but I feel the need to reply to your post.
Funny, great! So true.
AH
Masters in Applied physics; a climate denier.
Polar bears are black, with tanslucent fur, not white.
Polar bears have black skin…
Surely there are Yellow Bears, too . . . .
Auto [embracing multiculturalism; I live & work and socialise in London; when we sought the Olympics – 2005 – New York, another great candidate city, was happy to indicate that their people spoke ‘200 languages’; someone mentioned that in London, ‘143’ languages were spoken at home by the parents of just one school. I read it in the press – so it must be true. As true as if it was in the Wiki, which even I can edit . . . . ]
Let’s not forget the grizzlies; also, the pandas should be there for the bi-color portion of bio-diversity. The fact that bamboo [=panda food] has not proven successful in the high Arctic should not release us from the obligation to see that pandas are proportionally represented among the bear populations. I am not yet suggesting moving a proportional number of polar bears to panda habitats; as far as I know, there isn’t much ice there.
Welcome to the dark side, Aaron.
Polar bears remind me of Brits in a way, Brits have lousy wet, lack of sun type summers and then they go on a holiday in winter and when asked (when they get back with a nice facial tan), the question
” where did you go for a holiday?” ( the answer expected,is of course ” to Spain”)
Nope they answer I went skiing in the Alps…………???? Talk about punishment!
@ Andrew, 12 14 pm, Sorry that could lead to some serious discussion. What about , like Christian bears? What about Black Bears Matter Bears, and low and behold Muslim bears. Gay bears? Sorry, mods you are free to delete this.
IUCN/SSC Polar bear specialist group
According to IUCN/SSC Polar bear specialist group there are 19 distinct polar bear populations: 3 are in decline due to lousy neighbors, 1 is increasing, 6 are stable, and 9 covering over half the area lack useful data. The 9 unknown populations are mostly in Russia which hasn’t bought into the CAGW/disappearing sea ice clap trap. So the glib observation that when Gore was born there were 7,000 polar bears and only 30,000 are left now might not be exact, but the idea is close enough. I guess “saving” the polar bears beats having real jobs.
http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/wildlife/polar_bear/population/
http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html
IIRC, the pbsg doesn’t truly study bears, but Susan does…
AFAIK, Susan has never published a single peer-reviewed article on polar bears.
Have you?
Sure have. You?
Look at these obese bears… how much junk food do they eat?
Let’s tax fast bear food.
Will someone of the children … er … baby bears?
Surely there must be shome mishtake. We’ve all seen the pictures of starving polar bears “stranded” on icebergs.
Polar bears have been tracked swimming 600 miles. So they can swim from Key West FL to Jacksonville FL. These are not delicate animals that will see a 10 mile lead or polynya opening up as a problem.
Key West to Jacksonville is warm water and along a coast.
These bears swim that for across icewater, over open ocean in storm tossed Arctic conditions.
A far more impressive feat, IMO.
So “worse” ice conditions are good for polar bears?
Or maybe they have all been on holiday over the ice and they’ve been eating all the extra walruses.
Or maybe some “climatologists” don’t have a clue.
Well clearly this explains why the walrus populations in the previous post are not doing so well.
Who is going to bear the blame for all the unnecessary worry I have gone through?
LOL………..
Sue Gore for all the emotional distress and lost sleep he caused. I will join you and we can make it a class action on behalf of all the sad grandkids we thought would not know what a polar bear was. Many plaintiff lawyers should be eager to take this on a contingent fee basis, as Gore is a big fat target (literally as well as figuratively).
ruud
Please don’t get too personal
A figuratively convex target . . . .
Auto, not at all enjoying the idea of the Al Gore with with big concentric targets front and back – and probably on the sides, too . . . [Umm – go on – /Sarc]
Who is this Sue Gore? Hopefully, not another hand-wringer for brother Al….
millions of citizens spent fortune on tranquillizers, lost employment, suffered marriage breakdowns, no surprise the world economy is in the pits.
vukcevic
They are all very much and very properly worried about their future, their children’s future, and their parent’s futures .. because of the ever-rising costs of energy and lack of jobs caused BY the very CAGW crisis that the liberals invented.
See what happens when you “retire” someone who used to “count” polar bears:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/04/al-gores-polarbeargate-scientist-forced-to-retire/
Great post, and more good news as the bears thrived despite poor Svalbard ice conditions. BTW, Dr. Crawford’s new polar bear novel EATEN is delightful and highly recommended. It is also a lot more sciency than the peer reviewed fictions put out by CAGW polar bear scientists like Stirling and Derocher.
Perhaps we should acknowledge that less ice is “good conditions”, rather than “poor conditions”?
Even for polar bears.
Good work Susan.
Walruses increasing exponentially around Svalsbard, polar bears fat as pigs, yet NOAA and alarmists keep hyping that less ice is destroying the Barents Sea’s carrying capacity. Can the ugly politicization of climate be any more transparent. Hmmm
All Arctic animals are the result of evolution at work: long Ice Age cycles with short Interglacials, they can exploit both in various ways. And these populations have a boom/bust cycle depending on various ocean animals that do this like clockwork. It is never a ‘stable population’.
I suggest we supply the bears with low-fat seal cubs.
This post was succinct and concise–just the bear essentials. Although I could bearly believe the fact that increasing numbers were laid bear by the CAGW scientists.
Grin and bear it.
“Bear G, I see a fat bear coming this way”
Dr. Crockford, I’ve been remarking in past bear threads that if most of the ice disappeared, the polar bears would have a one dimensional hunting ground – along the shores instead of a two dimensional one. Not something too nice for the seals, but polar bears would probably have a feast for quite awhile. Of course this is an engineer’s view of it and I admit it may be flawed! In any case we have had times when ice did not cover the sea. Also, I’ve speculated an ice free Arctic would probably be home to a greatly inflated population of fish (probably including freshwater fish in rivers and lakes) that would keep bears and seals fed.
A second thought is the last glacial optimum moved all the Arctic animals southward. Is it ecologist’s thinking that California seals and other ex-Arctic seals were originally from the north but found a good living where they were and stayed behind when the glaciers retreated? And the manatees?
I was visiting family on the south coast of New Zealand (Papatawai, Otago) and went into a shore cave to find a penguin moulting. It looked miserable, like a plucked chicken and it shivered continuously. I thought it was a victim of bilge pumping oil or some such, but my in-laws informed me they had a number of them living in New Zealand, likely rafted by Antarctic ice long ago. These creatures found a way to live on the shore and they also had to contend with seals in the water. The photos show some happy looking creatures in dry dock with no ice to be found (how did they get there?). Penguins are even in the grass. Why do we think such creatures are so fragile.
http://www.shutterstock.com/s/new+zealand+fur+seal/search.html
http://www.shutterstock.com/cat.mhtml?lang=en&language=en&ref_site=photo&search_source=search_form&version=llv1&anyorall=all&safesearch=1&use_local_boost=1&autocomplete_id=&search_tracking_id=scYPQ154nbl0SC6z4jPs0A&searchterm=New+Zealand+penguins&show_color_wheel=1&orient=&commercial_ok=&media_type=images&search_cat=&searchtermx=&photographer_name=&people_gender=&people_age=&people_ethnicity=&people_number=&color=
Penguins are also found on the Galapagos Islands, north of the equator.
There are many penguins living in South Africa. Seven species. Their daily risk is sharks.
Maybe we should introduce penguins the Arctic, although I will stop short of suggesting we send some polar bears to the Antarctic.
I think they would do fine there, but the Penguins may be wiped out completely by them.
We have “little blue” penguins here in Auckland, on both the east and west coasts, considerable north of Otago.
Meanwhile the WWF continue to use the global warming = melting ice = starving polar bears meme to persuade punters to sponsor a polar bear i.e. send money to the WWF.
Well, they should be happy then, too – more bears, more sponsors.
Sponsor a polar bear! Send your unwanted children to Longyearbyen! The polar bears thank you!
Menicholas
December 23, 2015 at 10:40 pm
Maybe we should introduce penguins the Arctic, although I will stop short of suggesting we send some polar bears to the Antarctic.
I think they would do fine there, but the Penguins may be wiped out completely by them.
============
Great idea! the the bear luvvys can get some close n personal experience of having the bases raided and their personal safety at more risk..
might cut down the numbers of hangers on n idiotic grants to study crap
reminds me of the Florida manatee….there was a manatee crisis for years…endangered, idle speed zones, closed off portions of waterways…….until someone counted them that did not benefit from low manatee numbers
All of a sudden overnight, there was almost a 400% increase in the number of manatees in Florida
Just coincidence, right?
completely accidental…..the new numbers do not designate them endangered any more…..they are only considered endangered under the marine mammals act
Lat – “designate them endangered any more.”
But that is just what the EPA had to have.
The law of unintended consequences is a harsh mistress. The Clean Power Plan (CPP), a policy touted by EPA and others as mitigating climate change impacts on species, imperils the Florida manatee, a species listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA).
House Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) and Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-OK) spell out the CPP threat to manatees in a letter sent yesterday to EPA administrator Gina McCarthy. Because EPA failed to consult with the Fish & Wildlife Service about potential impacts of the CPP on manatees, the lawmakers conclude that the CPP flouts EPA’s obligations under section 7 of the ESA.
http://www.globalwarming.org/2015/06/16/does-epas-clean-power-plan-endanger-manatees/
Follow the money and take bets on who funded the count.
DD….now that’s irony for you
The coal plants created an artificial environment that allowed manatee numbers to swell.
When manatee counts go below that artificial number, they are considered endangered.
…manatees were put on the endangered list because they went below an artificially high number
and now the EPA can’t shut down the coal plants because of the endangered manatees that would not have been there in the first place if it wasn’t for the coal plants
Do you know how Garth Brooks became so popular?
Back in they day, sales were counted by having stores phoning in their numbers.
Needless to say, there was a bit of…well, I guess we could call them “adjustments”, much like “climate science” does now. There was a bit of chicanery in that some product came in the store, were counted as sales, but then went out the back door for a discount to rather unscrupulous sorts. Record companies paid for good numbers. Etc.
Then, they switched to computerized swiping. Almost literally overnight, “new country” was a thing and Mr. Brooks became a superstar beyond this previous niche.
Yes, funny how merely changing something as simple as “counting” will mess up a wonderful paradigm.
This strongly implies that the climate concerned community has been deceptively claiming polar bears are in trouble. This also implies strongly that polar bears are much more adaptable, and probably much happier, in low ice conditions.
It strongly reveals that liars lie. And one would have to be very silly to think they only lie about polar bears.
In fact, liars lie about everything, lying liars that they are.
But can they fly?
Only when chasing flying pigs.
The AGW crowd will now take another tack as they did when snow never dissappeard but actually increased or as in the Anarctic sea ice increasing instead of lessening.
AGW CAUSES MORBID OBESITY IN POLAR BEARS, OBAMA TO ADDRESS THE NATION.
I can also seee another noble, dangerous-stand Hollywood film starring Dicaprio. Redford and Ford.
‘The Diet After Tomorrow’,
Maybe Hollywood will make a movie out of Dr. Crawford’s delightful new polar bear novel, EATEN. But probably not, as these stars would likely object on warmunist religious grounds…unless the money was big enough. The novel is just too sciency, makes too much plot sense, and would produce a disturbance in their Force. Besides, no fun filming in Newfoundland in March unless you are from Chicago or Minneapolis or Calgary.
The new Leonardo DiCaprio movie The Revenant, (“based on a true story”) shows him being mauled by a grizzly:
So aside from money, if you jazz up the screenplay with enough totally gratuitous and perverted sex, you can get big-name Hollywood stars to sign on.
Dr. Crockford: one blockbuster screenplay and you would never again have to grovel for research grants. Think about it: A polar expedition on board a research vessel is stranded in ice. While the team updates facebook pages and makes banana milkshakes a polar bear stalks, assaults, molests, mauls then eats them one at a time. Meanwhile Greenpeace protesters block nuclear-powered icebreakers from putting out to rescue them.
Strangely, very strangely, as we know how totally impartial the BBC is, there is no mention of this on their website. The latest the y have on polar bears is dated 15 December 2015 and is a scare story about how polar bears are having to travel further to find food and how this means they need to eat more food, and so on and so on.
Polar bears travel further as Arctic sea-ice drifts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35065411
This is certainly good news, but in climate science, it’s the threat that counts.
Well, “good” means different things if you are a Gaia-worshipping Malthusian…more African children starving to death, for instance, would be a tragic thing to anyone with an ounce of compassion….
Good read. “Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eyes” by Zac Unger.
It must be due to “the pause” that never happened because particulate matter (Man’s, of course) caused “the pause” that hasn’t happened. Or something like that.
(Are you sure you’re not double counting the bears? The models say you must be.)
“as population numbers previously have been low due to the fact that these bears were hunted until 40 years ago”.
Possibly by applying a hunting correction factor to these numbers we could ultimately show the correct reduced numbers.
/sarc
I’m reading Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez right now. His chapter on the clever, beautiful, multiple survival strategies of the polar bear makes one gasp with wonder at what Darwin has been up to up there. Those silly leftist ‘climate scientists’ should just shut up and leave the polar bear to know best.
Churchill Manitoba depends upon their 1,000 polar bear population to bring in the tourist dollar. So I do hope the bear is doing fine, in spite of all that ice loss… poor things… they got all fat anyway.
http://www.everythingchurchill.com/experiences/polar-bears/
Can anyone please tell me what happened to that concerned chap who was going to live for a year on an iceberg?
He seems to have “disappeared”.
Appears to have gotten cold feet, so to speak.
Hmm…maybe he’s returned to living in his SUV?
I thought a polar bear eat him.
Maybe it just eight half of him.
That would be the adventurer Alex Bellini. He hopes to begin his iceberg adventure in November of 2016. His original plan was to have an Arctic oil rig escape pod as a backup when/if the ice berg rolled, but now has plans to use a sphere capsule instead, which was originally designed as a tsunami escape pod. i think he is still trying to raise money to cover his adventure.
That bear in the photo is like, “does this berg make me look fat”?
It’s worse than we thought – an outbreak of obesity and surging numbers of due to ursine birth control failure. CO2 is turning polar bears into the white trash of the Arctic.
it’s the sodas…..very fattening
http://www.coca-cola.co.uk/stories/history/advertising/our-coca-cola-polar-bears/_jcr_content/lead/smartslides1/slide1.img.png/1422983342853.jpg
Unfortunately, it is this kind of image that is part of the mainstream media’s deceit on polar bears. We are made to believe they are cuddly, lovable, white puffy muffin bears who wouldn’t do anyone (or anything) any harm.
http://www.catersnews.com/uploadedimages/11052011339135774.jpg
In fact they, like many creatures that roam this wonderful Earth, are voracious carnivores, and would think nothing of ripping my head off and eating me if the opportunity presented itself.
Frank K,
Yep. This stupid German woman decided to make friends with the cuddly bear.
She jumped into the Polar Bear enclosure at the zoo:
http://travelerfolio.com/travelerfolio/uploads/polar-bear-attack.jpg
The bear thought that was a tasty snack!
Oh, that poor bear…just think of the indigestion from eating a liberal !!
The number of bears is increasing, which is in itself worst than we believed enough, but the total mass is increasing even faster due to worst than we believed bear obesity, threatening to destabilize the Arctic which could capsize if the bears migrate in the same direction, which is worst than the worst than we believed we believed.
(Also, most bear don’t even have health insurance.)
Wouldn’t Obamacare cover them?
For an arm and a leg.
Simple,
Your comment is worse than I could have imagined 🙂
WWF, UK:
Last minute Christmas present. Adopt a polar bear.
http://www.wwf.org.uk/adoption/polar-bear/
Vuk,
A much better Christmas present:
http://eastendhistoricalmuseum.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/polarug03-670×350.jpg
You can get ’em here.
[snip desalinization systems – waaaaaaayyyyyy off topic -mod]
Seems populations of all ursine subspecies are exploding, world wide. No doubt some of it is due to a combination of fewer hunters and more habitat protection but I always wonder about the role of garbage eating. Some of the fastest population increases are near areas settled by humans.
Having read and been enjoyably scared by “Eaten” I’m not sure we should really be celebrating a healthy polar bear population!
Maybe a better metric is the estimated tonnage of polar bears. I hear too that the fashion industry council is advising the bears be died black so they won’t look so fat. They must be stressed by their unwanted girth.
Making my new novel, EATEN, a roaring success will be the last laugh on the polar-bears-are-doomed crowd. See purchase options here http://www.susancrockford.com
A terrifying read for a cold, dark winter’s night – when polar bears come alive on your page and show their gruesome potential.
Those who have purchased, don’t forget to go back and write a brief review.
Merry Christmas to all and best wishes for the coming new year.
Susan
Susan, have done so, plus plugged twice here. A terrific confabulation. Highest regards.
And much appreciated – sales are going well!
Susan
Read ‘Eaten’ a few weeks ago. I liked it a lot. Will do a review.
John
If you want to go the “science fantasy” route, you could write a sequel told from the point of view of a Polar Bear.
Maybe you could call it “EATING”!?
..” Snack Time in the North ” ????
Though there seems to be allot of todos about bear prosper or not, The facts remain that drowning photographed Bears are not made up and fat one are not either I am shore. But the fact remains that we can allow lazy and profit motivated bad industrial design rule the future. When you see soot in the air or haze on the Horizon above our cities that is real. No argument can be made for not cleaning it up, that is just the way it is in the real world we live in. Joseph Linton
Thanks, Dr. Crockford.
Even though I know polar bears would like (to eat) me, I don’t like them, not even as rugs.
I think of all the cuddly seals they kill.
30% Fatter than Al Gore! That is an Olympic Record!
Queue the Music of Chariots of Fire!
Translation: “I Declare The Games … Open!”
The Opening of the Anthropocene:
Ha ha
Who’s been sleeping in MY porridge ?
https://youtu.be/4kib9asbp6s
“Long Live The National Socialist Movement” Hitler.
NAZI = National-Socialist German Workers’ Party
The German Workers’ Party (German: Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, DAP) was the short-lived predecessor of the Nazi Party (German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, NSDAP).
The Nazi Party:
Platform of the National-Socialist German Workers’ Party
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/naziprog.html
“Oh, hey! I love these things!….Crunchy on the outside and chewy center!”
Fourth one down:
http://bado-badosblog.blogspot.ca/2011/09/my-favourite-cartoons-11-gary-larson.html
There’s a fellow on Kickstarter named J.D. King with a few great taglines for a film he wants to produce on the deceit promoted by environmentalists on Polar Bears, he calls it “Vicebears”. In the trailer he asks, “If they can’t get Polar Bears right, which is pretty simple, how can we trust them with something complex like climate?”. It’s worth a watch. One thing’s for certain, Ken Burns needs to watch for him in the rear view mirror, the production value of his last film “Blue” was amazing.
Sorry, forgot the link:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iG0F61NaKQ&w=560&h=315%5D
I hope he gets the needed funding. I saw his film Blue and it was wonderful. This documentary also covers the Polar Bears and the censorship. Here is a clip on he censorship.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=50m34s
I am sure that polar bears enjoy their swims. The water is typically tens of degrees warmer than the air and they have an insulating layer of air under their outer coat which prevents the water getting to their skin. It must be the bear equivalent of a hot bath.
Polar foxes apparently don’t, that could be a bit of disadvantage
polar bear: hi foxy, does poo stick to your fur?
polar fox: hi poly, no it doesn’t, why?
In an instant poly grabs foxy and wipes its bum with it.
Further to my post above on Barry Lopez’ book- sceptic/deniers will photograph polar bears in October/November when they are fat for the winter, particularly denning females, while warmist/alarmists will do so in early spring when some may have lost half their weight. I don’t suppose the bears care a toss.
Too much ice cream and not enough swimming.
Further to my post above on Barry Lopez’ Arctic book, sceptics/ deniers will photo their bears in Oct Nov when they are fed up for the winter, especially denning females. Warmist/alarmists will take their pictures in early spring when some may have lost half their weight. Leave it to the bears to manage.
This is not my area of expertise, but don’t some wild bears hibernate during the winter and satisfy their polyphagia the rest of the year? Skinniest in the spring and fattiest in the fall. Not much can be deducted from a signal lost in noise, but we can celebrate the anniversary of the entertainment it provides us:
What is noticeable these days is the complete absence of any warmists on this and other popular skeptic sites. I believe that realclimate.org has been disappeared as well
Low temperatures at the North Pole.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/meanTarchive/meanT_2015.png
I find it ironic that the greens have fetishized a wasteland of ice as being somehow preciousssss. As if we would miss it if it all melted and became somehow useful.
Correction, 24 December 2015: The new population survey number for Svalbard is
actually a 42% increase over the 2004 number. My error.
Thanks to Arvid Oen, a WUWT reader, for alerting Anthony Watts to the error, and to Anthony for passing
it along. Title and text fixed accordingly in the original here, http://polarbearscience.com/2015/12/23/survey-results-svalbard-polar-bear-numbers-increased-30-over-last-11-years/
Apologies to any others who have picked this up.
A 42% increase is even better news.
Cheers and Merry Christmas.
Susan
no surprises here..in some regions polar bears will do well, in others not so much…it is the total population that is of more significance, and this study is from one area only…cherry picking as per usual.
Accept some good news. Polar bears are resilient and so is the Earth. In spite of cry-baby misanthropic hopes for catastrophe.
Depends on your perspective, RobRoy:
Not too many seals or walrus will consider this good news.
/grin
Nope, the article is very specific in that it is talking about only one area.
Also, you probably didn’t read this part:
“The evidence is now very strong that recent declines in summer/fall sea ice have little to no negative impact on polar bear populations: the real threat to polar bears is thick spring ice (Crockford 2015).”
The overall Polar Bear population has increased since the 1950s. Do you dispute that?
This Investors Business Daily article features WUWT and polar bears:
“Three Global Warming Stories The Media Don’t Want You To See”, at http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/122415-786884-three-climate-change-stories-media-do-not-want-you-to-read.htm?p=full
The seal needs to be the new poster child, since the polar bears are eating so many of them, clearly caused by Climate Change.
It is amazing how many of these topics were hit on in The Changing Climate of Global Warming…and it was made years ago. This clip hits on the Polar Bears.
https://youtu.be/QowL2BiGK7o?t=48m29s
Blasphemy … plain and simple. What would Imam Al Jazeera Goracle say?