Today’s MSM is woefully inept at catching mistakes. Worse, reporters are often woefully inadequate at getting facts straight in the first place. And, with instant electronic distribution, it is much like the imaginary Roman vomitorium; eat, regurgitate, rinse, and repeat.
Yesterday’s LA Times story on the Obama administration deciding not to use polar bears as a global warming tool that we covered on WUWT had this howler:
“…the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population…”.
Polar bear populations may in fact may be larger than they were decades ago.
“In the 1950s the polar bear population up north was estimated at 5,000. Today it’s 20- to 25,000, a number that has either held steady over the last 20 years or has risen slightly. In Canada, the manager of wildlife resources for the Nunavut territory of Canada has found that the population there has increased by 25 percent.”
Even if the data from the 50’s is a “guess” it doesn’t take much brainpower to realize that if they are now protected, and hunted less, the population will increase. There’s precedence stories like this for many rebounding animal populations that are now protected.
In fact, there appears to be “no impact” on polar bears at all, according to this testimony before congress (PDF, from page 3)
“…Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), where both agencies issued “no jeopardy” biological opinions.”
It seems many other news outlets were content to pickup and regurgitate this story. A Google search on the phrase yields 283 results (as of 9AM today) and some big name media names are attached, like the Chicago Tribune.
To be fair, I missed the funny twist too. But sharp eyed WUWT reader Paul Coppin caught it and wrote:
I guess as a Canadian, I have to say “what U.S. polar bear population’? The couple dozen in US zoos?
Yep.
Journalism is dead.
Of course there’s polar bears in Alaska, which is what the article should have said rather than “U.S.”, but as we’ve seen they seem to be doing just fine in the great state of Alaska.
The level of ridiculae surrounding the polar bear “plight” was kicked off by that master of disaster Al Gore, with his swimming, drowning, polar bear animated characterization in “An Inconvenient Truth”. See it below about halfway in.
Gore later added to that distortion by making use of this photo:
Astute readers may recall seeing a photo flashed around the world earlier this year of polar bears “stranded” on an ice cube at sea. Please follow this link to the original photographer. See the bottom right photo.
A Canadian blogger, Carole Williams, tells the story behind this picture, which was taken in 2004 just off Alaska by a marine biologist on a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute project, Amanda Byrd. As the marine biologist (Byrd) points out, the bears were in no danger so close to the coast (they can swim 30 miles).
She just wanted a photograph more of the “wind-sculpted ice” than of the bears. Byrd writes:
“[You] have to keep in mind that the bears aren’t in danger at all. It was, if you will, their playground for 15 minutes. You know what I mean? This is a perfect picture for climate change, in a way, because you have the impression they are in the middle of the ocean and they are going to die with a coke in their hands. But they were not that far from the coast, and it was possible for them to swim.”
The image was copied from the ships computer (where Byrd had downloaded the camera flash memory stick to) by another member of the shipboard research crew and passed on to Environment Canada. Then it was eagerly adopted by many as an example of the fate that awaits the polar bears – including Al Gore, who used the picture as huge projected backdrop in one of his highly lucrative lectures.
Gore said:
“Their habitat is melting,” “beautiful animals, literally being forced off the planet.”
Audience: [gasp!]
Yes, it melts every summer.
Read all the details of the story behind the photo, here and here. It seems that a lawsuit is brewing and Canada has some pretty hefty copyright laws.
But you can also make a buck off polar bears. I had to chuckle, because now WUWT’s Google ads have put me square in the employ of “Big Bear”.
Gosh, I feel dirty, exploiting nature like that and all.
Well anyways, with all the hype over the polar bear plight, and the exploitation of the poor cuddly beasts to make a buck, perhaps we should suggest that all future newspaper articles make use of this stock photo:
After all the juxtaposing of the penguin and the polar bears is about as factual as
“…the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population…”.
I’m really becoming depressed at the state of journalism.
M
The problem comes from mixing a belief with fact:
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/ask-the-experts/population/
A seemingly reasonable response from a polar bear expert (reiterating some of the numbers widely spread around). It seems that when this expert is discussing their field of expertise, they indicate no conclusive evidence of polar bear decline or otherwise. Any declines seem to be from hunting/poaching rather than an environmental effect.
Basically, they don’t have enough information.
Unfortunately, the commentary drops into the obvious ‘all the polar bears are going to die because of global warming’ belief, with no evidence that their habitat is, in fact, declining. In addition, making a key point, no seals, no bears. Seal populations are influenced by many issues, not least of which is hunting. If there isn’t a balance between the human impact (simply by being there and eeking out a living) then something will give. Any changes can be attributed to a multitude of factors even if we had ‘zero climate change’.
We are all for looking after our environment, but there’s a big difference between climate change and the environment.
If we want to know something about the status and prospects of polar bears it is best to ignore the journalist hype as well as the speculation that appears on blogs such as this one, and to look at the scientific literature. To access the scientific studies about polar bears and sea ice, go to “www.googlescholar” and search under “polar bears and sea ice.” I found about 32,000 hits, but the most relevant articles appear on the first few pages.
Generally you can access all of the abstracts and some of the articles without subscriptions. Reading about polar bears in scientific articles, we learn that their populations were severely depressed by hunting in the 1960s but recovered since most hunting was stopped in 1972. There are now relatively large, healthy populations of polar bears. We can also learn that polar bears are highly dependent on the extent and quality of new sea ice for hunting success and body condition. Like other bears, polar bears are well-adapted to long periods of fasting, but also require periods of high food abundance. Bears (in general) cannot survive on berries and, unlike wolves, they are not well suited for hunting caribou.
The quality of sea ice varies seasonally, between years and between locations. Several studies show that body condition, growth and reproduction in polar bears are sensitive to this variation in sea ice. In the absence of sea ice, they give up on hunting seals and move on land. They have very poor success hunting in open water.
Stable carbon isotopes readily distinguish between land based and sea based food webs. Stable isotope analysis suggests that polar bears are losing weight on land (not including the possibility of feeding at garbage dumps near human settlements) and that growth and reproduction are dependent on a seal diet.
Thus, posts in this blog that suggest that polar bears can capture seals in open water, or that they can satisfy their nutritional needs by hunting on land are contrary to scientific evidence.
The scientific evidence is very clear that the future prospects of polar bears depends on the future quality, extent and seasonality of sea ice. If sea ice is maintained or recovers, polar bears will do well or at least ok. If sea ice resumes a decline, the outlook for polar bears is poor.
gacooke (08:26:43) :
I’ve re-read that paper, and I too don’t see where the ‘no jeopardy’ statement applies past the impact of lease sale 193. An extensive study was done, but what comment was made on the status of bears Arctic or Alaska wide?