After reading this BBC article on modeling the “tipping point” of polar bear populations, it seemed this photo summed it up well, especially since modeling was substituted in lieu of “nearly non-existent data”. I wonder how the bears survived the Roman Warm Period, or the Medieval Warm Period?
From the BBC: Polar bears face ‘tipping point’
By Matt Walker
Editor, Earth News
Climate change will trigger a dramatic and sudden decline in the number of polar bears, a new study has concluded.
The research is the first to directly model how changing climate will affect polar bear reproduction and survival.
Based on what is known of polar bear physiology, behaviour and ecology, it predicts pregnancy rates will fall and fewer bears will survive fasting during longer ice-free seasons.
These changes will happen suddenly as bears pass a ‘tipping point’.
Details of the research are published in the journal Biological Conservation.
Educated guesses
Until now, most studies measuring polar bear survival have relied on a method called “mark and recapture”.
We may not see any substantial effect on polar bear reproduction and survival until some threshold is passed. At that point reproduction and survival will decline dramatically and very rapidly
Peter Molnar University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
This involves repeatedly catching polar bears in a population over several years, which is cost and time-intensive.
Because of that, the information scientists have gathered on polar bear populations varies greatly: for example, datasets span up to four decades in the best studied populations in Western Hudson Bay and Southern Beaufort Sea, but are almost non-existent for bears in some parts of Russia.
Even more difficult is measuring how survival and reproduction might change under future climatic conditions.
“Some populations are expected to go extinct with climate warming, while others are expected to persist, albeit at a reduced population size,” says Dr Peter Molnar of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
However, these projections are essentially educated guesses, based on experts judging or extrapolating how current population trends might continue as the climate changes.
“So we’ve looked at the underlying mechanisms of polar bear ecology to assist our understanding of what will happen in a warming world,” Dr Molnar told the BBC.
Fasting and mating
Dr Molnar, Professor Andrew Derocher and colleagues from the University of Alberta and York University, Toronto focused on the physiology, behaviour and ecology of polar bears, and how these might change as temperatures increase.
“We developed a model for the mating ecology of polar bears. The model estimates how many females in a population will be able to find a mate during the mating season, and thus get impregnated.”
Male polar bears find females by wandering the ice, sniffing bear tracks they come across. If the tracks have been made by a female in mating condition, the male follows the tracks to her.
The researchers modelled how this behaviour would change as warming temperatures fragment sea ice.
They also modelled the impact on the bears’ survival.
Southern populations of polar bears fast in summer, forced ashore as the sea ice melts.
As these ice-free seasons lengthen, fewer bears are expected to have enough fat and protein stores to survive the fast.
By developing a physiological model that estimates how fast a bear uses up its fat and protein stores, the researchers could estimate how long it takes a bear to die of starvation.
“In both cases, the expected changes in reproduction and survival were non-linear,” explains Dr Molnar.
“That is, as the climate warms, we may not see any substantial effect on polar bear reproduction and survival for a while, up until some threshold is passed, at which point reproduction and survival will decline dramatically and very rapidly.”
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Read the entire story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8700000/8700472.stm
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RHS:
There are lots of animals that hunt man:
Tiger, Lion, Buffalo, Wolf (occasionally), Leopard, Hyena, Wild Dog, Dingo, lots of snakes,………… etc. .
That does it.
I’m now absolutely convinced.
The inmates are in complete control of the asylum.
“Mike M says:
May 25, 2010 at 12:20 pm
What they totally DISMISS is that the genetic make-up of a polar bears came from brown bears 150k years ago. That genetic information is still in there but just suppressed and waiting to be re-ignited by a change of climate conditions back to the way they were. ”
No, polar bears appeared by magic just like “green energy”. We need strong government, lots of regulation, cronyism, global agreements, end of capitalism, a new era for powerful centralised socialist rule, people living on carbon allowances. Then we can save the magical peaceful lovable polar bear!
perhaps the good doctor should go to the arctic drenched in lady bear urine then he will get a very good feeling on the state of the bears
So that’s how they came up with the scientific ‘consensus’. Counting the actual scientists was too much work so they came up with a computer model – perhaps based on the amount of climate grant money available?
Besides, it doesn’t make much sense to start counting scientists when they don’t even learn any science in the schools these days…
If somebody has some grant money left i can make a computer model that shows a tipping point for the human population if we don’t do some measure X (to be defined). You know, like the Club Of Rome’s Limits To Growth, only more dramatic. Just tell me the year you need the tipping point in and the extent of the population decline you want. I think i’ll use something like infectious diseases, spread of drug addiction or maybe pollution induced infertility as the mechanism, but i’m open to suggestions.
“[But] eventually mortality will dramatically increase when a certain threshold is passed; for example, while starvation mortality is currently negligible, up to one-half of the male population would starve if the fasting season in Western Hudson Bay was extended from currently four to about six months.”
If the western Hudson were to (by some miracle or magic) go ice free tomorrow (not very likely at all), it would have to remain free of ice until Christmas (again, not very likely, given normal winter conditions there) in order to have remained ice free for six months. Whether or not this would have a dramatic impact on the polar bears would be an interesting question at that point, but right now it’s about as useful a prognostication as inquiring what would happen to the polar bear population were they to suddenly and without warning be deposited onto the surface of Mars. It’s just not going to be an issue.
Is this what climate alarmism is reduced to these days?
If it were not for Climate Change there would be no Polar Bears.
Excuse me, that’s Thanksgiving, not Christmas.
Pardon my error.
Why don’t we move a bunch of polar bears to San Francisco to ensure their survival? When they get finished eating all the seals that have to be chased off the docks there they can start on the people who vote for Nancy Pelosi. There, solved two problems with one move. Then we can move some of the over population of wolves from Yellowstone to Washington DC and let them improve that situation. This is too easy!
The Polar bear has been around for c150k years and is capable of survival in a wide variety of climate conditions. They are more intelligent than canines and can adapt to changing circumstances.
Many so-called scientists would rather depend on the output of dubious computer models, rather than observing how the subject of their investigation adapts to change.
No evidence yet that they will succumb to ‘stupid bear’ syndrome!
It’s a typo. They meant to say “tupping point”. It’s the point when, even for polar bears, it gets too darn cold!
“what happened to good old lets have a look ats whats actually happenning?”
Aw come on sunderland steve, have you been to where the polar bears are? It’s COLD!
Easier and warmer to sit in a computer lab and make the model create the nice and scary output that the hyper-rich grant providers want. Not only that but the output is guaranteed to say whatever the heck they want it to be.
Investigating the real polar bears risks getting real evidence of the sort that the grant providers do not want.
That would be bad for the alarmism industry.
…and i think that somewhere in the not-too-distant past the population of journalists at the BBC must have collapsed suddenly, and they all got replaced by an invasive species that looks identical, occupies the same ecological niche and produces articles. The only way to tell the difference is the content of the articles…
Anyone who has done field work in the Arctic know how foolish much of what this program had to say. Yes, models have replaced solid fieldwork. Yes, the models are less then reliable. Yes, this is simple alarmist baffle gab or propaganda. Yes, we don’t know more about these bears and their population distribution then we know. Yes, it is grant time!
From kadaka (KD Knoebel) on May 25, 2010 at 11:46 am:
Awww…
How about some cartoons instead?
One, two…
This one should be popular.
Not a cartoon, but a horrifying visage of the fate awaiting the polar bears after the Arctic melts!
Oh, I also found an interesting pic in this old article from some practically-unknown website…
😉
Is polar bear tipping like cow tipping?
“we MAY NOT see any substantial effect on polar bear reproduction and survival, until SOME threshold is passed”
ie whilst the numbers of bears may actually be SEEN(ie by counting them) to INCREASE in the real world in the future. They say, the computer model predicts a tipping point sometime in the future, when they will die.
So basically they can still use the propaganda to scare you, even IF the Polar Bear numbers are increasing in the real world, because the computer model and their assumptions of the real world in the model, says so?
Potty ‘pseudo science’
How do they get funding? (oh!, It is cheaper than counting real polar bears)
Anyone like to make the obvious comparisons, to volcanic Ash cloud computer models(met office), AGW computer models, finacial risk (banking), BSE spread computer models, swine flu pandemic models, etc, etc
Of course, as the computer model now says they will be endangered,
This computer projection can now be used as IPCC propaganda to manipulate the emotions of the public and small children (ie at infants school – polar bears are dying because of humans – said my 5 year old daughter) Even as the polar bear numbers may be static or even increasing.
Can I get some funding, to count (to model bee population, for example – climate change) as I sit at my desk, £200,000 – £300,000 should do it.
Where do I apply.
Didn’t polar bears evolve from brown bears some 250,000 years ago?
They’ve been around for a considerable time and proved themselves capable of adapting (as animals and, yes, even humans do) to the environment and climate in which they live.
Perhaps some people don’t realise that polar bears were perfectly capable of looking after themselves way before tv companies started to make ‘oh-so-precious’ documentaries about them.
I think the bear is making a comment on Matt Walker’s journalistic skills.
Over 700 polar bears are hunted annually.
Hunting is by permits. I don’t think the natives have limits.
Just so you all don’t think the number is falling rapidly and it is caused by suiicide when the poley bears are depressed about ice prospects.
OK, so when it all actually happens we just send Gore, Molnar, Mann, and the Team up there with coffee for the bears after four months. It would do the Team a world of good, not to mention the bears… And Mann can check them for malaria while he’s in the neighborhood…
“A polar bear biologist formerly from Nunavut was barred from an international scientific meeting because his beliefs on climate change and its effects on the species are inconsistent with the group’s opinion.
Mitch Taylor, who was a polar bear biologist with the Nunavut government until last year, was not invited to the Polar Bear Specialist Group’s meeting in Copenhagen, Denmark, this past weekend.
The group of scientists meets periodically to discuss the status of polar bear populations around the world. Taylor said he had been attending the group’s meetings since 1981.”
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/2009/07/06/pbear-taylor-meeting.html#ixzz0oycnIc9V
The WWF knows what makes bears worry.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska, August 21, 2008 – An aerial survey by government scientists in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea this week found at least nine polar bears swimming in open water – with one at least 60 miles from shore – raising concern among wildlife experts about their survival. A World Wildlife Fund (WWF) polar bear expert said the bears could have difficulty making it safely to shore and risk drowning, particularly if a storm arises.
“To find so many polar bears at sea at one time is extremely worrisome because it could be an indication that as the sea ice on which they live and hunt continues to melt, many more bears may be out there facing similar risk,” said Geoff York, a polar bear biologist with WWF.
http://www.worldwildlife.org/who/media/press/2008/WWFPresitem9878.html
If the strawman argument is that less ice cuses bear drownings, how do they explain the bears being 60 miles from land and appear to be alive and swimming?
Old Sea Dog – There is a difference between hunting and attacking. Most any invertebrate (sp?) animal will attack in order to defend itself. Larger carnivores will attack as a convenience (animal is hungry, human is handy). Most of the animals listed fit the attack for defense category, esp Buffalo.
From http://www.dictionary.com:
Hunt –
1.to chase or search for (game or other wild animals) for the purpose of catching or killing.
2.to pursue with force, hostility, etc.,
I will agree with the Wolf but they mostly hunt in numbers/groups. Lions/Tigers on occasion but not as habit or convenience.
Many folks in the far north oil fields have found out the hard way that attempting to photograph a polar bear isn’t a bright idea because after the first few photographers have captured photos, the bears are maneuvering and setting a trap knowing where there potential dinner will be. Being armed with a camera isn’t enough.
Which is one of the reasons I volunteer Al Gore to build and monitor the outpost.