From CNS News:
From that article:
“The PBSG confirmed its earlier conclusion that unabated global warming will ultimately threaten polar bears everywhere,” it said.
At the same time, the report cited an American scientist who told the group that a research team had used a collar to track a polar bear that swam for more than 650 kilometers across the sea. “He described the extensive spatial data recovered from one particular collar that showed the bear swimming more than 650 km in the Beaufort Sea,” said the report.
Despite its concern that climate change could threaten the polar bear, the group also said it supported the right of human beings to “harvest” the bears.
Full story here
A quick internet survey shows;
14,500 Polar Bears in Canada – from Environment Canada
(1,500 in So. Beaufort Sea – Alaska population propably incl. in Canada’s count)
7,000 Polar Bears in Siberia – from WWF – panda.org
3,000 on the North Cape – from the Norwegian Polar Institute
2,000 in the Alaska Chukchi-Bearing area – US FWS
7,500 in Greenland – from foxnews article on Hunting limits
(higher than other Greenland counts I’ve seen)
This seems more like 30,000 + to me
It seems that everybody just accepts the 20-25,00 count, although endangeredpolarbear.com gives a wide range of 22 to 40 thousand polar bears
It also seems to me that if the count were much higher many more polar Bear cubs would starve, after all the Polar Bear is an alpha-predator in a barren wasteland.
Do the Inuit agree with this report on numbers?
689 km in 9 days. Sounds like they are used to cosiderable ice melt having occurred during their evolution. These guys are big travelers by land ice and sea. They regularly take a holiday in Newfoundland and Iceland.
I support the right of bears to bare arms when the climate gets warm.
Did polar bears survive previous warm periods via adaptation?
But the polar bear cubs are doomed to drowning. Ahhhhh!
A few weeks ago they had some video making the rounds on ABC News (US), about the “endangered” polar bears. They looked at the “most studied group” of them around Hudson Bay. Surrounded by people with proudly-displayed “WWF” logos, they were looking at a bunch of females with big radio tracking collars, and cited as evidence of how threatened they were that mothers were only having one cub, where previously two and three cubs batches were common.
Then when the crew had vehicle problems and were stuck in the boonies, they sighted an un-collared female, generally left alone and apparently not “most studied,” with three cubs.
Is this like what happened with the tagged penguins? They’re only having one cub because they’re being stressed from the radio collars and being so heavily studied?
If those WWF people were regularly knocked out by “aliens,” “probed” with “samples obtained,” tracking devices placed on them, and knew they were being regularly monitored with the “aliens” able to find them anytime anywhere, would they be able to do much successful breeding on their own?
I don’t know for sure, doubt anyone else knows. Time to draw up a grant proposal! Effects of Climate Change and Monitoring Stress on Homo Sapiens Gaian. Should be worth at least a few million dollars, for the initial research.
According to the story this report is based on a conference that took place in June 2009, but the report was not released until Feb of this year. Does anyone else suspect , as I do, that if they could have produced something negative to report on the PB’s status, the PR would have been burning up the wires before the staff at the conference center had finished stacking up the chairs.
Wasn’t this the same group that wouldn’t allow one of the world’s most experienced polar bear researchers to attend their conference because he didn’t support the proper agenda?
Sure. The population of Polar Bears is ~25,000. At the Churchill Manitoba Landfill. I guess these scientists only looked there.
Clearly it worse than we thought. Polar bear populations should be increasing! The fact that the population has not increased is cause for alarm.
Clearly the record minimum of 2007 has not harmed polar bear populations, then.
Here comes the headlines :In an alarming report scientists find that polar bear population is unchanged due to climate change.
Well, the Black Polar Bears went extinct. So did the Brown ones, and it was AGW that killed them!
Ot but all channels at AMSU satellite data are up and working
BTW what the heck is happening to the
http://www.berkeleyearth.org/findings
We were told April, now its May. My guess is the new data is most likely showing non AGW trends and they don’t know if they should release it or not?
This is scary story indeed.
All we now know is how far a polar bear has swum.
We do not know how far a polar bear could swim
CAGW is all about scare stories about what COULD happen
Therefore it is possible to predict that polar bears could swim to northern europe, and even Hawaii and cause havoc to the coastal populations, especially in the UK where we are not allowed to arm ourselves, to defend against polar bear attack
They breed???
It’s worse than I thought!!!
I still think that if some of these people end up as lunch snack for a polar bear, the bear acts as “chlorine for the human gene-pool”.
Ancient Polar Bear bones: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7132220.stm
Svalbard archipelago Arctic – 110-130,000 years old, survived through last interglacial, the Eeemian, which was warmer than ours now.
Good grief! I’ve been browsing through pages on ice age changes in Britain and Europe and came across this one on the LIA which has an astonishing disclaimer at the beginning – http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/little_ice_age.html
“In no way can my summary of the research regarding the impact of regional climate change on the Viking civilization and Europe during the Little Ice Age be used to “prove” the current global warming is due to a natural cycle.”
Point taken. I hope our recent warmcold events aren’t an indication of a repeat.
I’m sure the WWF are happier than hell to have the locals plugging their quota every year. A growing polar bear population would be quite the inconvenient truth wouldn’t it ??
Having said that though, Putin has placed a moratorium on their being hunted on the Russian side. Good for him, and I’m not going to question his motives.
http://www.celsias.com/article/polarbear-hunting-quota-wont-be-hunted-year-russia/
(Note, I provide this link for attribution purposes only. Some paragraphs may require having a barf bag handy)
JinOH says:
May 20, 2011 at 10:49 am
Where’s the one that’s holding a bottle of Coke?
That was an Antarctic Polar Bear. Remember, he was gooning with a penguin.
Just the bear facts!
Polar bears do not hibernate over winter in dens like brown and black bears. over winter in dens like brown and black bears.
Only pregnant females enter dens to give birth where they stay until the cubs are big enough to trek.
Most polar bears remain active throughout the year. They have the ability to reduce their metabolic rate when food is scarce and adjust it again when food is abundant.
Denning.
Pregnant polar bears den in the fall after feeding heavily in August and September. They choose den sites in snowdrifts along mountain slopes or hills near sea ice or in banks of snow on the frozen sea. Along Western Hudson Bay mother bears begin by denning in earthen dens along riverbanks and later move to snow dens.
See the Polar bear blogs (http://www.polarbearalley.com/ ) to find Polar bears throughout the summer and fall catching sleeping seals (yum yum) on tidal/mud flats when the tide goes out.
They are food opportunist and their food consists of seals coming up for air through holes in the ice or sun bathing and snoozing on ice or land. They also eat sea birds, lonely mosques bison going walkabout, stranded whales and in the summer time berries and plants. They regularly swim 40+ miles without effort at a cruise speed of 5 knots. Their only enemy are researchers and arrogant human beings with guns.
Why am I not surprised? It seems like everyone but Canadians believed this crap(well that and we club baby seals on our 12th birthdays as a right of passage–though seal flipper pie is delicious). Having seen polar bears as far south as Winisk River Provincial Park(that’s a long way south from the arctic) , I could never understand the hysteria over it.
Well I have heard rumors that they’re looking to do a cull in northern ontario because the population is getting to high but who knows, maybe it’s just talk like usual.
From the article:
“The group said it viewed anticipated changes in the Arctic environment caused by “climate change” to be the greatest threat to the future of the polar bear.”
What exactly does that mean? Exactly how much “climate change” does it take to threaten a Polar bear?
Also, if the Arctic environment warmed slightly, would this mean more or less available food for the Polar bears?
I would think that Polar bears would be better adapted to global warming than black or brown bears, based on their higher albedo. They’re white for cryin’ out loud!
Where’s the concern for the dark bears sweatin’ their little heinies off? Someone is not wearing their thinking cap.
JohnWho says:
May 20, 2011 at 5:50 pm
From the article:
“The group said it viewed anticipated changes in the Arctic environment caused by “climate change” to be the greatest threat to the future of the polar bear.”
What exactly does that mean? Exactly how much “climate change” does it take to threaten a Polar bear?
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Well, apparently the first 30 years wasn’t a big deal, but maybe the next 30….boy howdy! Watch out for that!
I guess its a hobby for simpletons. Somehow, it gets lost that polar bears are essentially genetically the same as grizzlies. But some how the bears, even though they do today, wouldn’t be able to live on land. About the only thing I find alarming is the low level of collective intelligence of the IUCN. But, more and more, I’m thinking to carry the label of “scientist” its mandated that you have an IQ 10-20 lower than the mean. Educable aments.
A polar bear swimming 650 kilometers? This is CLEAR proof of Global Warming. Obviously the polar bear has mutated and gain some fish-like webbings and gills, a la Kevin Costner in “Waterworld”. You bunch of evil deniers are the cause of this terrible disruption of the purity of the polar bear gene pool…
/sarc