This interesting article shows the information and perception gap between scientists that do helicopter surveys of polar bears and the native people who co-exist in their presence.
Excerpts:
In a news release issued after its conference last July, the PBSG concluded that only one of 19 total polar bear subpopulations is currently increasing, three are stable and eight are declining. Data was insufficient to determine numbers for the remaining seven subpopulations. The group estimated that the total number of polar bears is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000. (Estimates of the population during the 1950s and 1960s, before harvest quotas were enacted, range from 5,000 to 10,000.)
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Not so fast. According to a U.S. Senate and Public Works Committee report, the “alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. Those predictions are being “challenged by scientists and forecasting experts,” said the report.
Those challenges, supported by facts on the ground, including observations from Inuit hunters in the region, haven’t stopped climate fear-mongers at the U.S. Geological Survey from proclaiming that future sea ice conditions “will result in the loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century.”
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Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.
“Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says.
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The growing population has become “a real problem,” especially over the last 10 years, he says. During the summer and fall, families enjoying outdoor activities must be on the look-out for bears. Many locals invite along other hunters for protection.
Last year, in Pelly Bay, all the bears that were captured were caught in town, Nirlungayuk says. “You now have polar bears coming into towns, getting into cabins, breaking property and just creating havoc for people up here,” he says.
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Flaherty and many others disagree with the official story. “We are aware there are changes in the weather, but it is not affecting the daily life of the animals,” he says. “Polar bears hunt in the floe-edge areas, on newly formed ice, and in the fiords in search of baby seals. They don’t hunt in the glaciers [areas of multi-year ice].
“We’re not seeing negative effects on the polar bear population from so-called climate change and receding ice,” he says. He is convinced that some scientists are deliberately “using the polar bear issue to scare people” about global warming, a view widely shared by many Nunavut locals.
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Read the entire article here, it is quite enlightening
“January 8, 2010” – I wonder how the locals are doing now.
Ah yes. But the Nunavut locals are talking about real polar bears. They don’t count.
The U.S. Geological Survey and all the Thermageddonists are using their computers to count VIRTUAL polar bears.
Those are the ones that are important and they are in serious danger.
Trust me.
In the cold is warming logic of warmists, this is a very bad sign indeed.
“You now have polar bears coming into towns, getting into cabins, breaking property and just creating havoc for people up here,” he says.
Perhaps we can have Greenpeace, WWF, the IPCC and the USGS babysit some live polar bears in their offices for a few days – you know, since they’re SO cuddly and all…
I need to get a Polar Bear Rug!
Once I read the bit saying the declines were the projections of computer modellers, all became clear.
I’m more likely to trust those confronted with a real beast.
I can bear it no longer – just the bare facts, please…
A population of any species that becomes large enough is threatened by epizooties (called epidemics when it is our own species) So the polar bears may be the victims of a population collapse some day soon, but for the “wrong” reason – due to population increase
A pity we can’t catch some and let them loose in Westminster, Brussels, Washington DC., Canberra etc.
On second thoughts, they would get indigestion eating all the thick skinned politicians, so probably this would constitute cruelty to animals.
Ach mein Gott!!
It is worse than we thought! The starving polar bears must now be going to towns to forage since the sea is no longer safe for them.
Polar bears are the only true carnivores among the ursines. Seals are their livlihood and meat is what they eat. What genetic testing has been done suggests that polar bears evolved from brown bears some 100,000 to 250,000 years ago. Paleantologists tend to confirm the evolution. In short, these bears are highly adaptable and the gene pool can be expected to survive whatever the conditions they face.
Next Christmas’ news report from the Suzuki Foundation:
“Hi…this is David Suzuki reporting from the North Pole where the few polar bears that are left are starving. Send me money so I can feed them, or others may suffer a similar fate as Santa did last year – http://www.guy-sports.com/fun_pictures/polar_bear_christmas.jpg
A year or two ago, I think the BBC did a news-bite on the scavenging polar bears in Churchill – not forgetting to add the inevitable health warning, the line being that there were no more baby seals due to global warning. I’m pretty sure that none of the footage was shot in a Dutch zoo.
This article is from almost 2 years ago. The warmist will say polar bear numbers have declined since then.
I loved the story told by one “native Guide” about how the polar baears Hide when they hear the helicopters because the scientists have darted and examined so many of the bears. Momma’s also teach their babies to hide.
They also disappear at the sound of the truck engines used by the scientists. No dumbs them.
Here is the story:
Estimates of the population during the 1950s and 1960s, before harvest quotas were enacted, range from 5,000 to 10,000
The group estimated that the total number of polar bears is somewhere between 20,000 and 25,000.
“will result in the loss of approximately two-thirds of the world’s current polar bear population by the mid 21st century.”
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13,000 – 17,000………………………………
[Using multiple screen names violate site Policy. ~dbs, mod.]
Is there no way to hold organizations like the US Geological Survey to account for shoddy even false reporting?
They are shopping… they just want the industrialized countries to pay for it… Wow, they ARE quick learners.
Lets look at some known facts:
1. There are about 25,000 polar bears
2. Polar bear’s normal lifespan (natural causes) is 25 years.
3. Over 1000 polar bears are killed by people every year.
Somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the polar bears are killed by people (depends on the average age of killed polar bears). The polar bear population is at a size where the number of new polar bears just compensates for the number of old polar bears + polar bears that get too close to people.
If you want more polar bears, something drastic has to be done about the human population in the arctic.
Not an impressive rebuttal. “But the bears are getting into our garbage cans!” is on the same level as, “But it snowed really hard last winter!” Too impressionistic to take seriously.
When I lived in SE Alaska, taking a gun when you go into some parts of the mountains was pretty much Standard Operating Procedure. I doubt this is new for the Eskimos, either.
Try telling this to Coca Cola !!!
http://www.livepositively.com/#/arctic_home
“Coca-Cola is helping to establish a safe refuge for the polar bear”
They already have one……… THE ARCTIC !!!!!
Why, if warming is a threat to polar bears, are polar bear cubs born in time for spring?
If ice is important for polar bears to feed the cubs, why are the cubs not born in time for fall/winter when the ice forms? Doesn’t this tell us that warm weather is a benefit to the cubs?
Why is it that scientists that supposedly study polar bears never mention that the cubs come out in the spring, when the ice is melting? If warming makes it difficult for polar bears to feed the cubs, then evolution would have eliminated spring births in polar bears and replaced it with fall births.
This argues strongly that scientists and the WWF that suggest warming is bad for polar bears have not bothered to actually check this with the polar bears to see what they prefer.
Old Suzuki must be having a conniption fit!! How dare the indigenous people actually behave like indigenous people!! Bollocks. More lazy armchair surveyors flying around in choppers looking for bears whose natural camoflage would make them hard to spot, essentially a bunch of taxpayer-funded adventurers.