Yesterday I posted a story, based on a press release from the University of Alberta, suggesting ‘timing is everything‘. Indeed, it appears to be for action. Polarbearscience picked up the release via my story and writes:
The timing of the release of this paper is very convenient: Fish and Wildlife biologists and polar bear activists worldwide are actively campaigning to get CITES, at their meeting next month, to make it illegal to trade in legally harvested polar bear parts (see previous post here). Canada is also under international pressure to up-list the status of the polar bear to “threatened,” see post here.
The article itself is behind a paywall (abstract and co-author list below), so it is unlikely that many people outside the choir of conservation advocate subscribers of the journal will ever read it, so Derocher is talking it up big time, with the help of his university PR department. Timely indeed. [h/t WUWT]
Full story here: Andrew Derocher refuses to accept that polar bears have been saved
I chased a black bear out of our camp-site in the middle of nowhere by hitting it with a thrown full can of beer. True story. The bear ran away as fast as it could, crying all the way and a trophy beer was born. I was too young at the time to realize how dumb that was.
jono1066…
there are no polar bears at the south pole and there are no penquins in the north…to add polar bears is to erase penquins….
Don’t buy Coca-Cola, because the company misleads people about polar bears.
I don’t trust Bears, and that means all of them. After living in Slave Lake, I do remember the warnings on the radio about black bears coming into town, and yes sometimes sows did with their cubs too. So we learned which days when we could take a walk on the trails in town. We were told in no uncertain terms to not touch the cubs, or come between Momma and her cubs as warned by conservation officers on the local radio station.
So when I see the scientists posing with the cubs, on the Polar Bear International site, and touching them, I thought to myself, WTH? Are they not trying to save these bears? The pictures of the scientists posing with the drugged bears reminded me of Trophy Hunters posing with their kills. The ones who posed with the cubs were the dumbest of the bunch. Bears are not trustworthy, drugged or not. Humans are not supposed to mess with bear cubs, that is why Momma bears have big teeth and big claws. All the better to teach us dumb humans that her cubs are not cuddly if we get too close.
(I have read and seen too many incidents of tourists getting in the way of wild animals, and I know it is the fault of humans, not the animal itself.)
FYI, bear scare (Pepper spray), product should only be sold in small cans of one use only. It does tend to sweeten up, after it fades, and bears are attracted to that sweet scent.
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/science
Forgot to add this to my post. Most of the ones who were mentioned in the paper that was released Jan 25, 2013 are pictured here on the site.
Jim from Lodon asked about polar bears attcking explorers. Is this what you are looking for?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/8683416/Survivors-recover-from-surgery-after-polar-bear-kills-Eton-school-boy-Horatio-Chapple-in-Norway.html
Another tidbit:
Polar bears like pork chops
Cut and paste the link if it doesn’t work.
As I recall, one of the green rags (Nat Geo I think) published a picture of a bunch of polars bears sniffing and hanging around an area. The caption read that for years after the hog farm closed hopeful bears returned annually.
Atheok, I believe you. Bears have good recall of certain things, like where quality food was once found, but are, in other ways, incredibly dumb. My mother used to feed birds in the back yard. This also attracted raccoons and in the appropriate season bears. When a bear would come, the raccoons would scatter into the neighboring bushes and wait for the bear to leave. One day, a bear heard noises from the waiting raccoons and rushed into the bushes to chase them off – straight into the trunk of a tree, knocking itself out for many minutes.
Obviously Derocher isn’t afriad of the cute, cuddley and harmless bears… he’s carrying the gun to fend off mean, ignorant deniers!
See Bill Illis posted picture:
http://www.innovationanthology.com/uploads/253derocher_babybear.jpg
Derocher mentioned that Polar Bear counts in the 1950s were merely “guesses”, much like local temperatures before the instrumental record. So he, like his CAGW brethren, decided that, even though we don’t know what was going on before, we’re going to declare a catastrophe based on the fact that we don’t know what went on before. Gobsmackingly idiotic.
Oh Noes!