The press release below is from Wiley, where they worry that the polar bear can’t find enough sea ice. Meanwhile, billboards proclaim the uptick in polar bear numbers thanks to conservation efforts and other factors. See below for 10 reasons to consider why we shouldn’t worry. – Anthony
For polar bears, it’s survival of the fattest
One of the most southerly populations of polar bears in the world – and the best studied – is struggling to cope with climate-induced changes to sea ice, new research reveals. Based on over 10 years’ data the study, published in the British Ecological Society’s Journal of Animal Ecology, sheds new light on how sea ice conditions drive polar bears’ annual migration on and off the ice.
Lead by Dr Seth Cherry of the University of Alberta, the team studied polar bears in western Hudson Bay, where sea ice melts completely each summer and typically re-freezes from late November to early December. “This poses an interesting challenge for a species that has evolved as a highly efficient predator of ice-associated seals,” he explains. “Because although polar bears are excellent swimmers compared with other bear species, they use the sea ice to travel, hunt, mate and rest.”
Polar bears have adapted to the annual loss of sea ice by migrating onto land each summer. While there, they cannot hunt seals and must rely on fat reserves to see them through until the ice returns.
Dr Cherry and colleagues wanted to discover how earlier thawing and later freezing of sea ice affects the bears’ migration. “At first glance, sea ice may look like a barren, uniform environment, but in reality, it’s remarkably complex and polar bears manage to cope, and even thrive, in a habitat that moves beneath their feet and even disappears for part of the year. This is an extraordinary biological feat and biologist still don’t fully understand it,” he says.
From 1991-97 and 2004-09, they monitored movements of 109 female polar bears fitted with satellite tracking collars. They tagged only females because males’ necks are wider than their heads, so they cannot wear a collar. During the same period, the team also monitored the position and concentration of sea ice using satellite images.
“Defining precisely what aspects of sea ice break-up and freeze-up affect polar bear migration, and when these conditions occur, is a vital part of monitoring how potential climate-induced changes to sea ice freeze-thaw cycles may affect the bears,” he says.
The results reveal the timing of polar bears’ migration can be predicted by how fast the sea ice melts and freezes, and by when specific sea ice concentrations occur within a given area of Hudson Bay.
According to Dr Cherry: “The data suggest that in recent years, polar bears are arriving on shore earlier in the summer and leaving later in the autumn. These are precisely the kind of changes one would expect to see as a result of a warming climate and may help explain some other studies that are showing declines in body condition and cub production.”
Recent estimates put the western Hudson Bay polar bear population at around 900 individuals. The population has declined since the 1990s, as has the bears’ body condition and the number of cubs surviving to adulthood.
Because polar bears’ main food source is seals, and these are hunted almost exclusively on sea ice, the longer bears spend on land, the longer they must go without energy-rich seals. “Climate-induced changes that cause sea ice to melt earlier, form later, or both, likely affect the overall health of polar bears in the area. Ultimately, for polar bears, it’s survival of the fattest,” says Dr Cherry.
He hopes the results will enable other scientists and wildlife managers to predict how potential climate-induced changes to sea ice freeze-thaw cycles will affect the ecology, particularly the migration patterns, of this iconic species.
Seth Cherry et al (2013). ‘Migration phenology and seasonal fidelity of an Arctic marine predator in relation to sea ice dynamics’, doi: 10.1111/1365-2656.12050, is published in the Journal of Animal Ecology on Wednesday 20 March 2013.
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CFACT writes on their webpage:
The polar bear invasion
While many people believe that polar bears are in danger because of global warming, it might surprise them to learn that polar bear numbers have actually quadrupled in recent decades. Such news is no surprise to residents of Churchill, Manitoba, however, who are experiencing an invasion of polar bears in their town. According to reports, polar bears are commonly seen walking down Churchill’s main street, and people have learned to leave their cars unlocked so they can quickly duck inside if one approaches. It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that dogs are routinely being eaten, a polar bear hotline has been created, and kids cannot go out trick or treating without a parent packing a shotgun for protection.
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So in a sense, the Wiley article is correct, and polar bears are coming on land, due to Hudson Bay sea ice melt. But, hasn’t this always happened?
Jeff Condon did a post on Hudson Bay ice here and notes:
Since we know that this region definitely melts 100% (should hit zero every year) and we can see the same step pattern in the lower edge. This appears to be another indication of a definite bias in the sea ice satellite data. How this is handled by the pro’s is an unexplored matter but this data is the final published version from the NSIDC.
Biologist Susan Crockford gives us ten good reasons not to worry about polar bears:
1) Polar bears are a conservation success story. Their numbers have rebounded remarkably since 1973 and we can say for sure that there are more polar bears now than there were 40 years ago. Although we cannot state the precise amount that populations have increased (which is true for many species – counts are usually undertaken only after a major decline is noticeable), polar bears join a long list of other marine mammals whose populations rebounded spectacularly after unregulated hunting stopped: sea otters, all eight species of fur seals, walrus, both species of elephant seal, and whales of all kinds (including grey, right, bowhead, humpback, sei, fin, blue and sperm whales). Once surveys have been completed for the four subpopulations of polar bears whose numbers are currently listed as zero (how about funding that, WWF?), the total world population will almost certainly rise to well above the current official estimate of 20,000-25,000 (perhaps to 27,000-32,000?).
2) The only polar bear subpopulation that has had a statistically significant decline in recent years is the one in Western Hudson Bay (WH)(Fig. 1). A few others have been presumed to be decreasing, based on suspicions of over-harvesting, assumed repercussions of reduced sea ice and/or statistically insignificant declines in body condition (see 3, below) – not actual population declines.
Figure 1. A map of the 19 polar bear subpopulations (courtesy the Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG), with a few additional labels).
3) Polar bears in the US portion of the Chukchi Sea are in good condition and reproducing well, while sea ice in the Bering Sea has rebounded from record lows over the last ten years – good reasons not to be worried about polar bears in the Chukchi. The Chukchi subpopulation (which includes bears in the Bering Sea) was formerly assumed to be decreasing due to suspected over-harvesting and past declines in sea ice – even though no population survey had ever been done (see 2, above) – but preliminary reports about a recent survey suggest that Chukchi polar bears are doing very well. While there is still no official population estimate for the Chukchi (currently listed as zero), sea ice coverage in the Bering Sea has been higher than average over the last ten years and 2012 didn’t just break the satellite-era record set in 1999, it exceeded it by almost 100,000 square kilometers.
4) A survey by the Nunavut government in 2011 showed that polar bear numbers in Western Hudson Bay have not declined since 2004 as predicted and all available evidence indicates that Hudson Bay sea ice is not on a steadily precipitous decline – good reasons not to be worried about Hudson Bay bears. While polar bear biologists Ian Stirling and Andrew Derocher continue to insist that the modest decline in numbers of Western Hudson Bay polar bears recorded between 1998 and 2004 was due to earlier breakup of sea ice – and continues on that trend to this day – it turns out that much of the data used to support that claim is either unpublished, woefully out of date, or both. Although Stirling and colleagues have not yet published comparable dates of sea ice breakup since 2007 (they use a particular computation of satellite data), Canadian Ice Service data suggests that over the last 10 years we have not seen another very early breakup in Hudson Bay like the one that occurred in 2003. Surprisingly, 2009 was a late breakup year: the Port of Churchill experienced the latest breakup of sea ice since 1974 (three weeks later than average). All of which suggests that in Western Hudson Bay, some years have been good for polar bears and others have been not so good, but there has not been a relentless decline in sea ice breakup dates over the last thirty years.
5) Population decreases in polar bear numbers attributed to earlier sea ice breakup in Western Hudson Bay (see 4, above) have not been anywhere near as severe as the catastrophic decline that took place in 1974 in the eastern Beaufort Sea, which was associated with exceptionally thick sea ice. The modest decline in the Western Hudson Bay population that took place between 1998 and 2004 (down 22%) pales in comparison to the 1974 Beaufort event, when ringed seals numbers (i.e. polar bear food) dropped by 80% or more and numbers of polar bears plummeted. Similar events took place in 1984 and 1992, which means that three precipitous population declines due to heavy ice have taken place in this polar bear population over the last 40 years – but each time, numbers rebounded a few years later. In other words, due to entirely natural causes, polar bear numbers can fluctuate quite dramatically over relatively short periods because of the highly variable sea ice habitat they live in.
6) Polar bears need spring and early summer ice (March through June) for gorging on young, fat seals and documented declines in sea ice have rarely impinged on that critical feeding period (except for a few isolated years in Hudson Bay, see 4, above). A new study suggests that while some Western Hudson Bay bears will likely perish if the ice-free period extends to six months (from its current four-to-four+), many will survive because of their exceptional fat storage abilities.
7) There is no plausible evidence that regulated subsistence hunting is causing polar bear numbers to decline, despite suspicions harbored by the Polar Bear Specialist Group.
8) Global temperatures have not risen in a statistically-significant way in the last 16 years (see Fig. 2) – a standstill not predicted by climate models and a phenomenon even the chairman of the IPCC has acknowledged – which suggests that the record sea ice lows of the last few years are probably not primarily due to CO2-caused increases in global temperatures. Such changes in Arctic sea ice appear to be normal habitat variations that polar bears have survived before (see 9, below) and are likely due to a combination of natural and man-made processes we do not yet fully understand (including the effects of black carbon).[see footnote below]
Figure 2. LEFT – There has not been any statistically significant increase in global temperatures over the last 16 years (1997-2013), even though CO2 levels have continued to rise (Graph modified from David Evans, using Hadley UK Met Office data (HadCrut4). RIGHT – Sea ice extent in September (the yearly minimum) has declined quite a bit since 1997 – although nowhere near zero – while global temperatures have barely changed overall (Graph from NSIDC) Click to enlarge.
9) Survival of polar bears over a hundred thousand years (at least) of highly variable sea ice coverage indicates that those biologists who portend a doomed future for the polar bear have grossly underestimated its ability to survive vastly different conditions than those that existed in the late 1970s when Ian Stirling began his polar bear research. Sea ice has varied – countless dozens of times – over the short term (decades-long climate oscillations) and the long term (glacial-to-interglacial cycles of thousands of years). Over the last 100,000 years, there have been periods of much less ice than today, but also much, much more. Polar bear population numbers probably fluctuated up and down in conjunction with some of these sea ice changes but the polar bear as a species survived – and so did all of the Arctic seal species it depends on for food. Such survival indicates that these Arctic species, in an evolutionary sense, are very well-adapted to their highly-variable habitat.
10) Polar bears today are well distributed throughout their available territory, which is a recognized characteristic of a healthy species.
These are all good reasons to feel good about the current status of the polar bear. It is plain to see that these ice-dwelling bears are not currently threatened with extinction due to declining sea ice, despite the hue and cry from activist scientists and environmental organizations. Indeed, because the polar bear is doing so well, those who would like to see polar bears listed as “threatened” depend entirely upon dramatic declines in sea ice prophesied to occur decades from now to make their case.
Footnote: Updated Feb. 28, 2013. I have amended the last sentence of #8 to reflect the possibility that man-made influences (such as soot) may have contributed to recent sea ice declines.
I see that Climate Audit has just posted a detailed article today, detailing the lying endemic to the climate alarmist cult.
Alarmists like Lewandowski, Shehan and Cook [among others] lie because if they admitted the truth, their false narrative would come crashing down. The fact is that nothing unusual or unprecedented is, or has been, occurring. Current climate parameters are all well within historical norms [including polar ice cover, which is above its long-term average]. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified.
Any honest scientist would look at the complete lack of physical corroboration, and rightly conclude that the “carbon” scare has been falsified. But the alarmist crowd has no integrity, none at all. They lie like children caught with chocolate on their faces, standing next to an open cookie jar. The rest of us know they are lying. But when called on their lies, they double down and still insist — despite mountains of evidence falsifying their mendacious claims — that catastrophic AGW is upon us. The worst of it is, they know they are lying. And the reason is not because they need to support their religious AGW cult at all costs, or that they lack real world facts. No. They lie for only one basic reason: they lie because they are liars.
It is truly despicable the depths that many alarmists have sunk to. Personal integrity means nothing to them; their false narrative is everything, and if it must be supported with lies, then that is just the cost of admission. Honesty is simply not in them. As Steve McIntyre points out, they are bald faced liars. Read McIntyre’s article; you will see. As usual, McIntyre thoroughly backs up his accusation.
Apart from the usual name calling, Stealey’s argument is this.
If you put two data sets on a single graph with one apparently following the other that demonstrates causer and effect. Actually in principle it does not as both data may be caused by a third factor. However I have stated that I accept Stealeys proposition for the reasons given above.
If however you present two sets of data on seperate graphs but do not superimpose them on on a single graph, even though one trend clearly follows the other, that does not demonstrate cause and effect.
Go figure.
Shehan says:
“If you put two data sets on a single graph with one apparently following the other that demonstrates causer and effect.”
No, it doesn’t. For example, this graph appears to show cause and effect. But in reality, it does not. It is only a simple overlay.
One more time: the only chart that shows cause and effect, shows that ∆CO2 follows ∆T. There is no chart, and no empirical evidence, showing that temperature changes are caused by CO2.
Once that basic fact is understood, the AGW conjecture self-deconstructs.
I refer readers to the current exposé of the endless alarmist lying, by Steve McIntyre, Geoff Chambers, and Barry Woods. They have shown how mendacious John Cook and his pals are.
If it were not for the lies they tell, along with their psychological projection, the alarmist crowd would have nothing to say. Shehan has been reprimanded by a physics professor and by others for repeatedly posting Cook’s fabricated chart, purportedly showing rapidly accelerating global temperatures.
But we know that global warming has essentially halted for the past decade and a half. Since the physics community now accepts that fact, the response of the alarmist crowd has been to double down, and to now lie about it outright.
Satellite observations show that global warming has stalled out. The ARGO deep ocean buoys show that the ocean is not warming. The Envisat satellite observations showed that the planet is cooling — so Envisat was decommissioned. In fact, every empirical observation shows that the global warming scare is a baseless canard.
The alarmist crowd has nothing left now, except for their lies. The planet is decisively falsifying their false alarm. There is nothing either unprecedented, or unusual, with regard to current climate parameters — which have been routinely exceeded in the past. Thus, their wild-eyed cult does what any cult would do: they lie about it.
Society is very fortunate in having an honest resource like WUWT to set the record straight. Alarmist lies can easily be proven, which is why fewer and fewer people are spouting CO2=CAGW lies. There is simply no real world evidence to support the repeatedly falsified “carbon” conjecture. But rather than accept the reality of what Planet Earth is saying, a few of the truly whacked out prevaricators continue to emit the false propaganda that global warming is ‘accelerating’. But it is not, as any honest person will admit.
dbstealey says:
March 28, 2013 at 6:05 pm
…. But rather than accept the reality of what Planet Earth is saying, a few of the truly whacked out prevaricators continue to emit the false propaganda that global warming is ‘accelerating’. But it is not, as any honest person will admit.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
But db, they are correct it is ‘accelerating’
So yes global warming is ‘accelerating’ because there has been a change in the rate of warming. The fact that the change has been negative does not mean it has not “accelerated” we can have global warming ‘accelerating’ right into the depths of an ice age.
/sarc>
MORE POLAR BEARS MORE HAPPINESS YAHHH
Gail Combs,
Philip Shehan was reprimanded by Werner Brozek, a professor of physics, for the fabricated upward-curving red line in his chart. To most folks that would indicate acceleration of global warming. But that chart has no provenance; it was fabricated for the SkS blog by an anonymous cartoonist. It is an invention constructed to promote a false alarm. In fact, there has been no acceleration in global warming.
Most people understand ‘acceleration’ to mean a geometric rise in temperature, where each time period shows a greater rise than the preceding time period. But as numerous charts posted in this thread show, global temperatures are not accelerating. In reality, the steady rise in global temperature follows the long term rising trend line of ≈0.35ºC/Century. That naturally rising trend has not changed since the end of the LIA.
It is a dishonest scare tactic to falsely show an ever-faster rise in global temperatures. Empirical observations and measurements show no acceleration, only a very mild, steady rise in temperature.
As a matter of fact, global warming has stalled for at least the past decade and a half. Given that fact, the alarmist crowd has one of two choices: either admit that their models and predictions have been falsified by reality — or, they can lie about it, claiming that global warming is continuing at an ever accelerating rate. People like Shehan, Lewandowski and Cook have chosen to lie about it for their own self-serving reasons.
[snip.]
I might add that Mr Stealey is so obsessed with arguing with me regardless of the facts that here he ended up arguing with himself:
dbstealey says:
March 28, 2013 at 4:55 pm
Shehan says:
“If you put two data sets on a single graph with one apparently following the other that demonstrates causer and effect.”
No, it doesn’t. For example, this graph appears to show cause and effect. But in reality, it does not. It is only a simple overlay.”
The graph I had been referring to was “this one”
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/isolate:60/mean:12/scale:0.26/plot/hadcrut3vgl/isolate:60/mean:12/from:1958
which Stealey posted with the comment:
“Shehan’s first chart above shows only a simple overlay. So does his third chart. Neither shows cause-and-effect, as this chart clearly does.”
Now never mind the fact that “this graph” is also a simple overlay.
In Stealey world, if he posts it, he states it shows cause and effect.
If I agree with him on that point, he says it does not.
Amazing from anyone but Stealey.
Mr Stealey. I have never reprimanded Werner Brozak. He has never reprimanded me. I have disagreed with Werner on a number of matters but our exchanges have always been conducted with courtesy and mutual respect. You should take note.
I will here address you in your own terms. You are a serial liar.
You repeatedly claim the graph has no “provenace”. You fail to state what you mean by that term I have provided all the “provenance” required on numerous occassions.
This is a lie and you know it to be a lie because I have repeatedly corrected you on this matter:
“it was fabricated for the SkS blog by an anonymous cartoonist.”
The graph is by Robert Way, PhD.
Dr Way gives the source of the temperature data with an explanation:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SummaryTable.png
“Each temperature dataset has their own individual caveats so it is difficult to assess which is the most reliable, but a purely unscientific way to look at this issue is to put all the datasets on the same baseline and to average them to create the All Method Temperature Index (AMTI). I have put all the Table 1 datasets on the 1990-2000 baseline (so we could include all) and have averaged them to create Figure 1 below.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
The temperature data is fitted to a best fitted by computer to polynomial function to produce the red curve with an extremely good correlation coefficient R2 of 0.8412.
Shehan says:
“In Stealey world, if he posts it, he states it shows cause and effect.”
Correct. But in Shehan world, any overlay Shehan posts shows cause and effect.
But of course, it does not. This chart clearly shows cause and effect. But not one of Shehan’s links is anything but an overlay of one chart on top of another. None of them show cause and effect. Anyone with even the most rudimentary scientific education can see that ∆temperature is the cause of ∆CO2; not vice-versa.
Shehan is just sniveling because he cannot argue based on any empirical evidence. His one dishonest, fabricated chart that he posts incessantly purports to show accelerated warming. But even the Economist now admits that global warming has stalled. In fact, it is the consensus even among the climate alarmist crowd that global warming has stopped.
Any honest scientist would look at the complete lack of evidence for the runaway global warming conjecture, and admit that the CAGW conjecture has been deconstructed. But many in the alarmist crowd, such as Shehan, are being dishonest. They know that the steady rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 has no effect on global temperature.
My job — which I am very good at — is to prevent new readers from getting the misimpression that catastrophic AGW is occurring. It is not. The Null Hypothesis proves beyond any doubt that there is no runaway global warming, because all current climate parameters have been routinely exceeded in the past. Nothing now occurring is either unprecedented, or even unusual. Shehan is simply lying about it when he claims that global warming is accelerating. There is zero empirical evidence supporting that belief system. An honest scientist would admit that their conjecture has failed; a dishonest person would double down on their CAGW fantasy.
May I know the grounds for the snip on my post which was a correction of the record with regard to Stealey’s repeated personal attacks and misrepresentations of me?
Why is he allowed to continue this if I am not allowed to respond?
Mr Stealey. I have never reprimanded Werner Brozak. He has never reprimanded me. I have disagreed with Werner on a number of matters but our exchanges have always been conducted with courtesy and mutual respect. You should take note.
I will here address you in your own terms. You are a serial liar.
You repeatedly claim the graph has no “provenace”. You fail to state what you mean by that term I have provided all the “provenance” required on numerous occassions.
This is a lie and you know it to be a lie because I have repeatedly corrected you on this matter:
“it was fabricated for the SkS blog by an anonymous cartoonist.”
The graph is by Robert Way, PhD.
Dr Way gives the source of the temperature data with an explanation:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SummaryTable.png
“Each temperature dataset has their own individual caveats so it is difficult to assess which is the most reliable, but a purely unscientific way to look at this issue is to put all the datasets on the same baseline and to average them to create the All Method Temperature Index (AMTI). I have put all the Table 1 datasets on the 1990-2000 baseline (so we could include all) and have averaged them to create Figure 1 below.”
http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/AMTI.png
The temperature data is fitted to a best fitted by computer to polynomial function to produce the red curve with an extremely good correlation coefficient R2 of 0.8412.
Is Stealey on moderating duty at the moment? I know he has this position and has access to posts which do not apppear as on one occasion he has made specific references to such commments of mine.
Shehan says:
“I have never reprimanded Werner Brozak. [sic]” Correct.
“He has never reprimanded me.” False.
Shehan was informed by Prof Brozek that the red line in his linked chart is incorrect. Yet Shehan has posted that incorrect link even more often after being corrected. Why is Shehan deliberately trying to mislead? There has been no acceleration in global warming. In fact, global warming has halted.
Perhaps Shehan can get Robert Way to defend his fabrication right here. Note that it is contradicted by other charts linked by Shehan, which show no acceleration in global warming. In fact, the longest-term charts show conclusively that global warming has been rising naturally at the same rate — whether CO2 was low, or high — thus falsifying the failed conjecture that rising CO2 is the cause of [mythical] ‘accelerated’ global warming [btw, the problem is specifically regarding the red line].
By sticking to the scientific facts, the CAGW scare is shown to be absolutely baseless nonsense.
I don’t think you guys are getting anywhere. 🙂 I like a good brawl as much as the next guy, more than most maybe, but still this isn’t going anyplace.
Philip, I’m offering an unsolicited suggestion. You would get more traction here by pulling the raw data from the various sets yourself, averaging and polynomial fitting yourself than you would by citing an SkS graph. I’m certainly not going to accept a graph from the purveyor of twitterbots, recursive fury, and after the fact comment/post editing without walking through the data and method, and I fail to see why you’d expect anybody else here to either.
Nite gents.
By the way, I thank the moderator for reconsideration of the snip of my post.
May I also add that I have had courteous disagreements with Werner Brozak, which is the nature of scientific discussion amongst professionals. I do not recall him informing me that the “red line” was incorrect or on what grounds, but even if he had, so what?
Stealey’s proposition that because one scientist disagrees with another, one should be considered to have been definitively “corrected”, withdraw or be considered dishonest is anitscientific hogwash. Why not say that Werner should shut up or be branded a liar even if he did disagree with me on this point (which I do not believe he did).