Last week I asked: “What’s causing the death of the polar bear as a climate change icon?”
I was echoing the conclusion of a commentator at the Arctic Institute (22 August 2017) who lamented: “The polar bear is dead, long live the polar bear” and climate scientist Michael Mann, who told a lecture audience a few months ago that polar bears are no longer useful for generating “action” on climate change.
This is slide 15 from my presentation at ICCC-12 in Washington, D.C. in March 2017.
Now here’s the video. Watch “The Death of a Climate Icon” (31 August 2017):
The video was made possible with the assistance of the Global Warming Policy Foundation.
Kind of makes you wonder: is Al Gore’s recent climate change movie, An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power, tanking at the box officebecause he couldn’t include polar bears as an example of the effects of human-caused global warming as he did in his award-winning 2007 effort? Did too many polar bears doom Gore’s 2017 movie?
Conclusions in the video about the predictions of polar bear decline vs. the current status of polar bears and sea ice are documented in my 2017 published paper:
Crockford, S.J. 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice coverage of 3-5 mkm2 results in a greater than 30% decline in population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus). PeerJ Preprints 19 January 2017. Doi: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/
What’s causing the death of the Polar Bear as a Climate Change Icon?
Apparently Polar Bear obesity as you so amply recently demonstrated. And of course a heck of a lot of other good work by you and others.
Next up for the greenunists: give us money to stop the impending rise of polar bear diabetes.
Thank you, Dr. Crockford, for your science and your bravery.
A disastrous lack of death has caused the death of the Polar Bear as a Climate Change Icon. It’s worse than we thought. More research must urgently be made on the catastrophic lack of Ursus alignment with climate change consensus. If numbers of Polar Bears do not soon decline as predicted by accepted climate research, adjustments must be made. However, as Polar Bears, in contrast to earthly temperatures, have a nasty habit of being highly visible, physical mitigation may be required.
Maybe Al Gore can make a new film, featuring Michael Mann as the “Bear Hunter”
Polar Bears eat alot of ringed seals, which with climate change makes more food for the ringed seals and more ringed seal and therefore polar bears. Polar Bears don’t eat ice, they eat ringed seals. As long as there is seals to eat on the ice there will be polar bears.
Well today I saw an ad for the WWF that used both Polar Bears and Penquins and which tugged on the heart strings that they were losing their natural habitat and facing difficulty in feeding due to Climate Change.
I do not pay much attention and guess that they claimed it was due to manmade Climate Change, but am not 100% on that.
So I guess the claim of their demise as a poster child is a little premature, just like the.original claim that they were threatened by manmade Climate Change.
Unfortunately, for the Climate Doom people to stop using Polar Bears as a poster child these same people would have to be capable of critical thinking, honesty and humility. Since they have proved multiple times to be incapable of any of the above…………
What I find especially hilarious is when they lead a climate change catastrophe story with a photo of a fat, healthy polar bear.
Talk about a subliminal message that refutes the objectives of fearmongering!
Like this one from last year: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/18/science/polar-bears-global-warming.html?mcubz=1
Note the only subpopulation that is still considered to have registered a recent decline in numbers is the Southern Beaufort Sea group. But that last survey was completed in 2010 – seven long years ago now – and the decline it registered was due to thick spring ice conditions in 2004-2006.
Oddly enough, the bears showed signs of recovery in 2007 even though that was the first summer of markedly low summer ice.
As far as I know, there hasn’t been another thick spring ice event in the SB since 2006 – even though the phenomenon has been documented every 10 years or so since the 1960s.
None of the field researchers working in the SB seem to have considered the possibility that less severe ice conditions, especially in spring, might be beneficial to SB seals and bears.
Certainly, virtually all of the photos of bears onshore and offshore in the SB in recent years have shown fat, healthy bears.
If anyone tries to present the “SB decline” as an indicator of polar bear response to reduced sea ice let them know that data is not only out of date and but was misleading at the time it was published.
Dr. Susan Crockford, zoologist
Given what we know about the Greenland ice cores and the Holocene Optimum, I never understood how any sentient person could claim that polar bears were seriously threatened. They survived far higher temps in the not distant past, so it would be very unlikely that they would not survive this time round.
They are threatened, by hunters.
Actually, in the same way big game hunting in Africa is used to finance a lot of conservation work(I think permits to shoot poachers should be available, that is another discussion) permits for taking polar bears could do the same, plus the meat, skins and other usable parts could be donated directly to native settlements or sold to further add revenue for the local population. Controlled hunting is not a bad thing, and it soaks rich suckers, win/win!
I do not favour hunting. Sometimes the end simply does not justify the means.
Nature should be left alone to seek its natural order, but we must bear in mind that nature is brutally cruel. The prey usually die a horrific death, and a weak and feeble predator also usually succumbs to a slow and painful death. Just part of the circle of life and survival of the fittest.
Hunting is the natural order. Nothing about mankind is unnatural.
There is a world of difference hunting one on one where the predator also risks an injury that can ultimately lead to its death, and where the prey is needed for survival and food, and that of game hunting with the aid of a high powered riffle and where the prey is not needed as food or for survival.
“They survived far higher temps in the not distant past, so it would be very unlikely that they would not survive this time round.”
They survived everything, just like every species alive on the earth today.
They only way that happens is by being supremely adaptable.
Bears are omnivores and opportunists…they will eat whatever is the easiest and best food source they are aware of.
If one source of food and/or method of obtaining it becomes problematic, they will adapt.
While members of the Order Carnivora, all bears are omnivorous except, oddly, the herbivorous (bamboo-ivorous) pandas.
Pandas will however also eat fish, eggs and insects, although not other land vertebrates.
Order Carnivora consists of two suborders, Feliformia (cats and relatives, to include mongooses, civets and hyenas) and Caniformia (dogs and kin, to include bears, mustelids and seals). Feliforms tend to be more strictly carnivorous.
Richard Verney, Sept. 2, 1:14 am. I doubt the Inuit who depend on money from the land would agree with your opinion of hunting polar bears. Providing an opportunity for those wealthy and motivated people to take a polar bear is a valuable source of income for Native Peoples. Your opinion is highly dismissive of their needs. I find your remarks ignorant of the nature of big game hunting and the resource it provides for the local people. If you find it offensive, you certainly are entitled to state your feelings, but prejudiced opinions that apply normative constraints on a culture about which you appear to know very little, serves no good purpose. The animals provide money, food, and cultural continuity in an environment that is constantly under assault from the outside world. Polar bears are a manageable and valuable resource and the way to keep it that way is to continue to hunt them. The management of wildlife for the purpose of human use was the foundation of the North American Model of Wildlife Management developed over the past 100 years and it has provided spectacular successes in the preservation of wildlife;notwithstanding hunting prohibitionists who fancy themselves a higher form of life.
On UK TV they’ve been using the same polar bear ads for years so I guess the money keeps rolling in. For as long as the news of polar bear health doesn’t filter through to the naive and aged who the WWF prey upon then I guess they’ll carry on using them.
Well, I wonder at this, since if you look at the results from people actually studying polar bears in the field, they continue to be impacted by the declining ice.
(but most polar bear populations/most bears aren’t studied at all in this vast area)
The USGS research around the Beaufort shows that with the now annual extensive retreat of the sea ice, some bears are staying on shore and scavenging Inuit whale kills. The longstanding Hudson Bay research shows bear numbers and breeding dens in decline as the bay ice forms later and breaks up earlier. The reports from Svalbard are mixed – some reports of bears eating unusual items of diet and hungry – another survey showing them of good weight… what is indisputable is that late ice formation around Svalbard islands has left bears unable to reach traditional denning areas in recent times.
This is an animal which is tied tightly to ice conditions in terms of its survival and that ice is declining: how can it not be affected?
Ha ha ha!!!
Griff,
It is clear, you didn’t watch the video.
Not only that low Summer Ice doesn’t hurt the Polar Bears much anyway,since they already got most of their food for the year.
You are going to get plastered for your ignorance.
de·lu·sion·al
dəˈlo͞oZH(ə)nəl/Submit
adjective
characterized by or holding idiosyncratic beliefs or impressions that are contradicted by reality or rational argument, typically as a symptom of mental disorder.
Griff it is becoming very obvious that you will argue black is white about many subjects. Your mind is made up and you won’t allow yourself to be confused by any facts!!
Griff likes Cherry Pie. lol
Some people will argue with a stop sign or a fence post.
Leonard,
Some folk would provoke an argument in a phone box!
And –
Do you think that Griff may – perhaps – be among that number?
Auto.
Happy to defend Griff when merited, but – bluntly – that is certainly not every time the chap posts [both sexes included, of course, and all sexualities] [And every thing else I’ve missed!].
‘that with the now annual extensive retreat of the sea ice,’
what do you mean by saying “with the NOW annual retreat…”
Are you saying that sea ice never used to retreat in the summer? Well if you go back to the last ice age, maybe so, but even then I suspect summers would have been a bit different than winters.
She has been told repeatedly of published science papers attesting to little to No Summer ice cover. I know since I posted a few of them to her repeatedly. Told her about Polar eating habits too,which make low summer ice whining,not a major factor in their health.
She is a not an honest debater,just another warmist parrot who ignores a lot of published science.
Griff reckons . . . Polar Bears just aren’t going to know what ice is.
It is the boundary latitude limits at which sea ice would freeze and thaw with the seasons that would have been different in the past.
Even in an ice age, there must have been areas of sea ice that came and went with the seasons
So how did they manage to make it through the early Holocene and Eemian Interglacial Griff? Both were much hotter than present day temps.
Griff hasn’t been told, so he doesn’t know.
Rocky, she has been told about it and many more facts,but the warmist loon has swiss cheese for brains,as nothing stays in there long.
“some bears”
Wow, almost science like in the precision here.
Griff
Take the bet or go away.
Griff,
Most assuredly polar bears ands their populations appear to have been affected, but not in the manner to which you would allude.
All indications point to a positive effect.
They probably are affected. It’s possible that local populations will be extirpated. Polar Bears survived the MWP. We don’t know how they did it but obviously we still have Polar Bears.
Poleys survived not just the Medieval Warm Period, but the Roman, Minoan and Egyptian WPs and the Holocene Climatic Optimum, which was much hotter than now in the Arctic. Before that, they survived the entire, 16,000-year Eemian Interglacial, even hotter than the HCO.
Eemian polar bear fossil from Norway:
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/100401_polarbears
Yes, the MWP would be interesting.
But there are countless examples various populations in nature that suffer quite dramatic declines for all sorts of reasons.
If it’s not the end stage of an extinction, they tend to bounce back – survival of the fittest.
What gets me is some local groups (in Oz) that spend an inordinate amount of time trying to save some rare “endangered” species. Granted, there are instances where feral cats are devastating that population and the idea seems reasonable.
Other times, the species is just facing EOL.
FYI, Griff, I don’t know why anyone would read your comments. They’ve become merely a jumble of non-facts and ignorant assertions, like this one. Boring. I’ll just skip them from now on, since you skip reading the posts.
Are you claiming Dr. Crockford doesn’t actually study polar bears? Or are you claiming she’s not actually a person?
Griff-occhio, has your nose made it all the way to the Moon yet? It should be pretty close by now I would think.
Griff,
When even Michael Mann sees the light, you ought to open your eyes, too, Griff.
As your betters have repeatedly schooled you, the only ice that matters to polar bears is the landfast ice in the spring, when mama bears and their cubs emerge from hibernation. The shorefast ice is where they find the vital source of food to break their long fast, in the snow lairs of ringed seal moms and their pups, aka power bars.
They do hunt on drift ice floes for other seals later in the year, but those prey species aren’t vital to the survival of the species. Poleys can hunt and forage on land as well as their grizzly ancestors.
Have you perhaps noticed how preposterously wrong you were, as always, to have predicted that 2017 was “sure” to set a new record low for Arctic sea ice extent? At the moment, it’s about to cross over 2008 for seventh lowest year, read to take aim at 2010 for eighth. The old record, 2012, is not liable to be dethroned, just as your betters told you would be the case.
This might also be a year with an exceptionally early low point.
Arctic sea ice actually grew on Aug 29. Unprecedented!
You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it does. Wish I could type with a Spanish accent, just does not come across right unless you sound like Inigo Montoya! 😉
Uñprecedeñted?
I’m pretty sure I know what that word means.
I also have a Spanish computer.
El manzana?
Interesting ain’t it.
Whatever might be said about Mickey Mann, he is savvy.
When this false panic fades from view, Griff will still be there. He’s a ‘bitter ender’.
Griff it is staggering how little you know about Polar Bears.
Griff it is staggering how little you know !
there fixed it.
It’s not his fault. He can only repeat what he has read in the Guardian or on the BBC website. Neither are sources of information.
Polar bear populations have been increasing over time, up from an estimated 22,000 in 2005 to 28,500 in 2015:
https://polarbearscience.com/2017/02/23/global-polar-bear-population-larger-than-previous-thought-almost-30000/
Griff,
Be a good scientist and provide the references for your assertions. Links would be great.
Griff,
There are no Inuit on the Beaufort Sea. Eskimos there speak dialects of the language of northern Alaskan Eskimos. Inuit speak a related but mutually unintelligible language continuum in eastern Canada and Greenland.
But most Alaskan Eskimos are Yupiks, whose language is even less related to Inuit. They live in southern Alaska and Siberia.
There is no Eskimo word for Eskimo, ie all the related groups from far eastern Siberia to Greenland who aren’t Indians.
From Hadows (failed) Arctic Mission blog:
‘In closing the meeting, I raised the need for us all to switch on mentally to full polar bear alert, and all the safety procedures and equipment that this entailed. We had just seen our first sea ice. From now on, we could find ourselves in a highly dangerous situation with almost zero notice. I got a whiff of a sense of, Oh really, Pen? I think that sort of thing’s some way off, don’t you? Just because we’ve seen a few chunks and floes, doesn’t mean there’s a bear about in 98% ice-free water!… Within 24 hours, we saw the FOUR polar bears on ONE ice floe! I confess even I was astonished!’
Another blinkered one refusing to accept reality
theguvnor
Do bears shit in the wood?
Nope, on ice flows, after consuming stupid people who offer themselves as bait.
People who study polar bears for a living – especially, these days – are usually advocates.
Dr Crockford is! She advocates for real science.
The exception that proves the rule.
Nappy changing time for griff, yet again !!
Hey Griff, it’s amazing that the Polar Bear has survived so long, given the fact that the climate has been changing all the time to hot and cold and back again. But you knew that, right? You’re such an expert. I have some friends who have been doing a lot of research in the arctic recently, and they had to take guns with them to protect themselves from…..guess what? Polar Bears! Wonder why that is?? Learn a little bit about the history of climate before you open your big mouth, mate. Try to free yourself from brainwashing, if you’ve actually got a brain. I’m not too sure about that.
Grift actually aspires to be the washer.
Griff
It’s a fucking bear you idiot, probably one of the most robust survivors on the planet. Just because it happens to be white does’t mean it’s lost it’s survival instinct.
I have given you credit in the past for being polite and for having the courage to come on this blog and debate. However, you are rude enough to debate the polar bear issue with, probably, the worlds best authority on the subject.
You are an ill mannered, ill educated, ill prepared prick.
I know a lot of guys like Grift – I gave them the benefit of the doubt until I finally learned not to.
As for the rest of your comment, all I can say is THANK YOU!
Let’s get a grip guys. You think things are getting a bit too personal?
Not really. I understand Griff has previous for his arrogant, ignorant behaviour towards Susan. Actually, I witnessed it on here when he questioned her credibility. He was presented with numerous papers Susan had written but never apologised to her.
H’e an arrogant rude little [snip]. And I’m happy to say that to his face, which get’s the personal bit out the way.
Are you Susan’s personal defender, HotScot? This is supposed to be a conversation, not an all-out war.
Your comment would have been moderated out of a well-run blog.
Nope, sorry, it’s fine – an appeal to authority.
Would you apply the same logic if someone were debating Mickey Mann?
Griff does, however, need to show his working to be correct.
Sir, you insult all ill-mannered, ill-educated, ill-prepared pricks!
Gloateus
I apologise unreservedly to all ill-mannered, ill–educated, ill-prepared pricks. Griff could not find a place amongst you.
Raven
Appeal to authority? Bollox!
Griff has, in the past, questioned Susan’s credentials and work and when called out on it, has never apologised.
We are in the presence of an ignorant individual. One with no qualifications who questions those with qualifications, without first checking the simple details.
I’ll have a go at Michael Mann, but I would never question his credentials. I might ask if he’s qualified to comment on climate science, and there is some doubt about that, in which case, he’s no better than me to comment on climate science. But Susan Crockford is a Zoologist, Polar Bears are her life’s work and there’s few, if any more knowledgeable on the subject.
My comments were not an appeal to authority, I was pointing out that Griff ought to show some respect to a world authority on the subject of Polar Bears.
Scot,
Also, Griff engaged in an ad hominem attack on Dr. C, rather than trying to find fault with her apparently flawless research.
So it’s not an appeal to authority to cite her work, since Griff never even tried to challenge it.
The issue is whether her research is valid or not. And it is.
That of “consensus” polar bear “researchers”, demonstrably not so much. As in, at all. Their crying wolf over polar bear decline has been shown totally, completely and utterly false.
HotScot.
Agreed, he has and I agree he’s never apologised . . at least as far as I recall.
He’s obliquely questioned them in his current post, too.
Hey, I’d even largely agree with the various negative characterisations ascribed to Griff hereabouts, too.
But the point remains; it’s the science that’s important.
Getting “triggered” about Grif and calling him a drongo (or whatever) doesn’t add anything to that. It’s tempting, I know.
As the old adage says; don’t feed the trolls.
Ever wonder what Griff is doing now?
I’d wager he’s sitting back laughing like a drain at the chaos he’s just ignited.
Trolling is essentially an attention seeking exercise.
Why provide oxygen to that.
Raven,
Drongo. How apt.
G’day Gloateus,
Yeah, though perhaps drongo might be wrong.
I’m reluctant to harp on about this but if we look at Griff’s posts, the wording is fairly well crafted.
He alludes to such things as:
. . . carefully side stepping Dr. Susan Crockford’s work/credentials.
He then meanders on to his final conclusion being:
. . thereby attempting to reposition the onus of proof to the negative.
His post raises hackles because of the manner in which it’s presented.
Crikey, the whole AGW panic is communicated with the same subterfuge, lying by omission and slippery slope projections.
I reckon people react to the tactics as much as anything else. Consequently, half the thread becomes dedicated to Griff. Have a look at ‘em all.
The questions that might be asked are:
Is Griff a drongo or is he just looking for a reaction.
I don’t think it’s altogether clear but given he rarely comes back to engage with the substance, I suspect it’s the latter.
“illegitimi non tatum carborundum”
Loosely translates to . . don’t let the bastards grind you down.
😉
You guys have worked yourselves into a frenzy over (what seemed to me) a pretty harmless comment made way up-thread by the only contrarian here.
A good moderator would step in and put a stop to such nonsense.
(Moderators are sometimes too busy to see them,but you are right that some of the comments in response to Griff have gotten too personal.People who comment here are expected to moderate themselves so Moderators can do other work behind the scenes better) MOD
Uncalled for.
Why aren’t the moderators holding Griff’s feet to the fire? He/she never backs his assertions, and makes clear that he/she does not respond to accurate rebuttal. He/she doesn’t even read them as he has accomplished his goal of attention seeking and disruption. Nothing more. The respondents are not the villains. Griff is.
MOD
FWIW. I don’t envy your job, but i think it’s obvious that some of comments I’ve seen here have gone way, way over the line. Back in the old days of Dot Earth a single profanity would earn you a direction to either rewrite your comment or see it eliminated. That used to be NYT policy and Andy Revkin enforced it strictly.
That may not be the answer here. But it’s been my experience that comments like I’ve seen above, if allowed, inevitably cheapen a blog and seriously cost it credibility.
This is lack of civility at its zenith, and I guess is one of the prices you pay for anonymity. You won’t see this behavior on Climate Etc and we shouldn’t see it here.
Raven September 1, 2017 at 7:03 pm
Results from people actually studying polar bears in the field, like Dr. C, show clearly that their numbers have increased since the post-war global cooling ended in 1977.
@ scraft1:
This is an all out “war”.
No prisoners, the facts being force fed.
Hotscot use the f ***** word and call someone uneducated. Call someone rude. Hopscotch.
scraft1
It’s called freedom of speech. Thankfully Griff is allowed on here to talk rubbish, and I’m allowed on here to swear at him.
And Climate Ect allows comments with *snip* on it. But you think that’s OK because it doesn’t actually spell out the intended word? And there are also frequent personal attacks on individuals on there which are never removed. Quite rightly.
(Yes freedom of speech, but responsibility comes with it. You and a couple others are beginning to waste Moderators time having to watch you,for your increasingly hostile remarks) MOD
Gloateus
I owe you an apology. I wrote a response as though you were an ill-mannered, ill-educated, ill-prepared prick. That was not my intention. The passage should have read: I apologise unreservedly to all ill-mannered, ill–educated, ill-prepared pricks. Griff could not find a place amongst them
Where is the declining ice?
Concerning the Arctic ice area graph.
You and me see all those colored, wiggly lines going down then up again, all of them pretty close together with the red one, representing 2017, being in the middle at the moment.
However, some people looking at that graph………………see this:
For far too many people feelings trump facts every time, and the political left are masters at manipulating feelings and subverting/suppressing facts.
The last 10 years have been cherry picked. Why don’t you show with respect to the last 30 years. The there will be an obvious decline.However the biggest assumption is that Polar bears need ice to live on. They currently hunt off ice but their near relative Brown bears hunt on land rivers and forage for fruit.
Griff
Except the people who really study Polaris bears keep saying your wrong.
Are those nuclear tipped Polaris Bears, or conventional?
You are getting ridiculous, posting useless comments. This causes moderation work for me. Knock it off.
Thank you, Anthony Watts.
Anthony, humour is subjective, but it is also one of the main reasons I frequent WUWT?.t.
Griff,
Did you ever apologize for repeating the lies about the storm that hit my city, Houston?
Griff,
Did you ever apologize for repeating the lies about the storm that hit my city, Houston?
Griff, the intellectual coward, being consistent as always.
Griff: first, apologize to Susan.
Now, did you know that polar bears can swim? Some can swim all the way to their dens. They have been spotted swimming in the ocean more than 300 km from land.
Polar bears scavenge everything. Even Inuit whale leftovers. Even Inuit.
Arctic ice cover is, generally speaking, decreasing. Polar Bear numbers are, generally speaking, increasing. Correlation or causation? Textbook environmentalists armchair climate warriors want to know.
Perhaps the PB’s are just bloated from eating all that ice. There must be some connection, right?
There is less lead pollution nowerdays in the Artic
Still refusing to accept you’ve been caught lying in your teeth with the deliberate intention of destroying the reputation of an honest scientist, Skanky?
You really are a piece of work, aren’t you?
Comprehension really isn’t your forte is it Griff. Watch the video again and read the words of Dr Susan Crockford, who on balance knows quite a bit more than you do on this particular subject. Capiche!
When is a hole Griff – stop bl00dy digging!
The bear is an intelligent animal. It is obviously capable of adapting, just as humans are. Perhaps climate alarmists should stick to making dire predictions that are limited to the distant future so that they can’t be verified within their lifetimes. Or better still, make after-the-fact comments like blaming stronger hurricanes on global warming.
Polar Bears doesn’t really need the Summer ice much anyway since they get most of their food intake in the very late winter to early summer. Rest of the year, they eat far less.
Works for other religions!
I believe it’s the Polar Bears inability to read and follow along during Climate religion bible studies. Darn animals, just can’t follow instructions.
Good video.
The Adani coal mine has already killed the last polar bear on the Great Barrier Reef
Michael darby
There’s so many in the Northern Hemisphere mate, they’ll be emigrating to you guys soon.
I hear the declining ice on Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf has already sent the last of Southern Polar Bears (Ursus Maritimus Australis) to extinction. There is not a single one left in that region.
Such a shame. And we were warned. With the top predator gone, the penguin population is exploding. Those slick little birds must’a joined ISIS or something. (Maybe they pushed the bears to the edge.)
Let me see if I got this right. The polar bear is dead as a doomsday icon because too many are surviving?
http://www.zombietime.com/climate_movement_drops_mask_admits_communist_agenda/
About 4/5 the way down is a picture of a woman in a polar bear suit, with a funny caption: “An entire industry has sprung up solely devoted to manufacturing polar bear costumes for use at climate change rallies. (Think about how many polar bear costumes you ever saw in your life prior to, say, 2005; yet nowadays they’re de rigueur at every protest and march.) This, despite the fact that the meme of polar bears going extinct due to global warming has been totally debunked. “
In Oz, I think it was Greenpeace that used to walk around in shopping centres dressed in Koala bear suits.
We don’t seem to see many of those these days (he says, taking a line from the “wide mouth frog” joke.
As Michael darby astutely points out, the Adani coal mine killed off our last Polar Bear on the Great Barrier Reef.
Even the fund-raising site polarbearsos.org is dead.
If Al Gore didn’t include Polar Bears in his new movie, that tells you something.
The CAGW House of Cards is starting to collapse.
Oh it collapsed years ago. That’s why you see people referring to it as Climastrology now a days.
James, climate seance is also an accurate description.
Good video. Griff will not give it up, it appears.
Why did these crooks change “Man Made Globull Warming” to “Climate Change?” My guess it’s the same reason. Once people do a little research they discover the lie.
They are hedging their bets for winter storms, etc. If they use the scientifically correct term—global warming—people start to question why there is 10 ft of snow outside and it’s -20F. Climate change applies to anything and avoids those pesky questions.
Sheri
The IPCC is named such because of Climate Change. Global Warming was a slogan, a campaign banner if you like, they could always disassociate themselves from, and they did, by utilising climate change when it suited them.
Maybe Russian Collusion can replace the Polar Bear as a…. Oh, wait a minute; I take that back.
‘Michael Mann, who told a lecture audience a few months ago that polar bears are no longer useful for generating “action” on climate change.’
Never fear. Hurricanes are now back in fashion for generating action on climate change. And, like absolutely everything else in life, the numbers will go up, the numbers will go down, irrespective of our legitimate presence upon this planet.
Well, yes, but that was just a fortuitous event.
The issues really need to be rotated correctly.
If not for the hurricane, it was actually the turn of ocean acidification” . .
Yes, as dead as the Democrats supporting Antifa…
Global warming isn’t dead. It just smells that way.
‘polar bears are no longer useful for generating “action” on climate change.’
Left’s solutions for anything not useful in furthering their ideology. Throws it under the bus … or worst, gulag it.
“What’s causing the death of the polar bear as a climate change icon?”
It’s those Russians who did it – again!
http://programmes.putin.kremlin.ru/media/2010/7/28/33126/photolenta_big_photo.jpeg
Vladimir Putin fits collar to ‘the real master of the Arctic’ during his visit to Franz Josef Land, Russia.
I like the flunky in the background with the pink towel, waiting at the ready so Putin can wipe Polar Bear slobber off of his gloves.
weird comment !
I guess you would leave the slobber on your gloves?
AndyG55,
No. I’d wipe my polar bear slobbered gloves off on the polar bear rug in front of me.
Andy, When I have the need, I usually wipe the Polar Bear slobber on my pant legs. Typically I’m a bit unorganized and I don’t think ahead far enough to have a helper with a pretty slobber towel waiting nearby.
J Mac, I think (maybe, possibly) that I have actually seen that on the nature channel shows.
Polar bears are marine animals. They spend a LOT of time in the water and have been observed to swim as far as 62 miles. They are fat and float. Every adult polar bear eats around 50 seals a year, so what’s bad for the bears is good for the seals, generally speaking.
I wonder what percent of the time polar bears spend in the water, as opposed to on land or ice….
A female polar bear swam for a record-breaking nine days straight, traversing 426 miles
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/07/110720-polar-bears-global-warming-sea-ice-science-environment/
And of course, rather than suffer catastrophe due to the Alaska pipeline, as forecast by Green Meanie doomsayers, caribou have thrived on the North Slope. Their population has exploded in part because of the pipeline. Caribou moms prefer to give birth near it, since it’s a source of warmth, and keeps their newborns from freezing to the ground.
I was reading an article (somewhere?) in relation to a large sola thermal plant.
The article noted that due to the number of “streamers”, predators were attracted to the carcases and a whole new eco system had sprung up to take advantage of the free food.
Coyotes have certainly benefited from wind mill farms. They wait patiently beneath them for the inevitable rain of dead birds and bats.
“people actually studying polar bears in the field” You mean such as Dr Susan Crockford, internationally acclaimed Polar Bear expert? When are you going to apologize to her? Right here, today, in this thread, would be a good place.
Damn, meant that comment to be directed to griffie. Oops.
Excellent video, I emailed the link out of my youtube listings.
Don’t fret the Slandering ass would never admit he lied anyway
How inconvenient for Warmunists. Not only have they lost their icon, but they’ve once again been exposed for the big fat Liars that they are and always have been. It just doesn’t get any better than this. No wonder fewer and fewer people believe what they say.
Thanks for the excellent video, Dr. Crockford!
Your scholarship and wit are always appreciated here.
Another ex-icon is Mount Kilamanjaro. And low-lying tropical islands. And infected amphibians. The first two were mentioned in Gore’s initial movie, IIRC.
Maybe we should help them out and suggest a few new icons?
Fire Ants – They’re burning up! (No. Wouldn’t work. Their babies aren’t cute and cuddly.)
Bald Eagles – CAGW is expanding their range into “turbine territory”! (No. I don’t think that would fly.)
Hmmm….running out of ideas….
Frogs? No, decline wasn’t from “climate change”, but disease carried by climate change researchers.
Bees? No, decline was from pesticides and pathogens.
Please, help me out here. There must be something cute or at least useful which is being harmed by “climate change”.
I predict a masive decline in the population of ‘Climate Communicators’ in the next few years.
We might need to add them to the endangered list.
^¿^
Oh, wait. Sorry, I missed the ‘cute or at least useful’ part.
Never mind. ~¿~
Maybe stalactites and stalagmites? What will happen to them with Man’s increased CO2?
Sorry, but it needs to be something which Watermelon “climate change” protestors can get dressed up as. Rock formations somehow wouldn’t work. If you have to explain to people what you are, it loses something.
Since when have they ever cared about explanations?
Just tell them that Mammoth Cave will become just a big hole in the ground! 😎
Sorry, but I just don’t see Save the Stalagmites! as a rallying cry. Mammals are really hard to beat. Except maybe naked mole rats. Noboby likes their ugly little mugs.
How about this.
Kentucky Bourbon!
What makes it so good is that the water used is very “hard” yet very low in dissolved iron.
Dissolve all the limestone, and Kentucky Bourbon is doomed!
Gosh! Maybe even Tennessee’s Jack Daniels!
(They may not be cuddly but they sure are warm! 😎
@Gloateus
If they could use the Delta Smelt, they can use anything.
~¿~
Or the classic Furbish Lousewort 🙂
And the snail darter.
Although at least its behavior is interesting, unlike smelt.
If CACA could be shown to be a threat to whiskey or whisky, then they would indeed be onto something. Better to turn corn into whiskey to drink rather than ethanol to burn.
Tom,
At least Northern Spotted Owls are cute, however genetically indistinguishable from the non-threatened Southern Spotted Owl.
What has allowed the polar bear population to increase has been restrictions on hunting. It has nothing to do with climate change. Apparently polar bears survived the Eemian which was warmer than the current interglacial period with more ice cap melting and higher sea levels.
Yup. Much of the Arctic was not only ice free, but under water:
http://www.brightstarstemeculavalley.org/science/EemianEarth.jpg
Coca-Cola suing for trademark infringement?
Maybe Mann is suing them? But can’t avoid disclosure?
All the talk about polar bears has bothered me for years. Even if they actually went extinct it would have a minor impact on biodiversity. Their numbers have been small since long before the global warming alarm took hold. Compared to homo sapiens 7,000,000,000 plus population, polar bears are pretty vulnerable, but we did not make them that way. They are a small leaf on a huge branching tree, bearing (no pun intended) very little uniqueness in the grand scheme of things.
Global Warming will not harm biodiversity:
http://blog.bobtrower.com/2012/09/global-warming-will-not-harm.html
All the talk about polar bears has bothered me for years. Even if they actually went extinct it would have a minor impact on biodiversity. Their numbers have been small since long before the global warming alarm took hold. Compared to homo sapiens 7,000,000,000 plus population, polar bears are pretty vulnerable, but we did not make them that way. They are a small leaf on a huge branching tree, bearing (no pun intended) very little uniqueness in the grand scheme of things.
Global Warming will not harm biodiversity:
http://blog.bobtrower.com/2012/09/global-warming-will-not-harm.html
Polar bears are extremely vulnerable to rifles, which is why they might have gone extinct without protection from hunters.
Historically, polar bears have not been numerous as a proportion of all bears, including the grizzly, black and brown bears. But I wonder if they were not much much more numerous during warm periods such as the Medieval Warm Period and the Roman Warm Period than during the cold periods such as the Little Ice Age.
Could it be that the boom in polar bear populations is partly due to continuing recovery from the Little Ice Age? Could it be that polar bears eat better when it’s warmer?
I guess polar bears are harder to adjust than weather station temperatures. Aren’t they working on an al gorithm for this?
Reflect. Our planet has undergone a number of glacial expansions and retreats in the last 2 million years. There is no record of any mass extinctions due to this. Species, both animal and plant, simply migrate north and south as needed. These doomsayers are simply ignorant. The die off the the megafauna after the end of the last glacial retreat appears to be due to human activity.
Well,there is a possible replacement for the Polar Bear icon.
Yes it’s Aptenodytes Forsteri ( Emperor Penguin)!
” Emperor Penguin population to slide due to Antarctic Climate Change …” Study, June 2014.
But wait a minute this is modeling with numbers forecast to drop by a fifth from 600,000 by 2100.
And the PLOS ONE peer reviewed paper from 2012 has the numbers higher than expected and further research needed to see if AGW is going to have a serious impact.
Perhaps alarmists could move onto the King Penguin, the Adelie penguin, the Galapagos penguin or even the Macaroni penguin.
Numbers must be dropping somewhere.
Well the Galapagos penguin is already experiencing the tragic effects of a lack of ice….
Environmentalists who claim polar bears are endangered should be put in the cage with a hungry polar bear. They will quickly learn who is endangered
Oh the temptation to photoshop faces onto that tragic scene…
Cherishing the moment – distinguished treemometer proxy modelling projection professor found a kernel of corn.
Those penguins would have a very long way to run or swim to get back home. I have sometimes wondered what would happen if a small colony of one of the smaller species of penguins were transported as an “invasive species” to the Arctic. Would they survive and thrive or die off? In the Antarctic they have no real predators on land but in the Arctic that would be a different story and perhaps that is why there are no penguins in the Arctic.
Climate apocalypse fanatics, like all fanatics, are not abive arranging evidence, as we have seen many times.
Would it be beyond the ability if people who think like Griff to kill a bunch of polar bears to arrange for a photo op?
The dang pole bears survived many glacial eras when there were miles of ice atop their current habitat…fishing/”sealing” up there was a bit difficult during those periods. D’ya think they might have migrated over time as conditions changed? There is no “might have”…they are here now so they did migrate (oh so slowly) then. And they will continue to do so.
Tragically, looks like science will become extinct long before the bears do.
Amazing.
Griff once again makes an absurd comment and the rest of the thread then becomes all about Griff.
Something tells me that Griff has gotten the desired response and is laughing, as history repeats itself.
Indeed.
That’s what he/she/it gets paid for, after all.
These polar bears just don’t know that they’re doomed.
Someone from the “Main Stream Media” should tell them.
“Communicating-Climate-Change” studies indicate ‘D’nyers just need to be told in the correct way.
These D’nying bears need to learn..
Thanks again, Dr. Crockford
Consider a scenario in which the Earth emerged from the cycle of glacial advances and retreats, the poles warmed and the ice and permafrost all melted permanently.
In other words, the ice age ended.
Life at the poles would go from being sparse and seasonal to year round and abundant.
In such a condition, the total available food for creatures such as bears, including polar bears, would increase.
Bears are some of the most adaptable creatures on Earth, they can survive in nearly any habitat and on nearly any food source.
So, with more total food around, would polar bears all die?
Or would they thrive?
Less harsh conditions lead to more prosperous living and breeding for pretty much any animal, large mammalian predators included.
These bears do not thrive ON the harsh adversity of the perpetually frigid Arctic wasteland, they survive it, and thrive IN SPITE of that adversity.
Because that is what they do.
They survive.
Polar bears in that hypothetical case would probably trend back toward their brown bear ancestors, while also perhaps continuing to specialize to the extent possible on seals.
Even the ice-dependent seals might not go extinct, since ringed seals have freshwater lake relatives today. As long as shorefast ice forms in their habitat during winter and stays into spring, they can keep on reproducing snow lairs.
However if there were literally no ice left on earth, ringed seals would need to find a new method of reproducing.
New method of reproducing?
Do you mean a new favorite place for females to build a den or lair?
I think they would do so, rather than just feed themselves to the bears.
Seals are another adaptable species that eat a wide variety of foods.
Earless seals evolved about 15 mya, and have branched widely.
Ice nesting is a recent adaptation for them…again, evidence of strong adaptability, not a reason to suppose without ice they would not just do something else instead.
Me,
Yes, I did mean reproducing more as do harbor seals, ie without a snow lair on landfast ice.
I don’t know when the ancestors of ringed seals developed this method of nesting. It could have been before the Pleistocene glaciations, since even in the Pliocene there might have been winter shore ice in the Arctic, at least around lakes.
All pinnipeds, ie walrus, eared and earless seals, are now thought to be descended from a common ancestor related to bears. Earless seals were previously thought by some to have evolved independently from an otter-like ancestor. The earliest pinniped fossils are from the Late Oligocene of CA and OR.
Some think that seals are actually all descended from a bearlike species that went aquatic and radiated into many of the forms we see to day.
Just wanted to say thank you to Dr. Crockford. Your work is very important and does not go unappreciated. We all enjoyed your book very much and recommend highly that people look at your body of work.
Good health to you and yours.
DB&Family
David Ball, Catcracking and others above,
Thanks so much for your enthusiastic support, it means a lot.
FYI, in case you hadn’t noticed, French and German translations of my polar bear science book for kids “Polar Bear Facts and Myths” will be available shortly.
https://polarbearscience.com/2017/08/29/polar-bear-facts-myths-translations-in-french-and-german-coming-soon/
Watch for them!
Susan
Thanks for the excellent video Dr Crockford.
This should be mandatory showing in all schools since the kids have been brainwashed by schools and Kids TV programs.
Maybe a kids version would be helpful. I plan to try to get my grandchildren who have been brainwashed to watch the video. Hopefully they will learn to challenge all the false claims and propaganda pumped into them by the schools. How do we reeducate our teachers?