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/
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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?