Reposted from Polar Bear Science
A thin polar bear has wandered more than 1000km south of the Kara Sea into the Siberian town of Norilsk, which has happened at least once before in the 1970s. It is reminiscent of a similar incident this past winter in Alaska and there is no reason to blame this on lack of sea ice.
From the Siberian Times earlier today (17 June 2019) comes the report that a bear that did not get enough to eat this spring (due to any number of reasons, including competition from larger, stronger bears) and went looking for easier food sources. No mention is made that this incident should be blamed on global warming.
Update 18 June 2019: Lack of any evidence that this incident was due to lack of sea ice didn’t stop Reuters from implying this was indeed the case, a theme picked up by the UK Telegraph, the BBC, and The Guardian.
Quotes and video from the story below.
“Norilsk is some 500 km from the open shore yet locals believe the bear has walked much further to reach the city, crossing the vast Taymyr Peninsula.
On his journey to the Talnakh district of Norilsk the predator has walked into brown bear territory.
Reports say the bear is likely to be moved to the Royev Ruchei Zoo in Krasnoyarsk, although some residents are campaigning to see the bear sent back under sedation to the coast.
…
Oleg Krashevsky – who specialises in tours to the remote Putorana plateau – posted: ‘I don’t understand how the bear could have walked such distance, across Taymyr and not come across anyone.
‘He must have encountered many hunters.
‘The same thing happened in 1970’s when a polar bear showed up at an explosives warehouse around the same place as this time.’“
The video below is a reminder that starving bears are virtually never a sign of reduced sea ice blamed on global warming. Starvation is the leading natural cause of death for polar bears.
Or perhaps just a bear with a below average I.Q. — or some mental aberration
Maybe the Polar Bear is a climate alarmist, that would explain his dumb direction of travel.
They just found Sir David Attenborough chasing it with a drone.
today from the Siberian Times: a suggestion the bear had been captured as a cub and released just recently to avoid prosecution. So not anything to do with lack of sea ice as insisted by other media outlets, including the New York Times
https://siberiantimes.com/other/others/news/caught-the-norilsk-polar-bear-needs-urgent-medical-help-say-experts/.
Great! Now it’s an anchor cub, and will be able to legally get every one of its litter, its parents, uncles and aunts, cousins and babysitters to come into Russia and receive welfare, schooling and benefits.
rotflmao….good one RA
“Lack of any evidence that this incident was due to lack of sea ice didn’t stop Reuters from implying this was indeed the case, a theme picked up by the UK Telegraph, the BBC, and The Guardian.” – the usual suspects
To quote Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s first consigliere, now mayor of Chicago), “You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste” – – – even if it’s a FAKE CRISIS
Thanks Susan.
… or maybe it’s a Two Spirit Bear that’s been ostracized by his kin?
==================
Okay, that could be local humour, and WUWT has a widespread audience:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kermode_bear
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit
The Kermode bear needs to check its white privilege…
500 km is only 310 miles ….. and polar bears are noted for either “walking” or “swimming” 100+ miles when foraging for food (seals or their pups).
So, after a week or three out hunting, who the ell knows how far they can/will travel?
I’m sure there is more than one Polar Bear with a GPS collar that is being “tracked” where ever it goes.
Or perhaps just a bear with a below average I.Q. — or some mental aberration
Unlike Yogi Bear, he’s NOT smarter than the average bear.
Polar bears get old too, lose weight and wind up starving to death when they can no longer hunt. If this polar bear was starving because of climate change, then you would think every other polar bear in the region would be in the same shape, but they are not. We can’t make huge leaps of logic from the circumstance of one animal, and anyway, it would be much better to properly identify what has been going on with this one bear the last season, than to make up some phoney storyline to promote some other cause like AGW. That is just straight up intellectual dishonesty.
I wouldn’t be terribly opposed to putting up this bear in a zoo for its final days, since it would give a chance to study what happens to old sickly polar bears when given a chance to recover. It just could be that this polar bear made the right decision going south, especially if he gets to spend his final days in an old bears home. Lucky bear. My thought is that this particular bear has some disease which is why it is in the shape it is. Nature can be cruel too, so tying to blame it on humans is a lame, feeble excuse but it sells and that is a tragedy. Use this opportunity to study what is wrong with this animal and our knowledge will be increased.
“Polar bears get old too, lose weight and wind up starving to death when they can no longer hunt.”
But but I thought polar bears never ever die
Ever.
Like old accountants, who never die; they just lose their balance.
Or old physicians, who never die; they just lose their patients.
Or certain old board-game players, who never die; they just lose their marbles.
I’m sure there are more of these, but I’m out for now.
….Old truckers never die ; they just get a new Peterbuilt …
…Old farmers never die ; they just go to seed …
Old gardeners never die; they just lose their bloomers.
Old seamen never die.
They just smell that way!
Auto
certainly not in the wild and never without Manns interference
End of life for animals is almost always brutal (usually not too pleasant for humans either). Prey animals usually end up being eaten alive by predators. Predators usually starve to death in their old age (or get eaten by healthier, stronger predators).
Sometimes of their own breed!
But-but-but! THE PUBLIC don’t know Nature is red in tooth and claw, and Nature is a bitch to the old . . . they get their info. from The Lion King and Finding Nemo, and believe only WE make animals diseased and miserable . . . don’t we? /sarc. It MUST be OUR fault! (Or, how can we play this naturally occurring event for maximum bathos to generate checks for alarmist NGO’s?)
This reminds me of a solar source and all the known factors that explain climate change on a seasonal and decadal basis, with temperature swings of 10, 20, 100 degrees and more. A stadium wave, perhaps. Fluid mechanics that force a regular, recurring bias with irregular extreme divergence, possibly. A system that is incompletely and insufficiently characterized and unwieldy, that reduces human skill and perception to forecasts with a variable and sometimes large margin of error.
Are you ignoring emergent phenomena?
Not at all. I’m considering existent phenomena.
But, but you are not considering all the “mass balances” of air/surface temperature, ….. thermal radiation/conduction, …… CO2 ingassing/outgassing, ………. photosynthesis/decomposition, ……. etc., etc., that is prerequisite for explaining how the natural world keeps it “warmth”.
You know how things “”wobble n’ crash” iffen their mass is outa balance.
Anyone who walked 1000 km would loose a bit of weight. Judging by images of one or two CACC advocates it appears they could do with such an enterprise, contemplating along the way the preferred version of the imminent end of the world as we know it.
Adult animals that literally starve to death are not rare. In many if not most instances, particularly for large carnivores, when they get to advanced ages they lose a step or three, just like aged humans do. Also, teeth in aging animals tend to go bad in large carnivores, again, just like with many humans – after all, wild animals don’t get any dental care, as do zoo animals or domesticated animals. When the teeth go, their ability to feed is obviously hindered.
Finally, aged or not, all carnivores and omnivores are no more than a few missed meals away from starvation, particularly at the end of the winter thaw before they get a chance to put on pounds of fat from summer and early fall hunting for game and fish, as well as devouring berries, insects, and other typical foods. Same is true for black bears and grizzly bears in the American Rockies. And ditto with wolves and foxes and badgers and so on.
It seems cruel, but that’s nature for you. But also easily exploited by dishonest charlatans trying to mislead the public.
No Griff will save them, just agree with him and it will all be fixed.
I was yelling at the TV when I heard them use this propaganda. What a joke the CBC has become.
Geez, the poor polar bear comes as a hand-out seeking refugee and the first thing they want to do is deport it back to where it was being oppressed by the other polar bears. Where is their compassion?
/sarc
Thanks for the reminder of why I don’t watch or listen to MSM anymore! It’s a sad sad state when the media is complicit in lying to the citizens in the supposed information era?
It is easy to find Norilsk on windy.com, just turn on “SO² mass” tracking, and Norilsk will pop out as the most heavily sulfur dioxide polluted place on Earth. It produces 1% of the world’s SO² pollution (including volcanoes):
https://www.windy.com/-SO2-mass-so2sm?so2sm,68.194,86.484,3
Norilsk is cursed with the world’s largest deposits of nickel, copper and palladium, and has been heavily mined since Czarist times. The ores are smelted there and the air and ground are heavily polluted, making it one of the world’s most polluted areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk
Perhaps the poor animal was delirious from heavy-metal poisoning when it wandered into town.
Is it not curious that the western media never mention these notorious pollution problems in Russia (and China)? Instead they consistently blame mostly the United States for not doing enough to clean up pollution.
So you’re claiming not only was the barely naked polar bear barely able to eat, and it couldn’t swim (cause it was too far away from Arctic Ocean because the polar ice cap melted, right?), but that it couldn’t even SMELL the SO2 pollution any more!
I did not claim those things.
I am just baffled by the bear’s wandering. But reading above that the bear may have been in captivity might explain why the bear was headed towards human habitations, where food could be found.
In any case, it has been claimed that the pollution in Norilsk has lowered human life expectancy to 59 years (i.e., ten years less than Russian average of 69). So very bad for humans. And bears. Do you not agree?
Maybe it’s ditsy! Dementia in animals is a thing, you know, especially in the presence of certain parasite infestations or nutritional deficits, both a distinct probability in an aged animal. Do these dingbats think there are nursing homes in Florida for Arctic peak predators?
We are truly at Peak Human Stupid!
They don’t know how the bear could have walked that far and not come across many hunters? These people really need to get out in nature more to see that it’s bigger than the pictures.
“They don’t know how the bear could have walked that far and not come across many hunters?”
High-caliber (hunting) rifles were illegal in the USSR. Maybe the law persists in the XSSR.
With this bear heading in the ‘wrong’ direction maybe it is a bipolar bear.
Very good, LoL!!
If it’s come from the Canadian side it’s a trans polar bear….
His name is Al.
Yes SasjaL, however in my advancing years I am more concerned about a possible visit from another Al, you know, the one with the last name ‘Heimer’. I so far have avoided a visit from ‘Arthur’ (last name ‘Ritus’) but ocassionally my joints get a little stiff.
AKA slow Siberians
What ? there are no nursing homes for polla bears , no social security , no meals on wheels ???
No safe space ?
Where are the progressives when you need one (to eat)?
Population pressure driving bears south.
Trust me, you don’t want to accidently wander in to the town called Norilsk. One of the dirtiest places on earth.
Greens and the media just will never admit that nature is not kind. Disney lied.
Disney has always lied just take there lemming documentary.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness/
Susan’s book “Eaten”, leaves nothing to the imagination.
“And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.”
Amen. With a significant lack of sea ice (not in evidence) there would be many more than this one poor creature. No?
Dog catcher, cat asylum, game wardens.
+ polar bear nurses.
Always sell on TV.
This spring in my area (Southern VT) there were several older barn owls who apparently starved to death.
Not uncommon in these parts.
Feed the dang bear some steaks and let’s see how he’s faring in a few days!
We could feed him a few greenies because everyones mum always told you eating your greens would make you big and strong.
Well the CBC In Our Backyard propaganda series continues and quotes the Netflix film about walruses without any question on the circumstances of the scene…
https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/our-planet-climate-change-documentary-david-attenborough-1.5178420
To see how the Netflix film has been misleading check Dr. Crockford’s post
https://polarbearscience.com/2019/05/17/video-expose-of-the-groundless-netflix-bid-to-elevate-walrus-to-climate-change-icon/
30,000 fat polar bears, 1 skinny polar bear.
Climate change is so selective.
What about information about his colleagues who left at the seaside and probably miss the wandering tourist? I think more weight would be given by showing that there is this population of stronger animals left at the seaside and that we are dealing with an outlier here. Just reassuring statements – how much it resembles an argument “Believe me” from the CO2 guys…