While there is an admission that the over-hyped lies about starving bearspromoted by National Geographic in 2017 and 2018 were a factor, there is no mention in the article of the well-known, documented evidence of scientists’ own failed assumptions that polar bears require summer sea ice for survival have had any impact on public opinion (Amstrup et al. 2007; Crockford 2015, 2019, 2022, 2023; Lippold et al. 2019; Rode et al. 2021).
Thriving populations in the Chukchi Sea and elsewhere amid low summer ice levels have busted the myth that polar bears need ice year-round.
Andrew Derocher was also allowed to repeat, unchallenged, the ridiculous narrative he and his activist supporters have peddled before, that insists the polar bear had become a climate change icon by accident rather than design, a lie I addressed in detail last year.
Those damn Polar Bears just aren’t dying the way we said they would, but it might/could/may/perhaps happen in the future.
Despite this dramatic change in conditions, however, the polar bear population on Svalbard has yet to experience a decline. This could be because the mammals are still recovering from the pressures of hunting, which was banned in Norway in 1973, and Aars does not rule out a future collapse. There is growing evidence that the bears are switching hunting practices – targeting reindeer as well as seals, a change that was first documented on the archipelago in 2021. “Denning” – behaviour around making dens – has changed and bears are swimming long distances, but, says Aars, there is still enough sea ice in the spring for the bears to hunt successfully.
We just don’t know enough (to have made all those stupid predictions we made about the demise of the Polar Bears)
Derocher in 2004.
A cascade of impacts beginning with reduced sea ice will be manifested in reduced adipose stores leading to lowered reproductive rates because females will have less fat to invest in cubs during the winter fast. Non-pregnant bears may have to fast on land or offshore on the remaining multiyear ice through progressively longer periods of open water while they await freeze-up and a return to hunting seals. As sea ice thins, and becomes more fractured and labile, it is likely to move more in response to winds and currents so that polar bears will need to walk or swim more and thus use greater amounts of energy to maintain contact with the remaining preferred habitats.
And a big oopsie. pissing off the Inuits. That’s gotta hurt.
“In the Canadian context, the polar bear being a symbol of climate change has caused a lot of problems,” Derocher says. “We used to have a good relationship with Inuit hunters. A lot of the hunters that I know think that polar bears will do OK with climate change and it has created some interesting tensions.”
More from WWF Arctic , some subpopulations are decreasing but other subpopulations are stable or increasing. Is there a magic forcefield protecting the Chukchi Sea, the Barents Sea, and the Foxe Basin from CO2?
Nature is like that … nothing is ever a constant, there is always variability in nature. Ups and downs. To discern long term trends is to understand what is really happening to any given species as a result of habitat changes or changes in predation.
The thing about living in the Arctic is that if you don’t hunt polar bears, they’ll happily hunt you instead.
The Inuit know this well and are naturally upset with the ‘climate scientists’ trying to convince them that their lying eyes are deceiving them when the they see too many polar bears for their safety.
Steve Case
August 31, 2023 1:24 am
We’ve been told that the bears rely on sea ice and Climate Change has caused a decline in sea ice, giving the polar bear less access to seals leading to their starvation.
This is a case of “look here don’t look there” misdirection. It’s the seals that rely on the ice, not the bears. The seals need the ice to haul out and have their pups. Less ice means the bears have an easier time hunting the seals that are now crowded on to less ice.
Of course, their story is no ice means no seals means no polar bears, but of course the seals aren’t stupid either, they give birth on ice because it’s safer than on land but if there is no ice then they would be forced to birth on land and the polies would really feast.
But it’s all a pipe dream because there was never a chance of there being no spring ice because even if it all melted in summer, unlikely, it would always freeze again
And first year ice is thinner and easier for the seals to escape.
So it always was nonsense.
I’ll gain a smidge of respect for these “scientists” when they issue a public apology to Crockford.
Including Piltdown Mann.
Peta of Newark
August 31, 2023 2:09 am
Were the bears supposed to obey the diktats of A Computer by any chance…
quote:“Travel consultant Paul Charles told The Telegraph: ‘One flight plan corrupted the whole system. ‘It is an international embarrassment that our whole air traffic system collapsed because of it.’ The former head of British Airways described the Nats explanation for the incident as ‘staggering’. Willie Walsh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘This system should be designed to reject data that’s incorrect, not to collapse the system.
Just one piece of shit data crashed the entire UK air traffic control system – and we’re supposed to have confidence in computer climate models
Polar Bears are a lot smarter than Climate “Scientists”.
Tom Abbott
August 31, 2023 3:54 am
It was warmer in the past than it is now, and the Polar Bears did just fine.
Duane
August 31, 2023 4:38 am
There are two warmunist responses to the failure of real world data to confirm their wildassed hyperventilating screams of “catastrophe!”.
One as noted in the Guardian above, is that “it’s complicated”, so ignore THAT data, but only pay attention to the data we cherry pick to prove our point, until it doesn’t. Kinda like in Wizard of Oz (“Ignore the man behind the curtain”).
The other technique that we’ll be seeing is that the polar bear will suddenly transition from being a cuddly, lovable teddy bear like character to being an evil, baby seal eating monster – which is what the media generally said polar bears were until the global warmunist thing took over their brains.
Meaning, soon we won’t be seeing Coke commercials around Christmastime feature lovable, cuddly polar bear moms and cubs playfully frolicking in the snow and drinking coke, threatening nobody. Why,m that would be like featuring white slave drivers cracking their whips on black slaves while playfully drinking their Cokes at Christmas.
sherro01
August 31, 2023 5:54 am
In this socialist cell named Victoria, Australia, where I live, our State Parliament is considering a report recommending an end to the hunting of wild ducks. This hunting has happened as long as recorded history. Quail were thrown in as a bonus.
The central point has been ignored. THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT OWN THE DUCKS. It has no grant from the people who have lived with the ducks forever, to the government, so the government cannot assume that it can make laws.
Same with the polar bears. They have forever been property of “we, the people” in concept, not the property of a special interest group of people named government. The US does not even own some of the land on which the bears live.
(I have long found study of the topic named “property rights” to be rewarding and occasionally justiciable.)
So, if a theme is sought, why not use “Keep government laws away from polar bears. Governments don’t own the bears.” Geoff S
rah
August 31, 2023 6:08 am
Not all are shutting up! I see stories where others are still lying their asses off.
Icons and “canaries in the coal mine” of natural climate change deniers seem to always fall by the wayside when the stupid predictions by “scientists” are falsified.
The Polar Bear
The Great Barrier Reef.
The Adélie penguin The glaciers/snow cap of Kilimanjaro.
The Great Lakes
The Honey Bees
I’m sure others can add to this list.
Now, after three consecutive years of the Global ACE being well below average, this year with the ACE running above average in all basins and the recent hit by Idalia, the “news” is inundated with stories about how we humans are causing tropical cyclones to become more intense or frequent.
Never mind that the ACE count of majors is still well below the mean.
Oh, IU just remembered another one thanks Tony Heller. The Maldives were supposed to submerged by now but according to Tony, every single on of the 1,196 islands in the chain are still above water,
antigtiff
August 31, 2023 6:11 am
Do polar bears have tapeworms like their brown/black cousins? Yes they do. SAVE THE BEARS!
rah
August 31, 2023 7:17 am
Those damn Polar Bears just aren’t dying the way we said they would, but it might/could/may/perhaps happen in the future.
The reason the were put on the endangered list in the first place was not based on the numbers at the time but the claim they would suffer a catastrophic decline in numbers when the sea ice inevitably disappeared.
But they shot themselves in the foot. Listing them as endangered brought much greater restrictions on hunting and once that happened their numbers increased.
cuddywhiffer
August 31, 2023 7:32 am
Polar bears do NOT magically ‘switch’ prey. They grab whatever is within reach. Thank you, Charles, and Dr. Crockford for this continuing voice of sanity.
‘Beam me up, Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here!’
Correct
Seals are rich in fat, first choice.
If not available move onto choice 2, 3 etc.
Not, no seals? I’ll just fall over dead.
It’s all so stupid always
Lee Riffee
August 31, 2023 7:45 am
So how on earth did polar bears (and penguins) survive all of the previous times in the last tens of thousands of years when temps were much higher than they are now? No one who pushes CAGW seems to have any idea….
Because many truly believe this is the hottest time in 125000 years
Just one more facet of this tulip mania
cuddywhiffer
August 31, 2023 7:59 am
When ‘Whalers’ used to render penguins, as well as whales, seals, and walruses, down for oil, it was once… insensitively said… that from the smaller penguins, you might be lucky to get about ten penguins per gallon. It was always good for a nervous laugh when I gave a talk.
Pat from Kerbob
August 31, 2023 10:01 am
I almost, almost feel sorry for guys like Derocher.
I don’t know what they really believe either now or 25 years ago.
It’s entirely likely they have tooth decay from the years of Koolaid drinking decades ago and they really truly believed this stuff, while trying to destroy careers like Crockford’s.
When it becomes apparent they were wrong on all the really big questions what is an alarmist to do?
If you admit you are wrong and the polies aren’t in danger then no one is calling and interviewing you, no more pictures in the paper or your face on TV and so you desperately look for ways to keep that attention.
These people are the ones who need help from mental health professionals.
You know they will never apologize to her. To do so would be an admission they were wrong and even worse and admission that “climate change” is not endangering the bears.
Jason Livermore
August 31, 2023 11:38 am
Somewhere in those ever-increasing numbers, there is a steep decline, I tell you!
Rud Istvan
August 31, 2023 11:39 am
Animal climate alarm things that did not work out as advertised:
Polar bears
Adelie penguins
Emperor penguins
American pika
Red wolves
White ring tailed lemurs
Costa Rica Golden toads
All but the new emperor penguin alarm documented in essays ‘Polar Bears’ and ‘No Bodies’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Neo
August 31, 2023 1:05 pm
Planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions pose a direct threat to the survival of polar bears — by limiting their access to the sea ice that serves as their hunting grounds, a new study has found.
During ice-free summer months, the bears must fast, which in worst-case scenarios mean adults could die and, before then, lose the ability to successfully raise cubs, according to the study, published Thursday in the journal Science.
The first-of-its-kind research quantifies the amount of ice-free days caused by specific amounts of emissions, as well as associated polar bear survival rates and declining trends in some subpopulations.
“We’ve known for decades that continued warming and sea ice loss ultimately can only result in reduced distribution and abundance of polar bears,” lead author Steven Amstrup, chief scientist emeritus at Polar Bears International, said in a statement.
“Until now, we’ve lacked the ability to distinguish impacts of greenhouse gases emitted by particular activities from the impacts of historic cumulative emissions,” added Amstrup, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Wyoming.
“The first-of-its-kind research quantifies the amount of ice-free days caused by specific amounts of emissions,”
That’s funny, in a clueless kind of way.
They have it all figured out, they think. But, it’s all speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions, in reality. They couldn’t tell you how much warmth a given amount of CO2 would add to the temperatures if their lives depended on doing so. All they have is guesses and CONfidence levels.
kwinterkorn
August 31, 2023 3:54 pm
So if there is climate change, the bears adapt to it. What an amazing concept!
One wonders if the climate alarmists have the intellectual flexibility of a bear.
Somehow humans have over the millennia adapted to dozens of different climates from inuits to Tahitian Islanders, but a few degrees of global warming are going to stymy us and we’re all gonna die.
a_scientist
September 1, 2023 6:54 am
And this abstract was just published in Science, “linking” the “decline” in polar bear populations to “green house gas emissions”. Since they are doing the linking, if populations are going up or are stable, then there is no problematic GHG increase?
Maybe Susan our resident polar bear expert knows of these authors.
Unleashing the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions is one more way to expand the power of the administrative state and reduce the peoples economic and personal freedom. Yet in contrast, whales and bald eagles get no protection from off-shore wind projects and bird chopping wind turbines.
AbstractIn 2008, projections that up to two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could disappear by mid-century (1) led to polar bears becoming the first species listed under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of threats from anthropogenic climate warming. Updated analyses (2) corroborated the 2008 projections and showed a linear but inverse relationship between Arctic sea ice extent and global mean temperature. Despite the relationship between warming and sea ice loss, absence of a quantitative link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sea ice loss, and declining polar bear vital rates has foiled full ESA implementation for polar bears. By quantifying the relationship between anthropogenic GHG emissions and polar bear recruitment, we show that sensitivities to cumulative anthropogenic emissions explain observed population trends, allow estimation of demographic impacts from new emissions sources, and enable ESA procedures to assess global warming impacts of proposed actions—along with impacts on the ground.
More from WWF Arctic , some subpopulations are decreasing but other subpopulations are stable or increasing. Is there a magic forcefield protecting the Chukchi Sea, the Barents Sea, and the Foxe Basin from CO2?
Nature is like that … nothing is ever a constant, there is always variability in nature. Ups and downs. To discern long term trends is to understand what is really happening to any given species as a result of habitat changes or changes in predation.
Illustrating my point that the changes we are observing are predominantly of natural origin.
Duane missed your sarcasm
The thing about living in the Arctic is that if you don’t hunt polar bears, they’ll happily hunt you instead.
The Inuit know this well and are naturally upset with the ‘climate scientists’ trying to convince them that their lying eyes are deceiving them when the they see too many polar bears for their safety.
We’ve been told that the bears rely on sea ice and Climate Change has caused a decline in sea ice, giving the polar bear less access to seals leading to their starvation.
This is a case of “look here don’t look there” misdirection. It’s the seals that rely on the ice, not the bears. The seals need the ice to haul out and have their pups. Less ice means the bears have an easier time hunting the seals that are now crowded on to less ice.
Of course, their story is no ice means no seals means no polar bears, but of course the seals aren’t stupid either, they give birth on ice because it’s safer than on land but if there is no ice then they would be forced to birth on land and the polies would really feast.
But it’s all a pipe dream because there was never a chance of there being no spring ice because even if it all melted in summer, unlikely, it would always freeze again
And first year ice is thinner and easier for the seals to escape.
So it always was nonsense.
I’ll gain a smidge of respect for these “scientists” when they issue a public apology to Crockford.
Including Piltdown Mann.
Were the bears supposed to obey the diktats of A Computer by any chance…
quote:“Travel consultant Paul Charles told The Telegraph: ‘One flight plan corrupted the whole system.
‘It is an international embarrassment that our whole air traffic system collapsed because of it.’
The former head of British Airways described the Nats explanation for the incident as ‘staggering’.
Willie Walsh told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘This system should be designed to reject data that’s incorrect, not to collapse the system.
Just one piece of shit data crashed the entire UK air traffic control system – and we’re supposed to have confidence in computer climate models
This. Is. Madness. unfolding all around us.
If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences.
If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.
Ayn Rand
“Smarter than the average bear.”
It seems like climate change
scientistsalarmists didn’t realize that bears are smart.Polar Bears are a lot smarter than Climate “Scientists”.
It was warmer in the past than it is now, and the Polar Bears did just fine.
There are two warmunist responses to the failure of real world data to confirm their wildassed hyperventilating screams of “catastrophe!”.
One as noted in the Guardian above, is that “it’s complicated”, so ignore THAT data, but only pay attention to the data we cherry pick to prove our point, until it doesn’t. Kinda like in Wizard of Oz (“Ignore the man behind the curtain”).
The other technique that we’ll be seeing is that the polar bear will suddenly transition from being a cuddly, lovable teddy bear like character to being an evil, baby seal eating monster – which is what the media generally said polar bears were until the global warmunist thing took over their brains.
Meaning, soon we won’t be seeing Coke commercials around Christmastime feature lovable, cuddly polar bear moms and cubs playfully frolicking in the snow and drinking coke, threatening nobody. Why,m that would be like featuring white slave drivers cracking their whips on black slaves while playfully drinking their Cokes at Christmas.
In this socialist cell named Victoria, Australia, where I live, our State Parliament is considering a report recommending an end to the hunting of wild ducks. This hunting has happened as long as recorded history. Quail were thrown in as a bonus.
The central point has been ignored. THE GOVERNMENT DOES NOT OWN THE DUCKS. It has no grant from the people who have lived with the ducks forever, to the government, so the government cannot assume that it can make laws.
Same with the polar bears. They have forever been property of “we, the people” in concept, not the property of a special interest group of people named government. The US does not even own some of the land on which the bears live.
(I have long found study of the topic named “property rights” to be rewarding and occasionally justiciable.)
So, if a theme is sought, why not use “Keep government laws away from polar bears. Governments don’t own the bears.” Geoff S
Not all are shutting up! I see stories where others are still lying their asses off.
Icons and “canaries in the coal mine” of natural climate change deniers seem to always fall by the wayside when the stupid predictions by “scientists” are falsified.
The Polar Bear
The Great Barrier Reef.
The Adélie penguin
The glaciers/snow cap of Kilimanjaro.
The Great Lakes
The Honey Bees
I’m sure others can add to this list.
Now, after three consecutive years of the Global ACE being well below average, this year with the ACE running above average in all basins and the recent hit by Idalia, the “news” is inundated with stories about how we humans are causing tropical cyclones to become more intense or frequent.
Never mind that the ACE count of majors is still well below the mean.
Oh, IU just remembered another one thanks Tony Heller. The Maldives were supposed to submerged by now but according to Tony, every single on of the 1,196 islands in the chain are still above water,
Do polar bears have tapeworms like their brown/black cousins? Yes they do. SAVE THE BEARS!
Those damn Polar Bears just aren’t dying the way we said they would, but it might/could/may/perhaps happen in the future.
The reason the were put on the endangered list in the first place was not based on the numbers at the time but the claim they would suffer a catastrophic decline in numbers when the sea ice inevitably disappeared.
But they shot themselves in the foot. Listing them as endangered brought much greater restrictions on hunting and once that happened their numbers increased.
Polar bears do NOT magically ‘switch’ prey. They grab whatever is within reach. Thank you, Charles, and Dr. Crockford for this continuing voice of sanity.
‘Beam me up, Scotty. There is no intelligent life down here!’
Correct
Seals are rich in fat, first choice.
If not available move onto choice 2, 3 etc.
Not, no seals? I’ll just fall over dead.
It’s all so stupid always
So how on earth did polar bears (and penguins) survive all of the previous times in the last tens of thousands of years when temps were much higher than they are now? No one who pushes CAGW seems to have any idea….
Because many truly believe this is the hottest time in 125000 years
Just one more facet of this tulip mania
When ‘Whalers’ used to render penguins, as well as whales, seals, and walruses, down for oil, it was once… insensitively said… that from the smaller penguins, you might be lucky to get about ten penguins per gallon. It was always good for a nervous laugh when I gave a talk.
I almost, almost feel sorry for guys like Derocher.
I don’t know what they really believe either now or 25 years ago.
It’s entirely likely they have tooth decay from the years of Koolaid drinking decades ago and they really truly believed this stuff, while trying to destroy careers like Crockford’s.
When it becomes apparent they were wrong on all the really big questions what is an alarmist to do?
If you admit you are wrong and the polies aren’t in danger then no one is calling and interviewing you, no more pictures in the paper or your face on TV and so you desperately look for ways to keep that attention.
These people are the ones who need help from mental health professionals.
Maybe they deserve pity?
Nah, roast them, narcissists deserve nothing else.
Although a public apology to Crockford would be a start
You know they will never apologize to her. To do so would be an admission they were wrong and even worse and admission that “climate change” is not endangering the bears.
Somewhere in those ever-increasing numbers, there is a steep decline, I tell you!
Animal climate alarm things that did not work out as advertised:
All but the new emperor penguin alarm documented in essays ‘Polar Bears’ and ‘No Bodies’ in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions pose a direct threat to the survival of polar bears — by limiting their access to the sea ice that serves as their hunting grounds, a new study has found.
During ice-free summer months, the bears must fast, which in worst-case scenarios mean adults could die and, before then, lose the ability to successfully raise cubs, according to the study, published Thursday in the journal Science.
The first-of-its-kind research quantifies the amount of ice-free days caused by specific amounts of emissions, as well as associated polar bear survival rates and declining trends in some subpopulations.
“We’ve known for decades that continued warming and sea ice loss ultimately can only result in reduced distribution and abundance of polar bears,” lead author Steven Amstrup, chief scientist emeritus at Polar Bears International, said in a statement.
“Until now, we’ve lacked the ability to distinguish impacts of greenhouse gases emitted by particular activities from the impacts of historic cumulative emissions,” added Amstrup, who is also an adjunct professor at the University of Wyoming.
https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/4181520-scientists-link-greenhouse-gas-emissions-to-polar-bear-population-declines/
See! I told you all there were still some out their lying their asses off about Polar Bears.
“The first-of-its-kind research quantifies the amount of ice-free days caused by specific amounts of emissions,”
That’s funny, in a clueless kind of way.
They have it all figured out, they think. But, it’s all speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions, in reality. They couldn’t tell you how much warmth a given amount of CO2 would add to the temperatures if their lives depended on doing so. All they have is guesses and CONfidence levels.
So if there is climate change, the bears adapt to it. What an amazing concept!
One wonders if the climate alarmists have the intellectual flexibility of a bear.
Somehow humans have over the millennia adapted to dozens of different climates from inuits to Tahitian Islanders, but a few degrees of global warming are going to stymy us and we’re all gonna die.
And this abstract was just published in Science, “linking” the “decline” in polar bear populations to “green house gas emissions”. Since they are doing the linking, if populations are going up or are stable, then there is no problematic GHG increase?
Maybe Susan our resident polar bear expert knows of these authors.
Unleashing the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions is one more way to expand the power of the administrative state and reduce the peoples economic and personal freedom. Yet in contrast, whales and bald eagles get no protection from off-shore wind projects and bird chopping wind turbines.
Science
Vol. 381, No. 6661
Unlock the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissions
Unlock the Endangered Species Act to address GHG emissionsFor the first time, ESA evaluations can include impacts on polar bears from greenhouse gas emissions
Steven C. Amstrup and Cecilia M. Bitz Authors Info & Affiliations
Science
31 Aug 2023
Vol 381, Issue 6661
pp. 949-951
DOI: 10.1126/science.adh2280
AbstractIn 2008, projections that up to two-thirds of the world’s polar bears could disappear by mid-century (1) led to polar bears becoming the first species listed under the US Endangered Species Act (ESA) because of threats from anthropogenic climate warming. Updated analyses (2) corroborated the 2008 projections and showed a linear but inverse relationship between Arctic sea ice extent and global mean temperature. Despite the relationship between warming and sea ice loss, absence of a quantitative link between anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, sea ice loss, and declining polar bear vital rates has foiled full ESA implementation for polar bears. By quantifying the relationship between anthropogenic GHG emissions and polar bear recruitment, we show that sensitivities to cumulative anthropogenic emissions explain observed population trends, allow estimation of demographic impacts from new emissions sources, and enable ESA procedures to assess global warming impacts of proposed actions—along with impacts on the ground.