Susan Crockford
For months, the media has been bleating about the poor polar bears of Churchill suffering from lack of sea ice blamed on human-caused climate change during the so-called ‘hottest year’ on record: in April, July, August, November, and December.
However, while breakup of sea ice on Hudson Bay was indeed early this year and freeze-up came earlier than usual, Western Hudson polar bears apparently spent only the fifth-longest time on land since 1979, according to a polar bear specialist. How is that even possible, given that sea ice conditions should be getting worse and worse as CO2 levels increase and average global temperatures rise? As I’ve pointed out before, it is apparent that Arctic sea ice is not closely coupled to CO2 levels (as the ‘experts’ claim), which makes me wonder if there is any ecologically-relevant correlation between CO2 and sea ice at all.
Money quote from Geoff York, from Polar Bears International: “As of Nov. 28 this year, the bears in western Hudson Bay had spent 164 days on shore, he said. That’s tied for the fifth-longest amount of time the bears have spent off the ice since 1979.” CBC, 9 December 2023 [my bold]
Hudson Bay sea ice & polar bears
Sea ice over Hudson Bay at 8 December 2023:
Locations of tagged polar bears at 8 December 2023 (those on land will be denning pregnant females), note that the bear in the south is on a patch of low-concentration ice (see chart above):
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And even if sea ice did disappear completely ( which is highly unlikely) I think bears in general are very adaptive , adaptable creatures and the polar bears would probably get by on land along the shore just fine. Nature adapts or we would not be here.
As the high northern latitudes get warmer — as the climate models have predicted — polar bears are having to spend greater and greater parts of the year on land. On land, they find nothing to replace seals as a basis for the fat rich diet that they require for good health. They are not in immediate danger of extinction, but rising temperatures point to a desperate future.
Really how can you be sure since the Arctic summers have been ice free for long periods of time earlier in the interglacial time as this link goes to a nice list of published papers:
Little to no summer ice in the Arctic
LINK
Yet the Polar Bears are here today.
For the sake of argument, let’s suppose that polar bears are flourishing and will flourish in aeternam. The fact remains that the average global surface temperature is rising, and that rising temperatures are leading to dangerous changes in climate. A picture of a fat polar bear does not speak to the issue.
A polar bear does not live in an average temperature. 😉
They are doing so poorly, their population has only increased by about 300% since the 60’s.
But methods of estimating the size of the population have improved greatly in the last fifty years, and this may account for the increase.
Not that improved as it was far lower a few decades ago as they were being hunted to near extinction until they were put under protected status that allowed population to grow.
It was that and stopping the seal culls that helped them recover, seals being a major food source of theirs.
The emissions that were killing Polar Bears was Pb from Remingtons and Colts, not CO2. When hunting was outlawed, the population started recovering quickly. There is actually little to show that Polar Bears are very dependent on sea ice to survive.
Kudos! Critical Thinking rears its ‘pretty’ head.
“and that rising temperatures are leading to dangerous changes in climate. “
What a load of rubbish. !
There is absolutely no evidence to back up that statement.
All data shows nothing untoward happening.
PBs survived very comfortably during the last 10,000 years, when Arctic sea ice levels were far less than they are now, and the climate was much warmer.
Being in Canada, a bit of warming would be a good thing. And the bears can move further north. A species that can swim as far as this tagged female did can move if it gets too hungry.
The longest recorded duration for a swimming session by a polar bear Ursus maritimus is 232 continuous hours (9.67 days), during which time the individual in question, an adult female, swam 687 km, through chilling waters of only 2-6°C in the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska and northern mainland Canada.
What has happened, since the extreme high sea ice levels of 1979, is that a large amount of Arctic Sea aquatic life is returning.
Sea life is returning that hasn’t been seen in proxy evidence since the end of the MWP, as the Arctic sea ice expanded to levels that didn’t allow sea life to prosper.
Don’t hate Arctic sea life !!
Polar bear populations show variations, with increases observed in certain regions and decreases in others. These apex predators are adept at thriving on sea ice, utilizing it as a hunting platform for seals. Consequently, the well-being of polar bear populations serves as a dependable gauge of Arctic conditions. In instances where populations are on the rise, what inference can we draw?
There have been few, if any decreases in recent decades – the only one that springs to mind showed a corresponding increase in surrounding areas due to a migration of polar bears into easier hunting ranges. All regions are at least stable with most increasing – twin and triplet births are a sure sign of a healthy, growing population with a plentiful food source.
glaciers https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/climate-change-will-accelerate-earths-sixth-mass-extinction-180955138/
Umm, what glaciers are around Hudsons Bay?
Maybe he means the ones they are finding 1000-year-old tree stumps and human artefacts underneath,
Maybe he can explain how they grew there.
Although his particular AGW cultist seems particularly dumb and ignorant… even for an AGW cultist.
The Ungava Peninsula was not deglaciated until 6,500 years ago (11,500 years after the Last Glacial Maximum) and is believed to have been the prehistoric centre from which the vast Laurentide Ice Sheet spread over most of North America during the last glacial epoch.
However, your SUV caused it to deglaciate! 🙂
BS conclusion from BS crystal ball computer games.
OMG, you AGW scum are so, so GULLIBLE., !!
Now where is that list of extinction.. stop being a mindless headless chook, and post it., idiot !
accidentally included “glaciers” in the link I copied. fat finger strikes again.
What you should have mentioned is that the article is in a Smithsonian magazine special report titled “The Anthropocene.”
Insofar as there is no Anthropocene except in the odd minds of the ClimateCult™, all that is written therein can be labeled as science fiction.
Oh, my… what an opening… no, I won’t.
But what if ‘average global temperatures’ are rising toward some optimum global temperature. IOW, what is the optimum global temperature. Adaptation is the key.
It is clear you have no argument to offer because all you offer is nebulous statements that is worthless while you ignored the published science papers in the link that doesn’t agree with you.
Not only that the summer ice cover has been low for the last 16 years, yet we have pictures of many fat Polar Bears a reality you are having difficulty grasping.
Sorry , but Arctic sea ice has been doing basically nothing untoward for the last 15 or so years.
There was also far less sea ice than now for nearly all the last 10,000 years.
The only “desperation” is from the gullible AGW “believers” .
“There was also far less sea ice than now for nearly all the last 10,000 years.
That was meant to say FAR MORE sea ice now than nearly all the last 10,000 years.
Current levels are in about the top 5% or so of the last 10,000 years..
Only the LIA and the period around 1979 had more sea ice.
“It will without doubt have come to your Lordship’s knowledge that a considerable change of climate, inexplicable at present to us, must have taken place in the Circumpolar Regions, by which the severity of the cold that has for centuries past enclosed the seas in the high northern latitudes in an impenetrable barrier of ice has been during the last two years, greatly abated.
(This) affords ample proof that new sources of warmth have been opened and give us leave to hope that the Arctic Seas may at this time be more accessible than they have been for centuries past, and that discoveries may now be made in them not only interesting to the advancement of science but also to the future intercourse of mankind and the commerce of distant nations.”
President of the Royal Society, London, to the Admiralty, 20th November, 1817
OOPS.. meant FAR LESS !!
Was right the first time. Too many things happening today !
“As the high northern latitudes get warmer”
NOT !!
No warming this century up until the 2015 El Nino
The El Nino spike, then cooling back down to basically where it started.
Less ice means they have to travel less distance to reach the seals.
There is still one heck of a lot of sea ice up in the Arctic. !
Several areas are already chock full.
Try again.. this time with facts, not baseless AGW mantra.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/snow-and-ice-extent/
A link that shows absolutely NOTHING of the state of different regions of the Arctic
Graph uses non-zero axis to help people like you make abject fools of themselves.
1979 was also a period of extreme high levels of sea ice, up there with the LIA.
What you are showing is a RECOVERY from a period of way too much sea ice…. slightly towards more normal Holocene levels.
There has been far less sea ice for nearly all the last 10,000 years.
Why not learn the reality of Arctic sea ice history over the Holocene
Don’t be a climate change DENIER all your life.
One could suggest that a reduction in sea ice merely concentrates the seals for easier hunting. Not sure why everything is always perceived to be worse, when, obviously sea ice has declined many times before, and, viola! – Polar Bears are still here!
‘Viola?’ I guess that’s french for ‘where’s the edit button?’
Music to my ears…
Yep, and the alternate definition of “hitting the Post Comment before proof reading”.
We’ve all been there since the edit function disappeared.
Polar bears don’t actually like sea ice….it makes catching a seal pup lunch much more difficult than on a beach. Just ask one !
I always laugh when I hear anyone talk about a ‘hottest year on record’ in the media. Putting aside the corrupted and highly suspect datasets, this is only a ‘hottest average year’ which just means that slightly more places were warm than cold, according to the climate enthusiasts, who seem to enjoy wetting their knickers at every opportunity. It’s beyond farcical now.
“enjoy wetting their knickers”
Is that like wearing a wet suit??
As it has almost certainly been warmer many times in the past (Medieval Warm, Roman Warm, Minoan Warm, etc), and polar bears tolerated those, they should have no problems with the present.
Even if the polar bears of Hudson Bay disappeared, so what? Is the climate supposed to never, ever change again? No population to collapse, or grow and expand as habitats change with a changing climate? The climate alarmists are lunatics. Evolution will allow species to adapt and change. That’s the way of the world.
Evolution is slow and climate change can be quite fast. This is why we are seeing so many species becoming extinct now.
AGW cultist / believers are SLOW and GULLIBLE !!
Name one extinct species due to “climate”, other than a little rodent that got washed of a sand bar.
And yet hunting (along with the invention of modern firearms, which enabled mass slaughter of animals like the bison) has had absolutely nothing to do with animals dying out…..Yep, nothing whatsoever to do with extinction!
Let’s not forget about habitat loss due to very obvious reasons like deforestation for agricultural purposes. And actual pollution/contamination from industrial processes, including the mining of minerals and metals used in all sorts of battery powered electric vehicles….
What a crock.
Just find a list of all these newly extinct species the usual sources report are GOING to be extinct IF WE DON’T STOP CAGW!
Actually provide a reference to a current list of those that have gone extinct over the last 30 years. Make sure the list includes WHY each species became extinct. Finally, make sure the species are actually DIFFERENT species, i.e. not able to bread and reproduce with another still existing “species”, thus not actually extinct.
I do hear of one species that offshore wind may finish off, the Right Whale. No problem there though.
There have been a number of species come back from the dead in the last couple of years. Most recently, as far as I know, Attenborough’s long-lost echidna rediscovered in New Guinea jungle.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/10/attenborough-named-echidna-mammal-rediscovered-new-guinea/
Possibly more creatures gone unextinct than extinct?
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/climate-change-will-accelerate-earths-sixth-mass-extinction-180955138/
BS prediction from baseless computer games.
Are you really so mindlessly gullible that you believe that sort of nonsense !!
Funny how you reply to your own comment, not to My, bnice2000’s or Lee Riffee’s comments or even Ben’s comment.
Typical leftist, either just outright refuse to answer any questions that shake your FAITH, or try to change the subject.
So as to MY comment, you just responded with a link to a “usual source” of leftist CAGW drivel.
“will accelerate”… is that anything like “will rise”?
Polar bears aren’t just fluffy creatures for your amusement; they happen to be apex predators, keeping the seal population in check in the Arctic ecosystem. Believe it or not, they’re more than just decorations for your nature-deficient brain. Indigenous communities actually value them culturally, and surprise, surprise—they contribute to local economies through ecotourism. Now, I get it might be hard for your antique mentality to grasp, but there are plenty of people out there who care about animals. Maybe try joining the 21st century.
I think yours is an inaccurate reply to Wester’s post. He did not state that he welcomed in any way, the extinction of Polar Bears.
I could be wrong but I think polar bears ancestor is a grizzly type bear. Bears are highly intelligent. See the story of Wojtek the army bear. They might struggle to ick out a living along the shore at first but some somewhere would adapt and survive. Just as their predecessors adapted to cold winter and ice.
Assuming humans didn’t shoot them all at the garbage bin.
That’s “eke” out a living.
Wow, you really are one, aren’t you.
It could be ‘ice’ out a living, as they, y’know, live on the ice.
Or maybe Mr. Oliver dropped a “p”, as in “pick out a living”.. Mr. Frederick is a typical alarmist, reacts before considering other explanations.
Huson Bay is the only place with a slight ice deficit this year (still above 2021 and 2016)
Plenty of other places where PBs live that are already full of sea ice.
Hudson Bay.. where that typo fix button !!
I wasn’t going to say anything, honest. But we all qant that edit button back.
Want, dammit.
it’s just playing with you…
“I wasn’t going to say anything, honest“
But you did ! 😉
Not about the typo and it was only after you commented!
Well done you beat JF with the correction.
If there is no ice the seals will be on shore along with the polar bears. Who can run faster? I don’t think it is the seal
eeek! there’s an ‘ick’ instead of an eke…
I think we already did that joke.
IF grizzly bears and polar bears can mate AND produce offspring that can mate and reproduce, THAN they are not different species. i.e. biologists are full of crap when the call different animals of the same species a different species.
Ex. Wolves, domestic dogs, cayotes, dingoes, etc. are all just dogs.
So I am not the decider BUT I call BS on all this “extinct species” crap when you can take, for example, a poodle and, through selective breading, end up with a wolf. Now it will take a while, but all the genetic material required is there.
And sheep can also breed with goats, lions with tigers, horses with donkeys – yes they are called interspecies hybrids, they are not the same species.
Plus I’ve never actually breaded a poodle – does it cook better that way?
Lol. Now a horse and a donkey make a mule THAT CAN NOT REPEODUCE.
Can the other “hybrids” you listed reproduce??
Apparently, according to wiki, the answer is that lion and tiger “hybrids” CAN reproduce, so apparently lions and tigers ARE the same species.
Now to goat and sheep “hybrids”, their offspring appear to actually be hybrids and unable to reproduce, and usually stillborn. Funny that even though they have different numbers of chromosomes, they can produce living offspring on occasion.
But apparently these “hybrid” bears CAN reproduce. So they are the same species!
I mean, the envirowacos tried to stop the rare earth mine in northern Nevada over a plant that is a “subspecies” of a plant found in MOST US states. Just BS.
Why are words like ‘stupid’ and ‘mendacious’ (or lying) still taboo in this business?
In the absence of sea ice how do we know that seals would not gravitate toward a shore line eventually like they do all over the world. I don’t trust this idea that everything in nature must remain static or it is deemed abnormal manmade catastrophic.
And species come and go even before humans. We are a species and maybe we have a “ right” to be here and live comfortably. I guarantee you any other animal is not going to think twice about eating another or us too in order to survive.
Except for some domesticated dogs or Wojtek the loyal polish army bear.
Some 99% of all of the animals (and plants) that have inhabited the earth since the first single cell organisms appeared are now extinct.
What many do not realize about the polar bear is that because it is a large hypercarnivore (an animal that has become adapted to eating nothing but meat) it is, historically speaking, in increased danger of extinction. Regardless of any and all pressures on its existence.
Basically any animal that has boxed itself into a tight evolutionary niche is in danger of not surviving when the going gets tough. This is why we no longer have sabertoothed cats – they were apex predators so dedicated to bringing down very large, slow prey animals that when those animals went extinct, so did they.
But the good news for the polar bear is that it is far more resilient than many give it credit. It has survived far less icy times and is still around. And, if in the far future, summers in the Arctic do become ice free, the polar bear still has the molar teeth and digestive tract to handle plant matter, unlike sabertoothed cats. It could well evolve back into something much more like its ancestor, the brown bear.
Absolute and utter bollox of the worst kind – I would have found a 5 year old’s answer more accurate and better researched. Polar Bears may eat mostly meat as this provides them with an energy-rich diet that they need in the Arctic but they can eat almost anything – they have not lost their omnivorous tendencies at all – it’s a diet forced on them by habitat not evolution.
PBs apparently LUV human food refuse !
Or humans.. for that matter.
They should have a COP conference up there.. attire…. penguin suits.
(yes… I know penguins are SH 😉 )
No, if they want to ingratiate themselves with the bears the COP attendees should rub themselves with delcious herbs and place an apple in their mouths!
They already have a habit of placing their feet there..
Walrus are known to often use the shore line.
They even climb up cliffs and jump off…… because of climate change. !!
I have thought the same. Seals would have to go to shore and as I point out they cannot run very fast. Polar bears on the other hand can run very fast.
Good news.
Speaking of sea ice a look at NSIDC Charctic interactive graph is telling. 2007 and 2023 annual Arctic ice extent is an essential mirror image. Yes, 2007 is a cherry pick and extent does not equal volume, but it remains an undisputable fact.
Been “in the bunch” since 2005. !
Do do please take a look at ocean.dmi.dk Arctic where you will see that the Arctic (80N plus) has NEVER exceeded about plus one point five degreesC for a coupla weeks in the summer since 1958. OK later or earlier in the year one sees warming spikes from say minus 20 to minus 10 colour me unimpressed
https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2023/07/the-scorching-summer-of-2023-reaches-mind-blowing-high-temperatures/#:~:text=Kingman%2C%20Arizona%2C%20set%20a%20new%20all-time%20high%20on,96°F%20Las%20Vegas%2C%20Nevada%3A%20116°F%20Tonopah%2C%20Nevada%3A%20104°F
Can’t we bring back the Giant Short-Faced bear (Arctodus simus)? The folks at the North American Bear Center could maybe manipulate the dna of a polar bear and bring back the Short-Faced animal?
Continuous selective breeding of bears to get the body shape you want could, given time, get you a short-faced bear. No laboratory DNA modification required. All the genetic material is there already.
Fantastic and we have a volunteer to go in there to hand select the breeding couples and personally prevent them from breeding with the wrong mates. Enjoy!
Funny, again.
I am just saying the genetic material is there.
Show me where that is NOT the case.
Also, the Galapagos finches can apparently interbreed, they just usually don’t.
So is there only ONE species of Finch on the islands, just a bunch of different “looks”. Sort of like humans. You know all “races” can “interbreed” so are not different “species”. Just like Polar and Brown bears just have different “looks” but are the same species.
What am I saying. IF there are any “extinctions” going on, PROVE they are actually different species. i.e. not just a different look of a species that exists elsewhere on the planet and just fit into a “special” niche in nature so looks different than the other members of their common species.
Hottest was in 1913.. by the climate cabal have tried to “cancel” that one.. of course.
“Several other locations came within 1°F of their hottest temperatures on record on Sunday:”
Oh, so NOT the hottest… OK
The high temperature in China was measure in a low-lying village in a valley in a desert, which didn’t even have a reliable meteorological site.
Someone’s phone, who knows…
Until you are capable of telling the difference between a single WEATHER EVENT and “climate..
… you should probably not comment… save proving that you are a mindless fool. !
First pic I have ever seen of a Polar Bear resting in that position. Is this a Yoga-Bear?
d’oh !!