From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Cunningham
Who would have guessed it!
Scientists expected the opposite, but polar bears in the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard have become fatter and healthier since the early 1990s, all while sea ice has steadily declined due to climate change.
Polar bears rely on sea ice as a platform from which to hunt the seals that they rely on for blubber-rich meals. The bears’ fat reserves provide energy and insulation and allow mothers to produce rich milk for cubs.
Researchers weighed and measured 770 adults in Svalbard between 1992 and 2019 and found that bears had become significantly fatter.
They think that Svalbard bears have adapted to recent ice loss by eating more land-based prey, including reindeer and walruses.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2l1xpz03no
This was on the BBC news the other day. The news article finished by saying that the Hudson Bay bears are in trouble. They always try to find a negative to try to neutralise a positive. I’d like to see Susan Crockford’s take on this.
“The news article finished by saying that the Hudson Bay bears are in trouble.”
The last I heard only one subpopulation had reduced numbers, The rest had stable or increasing numbers.
Propaganda still dominates peoples minds. I asked a Canadian couple why Canadians would be concerned about global warming when they are all huddled within 100 miles of the US border because it’s too cold most of the year. The only thing they could come up with was “polar bears”. When I relayed the bear survey findings they didn’t believe me.
Yep, it really is like trying to get adherents to explain their dedication to their chosen religious sect.
As when any forms of ideology take hold on people, there is no brain space left for rationality to prevail.
(and remember, it’s rationality that’s supposed to make us homo sapiens sapiens, as distinct from Pavlov’s dogs)
“As when any forms of ideology take hold on people, there is no brain space left for rationality to prevail.”
Because they allow ideology to replace reason. That’s why no amount of reason or empirical evidence works on them.
Are you sure about “because it’s too cold most of the year” as opposed to eg:
“Canada’s trade is heavily concentrated with the United States, which is the destination for over 70% of Canadian exports.”
I don’t like ‘cold’ either, but for me ‘cold’ is preferable to ‘broke’.
The last paragraph of the BBC article is
“In the long term,” he told BBC News, “if ice loss continues unchecked, we know the bears will eventually disappear.”
BBCcan’t publish good news without pouring cold water on it.
She has covered that many times in the past, while she is spending less time on bears now she has covered the Arctic in general recently, finding more sea life. polarbearscience | Polar bear science – past and present
I remember that ice does melt in much of Hudson’s Bay _in summer_, so polar bears come ashore and eat other things including bird eggs. They are a perennial threat to settlements like Churchill MB.
Eco-flappers ignore that what counts for polar bears is some open water near shore for seals plus some ice to birth on – that’s been shown for the High Arctic such as in the Beaufort Sea where too much ice means fewer seals.
(The Beaufort Sea has low islands, whereas well to the east are high (I’ve flown over both).
In the heyday of exploring for oil in the 1970s one of our Herc airfreighter Captains for Pacific Western would take a piece of meat for the dog that one airstrip attendant kept to warn of polar bears.)
Yeah… but…. polar bears don’t do net zero, do they. Needless to say, life finds a way.
“life finds a way” needs to be said more often!
Weak minded environmentalists like to project their own fragility onto nature which is a relentless resilient force for maximizing biologic productivity for whatever conditions exist.
There was WAY less ice in the Arctic during the Holocene Thermal Optimum. Blubbering is all I’ve ever gotten in response to “how did Polar bears survive that?”
Good to know, ice isn’t part of polarbears diet.🐻❄️❄️😁
Maybe they got so fat because of the ice loss, just as many people get fat because of depression.
( ” Depressed polar bears protesting ice loss ” Attenborough would claim.)
But what I don’t understand: The thinner the Ice Flow the thinner the Polar Bears have to be to surf around on them.
The adaption went the wrong way in this case.
But, maybe the floating ice these days has some Hank Johnson anti-tipping -device built in to compensate for the thinner Ice and can now carry fatter polar bears..
They need to get off the Maccas. /s
“It is also possible that they are able to hunt seals more efficiently.“
Less sea ice means less ice for seals to haul out and have their pups. So, concentration of pups on remaining ice will be greater. The bears know this and have a feast. It’s the seals, not the bears that depend on the sea ice.
“So, concentration of pups on remaining ice will be greater. “
And less distance from land the bears have to travel.
And more smaller sea life for the baby seals to feed on.
Polar bears on Norwegian islands fatter and healthier despite ice loss
Scientists expected…
Indeed, I’m sure they did; and the Guardian can explain it. It’s global heating, duh.
Changes in polar bear DNA that could help the animals adapt to warmer climates have been detected by researchers, in a study thought to be the first time a statistically significant link has been found between rising temperatures and changing DNA in a wild mammal species. Guardian
Still, they’ve changed their tune considerably going by the new ‘scientific understanding’ that their survival is possible. Which is just as well given that the Arctic ice cap – as per the alarmists – melted 12 years ago. Credit: Gore Maslowski et al.
” … changing DNA … “
It’s called Evolution. Been going on for centuries. Aeons even.
I remember reading about something called, “Survival of the fittest” a long time ago.
Well, the alarmists have just discovered it? Either way they’re scratching round for any excuse.
Getting a down vote was kind of funny. Obviously over the target.
Darwin wouldn’t have agreed with what “Survival of the fittest” became. Nature primarily functions on symbiotic relationships.
Cellular biologists have discovered that cells are information processors that can read their environment and self select beneficial mutations to take advantage of conditions. Evolution isn’t considered to be driven primarily by random mutations anymore.
Aren’t polar bears simply North American bears that relocated, sharing a significant portion of DNA?
“DNA sequencing … Key milestones include Sanger sequencing (1977), the Human Genome Project (1990-2003), Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) in the mid-2000s, and 3rd-gen real-time sequencing, reducing costs from millions of dollars to hundreds per genome today.”
Plus
“Polar bears generally live for 15 to 30 years in the wild,”
Seems like DNA sequencing has not been around long enough to track animals adapting – unless someone’s been saving a statistically significant sample of old polar bear parts in the couch cushions.
Researchers who do not have an economic interest in pandering to the ‘consensus’ have been saying this for many decades now. The BBC has finally, belatedly, smelled the coffee and is preparing a retreat from the alarmist position. When Reform comes in as the next government being an alarmist publicly paid broadcaster will not be a good position to be in.
Polar bears fatter than expected, and also the missing persons list has tripled?
Climate Change Causing Obesity in Polar Bears will be the MSM headline, and then how obesity-related illnesses will soon follow, threatening polar bear populations.
What’s the difference between Mounjaro, Wegovy, and Ozempic?
Can Polar bears get on the programme to lose weight? /sarc
Breaking news
Polar Bears: Scientists Catch Up with Sceptics
It could be possibly due to the fact that with less ice, their prey is distributed over a smaller surface which makes hunting easier.
No, it’s Carbon dioxide – again.
Whoever said the climate 20, 50, 100 years ago was optimal? It seems a plausible conjecture that polar bears have been surviving a suboptimal, icy environment and now find themselves in a slightly more suitable one.
Optimal – these days – is not needing to put the heating on.
Does this mean that instead of calling them “Poley Bears”, their new name will be “Roly-Poley Bears”?
Poor polar bears. When Al Gore was born there were ten thousand of them, now there are only thirty thousand.
So, we have documentation and evidence of the bears gaining weight, does anybody have evidence of ice loss?
Polar Bears have been around for well over 100,000 years surviving numerous changes of climate during that time. They have long been known to take shellfish from the sea bed as well as gulls on the sea surface which they take from below and have never only been dependent on seal pups
Homewood missed this part of the article –
and this
while other
researchobservations found that the polar bears were bearing up quite well.ursus maritimus, of the sea, coastal, not ursus glacialis or somesuch.
It’s always been a lie. They are immensely adaptable opportunists. They don’t need the ice, they exploit it when it is there.
I’ve been reading of wild animal population dynamics for about 70 years. Here is the story of the first of those: “The population dynamics of Kaibab deer on the Kaibab Plateau experienced a dramatic increase from about 4,000 in 1906 to an estimated 100,000 by 1924, primarily due to predator control and reduced livestock grazing. However, this surge led to overpopulation, food depletion, and a significant decline in numbers, with estimates suggesting a drop to fewer than 10,000 by 1939.”
Hug a Polar Bear Day is coming in two weeks. Don’t miss it.
Interesting, thankyou.
I presume reindeer (caribou) have less fat than young seals.
Susan Crockford covers the Barents Sea in polarbearscience | Polar bear science – past and present, Svalbard is islands in it.
But walrus are blubbery.
Note BBC article assumes much loss of sea ice due rapid global warming, as does source report.
Yet there is still far more Arctic sea ice than for most of the last 10,000 years..
Evidence shows that during parts of the Holocene optimum, there was probably little or no summer sea ice..
Polar bears lived through that without a problem.
We’ve been enjoying over a foot of global warming for over a week, hasn’t been above freezing in that whole time.
I woke up this morning feeling good only to come face to face with this. These endless attacks on the great American Al gore need to stop, and now. How DARE you print this. It’s all lies.
Have they been eating climate activists? Asking for a friend.
The ‘researchers’ failed to mention that Arctic ice shows no sign of ‘disappearing’. Ice data (attached) show stable multiyear polar ice in the 16 years from 2008 to 2024. The polar bear will continue to do well, as it has already. ‘Researchers’ often do not appreciate the logistic function.
A RECOVERY from the extreme high of the late 1970s.
Still way above Holocene norms.
The polar Bears are not nearly as stupid as the Climate alarmists who depicted them as clueless victims.