Animals, Environment, International, Science, Society

Report: Polar Bear Numbers Decline By 40 Percent In Canada and Alaska

800px-Polar_Bear_-_AlaskaThe polar bear has become the symbol of the plight of animals in the face of global warming. A new report appears to reaffirm the plight of these incredible animals. A study in the Ecological Applications journal reports that the number of polar bears in eastern Alaska and western Canada has declined by 40%. Perhaps the most unnerving disclosure is that just two of 80 polar bear cubs that the international team tracked between 2003 and 2007 have survived.

The numbers are staggering. The bear population in the area shrank to about 900 in 2010, down from about 1,600 in 2004.

Polar bears serve as a tragic type of canary in a cage for climatologists charting the progress of global warming. The news is obviously not good for them or for us.

The bears rely on ice flows and seal populations to survive. The distance at which they are required to swim has now gotten longer and more painful according to scientists. In one case, a mother had to swim nine days and 426 miles — resulting in her loss of 22% of her body weight. Her cub died.

There was a bear stabilization between 2008-2010 due to unusual oceanographic conditions and other conditions. However, experts now predict that more than two-thirds of the world’s polar bear subpopulations could be extinct by 2050.

Source: LA Times

157 thoughts on “Report: Polar Bear Numbers Decline By 40 Percent In Canada and Alaska”

  2. Patriot (@musicman27103)
    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/10/28/weather-channel-co-founders-climate-denial-find/201344

    For years, Coleman has been connected to the Heartland Institute, which has been funded by fossil-fuel interests, and its promotion of climate change denial. Coleman was featured at a Heartland Institute climate conference in July of this year. Previously, he hosted four paid associates of Heartland to deny climate change on the San Diego station where he worked as weathercaster for 20 years (he has since retired). As Coleman told Kelly, the Heartland Institute has been promoting his letter urging UCLA’s Hammer Museum to “provide balance” to a debate it recently hosted on climate change. In the letter, Coleman wrote, “It is important to have those who attend know that there is no climate crisis.”

    Read above about the Heartland Institute’s tie to denialism funded by Koch.

  3. Paul C. Schulte
    Max-1 – you do know the difference between weather and climate? A drought is weather.
    = = =
    A snowstorm over Buffalo NewYork is weather, correct.
    Except this snowstorm is greater than normal.
    WHY?

  4. Paul C. Schulte
    Max-1 – you do know the difference between weather and climate? A drought is weather.
    = = =
    When that drought is spurred on by climatic changes?
    … That’s climate change, baby.

    1. Max-1 – so, if a drought is climate change, what caused the drought of 1300 AD?

  5. Jim22
    Hahahaha… who’s fooling whom, here?

    Wool pulled over your eye, and I’m not the one doing the pulling.
    … I’m trying to shed light where you refuse to let it in.

    Read about the citation Karen S brings us and how and more importantly WHO is driving it… THEN critically decide for yourself.

  6. Karen S
    You can “claim” to not be attached to either side, however the “evidence” you bring is tightly tied to the denier side, funded by two brothers who look to stand to make big money destroying the environment. Until you can divest yourself FROM these sources, everyone should suspect your agenda… The Koch brother ties to ALEC and Heartland Institute are well established by now and anyone paying attention could have told you that.

    1. Max-1 – you are tied to the side of a man (Michael Mann) who is guilty of academic fraud and data fudging. If you cannot separate yourself from his stands you cannot be taken seriously.

  8. From Sourcewatch
    http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Heartland_Institute

    Ties to the Koch Brothers

    The Heartland Institute is connected to the Koch brothers and their network of right-wing donors. In the past, the Institute has accepted $40,000 from the Claude R. Lambe Foundation and $62,578 from the Charles G. Koch Foundation. Both organizations are members of the Koch Family Foundations.[3]

    Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

    The Heartland Institute is a member of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) as of 2010-2011.[4] It is a member of ALEC’s Telecommunications and Information Technology Task Force,[5] Education Task Force,[6] Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force Financial Services Subcommittee[7] and Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force.[8] James Taylor, managing editor of the Heartland publication Environment & Climate News, spoke at the Energy, Environment and Agriculture Task Force meeting at the 2011 ALEC Annual Meeting.[8] Heartland was also an Exhibitor at ALEC’s 2011 Annual Meeting.[9]

    The Heartland Institute has also functioned as a publisher and promoter of ALEC’s model legislation.[10] At the Commerce, Insurance and Economic Development Task Force meeting of ALEC’s 2010 annual meeting, Alan Smith “The Hurricane Mitigation Promotion Act” and “A Resolution Concerning Tax Treatment of Affiliated Reinsurance.”[11] Marc Oestreich, who represents Heartland on the Education Task Force, has also sponsored model legislation. Oestreich sponsored the “Parent Trigger Act,” which he presented at the 2010 States and Nation Policy Summit,[12] and the “Taxpayers’ Savings Grants Act,” which he presented to the K–12 Education Reform Subcommittee during ALEC’s 38th Annual Meeting.[13]

    Heartland Partners With ALEC to Roll Back Renewable Energy Sources
    As a part of its 2013 agenda, ALEC partnered with the Heartland Institute to roll back the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), state-level legislation that requires utility companies to produce a certain amount of their total energy from renewable sources.[14]

    The Institute brought a model bill, dubbed the Electricity Freedom Act, to ALEC’s attention in May 2012. While ALEC publicly expressed its high hopes for the legislation, the bill had little success in state houses during the 2013 legislative session, failing to pass every legislature in which it was introduced.[15]

    Citations at above link.

  10. Karen S
    How about citing a non-profit think tank that isn’t funded by the Koch brothers?

    1. Max-1 – Karen will cite a non-Koch group when you cite a non-Soros group. Fair is fair.

  12. @KarenS

    I am ashamed of you! How in the world is Goldman Sachs and Wall Street going to make any money if they are not included in the solution through carbon credits??? Just cleaning up water doesn’t give them anything to swap, or trade, or make commissions on. Heck, you are even cutting into their efforts to control people’s drinking water! (like Bolivia???) Plus, stuff that Democrats and Republicans can agree on is going to make fund raising awfully darn hard!

    Tsk! Tsk!

    Squeeky Fromm
    Girl Reporter

  14. I can solve the whole problem of both sides quarreling about climate change.

    Let’s focus instead on cleaning up the universally recognized pollutants from the atmosphere. Aerosolized pollution is considered one of the causes of global warming, and it’s bad to breathe, so win-win. Then let’s try to rectify the revegetation of our planet, and monitor the health of the dominant phytoplankton and marine algae, which produce the bulk of our Oxygen. Let’s adjust our hardscape/landscape to allow water to soak into the ground and recharge underground aquifers instead of letting it run off. Combat the contamination of our water, such as mercury contamination that has rendered almost all the fish in the ocean unsafe for pregnant women to eat.

    If we put the same effort into those worthy goals that we pour into climate change, the Earth would be a far healthier place for man, flora, and fauna.

    Then we can debate for the next decade about climate change while breathing in all that healthy air, sipping pristine water.

    Win/Win.

  15. Do you think anybody really knows the number they quote? Another article said the population of polar bears is increasing. The climate changes, always has, always will. I think we do a great deal to preserve our way of life. We drive cars with less power, we recycle, a lot of people have less grass and more plants, we add solar. Our air is cleaner. And our rivers and streams are getting cleaner. In high population cities, probably a different story. We need to get people out of the big cities. A lot of people forced out of New Orleans didn’t come back. They liked their lives elsewhere. Professor, I have great respect for you, but no one knows what will happen. Look at the snow in Buffalo. Nature pulling a trick on us. I lived in CT for ten years, we never had snow in November. Earth governs itself. Done pretty well for a long time.

  16. Dr. Crockford, the polar bear expert and proprietor of the Polar Bear Science blog that I linked to yesterday (above) questioning this study, has published a follow up post about the study today.

    She believes the researchers designed the study the way that they did because they wanted to show a declining population at the U.N. climate conference next year. She supposes that’s why they only used data collected through 2010, even though they knew from another government source that the population continued to recover through 2012.

    Looks like more Gruber-esque manipulation by alleged “elites”.

    http://polarbearscience.com/2014/11/19/polar-bear-researchers-knew-s-beaufort-population-continued-to-increase-up-to-2012/

  19. Karen, Thanks for the report.

    My guess is you will never convince a Max-1 or a Lloyd Blankfien – bankster of anything. They have their religion and they must put forth a narrative of fuzzy animals dying to show that they are good guys and anyone who disagrees with them are the bad guys. It’s the same with arguing with Annie over health insurance. If you don’t believe like she does that we should steal property from one person and give it to another than you hate old and poor people and want them to die. Again, it is why I believe we will always ultimately lose these battles. I’m lately trying to view the world as a game. It is their rules for now until the reset button gets pushed and all hell breaks loose and sanity and self reliance come back. The goal for now though is to figure out how to play their game and win within it because it doesn’t matter if an “R” or a “D” is on the top, the cog will keep moving slowly in the only direction it is designed to go. I hope I’m young enough to see and live through the reset since the other side will be so much more positive than where we are today.

  20. You know what’s so liberating about not being tethered to either side in this contentious debate is that no evidence from either side could possibly threaten me.

    The one thing everyone agrees on about CO2 is that, at some point, too much of it is detrimental to mammalian life. And yet, we keep on with deforestation/devegation of our oxygen factories.

Comments are closed.