Polar Bears Thrive Regardless of Sea Ice Loss In keeping with Scientific Literature – Watts Up With That?
From polar bear science
Posted on February 19, 2021 | Comments Offon Fact: According to scientific literature, polar bears thrive despite sea ice loss
Is Facebook now an expert on polar bear protection status? Apparently they have the final say on online content. A plan is underway to label “disinformation” anything that says polar bears will not be harmed by the recent decline in sea ice – but on whose authority? Thanks to Josh for the cartoon below.
A new section of the Climate Science Information Center, launched alongside the labeling attempt, debunks common myths such as the false claim that polar bear populations do not suffer from global warming or the popular belief that excessive carbon emissions benefit plant life. Facebook works with experts in climate communication from all over the world, including the University of Cambridge to produce the content.
Ah, you are consulting “climate communication experts”! These experts certainly need to be informed of the latest publications and not trust the word of obviously biased conservation organizations like WWF or PBI, whose real reason for existence is to raise as much money as possible for donations.
The peer-reviewed literature supports the claim that despite the recent ice retreat – particularly in the Chukchi and Barents Seas – polar bears are currently thriving, regardless of what predictions from computer models speak of future developments. This is a fact, not a “myth”. You can find most of the citations (Crockford 2017, 2019) and others in my 2017 article and my 2019 book in the reference list below. Try them out for yourself before you believe Facebook. Ask me for any paper you would like to see via the contact form and I will send it to you. Also, look for my report on the Polar Bear 2020 condition next week.
The polar bear has two characteristics that set it apart as a flowering species: it is as widespread in the Arctic as it was hundreds of years ago, and none of the 19 official subpopulations has seen any sustained, statistically significant decline in numbers. The modest declines documented in Abundance in western and southern Hudson Bay in 2016 were not statistically significant and have almost certainly reversed since then.
That’s because the past four years have been particularly good for Hudson Bay bears: in 2020, most western Hudson Bay bears walked on the newly formed ice as early as the fall, as they did in the 1980s – for the fourth time in a row – and the break-up of sea ice in spring was, as in the 1980s, the second year in a row. The bears in south Hudson Bay had practically identical conditions. The number of bear problems in Churchill, Manitoba, which identifies itself as “the polar bear capital of the world,” was the lowest in years.
Bears that came ashore in mid-to-late August and left in November would have spent only three months on land – about a month less than most bears in the 1980s and two months less than bears in the early 2000s (Castro de la ) Guardia et al. 2017). At least the past four years have been very similar – so it’s no wonder none of this information was made available in the peer-reviewed literature.
It’s not just these Canadian bears that are thriving: virtually all polar bears in the Arctic have been in excellent condition over the past few years. Photos of fat bears are the “new normal”. They had an abundance of seal pups to eat in the spring, in large part due to increased primary productivity. According to NOAA scientists, summer plankton growth in the Arctic has increased since 2002 due to longer ice-free periods, particularly in the Russian Arctic, Barents Sea, and Hudson Bay. Due to the particularly low ice content in 2020, plankton blooms reached record heights in August (see photo below). More plankton benefits the entire Arctic food chain: More fish means thicker seal pups and well-fed polar bears. This explains to a large extent why polar bears do so well in areas like the Chukchi and Barents Seas, which have seen profound summer sea ice losses in recent years.
However, none of these recent facts were considered for the 2020 computer model, which predicted extinction of the species by 2100 and minimal survival for cubs for bears in southern Hudson Bay before 2030. The main assumption of this pessimistic model was that historical data came from the west Hudson Bay polar bears could be used as a proxy to predict how all other bear populations in the Arctic would react to various predicted declines in summer ice cover. Unfortunately, the model also depended on the scientifically discredited and implausible “Worst Case” (RCP8.5) climate scenario in order to arrive at its dystopian vision of future sea ice conditions.
As a result, this new prediction of polar bear extinction is even less serious than the 2007 polar bear prediction specialists developed. We now know that polar bears have generally benefited from much less summer sea ice than they did in the 1980s, and instead of falling continuously, sea ice levels have been fairly stable in September since 2007 (see graph below from US NSIDC).
Unfortunately, the facts indicating that polar bears thrive in the Arctic are routinely brushed aside in favor of a threatening prophetic narrative as it supports the “emergency climate change” rhetoric. “Trust Science” is meaningless when model results based on erroneous assumptions are taken as evidence and when scientists have blatant prejudice, as the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group does, when they ignore a massive increase in population that is not statistically significant was as they did for Barents Sea bears but taking the new number when it is not statistically significant but showing a slight decrease as for Western Hudson Bay.
That’s why I do what I do – someone has to keep the public up to date on current literature and local developments that don’t match the climate emergency narrative, and invoke false statements from polar bear specialists with an agenda. There is currently no climate emergency for polar bears, although computer models suggest that it could happen in decades.
REFERENCES
Aars, J. 2018. Polar bear population changes: protected, but quickly lost to habitat. Fram Forum Newsletter 2018. Fram Center, Tromsø. Download PDF here (32 mb).
Atwood, TC, Bromaghin, JF, Patil, VP, Durner, GM, Douglas, DC and Simac, KS, 2020. Analyzes of subpopulation frequency and annual number of dams for the US Polar Bear Fish and Wildlife Service (Ursus maritimus) in the southern Beaufort Sea, Alaska: US Geological Survey Open-File Report 2020-1087. https://doi.org/10.3133/ofr20201087. pdf here.
L. Castro de la Guardia, PG Myers, AE Derocher, NJ Lunn, Terwisscha van Scheltinga, AD 2017. Sea ice cycle in western Hudson Bay, Canada, from a polar bear’s perspective. Marine Ecology Progress Series 564: 225-233. http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v564/p225-233/
Coupel, P., Michel, C. and Devred, E. 2019. Case Study: The Ocean in Bloom. In the Arctic Sea of Canada, A. Niemi, S. Ferguson, K. Hedges, H. Melling, C. Michel et al. 2019. Canadian Technical Report Fisheries and Water Sciences 3344.
Crawford, JA, Quakenbush, LT and Citta, JJ 2015. A comparison of the diet, condition, and productivity of ringed and bearded seals between historical (1975–1984) and recent (2003–2012) periods in the Bering and Chukchi Seas of Alaska. Advances in Oceanography 136: 133-150.
Crockford, SJ 2017. Testing the hypothesis that routine sea ice cover of 3-5 mkm2 leads to a decrease in the population size of polar bears (Ursus maritimus) by more than 30%. PeerJ Preprints January 19, 2017. Doi: 10.7287 / peerj.preprints.2737v1 Open Access. https://peerj.com/preprints/2737/
Crockford, SJ 2019. The polar bear disaster that never happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and e-book formats. Crockford, SJ 2020. Polar Bear Condition Report 2019. Global Warming Policy Foundation Report 39, London. pdf here.
Dyck, M., Regehr, EV and Ware, JV 2020. Assessment of the frequency of the polar bear subpopulation in the Gulf of Boothia using genetic marrow recapture. Final report, Government of Nunavut, Ministry of Environment, Iglulik. June 12, 2020. Pdf here.
Frey, KE, Comiso, JC, Cooper, LW, Grebmeier, JM and Stock, LV 2020. Primary productivity of the Arctic Ocean: The response of marine algae to global warming and the decline in sea ice. Report on the Arctic 2020. NOAA. DOI: 10.25923 / vtdn-2198 https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2020/ArtMID/7975/ArticleID/900/Arctic-Ocean-Primary-Productivity-The-Response-of-Marine -Algae-to-climate-warming-and-sea-ice-decline
George, JC, Moore, SE and Thewissen, JGM 2020. Bowhead Whales: Current Insights into their Biology, Status and Resilience. 2020 Arctic Report, NOAA. DOI: 10.25923 / cppm-n265 https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2020/ArtMID/7975/ArticleID/905/Bowhead-Whales-Recent-Insights-into-Their-Biology-Status -and-resilience
Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., Andersen, M., Polder, A., Lyche, JL, Bytingsvik, J., Jenssen, BM, Derocher, AE, Welker, JM and Routti, H. 2019. Temporal trends of persistent organic pollutants in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to changes in eating habits and body condition. Environmental Science and Technology 53 (2): 984- 995.
Lowry, L. 1985. “Pacific Walrus – Boom or Bust?” Alaska Fish & Game Magazine July / August: 2-5. pdf here.
MacCracken, JG, Beatty, WS, Garlich-Miller, JL, Kissling, ML and Snyder, JA 2017. Final Species Status Assessment for the Pacific Walrus (Odobenus rosmarus divergens), May 2017 (Version 1.0). US Fish & Wildlife Service, Anchorage, AK. PDF here (8.6 mb).
Perovich, D., Meier, W., Tschudi, M., Hendricks, S., Petty, AA, Divine, D., Farrell, S., Gerland, S., Haas, C., Kaleschke, L., Pavlova O., Ricker, R., Tian-Kunze, X., Webster, M. and Wood, K. 2020. Sea ice. 2020 Arctic Report, NOAA. https://arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2020/ArtMID/7975/ArticleID/891/Sea-Ice PDF of the entire Arctic Report Card here (12 MB).
Regehr, EV, Hostetter, NJ, Wilson, RR, Rode, KD, St. Martin, M., Converse, SJ 2018. The integrated population modeling provides the first empirical estimates of the vital rates and the frequency of polar bears in the Chukchi Sea. Scientific reports 8 (1) DOI: 10.1038 / s41598-018-34824-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-34824-7
Rode, KD, Regehr, EV, Douglas, D., Durner, G., Derocher, AE, Thiemann, GW and Budge, S. 2014. Variation in a top arctic predator’s response to habitat loss: feeding and reproductive ecology of two polar bear populations. Global Change Biology 20 (1):76-88. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12339/abstract
Rode, KD, RR Wilson, DC Douglas, V. Mühlenbruch, TC Atwood, EV Regehr, ES Richardson, NW Pilfold, AE Derocher, GM Durner, I. Stirling, SC Amstrup, MS Martin, AM Pagano and K. Simac. 2018. The fasting behavior in spring in a predator with a marine tip provides an index for the productivity of the ecosystem. Global Change Biology http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13933/full
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