Will Global Warming Drive Polar Bears Toward Extinction? (chicagotribune.com) 104
An anonymous reader quotes the New York Times:
Polar bears could become nearly extinct by the end of the century as a result of shrinking sea ice in the Arctic if global warming continues unabated, scientists said Monday.
Nearly all of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, from the Beaufort Sea off Alaska to the Siberian Arctic, would face being wiped out because the loss of sea ice would force the animals onto land and away from their food supplies for longer periods, the researchers said. Prolonged fasting, and reduced nursing of cubs by mothers, would lead to rapid declines in reproduction and survival.
"There is very little chance that polar bears would persist anywhere in the world, except perhaps in the very high Arctic in one small subpopulation" if greenhouse-gas emissions continue at so-called business-as-usual levels, said Peter K. Molnar, a researcher at the University of Toronto Scarborough and lead author of the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Even if emissions were reduced to more moderate levels, "we still are unfortunately going to lose some, especially some of the southernmost populations, to sea-ice loss," Molnar said....
Arctic sea ice grows in the winter and melts and retreats in spring and summer. As the region has warmed rapidly in recent decades, ice extent in summer has declined by about 13% per decade compared to the 1981-2010 average. Some parts of the Arctic that previously had ice year-round now have ice-free periods in summer. Other parts are now free of ice for a longer portion of the year than in the past....
Even under more modest warming projections, in which emissions peak by 2040 and then begin to decline, many of the subgroups would still be wiped out, the research showed.
Nearly all of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, from the Beaufort Sea off Alaska to the Siberian Arctic, would face being wiped out because the loss of sea ice would force the animals onto land and away from their food supplies for longer periods, the researchers said. Prolonged fasting, and reduced nursing of cubs by mothers, would lead to rapid declines in reproduction and survival.
"There is very little chance that polar bears would persist anywhere in the world, except perhaps in the very high Arctic in one small subpopulation" if greenhouse-gas emissions continue at so-called business-as-usual levels, said Peter K. Molnar, a researcher at the University of Toronto Scarborough and lead author of the study, which was published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. Even if emissions were reduced to more moderate levels, "we still are unfortunately going to lose some, especially some of the southernmost populations, to sea-ice loss," Molnar said....
Arctic sea ice grows in the winter and melts and retreats in spring and summer. As the region has warmed rapidly in recent decades, ice extent in summer has declined by about 13% per decade compared to the 1981-2010 average. Some parts of the Arctic that previously had ice year-round now have ice-free periods in summer. Other parts are now free of ice for a longer portion of the year than in the past....
Even under more modest warming projections, in which emissions peak by 2040 and then begin to decline, many of the subgroups would still be wiped out, the research showed.
The quickie answer (Score:1, Troll)
Yes
Re:The quickie answer (Score:4, Informative)
There's substantial evidence polar bear populations have been going up despite climate-change.
There is substantial evidence that polar bears number increased due to the hunting bans of grown-up animals instituted in the 70s and the 80s, and substantial evidence that the populations are at risk because of factors like the observed decrease in the survival rates of the cubs, brought about by ... yes, global warming.
Here, educate yourself:
snapshot + trends:
http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/statu... [npolar.no]
some analysis:
https://www.canadiangeographic... [canadiangeographic.ca]
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What retracted papers? You don't cite them because there weren't any.
These [nature.com] studies [sciencemag.org] are very much non-retracted, and demonstrate clearly why polar bear populations are impacted so much by climate change.
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Conservation efforts that started in the 70's made a huge difference to the polar bear population, and without them, they would likely be already extinct. I do not deny that there are roughly 5 times as many polar bears today as there were in, say, 1950.
However, the rate at which the population has been declining for the past few of decades is still slightly faster than the rate at which conservation efforts have saved them. You get fluctuations year after year, with some years having a significant i
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A more informed and scientifically skeptical answer would actually be "probably", not "no".
Polar bear populations have fluctuated year after year, and it's true that the last couple of years have actually seen an increase, but if you look at the overall trend of the population over decades, it's clear that the population is on a downhill slope, as every population increase that might be seen over any range of years was still eventually followed by a greater decline.
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citation?
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Ask the researcher(Susan Crockford) from UBC - Victoria that was fired from her job for refusing to retract her paper. This is despite the consensus saying 'Yes, the methodology is correct. And polar bears are not dropping dead. And they're thriving even more then we expected from a warming actic environment.'
The environmentalist movement, even the federal government(Trudeau) has gone after researchers that show "evidence to the contrary." It's funny though, remember just a few years ago about the "scien
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Federal and provincial funding is a conflict of interest? Well shit you should let her know that. Since in BC grant funding is public record. I'm also sure that letting go one of your key researchers of over 15 years, suddenly, and only a short time after their research was released was the cause. Yep, I'm absolutely sure of that.
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We've always been very good at extinguishing species from the planet, and with this global warming we can do it so much better and faster! Humanity First!
Anti-Betteridge are we? (Score:2)
Re: Could (Score:2, Troll)
Not only that but hunters kill far more black bears than white ones. In many jurisdictions it is legally permissible to kill innocent black bears, yet killing white bears is illegal everywhere. This is a blatant example of systemic racism.
Exceptionally answering "yes" (Score:1)
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I think it's possible, but it's also possible that the polar bear populations could become fragmented and it's possible that they can interbreed with other bears if the habitats changes. But that means that they will go the way of the Neanderthals - some of the genes are preserved in modern humans.
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Good news! The answer is actually "No".
The polar bear population [fee.org] is five times what it was in the 1950s. Three or four times what it was in the 1970s, and after stabilizing at a sustainable level, still increasing since the 1980s.
So polar bears have been fine, even increasing, for decades, and there is no reason to believe that's going to change anytime soon.
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Because what happened in the 1950s through 1980s is certain to continue to happen?
The reasons why this is not going to continue were clearly stated but you ignored it.
Rather like citing ice pack increases that occurred decades ago as proof that ice packs will continue to increase.
Nah, we as humans will save them (Score:4, Funny)
We will move them to the south pole (the antartic) where they will hunt penguins and marine mammals, then we will hunt them to control their populations (like we already do with cangaroos and other animals) so that penguins and sea mammals do not become extinct, and comerzialize the meat popularizing the "polar bear rib" just as much as pork ribs and chicken wings.
Win-win-win
PS: In case anyone did not notcie: Sarcasm.
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There's an even more compelling reason why polar bears hunt seals instead of penguins. It's a matter of geography, mostly.
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The reason polar bears don't eat penguins is the exact same reason they don't eat elephants.
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This ain't no Panda Bear, ya know...
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According to the research, polar bears split into it's own group between 50k and 180k years ago. If you think their diet is specialized you're wrong, they'll eat anything just like all bears(moose, deer, eggs, various berries/greens, etc). They just have a preference for seal. If they ever open Polar Bear Park again here in Ontario, you can even watch them cooperatively hunt deer and moose.
Here's the kicker, 200k-90k years ago we were still in a glaciation period with a lot of low-laying ocean. What's t
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WOOSH
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I presume the answer is yes, but I don't want to try it.
Not by Itself (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Not by Itself (Score:5, Insightful)
You're factoring in only absolute temperature and not rate of change. It's easy to adapt to very slow change. Much harder when it's a thousand times faster.
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This study [sciencemag.org] explains why that's unlikely.
Nobody claimed polar bears would be extinct by now. Even TFA only says they could become nearly extinct by 2100. Your "alarmist" claims are an obvious straw man.
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You're factoring in only absolute temperature and not rate of change.
While that's a good point I understood that at least some of the temperature changes in the past were about as fast as we could measure. Certainly looking the wikipedia plot [wikipedia.org] it looks that way. Of course, that may not be saying much since it depends on the resolution with which we can measure temperature that long ago so what looks like a point on that graph may well be several millennia.
However, being animals I would suspect that polar bears can adapt pretty quickly even if the human-caused temperature
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He seems to be confusing the odd outlier year here and there for prolonged long term change.
Interesting. For that to be true there would need to be a dataset that contained the average global temperature for each year going back hundreds of thousands of years. I'm certainly not aware of anything that detailed so your supposition is wrong but, frankly, unless you happen to know of such a dataset I'm amazed that you could possibly think it might be right. The only thing we can do that far into the past is to is measure the climate not the weather and there are spikes in the global average temperatu [wikipedia.org]
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the planet's temperature has spiked at 2-3C above present-day levels
No it hasn't. It has gradually moved to those levels. The only time the planet has ever seen a "spike" in temperature in the very long geological record has been in the past century.
Only one thing left to do (Score:2)
... to book a cruise to the Arctic and make a selfie with a polar bear.
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Use a very durable camera....
Same old, Same old (Score:5, Informative)
"Polar bears are dying because of global warming" was a central theme of environmentalist catastrophist movement about two decades ago, when historic image of a hungry, dying polar bear went viral.
Reality, as is usual for this movement is polar opposite (pun intended). Polar bears have never done better since the treaty protecting them was signed in 1970s. Their population is thriving, and they're so numerous today that they're causing significant new problems to various human settlements in Arctic as they are expanding their territory.
Funnily enough, when this fact was raised by a scientist a few years ago in Canada, she got fired for stating this scientific fact. Because it ran against one of the most successful viral narratives in environmentalist history. This in spite of the problem is growing so big, that in recent years Inuits and Chukchi peoples among several other northern natives have been trying to get their countries' leadership to increase their quotas for being able to kill polar bears to prevent increasing attacks on their settlements.
Unfortunately environmentalist narrative takes precedence over objective reality, and they've been largely unsuccessful.
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I was going to say something along these lines, having read some of the literature and coming to the same conclusion. Either that literature is incorrect and there really are fewer bears than there were a few decades back - which raises the question why people still get permission to shoot around 900 of them every year - or this is yet another example of a fact-free rally cry for action by those who will use anything and everything to create an atmosphere of fear, doubt and anxiety centred on the actions o
Re:Same old, Same old (Score:5, Interesting)
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Do you even read your own Commie propaganda? That report says nothing about the total bear population, but instead splits it up into "subgroups", and is very concerned not because the overall bear population is in decline, but a 'rising number of subgroups is in decline'. It's typical abuse of statistics to get the desired outcome, and it worked on you very well.
Re: Same old, Same old (Score:3)
Except the evidence days you're wrong.
It is more important to believe what you see is true than to see only what you believe is true.
I have very little time, and less sympathy, for those who deny evidence counter to their beliefs. That goes for all sides, *I* have the integrity to not distinguish. I recommend you do likewise.
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That'll be you then. Seriously, you believe what you like in the face of evidence.
https://fee.org/articles/the-m... [fee.org]
5 times what it was in the 50s - or do you think climate change hasn't happened?
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https://polarbearscience.com/2... [polarbearscience.com] indicates that there are at least 26000 polar bears now, a significant increase since the 1970s. Also, if you notice and read a little on their site, there is a large amount of concern with with polar bear / human contract troubles. This wouldn't be happening in a place like the arctic which has a LOW human density already if the numbers were DECREASING.
The IUCN keeps Polar Bears listed as "vulnerable" based upon computer models, not based on actual reality. This is why the
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>I have very little time, and less sympathy, for those who deny evidence counter to their beliefs.
If this was true, you'd have a suicidal attitude, as this is exactly how you arrived at these claims - by denying evidence. Same is true for environmentalists who arrive at the same conclusions, which is why you will not find total number of bears and "modelling which we used to reach the conclusions" at the same time. Because they are in an irreconcilable conflict with one another. You can find the evidence
Re:Same old, Same old (Score:5, Insightful)
This tells us that conservation works. It says nothing about how ice loss will affect them.
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This tells us that you don't seem to realise that loss of ice has been ongoing for decades, and therefore effect has already manifested.
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"It's been several seconds since he jumped off the skyscraper and so far he's perfectly fine!"
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Are you a global warming denialist who denies that loss of ice has been ongoing for several decades now?
Or just so stupid that you don't realise that it's been ongoing for that long?
Or just desperate for the narrative you are in love with to be true regardless of facts?
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Do you have any facts about how the loss of sea ice will affect polar bears? Your claim that it hasn't effected them yet and so it won't affect them in the future, just isn't very satisfying.
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Yes. Objective reality of today, several decades after massive loss of sea ice was observed as ongoing.
What facts do you have to support the opposite, other than the infamous model made about two decades ago that is in utterly irreconcilable conflict with reality of today?
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First, I never claimed the opposite. Second, I would be interested to see the scientific article you're referring to.
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You are free to do relevant google search, or simply click the links found in this thread by people who unlike you were actually interested in the subject.
Instead of saying how interested they are, and then demonstrating their utter lack of interest in anything other than confirming their biases.
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Easy fix (Score:5, Funny)
Transform them into Cartesian bears.
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I don't know if I should congratulate you or be annoyed at you for inducing what might be the worst spit take I've ever experienced.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have several tablespoons of orange juice I need to clean up.
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Uh, careful there, if PETA hears that...
That's NOT the natural habitat of the Cartesian Bear!
It already is (Score:2)
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"already suffering", maybe we should take a knee for them.
Or perhaps, look at the data instead! Stupid idea I know, it might... reveal that they're not, and nobody wants to hear that, not when there's an ignorant bit of social justice to exploit.
https://fee.org/articles/the-m... [fee.org]
Some yes (Score:3)
Bears are smart and adaptable and whilst some will unfortunately die others will change their behaviour and diet. Polar bears are descended from brown bears and are so genetically similar that they can produce viable offspring with them, which arguably makes them the same species, different colour which means they could probably survive on the same diet as brown bears too.
Re: Some yes (Score:3)
Only works for slow rates of change. We're talking change a thousand times faster than will occur in nature outside of an asteroid strike.
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Only works for slow rates of change.
How many millennia did the garbage dump in Churchill, Manitoba exist before polar bears learned to exploit it?
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How many millennia did the garbage dump in Churchill, Manitoba exist before polar bears learned to exploit it?
Well done. Wish I had mod points today.
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others will change their behaviour and diet.
Yeah of course, I mean everyone always forgets that the polar region is such a thriving ecological system. I too didn't realise that the polar region is rich in berries and small mammals until you just mentioned it. Of course, why don't they just eat the things their brown bear cousins do.... /sarcasm.
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Some people who claim to believe in Science always assume...for some bizarre reason...that systems are static, that resources are static, that variables are constants. You see this a lot with "environmental science" supporters. They set these silly parameters in their computer models and then go into hysterics with their projected "outcomes". What can I say, politicians LOVE them and make sure they get paid.
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they'll migrate south and do exactly that. they can interbreed with brown bears too. a polar bear is just a variant of brown bear.
Re: Some yes (Score:1)
The only known hybrid I'm aware of is with grizzly bears. Makes sense brown (or black or other local) bears will work. Not easy though!
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
polar bear is just a kind of brown bear.
Re: EditorDavid strikes again on a Slow Weekend (Score:3)
Polar bears are not fine and will soon be extinct.
Several species of bee are extinct and the rest are in steep decline.
That's the real world. Cynics might try living in it. Us skeptics have to.
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> Polar bears are not fine and soon will be extinct.
No. https://torontosun.com/news/na... [torontosun.com]
> Several species of bee are extinct and the rest are in steep decline.
Not from climate change. https://www.sierraclub.org/sie... [sierraclub.org]
> That's the real world. Cynics might try living in it. Us skeptics have to.
You're not a skeptic, and there is no "us". Those of "us" who read the science understand it's not about blaming everything on climate change. You're no skeptic, and your idea of climate change is not the re
Re: They seem to be doing badly (Score:3, Informative)
Except the report is old and has largely been debunked.
If you're going to offer evidence, offer something credible.
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Perhaps you'd like to put up a link about this supposed debunking?
Another perspective from a Polar Bear expert (Score:3, Informative)
https://polarbearscience.com/2... [polarbearscience.com]
Perhaps in the future, the NYTimes [nytimes.com] writer should talk with her first. Unlike many alleged experts, Susan Crockford has years of experience in the field and many contacts among the Aleut community, who report that polar bears are actually doing just fine. But why let facts get in the way of a good Narrative?
Polar bears are not the fragile creatures depicted in the media. They are robust and highly adaptable, and will feed on whatever is available, exactly like brown bears, to which they are closely related, and with which they frequently interbreed. Every bit of ice could melt and they would still thrive.
But this isn't going to happen on any time soon, or on any time scale humans can appreciate. This little warm blip notwithstanding, the temperature continues to trend downward, as it has for the last 6000 years, indicating that the Holocene Interglacial is winding down, with glacial conditions, the norm for the last 2.5 million years, almost certain to resume some centuries hence.
But then you'll have your wish: Lots of ice and happy polar bears. Humans, not so much.
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This little warm blip notwithstanding, the temperature continues to trend downward, as it has for the last 6000 years, indicating that the Holocene Interglacial is winding down, with glacial conditions, the norm for the last 2.5 million years, almost certain to resume some centuries hence.
This junk is now at 4, Informative. On Slashdot.
The trolls have won.
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and will feed on whatever is available, exactly like brown bears
Indeed. Fortunately it's 2020 now so the fact that polar bears natural habitat does not remotely include the flora and fauna of the brown bear's natural habitat isn't even a problem anymore. They can just order Uber Eats like a normal mammal, bonus points if they are extra hungry they can eat the driver and sell the car for some drinking money.
To be clear, if I posted something as ignorant as you just did, I too would post anonymously.
Do Empirical Facts Matter ? (Score:4, Informative)
Data from conservation groups and the government show that the polar bear population is roughly five times what it was in the 1950s and three or four times what it was in the 1970s when polar bears became protected under international treaty.
Population
1950 - 5000
1970 - 10000
1984 - 25000
2005 - 25000
2020 - 31000
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I like how you just jumped to the max number for 2020. No the WWF puts the number between 20-31000. They also acknowledge that 2 sub species are doing well, while 4 are in decline. Surprisingly those that are in decline are the ones in areas where ice is melting.
The conservation groups all agree that the recovery since the treaty will be undone by global warming as the ice caps melt, not may, WILL.
They're just the harbingers (Score:2)
won't go extinct - endless supply (Score:2)
polar bears are just a variation on brown bears that diverged from them about 600,000 years ago. They can interbreed. If the world gets warm and the white bears disappear, they can reappear from brown bears when the world gets cold again.
Is it really extinction...? (Score:2)
Is it really extinction if a subspecies disappears? ... normal brown or grizzly bears.
The polar bear evolved into a niche, when the niche vanishes it'll just end up being
Not that they're actually going extinct anyway, that's an outright lie the environmental movement has been pushing for what 20? 30? years?
Possibly, But Likely the Opposite. (Score:1)