The simple fact is that if polar bear experts had been right about the threat to polar bears from the loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic, there would be no polar bears in Churchill this fall. No bears for tourists to photograph, none for biologists to study, and certainly none for the BBC to film for an upcoming three-part TV special called “Arctic Live.”
The low-ice future that biologists said would doom polar bears to extinction by 2050 has already happened in 8 out of the last 10 years. The sea ice future has been realized.
Polar bears have experienced those supposedly deadly low-ice summers for almost a decade but the global population did not drop by 2/3 as predicted and not a single one of the ten subpopulations predicted to be extirpated under those conditions has been wiped out.
How much more wrong can you be than that? Will the BBC mention this conundrum in their show? Will the polar bear experts they consult share this fact with viewers? We’ll all have to watch and see
We’ve already had the sea ice future
“Dominant outcomes of the BN model were for extinction [extirpation] of polar bear populations in the Seasonal Ice and Polar Basin Divergent Ecoregions by 45 years from present [2050]… Our modeling suggests that realization of the sea ice future which is currently projected, would mean loss of ≈ 2/3 of the world’s current polar bear population by mid-century.” (Amstrup et al. 2007:1-2) [my bold]
Assuming low summer sea ice like we’ve had for 8 out of the last 10 years, total eradication of Western Hudson Bay polar bears – as well as extirpation of bears in nine other subpopulations – is what USGS polar bear researchers predicted when they filed their reports in 2007 to support listing polar bears as ‘threatened’ under the US Endangered Species Act (Amstrup et al. 2007; Durner et al. 2007). Eradication of those ten subpopulations (plus declines in others), the experts said, would cause the global population to decline by 67%.
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AND THE REALITY?
Yet, almost a decade of polar-bear-destroying sea ice levels did virtually none of the damage predicted to occur – fat polar bears still come ashore in Western Hudson Bay and migrate through Churchill waiting for ice to form, and not a single subpopulation (let alone ten) has been wiped out (Wiig et al. 2015).
Global polar bear numbers have not declined at all, let alone a decline of 67% – in fact, the latest estimate of 22,000-31,000 polar bears worldwide (IUCN Red List, 2015) is the highest it’s ever been.
Churchill bears in fine shape this year
As I pointed out more than three months ago, the word from bear guides north of Churchill in late July 2016 was this:
“Bear numbers are up spectacularly this year and all are looking very fat and healthy, perhaps much to the chagrin of climate change “experts.”
And the first report from the Churchill Polar Bear Alert program (week of July 11-17, 2016) had this to say:
“Bears are off the sea ice and on land. They are looking well fed and in great shape.”
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Read it all here polarbearscience.com/2016/11/0…
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And some of you wonder why I am a climate skeptic*?
* - that is to say, IF you had the guts to admit that skepticism is valid, and NOT be shrieking 'DENIER! CO2! DENIER! CO2!'?
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The weekend is here! *cheers*
