Gore stranded polar bear lie exposed by Aussie TV

[J.B. Stone]

B....B...But, they're so LOVABLE....!!!

[styky]

Polar bears in western Arctic going hungry: Study


By Ed Struzik, Edmonton JournalJanuary 5, 2009
EDMONTON — Polar bears in the western Arctic are finding it increasingly difficult to find food during the critical spring period, a recent study suggests.

Seth Cherry, a PhD candidate working with University of Alberta scientist Andrew Derocher, came to the conclusion after comparing blood samples taken from polar bears in 1985-86 and comparing them to samples taken two decades later when sea ice cover was near or at record lows.

By measuring the ratio of urea to creatinine — waste materials found in bears that are byproducts of metabolism — scientists can tell whether an animal is fasting.

Mature males will often fast in the spring when they are spending almost all their energy searching for females. So it was not surprising to find that some of these animals were not eating for considerable periods of time.

The blood samples, however, showed a sharp increase 20 years later in the number of bears that were fasting.

What's more, they were doing it for longer periods of time. It didn't matter how old the bear was or whether it was male or female — nearly a third of the bears sampled were going without food longer than they normally would.

The study was done by University of Alberta and Environment Canada scientists.

Sea ice in the Arctic has been thinning. Records for low ice cover were set in 2005 — and again in 2007, when the Northwest Passage was ice-free for the first time in recorded human history.

In the Beaufort Sea, the spring meltdown in the Arctic began an average 13 days earlier between 2000 and 2005 than it did throughout the 1980s.

Canadian Wildlife Service scientist Ian Stirling was the one who collected the blood samples back in 1985-86. He and other scientists have suggested that this early thaw and rapid meltdown in the Arctic will make polar bears, narwhal and hooded seals particularly vulnerable because their life cycles are so closely tied to the ice. Without ice as a platform to hunt seals, polar bears are deprived of ringed seals, the mainstay of their diet.

Ringed seals could also be vulnerable because they need stable ice cover to nurse their pups in spring.

In itself, the study is not a firm sign that the polar bears in the Beaufort are suffering the same fate as those in western Hudson Bay, where the link between population decline, the increasingly poor physical condition of bears and melting sea ice is much more clear.

But Cherry believes there is reason to be concerned that bears in the western Arctic are heading in the same direction.

"The large-scale changes to Arctic marine ecosystems that have occurred since the beginning of this study appear to be affecting the hunting success of polar bears in the Beaufort Sea," he said. "The nutritional stress we are currently observing could be a precursor to future population declines if sea-ice conditions remain the same or worsen."

Anecdotal evidence suggests Cherry is right.

As the ice has been thinning in the western Arctic, polar bears have been drowning, observations of cannibalism have been increasing and bears in Alaska that used to have dens on the ice are now shifting to dens on land. The sighting of nine polar bears swimming 20 to 100 kilometres offshore in the Chukchi Sea last August seemed to add an exclamation point to the prospect that the polar bears in the Beaufort are in trouble.

If so, then a report issued by the U.S. Geological Survey a little more than a year ago is right on target.

A blue-ribbon panel of experts under contract with the survey predicted that two-thirds of the world's polar bears — including all of those in Alaska and most of Canada's western Arctic — will be gone by 2050. The only ones remaining, the panel warned, will be those animals inhabiting the High Arctic regions of Canada and western Greenland.

Cherry said this study, which was recently published in the journal Polar Biology, highlights the importance of conducting long-term research.

"Having blood samples from 20 years ago has provided us with valuable insights on how long-term changes in environmental conditions have affected the ability of polar bears to find and/or capture prey. I am extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to collaborate with researchers that have spent several decades collecting information on the ecology of polar bears so that long-term research questions such as this can be addressed."

<a href=http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/Polar+bears+western+Arctic+going+hungry+Study/1144756/story.html>source</a>

[styky]

Canada dragging heels on polar bear issue


By Ed Struzik, Edmonton JournalFebruary 24, 2009 1:02 PM
When University of Alberta scientist Andrew Derocher caught and tagged a female polar bear in the southern Beaufort Sea last April, he didn't expect that she would stray too far.

Keep in mind that "too far" is a relative term in the world of polar bear science.

A small home range for a polar bear in the High Arctic can be 50,000 to 60,000 square kilometres. A large home range such as that in the Bering and Chukchi seas in Alaska and Russia may be in excess of 350,000 square km.

Most polar bears tend to stick to these ranges so long as there is sufficient sea ice and seals to hunt. Straying too far is not a good strategy, because the bears usually know where their food should be. And wandering too far is risky because it requires a lot of energy to look for good ice conditions and food that might not materialize.

Every once in a while though, a bear will set off in one direction and keep going.

<a href=http://www.canada.com/technology/Canada+dragging+heels+polar+bear+issue/1324034/story.html>continued</a>

[styky]

The World Wildlife Fund's Polar Bear Lies
by Tom DeWeese
No doubt you’ve seen the ads: The music is dramatic. The scene is tragic. The message emotional. Polar Bears, holding on for dear life to bits of ice, their artic habitat destroyed by Global Warming. And the narration tells you of the tragic fate of the bears, all because of man and his selfish destruction of the earth. Of course, the ad ends with a plea for funds to help the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) protect the bears and stop Global Warming. Cute, fuzzy animals always do the trick.

Trouble is, it’s all a lie. Not one word of the ad is true. Polar Bears are not endangered. There is no indication of any reduction of their populations. In fact, they are actually being hunted by locals who have to live with them in an effort to keep their populations down. Of 13 Polar Bear populations, 11 are thriving and growing.

The real agenda behind WWF’s Polar Bear campaign is to stop drilling of American oil and to shackle the United States with the UN’s Kyoto Climate Change Treaty. The policy is called Sustainable Development.

Using the Polar Bear, which WWF and the Sierra Club managed to get listed on the Endangered Species (ESA) list last year, the greens can grab control of the U.S. economy, controlling energy production.

Last year, in a Congressional hearing on the listing of the Polar Bears, Congressman Don Young of Alaska said testimony by Bush Administration officials “clearly indicated the overriding goal was to use the ESA as a tool to stop energy production in any and all states.” Under questioning, former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Dale Hall confirmed that if a coal-fired power plant in Arizona were seeking a federal permit, with the Polar Bear listed as protected by the ESA, the Fish and Wildlife Service would have to consult on the permit. In other words, a power plant located thousands of miles away from Polar Bear habitat would be considered a danger – because of global warming. How could any industry be possible? And that’s just the way WWF wants it.

The truth is now rapidly coming out. There is no man-made global warming – it’s a lie. There is no threat to Polar Bears - it’s a lie. Drilling American oil is not a danger to the environment – it’s a lie. And yet, WWF continues to spread the lies and fan the fear.

It is time we fight back against these zealots who put anything else on earth ahead of man. Taking donations based on lies is fraud and WWF should be called on it. We should call on the federal government to take away WWF’s non-profit status. We should complain to any television network that runs their lies. We should demand that such false advertising be pulled from the airways.

The World Wildlife Fund is dangerous to our way of life – to our very civilization. We should no longer just treat them like some nice folks with a different point of view. Political debate is one thing, outright fraud is criminal.

http://townhall.com/columnists/TomDeWee ... _bear_lies

[Monorprise]

lol Wish we could strand Al Gore on a floating ice burg, its just soo metaphorically representative of his cause!

Standing a top a melting mountain of propaganda indicating a cause who's true implications in overwhelming majority rest as yet unseen below water.

[Monorprise]

lol Wish we could strand Al Gore on a floating ice burg, its just soo metaphorically representative of his cause!

Standing a top a melting mountain of propaganda indicating a cause who's true aims in overwhelming majority rest as yet unseen below water to be reviled slowly and surlily part by part as it melts.

If we don't respect the seriousness of their threat we will soon find ourselves like the Titanic at the bottom of a sea of dept and persecution of our rights.

[DianaDS]

B....B...But, they're so LOVABLE....!!!

They're very appealing and awesome animals. Others, well, not so much.

http://www.animalpicturesarchive.com/Ar ... 442260.jpg

Too many environmentalists have made far too much money by squeezing this issue for me to believe whatever they say. There are environmental concerns in the world but I am so sick and tired of the hysteria.

[Knox]

Polar bears can swim 2 kilometers non-stop. So they weren't stranded unless the photographer was using a very strong lens.

[C.Morgan]

Polar bears can swim 2 kilometers non-stop. So they weren't stranded unless the photographer was using a very strong lens.

Actually, they have been known to cover hundreds of kilometers.

[Maestro_T]

Something tells me they will just move to the nearest land available to them in the summer or whatever. And guess what? I'm sure they will find enough things to kill and eat.

These environmentalists are insulting to the intelligence of the animals they are trying to protect! Just because they don't know how to take a pee without government assistance doesn't mean a smart animal like a polar bear can't take care of itself.

[styky]

http://www.junkscience.com/
March 23/09

<a href=http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/the-incredible-shrinking-polar-bear-1651315.html>The incredible shrinking polar bear</a> - Animals lose weight and size as melting ice limits hunting - Polar bears are shrinking, along with the ice on which they live – and are turning to cannibalism – as global warming increasingly stops them getting enough to eat.

Scientists say the animals are now only two-thirds as big as they were 30 years ago as melting ice makes it harder for them to catch seals, and that they have begun to hunt each other instead.

The news comes as Arctic nations agreed at a special summit in Norway last week to draw up an action plan to try to save the highly endangered species. (Geoffrey Lean, The Independent)

Don’t reporters check anything anymore? - How hard would it have been for the reporter to plug in a simple search (like "’polar bear’ +cannibalism", maybe?) and then up would pop items like:

Factors affecting the survival of polar bear cubs (Ursus maritimus) are poorly understood (Derocher and Stirling, 1996). Low food availability and accidents on the sea ice may be the main sources of cub mortality (Uspenski and Kistchinski, 1972; Larsen, 1986; Derocher and Stirling, 1996). Intraspecific predation, infanticide, and cannibalism have been reported in polar bears (Belikov et al., 1977; Hansson and Thomassen, 1983; Larsen, 1985; Lunn and Stenhouse, 1985; Taylor et al., 1985). However, some of the instances have followed human activities such as harvest or immobilization (Taylor et al., 1985). Regardless, intraspecific predation has been suggested as a regulating feature of ursid populations (e.g., McCullough, 1981; Young and Ruff, 1982; Larsen and Kjos-Hanssen, 1983; Stringham, 1983; Taylor et al., 1985). <a href=http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic52-3-307.pdf>(Infanticide and Cannibalism of Juvenile Polar Bears (Ursus maritimus) in Svalbard</a>, ARCTIC, VOL. 52, NO. 3 (SEPTEMBER 1999) P. 307–310)

Wouldn’t they then have wondered about the list of references 1977-1985 specifically on intraspecific predation (in case reporters don’t know, intraspecific means existing or occurring within a species — in this case bears eating each other or practicing cannibalism), infanticide, and cannibalism (a term some references used rather than the cumbersome intraspecific predation)?

So which is it? Were ice conditions similar 20-30 years ago or do bears simply act this way normally? Either way there doesn’t seem to be anything new here, does there? In fact there has been a veritable explosion in the number of polar bears over the period, perhaps this is a food availability/population pressure thing. Sheesh! What a lot of nonsense about bears you see printed lately: Beaufort Sea polar bears starving to death, scientist finds - Desperate animals resorting to cannibalism, wandering south to find food (CBC News) Perhaps they are, maybe the population has simply maxed out for the available habitat and food resource. Perhaps mechanical transport and more efficient hunting methods are selectively culling the biggest bears and leading to reduced average mass as happens in other wild species harvested by people.

Whatever the case, people's fixation with climate is hardly likely to help the bears any.

[styky]

The “precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population”Today’s MSM is woefully inept at catching mistakes. Worse, reporters are often woefully inadequate at getting facts straight in the first place. And, with instant electronic distribution, it is much like the imaginary Roman vomitorium; eat, regurgitate, rinse, and repeat.

Yesterday’s LA Times story on the Obama administration deciding not to use polar bears as a global warming tool that we covered on WUWT had this howler:

“…the precarious state of the U.S. polar bear population…”.

continued = http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/09/t ... opulation/

[styky]

Climate change hurting polar bears: Prentice


By Peter O'Neil, Europe Correspondent, Canwest News ServiceMay 26, 2009

PARIS — Climate change does indeed pose a serious threat to the world's polar bear population, Environment Minister Jim Prentice said here Tuesday while attending a conference of ministers representing the world's top greenhouse gas-emitting economies.

Prentice clarified comments he made in March that have contributed to a sharp debate among scientists about whether bears are indeed at risk due to melting Arctic ice caused by the warming climate.

"It is clear the polar bear is a mammal that has developed over time as an expert at hunting from sea ice, so clearly the absence of sea ice is going to be problematic," Prentice told Canwest News Service.

In March, Prentice said: "I don't think anyone disagrees the whole process of climate change has implications for polar bears. What those implications are is still under scientific investigation. It could be positive, it could be negative."

Prentice said Tuesday he was referring in March to the differing impacts of climate change on the 13 sub-species of Polar bears living in various geographical areas.

"The effect of global warming has different impacts on different sub-populations, and even the scientists, I think, acknowledge that the effects have not been studied on each of the sub-populations," he said.

"Generally speaking over time it will be negative. I've never disputed that."

He said he showed his concern for the polar bear's survival by launching a national consultation initiative looking at ways to protect the animal.

A group of scientists recently produced a paper criticizing those who suggest the bears, more than half of which live in Canadian territory, could benefit from climate change.

Ian Stirling, an Edmonton-based emeritus researcher with Environment Canada, told Canwest News Service in a recent e-mail that climate change is unquestioningly harmful.

"One sees all manner of either misleading statements, or ones that are taken out of context, to even suggest in some cases that climate change will be good for polar bears, or at least that they will just adapt to life on land," Stirling wrote. "Really, it is not a complicated question. Polar bears evolved to exploit an ecological niche on the sea ice. They are large, specialized predators that depend on the sea ice for their existence."

In Paris, Prentice said he was satisfied with the progress made at the two-day gathering of environment ministers from 17 major economies that produce 80 per cent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions.

He was taking part in the Major Economies Forum, meeting, an initiative of President Barack Obama to seek greater climate change co-operation from major developed and developing countries such as India and China.

The United Nations will lead talks in December in Copenhagen aimed at striking a global treaty. The accord would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

China has demanded that the U.S. and other major economies commit to reductions of at least 40 per cent by 2020 from 1990 levels.

But only the European Union has come close to that target, vowing to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020 over 1990 levels. The EU said it would boost its commitment another 10 per cent if other major economies followed its lead.

The Obama administration has proposed reducing America's emissions by 14 per cent by 2020 over its 2005 level. Estimates suggest that translates into a three per cent cut over 1990 levels.

Canada has vowed to reduce greenhouse gases by 20 per cent from 2006 levels by 2020.

U.S. climate envoy Todd Stern said Sunday that China's demand is unrealistic given that a treaty would have to go through the U.S. Congress.

"We are jumping as high as the political system will tolerate," Stern said.

Prentice said a new treaty must have both the participation of the U.S. and major emitters from the developing world.

"We need to ensure that whatever we arrive at in Copenhagen is ratifiable by the Americans, and that we need to be pragmatic in that sense."

With files from Randy Boswell
http://www.vancouversun.com/Technology/ ... story.html

[styky]

Polar bear expert barred by global warmists
Mitchell Taylor, who has studied the animals for 30 years, was told his views 'are extremely unhelpful’ , reveals Christopher Booker.
Christopher Booker
Published: 5:20PM BST 27 Jun 2009
Over the coming days a curiously revealing event will be taking place in Copenhagen. Top of the agenda at a meeting of the Polar Bear Specialist Group (set up under the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Species Survival Commission) will be the need to produce a suitably scary report on how polar bears are being threatened with extinction by man-made global warming.

This is one of a steady drizzle of events planned to stoke up alarm in the run-up to the UN's major conference on climate change in Copenhagen next December. But one of the world's leading experts on polar bears has been told to stay away from this week's meeting, specifically because his views on global warming do not accord with those of the rest of the group.

Dr Mitchell Taylor has been researching the status and management of polar bears in Canada and around the Arctic Circle for 30 years, as both an academic and a government employee. More than once since 2006 he has made headlines by insisting that polar bear numbers, far from decreasing, are much higher than they were 30 years ago. Of the 19 different bear populations, almost all are increasing or at optimum levels, only two have for local reasons modestly declined.

Dr Taylor agrees that the Arctic has been warming over the last 30 years. But he ascribes this not to rising levels of CO2 – as is dictated by the computer models of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and believed by his PBSG colleagues – but to currents bringing warm water into the Arctic from the Pacific and the effect of winds blowing in from the Bering Sea.

He has also observed, however, how the melting of Arctic ice, supposedly threatening the survival of the bears, has rocketed to the top of the warmists' agenda as their most iconic single cause. The famous photograph of two bears standing forlornly on a melting iceberg was produced thousands of times by Al Gore, the WWF and others as an emblem of how the bears faced extinction – until last year the photographer, Amanda Byrd, revealed that the bears, just off the Alaska coast, were in no danger. Her picture had nothing to do with global warming and was only taken because the wind-sculpted ice they were standing on made such a striking image.

Dr Taylor had obtained funding to attend this week's meeting of the PBSG, but this was voted down by its members because of his views on global warming. The chairman, Dr Andy Derocher, a former university pupil of Dr Taylor's, frankly explained in an email (which I was not sent by Dr Taylor) that his rejection had nothing to do with his undoubted expertise on polar bears: "it was the position you've taken on global warming that brought opposition".

Dr Taylor was told that his views running "counter to human-induced climate change are extremely unhelpful". His signing of the Manhattan Declaration – a statement by 500 scientists that the causes of climate change are not CO2 but natural, such as changes in the radiation of the sun and ocean currents – was "inconsistent with the position taken by the PBSG".

So, as the great Copenhagen bandwagon rolls on, stand by this week for reports along the lines of "scientists say polar bears are threatened with extinction by vanishing Arctic ice". But also check out Anthony Watt's Watts Up With That website for the latest news of what is actually happening in the Arctic. The average temperature at midsummer is still below zero, the latest date that this has happened in 50 years of record-keeping. After last year's recovery from its September 2007 low, this year's ice melt is likely to be substantially less than for some time. The bears are doing fine.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... mists.html

[styky]

Where are all the save the polar bear nutcases The killing of a so called endangered animal and nary a protest is heard.


<a href=http://alaskadispatch.com/features/6-features/1233-scientist-kills-polar-bear-during-first-field-experience>Scientist kills polar bear during first field experience</a>