Polar Bear

[LadyMod at scam.com]

Someday these will only be seen in zoos that no one will be able to go see because there won't be fuel for the car to make the trip.


Not Much Help for the Polar Bear (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/opinion/18sun2.html?th&emc=th)

Published: May 18, 2008

Boxed into a corner by the courts and its own scientists, the Bush administration agreed last week to place the polar bear under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. The decision was the clearest official acknowledgment that the bear, its hunting grounds diminished by shrinking summer ice, is seriously at risk.

It is not clear that the decision is much of a victory for the bears. The listing appears to offer only modest new protections. United States law already bars the killing of bears. The listing will also prohibit the importing of hides or other trophies from bears killed in Canada.

It does nothing to address the gravest threats to the bears’ survival: oil and gas drilling and global warming. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne said the act — as he interprets it — in no way inhibits oil and gas development in prime polar bear habitat like the Chukchi Sea, where the department recently opened up 30 million acres to exploratory drilling.

He also said the listing could not be used as leverage to force power plants and other carbon dioxide sources to restrict emissions of greenhouse gases, even though those gases are heavily responsible for the ice’s melting. Mr. Kempthorne did not dispute that the bear’s habitat is shrinking or that in time the bear could face extinction. But using the Endangered Species Act to shape climate policy, he said, would be “wholly inappropriate.”

The act — designed to protect specific animals from chain saws, bulldozers and, yes, oil rigs — probably should not have to carry the burden of solving global warming. But President Bush has denied the problem for so long, refusing to offer serious remedies, it is little wonder that people are tempted to grab at any lever.

This leaves the polar bear much as before: living precariously in a changing world, and facing the added stresses of exploratory drilling with no real protection.


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[Smurf-Herder]

The polar bears had a population of around 12,000 in the 60s; and now it's around 25,000. How has Global Warming lowered their numbers over the years, if the population has doubled?

Federal Polar Bear Research Critically Flawed, Forecasting Expert Asserts
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080508132549.htm

"ScienceDaily (May 10, 2008) — Research done by the U.S. Department of the Interior to determine if global warming threatens the polar bear population is so flawed that it cannot be used to justify listing the polar bear as an endangered species, according to a study being published later this year in Interfaces, a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences.

On April 30, U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken ordered the Interior Department to decide by May 15 whether polar bears should be listed under the provisions of the Endangered Species Act.

Professor J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School says, “To list a species that is currently in good health as an endangered species requires valid forecasts that its population would decline to levels that threaten its viability. In fact, the polar bear populations have been increasing rapidly in recent decades due to hunting restrictions. Assuming these restrictions remain, the most appropriate forecast is to assume that the upward trend would continue for a few years, then level off.

“These studies are meant to inform the US Fish and Wildlife Service about listing the polar bear as endangered. After careful examination, my co-authors and I were unable to find any references to works providing evidence that the forecasting methods used in the reports had been previously validated. In essence, they give no scientific basis for deciding one way or the other about the polar bear.”

Prof. Armstrong and colleagues originally undertook their audit at the request of the State of Alaska. The subsequent study, “Polar Bear Population Forecasts: A Public Policy Forecasting Audit,” is by Prof. Armstrong, Kesten G. Green of Monash University in Australia, and Willie Soon of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It is scheduled to appear in the September/October issue of the INFORMS journal Interfaces.

Professor Armstrong is author of Long-Range Forecasting, the most frequently cited book on forecasting methods, and Principles of Forecasting. He is a co-founder of the Journal of Forecasting, the International Journal of Forecasting, the International Symposium on Forecasting, and forecastingprinciples.com.

The authors examined nine U.S. Geological Survey Administrative Reports. The studies include “Forecasting the Wide-Range Status of Polar Bears at Selected Times in the 21st Century” by Steven C. Amstrup et. al. and “Polar Bears in the Southern Beaufort Sea II: Demography and Population Growth in Relation to Sea Ice Conditions” by Christine M. Hunter et al.

Prof. Armstrong and his colleagues concluded that the most relevant study, Amstrup et al. properly applied only 15% of relevant forecasting principles and that the second study, Hunter et al. only 10%, while 46% were clearly contravened and 23% were apparently contravened.

Further, they write, the Geologic Survey reports do not adequately substantiate the authors’ assumptions about changes to sea ice and polar bears’ ability to adapt that are key to the recommendations.

Therefore, the authors write, a key feature of the U.S. Geological Survey reports is not scientifically supported.

The consequence, they maintain, is significant: The Interior Department cannot use the series of reports as a sound scientific basis for a decision about listing the polar bear as an endangered species.

Prof. Armstrong testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works on January 30, 2008 in a hearing, “Examining Threats and Protections for the Polar Bear.” A portion of the testimony can be viewed on a website partly supported by Prof. Armstrong and questioning climate change http://theclimatebet.com/."

[PhoneMistress]

We were tracking the world’s polar bear numbers in the 1950s? Those numbers were at best an estimate. We stopped hunting them and began researching while figuring out what we had in terms of numbers.

http://www.polarbearsinternational.org/in-the-news/numbers/
Scientists have only rough estimates for many of the 19 polar bear populations because it is both difficult and expensive to census the bears in many parts of the Arctic. That said, they use a working figure of 20,000 to 25,000 bears worldwide.

In the early '60s, the number of bears worldwide plummeted to possibly as few as 6,000 bears due to severe over-hunting. In 1973, the five polar bear nations agreed to ban hunting except by Natives. Polar bear numbers rebounded in the early '80s to a possible high of 25,000 bears.

Although polar bears were able to recover from overhunting, they now face a much more greater threat: the loss of their habitat due to a dramatic warming trend in the Arctic. Last summer, the melt-off in the Arctic was equal to the size of Alaska, Texas, and the state of Washington combined. The loss of Arctic sea ice has resulted in a shorter hunting season for the bears, which has led to a documented decline in two well-studied populations, Western Hudson Bay and the Southern Beaufort Sea.

Both are considered representative. The Western Hudson Bay population has dropped by 22% since 1987. The Southern Beaufort Sea bears are showing the same signs of stress the Western Hudson Bay bears did before they crashed: smaller skull sizes, fewer cubs, etc.

Some members of the press take advantage of the complexity by stating that "polar bears are not in trouble—their numbers have doubled since the 1960s." That's a disingenuous statement, of course. There are twice as many bears now, true, but that's because they were severely over-hunted before and when the hunting stopped, they rebounded. But now they are starting to decline and we have two representative populations that illustrate this.

At the most recent meeting of the IUCN Polar Bear Specialist Group (Seattle, 2005), scientists reclassified the polar bear as a vulnerable species on the IUCN's Red List of Endangered Species. They reported that of the 19 subpopulations of polar bears, five are declining, five are stable, two are increasing, and seven have insufficient data on which to base a decision. The declining populations are the most southerly. The drop is expected to continue northward.

Interview with Dr. Nick Lunn of the Canadian Wildlife Service:
http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2008/03/10/scientist-on-western-hudson-bay-polar-bear-population-i-consider-myself-a-historian/

There Are More Polar Bears Now Than Ever! At Least That’s What the Wall Street Journal and the Heartland Institute Says…

Oh really?

It isn’t hard to find media reports stating that polar bear populations are at historic highs – up to 25,000 now from a low of 5,000 or so in the 50’s or 60’s. This gets a chuckle from Nick. Look in any of those reports for the source of their conjecture. The fact is nobody was even paying attention to polar bear numbers in the 50’s or 60’s, much less conducting a scientifically sound census survey. So where do they come up with those numbers? Hmm… Good question.

In the 50’s and 60’s polar bear were being shot, killed, hunted down wholesale. It has only been within the past couple of decades that scientists, government leaders, and wildlife managers have realized that it might be prudent to put some limits on the carnage to assess what it is we have in the way of polar bears and to begin serious, ongoing scientific study of them.

What happens when uncontrolled hunting is stopped? Gosh, it seems there may have been some recovery in polar bear populations due to the alleviated stress from hunting. (Incidentally, 500 bears are still harvested every year in Canada.)

When you hear anyone authoritatively pronouncing that polar bear numbers have recovered from 5000 to 25,000 just know that they’re simply guessing. Right off the bat a reason to question the veracity of their argument. (And when the Wall Street journal says anything about environmental policy, assume they likely don’t know a whit about what they’re talking about.)

Polar Bears in the Western Hudson Bay Region

Churchill, Manitoba is widely know as the Polar Bear Capital of the World, strategically located in the midst of one of the world’s 13 polar bear populations. While it is possible to encounter a bear at any time in or around the Churchill area, the crowds come in October and November – bear “high season” – to catch a glimpse of a bear while riding in the comfort of a “tundra buggy” (I say you haven’t really experienced the area until you’ve taken a ride in a dread sled – but again, that’s another story). There are other attractions in Churchill; historic forts from the Hudson Bay Company days to Beluga whale watching and birding. But Polar Bears are what give Churchill a reason to call itself a “world capital”.

This may not last for very much longer and is why Nick, studying the Western Hudson Bay population as he does, says he considers himself a historian. Those are his words, not mine. The population in the Western Hudson Bay region has declined 22% in 17 years, to less than 1000 bears.

The condition of adult bears has steadily been decreasing, with the average weight of females declining toward a threshold at which the chances of it bearing viable cubs becomes doubtful. As Nick explained, that threshold may be reached, if the trends continue as they have, as soon as 2012.

The principal cause for the deteriorating condition of this population of bears is the early break-up of sea ice. Bears have to go further and work harder to find their principal source of food, the ring seal, and thus the female gives birth to her cubs more emaciated and less able to nurture her cubs. More cubs are not surviving to adulthood. The overall threat to the population is that current generations of bear will not be replaced.

Two out of Thirteen

Again, you’ll find plenty to media reports speaking to the thriving polar bear populations around the world. Just not from research scientists that are actually studying them in the field. Yes, by that I mean scientists that get their butt out from behind a desk, put on their long-johns, and actually go into the arctic and get up close and personal not only with the bear, but with the harsh conditions in the arctic.

I encourage you to go out and canvas your own sources of information on this, but this is what I got from Nick (the polar bear expert, while we chatted near the arctic circle one evening):

Of the thirteen populations of polar bear in the world, only two are considered as thriving, as many as five may currently be stable, and the rest are either threatened, in decline, or there is simply not enough data to make a reliable assessment.

Heck, that doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Maybe those giggling fools from the Wall Street Journal are right!

Not bloody likely. The Western Hudson Bay region is one of the most studied populations in the world, so the data set for these bears is the most complete and accurate available. The low arctic region they inhabit is an ecosystem highly vulnerable to climate change, and so it is likely that what we are seeing with this population will continue to spread throughout all circumpolar bear populations as environmental changes in the north accelerate.

[Smurf-Herder]

So the basic argument is, you can't authenticate figures showing a smaller population in the past, because people didn't care enough to do accurate studies in the 60s and 70s; and even then it doesn't matter, because hunting restrictions artificially inflated the population over the past 40 years or so?

It seems you have all bases covered; to make sure everybody ignores figures too far back, that show a lower population back then.

[PhoneMistress]

Alaska's Governor is suing. She is challenging polar bears being listed as endangered species.

http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/us/2008/05/21/D90Q9GC82_polar_bears/index.html

Palin on Wednesday said there is insufficient evidence to support the decision U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne made last week.

[Smurf-Herder]

This is the thing about Polar Bears. If you link their endagerment to Global Warming specifically, you're letting a foot in the door to future court interpretations, that could spin off into regulation of just about anything that you can connect with CO2, methane, or any greenhouse gas; or in any way connected to warming.

How do we protect Polar Bears from Global Warming?

It's a loaded question.