Remember 15 years ago when Al Gore designated the polar bear as the climate crisis mascot because he insisted they were endangered?
Just the opposite happened!
Kane Basin population size at 2013 was 357 (range 221 – 493), up from 224 (range 145 – 303) in 1997. That’s an increase of 59% based on a 2016 recalculation of the 1997 population estimate of 164 (Crockford 2020) – it would have been a 118% increase otherwise.
Money quote: “We find that a small number of the world’s polar bears that live in multiyear ice regions are temporarily benefiting from climate change.” Kristen Laidre, lead author of Transient benefits of climate change for a high‐Arctic polar bear (Ursus maritimus) subpopulation
Both the paper and the press release also claim, despite acknowledging that there is no evidence for this conclusion (“the duration of these benefits is unknown“), that this good news will probably not last because computer models say beneficial conditions might not persist beyond the end of the century."
metmike: "Might not persist?" and "beyond the end of the century?"
The end of the century is close to a century from now!
Gore and others told us the polar bears were endangered NOW and that was 15 years ago.
In fact, no evidence exists that the especially low summer sea ice levels in 2012 negatively impacted polar bears – or surely, Derocher would have provided it. On the contrary, what evidence does exist (from the Southern Beaufort, the Canadian Archipelago, and the Barents and Chukchi Seas), shows that polar bears in many areas have done better with less summer ice since 2007 or have had no negative effects. Other examples discussed here.
Posted on July 15, 2020
“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 more than the minimum 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, comprising all ‘divergent’ and ‘seasonal’ sea ice ecoregions, as shown below – is what USGS polar bear researcher Steven Amstrup predicted when he and his colleagues 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. 2009). Eradication of those ten subpopulations, the experts said, would cause the global population to decline by 67%.
Yet, more than a decade of what was presumed to be polar-bear-destroying sea ice levels has resulted in virtually no overall damage to polar bear health or survival – fat polar bears still come ashore in Western Hudson Bay, along the Alaskan shore of the Southern Beaufort Sea and on Wrangel Island, Russia – and not a single subpopulation (let alone ten) has been wiped out (Crockford 2020; Aars et al. 2017; Regehr et al. 2016; Wiig et al. 2015). The anticipated polar bear catastrophe not only never happened, it never came close to happening."
metmike: We read and heard about the devastating affect on polar bears because of the climate crisis being shouted from the MSM rooftops for years a decade ago. This was all wild speculation based on the belief system and not real science..............but we were told that it was science that was settled and people that disagreed were/are deniers.
Now, over a decade later with fat, healthy polar bears flourishing, not despite climate change but because of it(the climate optimum for life on this greening planet) we don't hear a word about this news from the MSM.
Fake/manufactured bad news(previously known as propaganda) =used as THE news to sell the agenda
REAL/objective news and authentic science that is good news = buried because the truth contradicts the agenda
There are more polar bears now than there were when Gore was born.