From Polar Bear Science
This morning, self-professed ‘local weather campaigner’ Mike Hudema posted a brief video of two polar bears seemingly struggling to outlive as they repeatedly break by newly-formed ice, with the message “Polar bears are up in opposition to an enormous downside. They’re shedding their habitat. Because the Arctic turns into more and more heat & sea ice disappears its tougher to discover a mate & meals.”
This was clearly designed to elicit an emotional response from viewers but it surely’s each bit as manipulative and false because the video of the emaciated polar bear shamelessly promoted by Nationwide Geographic as ‘what local weather change appears to be like like’, which I describe intimately in my new guide, Fallen Icon (Crockford 2022a).
The reality is that these bears weren’t struggling to outlive: they have been chasing a drone. The unique video (2:55m lengthy) was posted by ‘LADBible’ on 18 January 2020, which took me all of 30 seconds to find through an Web search. The title of the unique video is Polar Bears Chase Drone Digital camera By way of Ice (2:55m) and the outline is: “When these polar bears found a drone was watching them, they determined to provide chase by the ice.”
Hudema truncated the video right down to 25 seconds for his tweet. He was being intentionally dishonest by posting this footage together with his message: the whole factor is a falsehood.
Whereas there are implausible predictions that polar bears could sooner or later wrestle to outlive as a result of declining sea ice (e.g. Amstrup et al. 2007), polar bears are at the moment thriving (Crockford 2019, 2022b). One motive they’re thriving is {that a} longer open-water season on the finish of summer season permits extra phytoplankton progress, which implies extra meals for the whole Arctic meals chain, together with polar bears (Crockford 2020).
In different phrases, opposite to predictions, areas the place latest summer season sea ice loss has been the best (particularly the Barents Sea and Chukchi Sea), polar bears are doing higher than anticipated, and higher than they have been when sea ice protection was larger (Lippold et al. 2020; Rode et al. 2018).
Hudema is blatantly mistaken in addition to dishonest: scientific info don’t again up his assertions. Simply extra proof that these local weather activists will cease at nothing to advertise their ludicrous agenda and groundless beliefs.
PS. Here’s a related video (from December 2019) of Russian polar bear cubs taking part in on skinny ice, as they learn to cope with an ever-present facet of their setting:
References
Amstrup, S.C., Marcot, B.G. & Douglas, D.C. 2007. Forecasting the rangewide standing of polar bears at chosen instances within the twenty first century. US Geological Survey. Reston, VA. Pdf right here
Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Disaster That By no means Occurred. International Warming Coverage Basis, London. Obtainable in paperback and e book codecs.
Crockford, S.J. 2020. State of the Polar Bear Report 2019. International Warming Coverage Basis Report 39, London. pdf right here.
Crockford, S.J. 2022a. Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception. Amazon KDP.
Crockford, S.J. 2022b. The State of the Polar Bear 2021. International Warming Coverage Basis Word 29, London. pdf right here.
Lippold, A., Bourgeon, S., Aars, J., Andersen, M., Polder, A., Lyche, J.L., Bytingsvik, J., Jenssen, B.M., Derocher, A.E., Welker, J.M. and Routti, H. 2019. Temporal tendencies of persistent natural pollution in Barents Sea polar bears (Ursus maritimus) in relation to modifications in feeding habits and physique situation. Environmental Science and Technology 53(2):984-995.
Rode, Ok. D., R. R. Wilson, D. C. Douglas, V. Muhlenbruch, T.C. Atwood, E. V. Regehr, E.S. Richardson, N.W. Pilfold, A.E. Derocher, G.M Durner, I. Stirling, S.C. Amstrup, M. S. Martin, A.M. Pagano, and Ok. Simac. 2018. Spring fasting habits in a marine apex predator supplies an index of ecosystem productiveness. International Change Biology 24:410-423. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.13933/full
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