Can’t bear the insanity!
They are big, they are white, they are endangered. The US Government affirms that climate change is putting polar bears in peril. Yesterday, it listed the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), wildly applauded by WWF.
“A tremendous victory for one of the world’s most iconic and charismatic species”, says Carter Roberts, president and CEO of WWF-US. “The other big winner today is sound science, which has clearly trumped politics, providing polar bears a new lease on life.”
“Based on the best available science, if current sea ice trends continue, two-thirds of the world’s polar bears will be lost by 2050,” said Geoffrey York, coordinator of WWF’s Polar Bear Conservation Program. “The threatened species designation will now provide additional legal protections for the bears, including the conservation of critical habitat and the development of a government-supported recovery plan.”
At the same time, the US Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000 to 10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. The Inuit people themselves are telling us that the bear population has increased. Of course they are immediately accused of pursuing their own interest - hunting.
But the entire alarm about polar bears disappearing is based on speculative computer model predictions. The polar bears are thus being put on the list NOT because they are in decline but because the ice is melting. In the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were warmer than they currently are now, the polar bears managed to survive. Why shouldn’t they now?
Besides, the Earth’s climate is expected to cool for the next decade, not warm.
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Why Do We Care If Polar Bears Become Extinct?
This is not any sort of revelation: Polar bears declared a threatened species , but it does raise the question: Why do we care? By some estimates, 90% of all species that once existed are now extinct and new species are always taking their place. For the species that’s going to become extinct, for whatever reason, extinction is the end of it. However, for the species that remain, is the extinction of another species good or bad. When Europeans first colonized North America, there was an estimated five (5) billion Passenger Pigeons alive and well in North America. In 1914, they were extinct. Passenger Pigeons didn’t live in little groups, but huge flocks that required extraordinary quantities of hardwood forests for them to feed, breed and survive. Deforestation to build homes, create farmland and over hunting for cheap food decimated their population. The westward drive to grow the United States in the 1800s and early 1900s was incompatible with the needs of the Passenger Pigeon and they literally could not survive in the new North America being carved out by the U.S. economy. The interesting thing about the Passenger Pigeon was the impact its extinction had on another species—man. That impact was essentially none. Man continued to find ways to feed himself through agriculture and other technologies and the United States and its citizens continued to prosper from the early 20th century till today. Whether or not Polar Bears become extinct because of Global Climate Change or other reasons, we need to address the larger question of: Do we care and why? One of the ways a nation, its citizens and the global community can answer that question is addressed by John A. Warden III in Thinking Strategically About Global Climate Change. He asks some interesting biodiversity questions in his post to include How Many Species Is the Right Number and Which Ones?
[...] rdnekaristocrat’s journal wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt“The other big winner today is sound science, which has clearly trumped politics, providing polar bears a new lease on life…. [...]
… sorry just speechless at the insanity….
The lunatics have truly taken over the asylum.
How Many Species Is the Right Number and Which Ones?
The right ones are the cute ones. Of course!
General rule of thumb: If it’s cute enough to be used for a Coca-Cola commercial, then it’s cute enough to save.
The ugly animals have to fend for themselves. After all, when was the last time you hear the urgent call from “environmentalists” to save the aye aye, a truly ugly creature?
If opossums were in danger of extinction (say, due to excessive road kills), how many of you think that the “environmentalists” would be raising the alarm? What about the stinky skunk?
No, I doubt that you would hear about any of them, unless there was an ulterior motive at work and these animals could be exploited for this purpose.
Brian M: The thing is that the polar bear is hardly cuddly. And it kills a lot of cute little seal pups. Shouldn’t we be protecting the seals now that the bear population has grown much bigger?
Maggie: Where have you been?
Everybody knows that “skeptics” and “deniers” regularly club baby seals to death all of the time.
That’s why they don’t care about the fate of the polar bear. Polar bears are competition.
Now let’s see…… Hmmmmm….. Polar bears were hunted down to between 5 and 10 thousand. Then Inuits stopped hunting and started drinking…….. Now we have an estimated 20 - 25 thousand killer bears who are now being protected and will increase in number [thereby killing more seals] and because a panel of total idiots has voted that P Bears are in danger of extinction [with no credible science as backup] we will have to encourage the Inuit to drink more [after all they started drinking and the polar bear population increased!] and we will have to provide Canadians with fortresses to avoid being eaten by hungry polar bears! Who will have reduced the seal population to near extinction!
And all because Al Gore says CO2 is a poison. Doh!
Maybe we can encourage the polar bears to feed on ecotourists instead, thereby saving the seals and increasing the intelligence level in contemporary environmental debate in one fell swoop.
There aren’t any polar bears, the ones that didn’t die during the Roman climate optimum were finished off by the Medeval Warm Period.
“The polar bears are thus being put on the list NOT because they are in decline but because the ice is melting. ”
Well stated.
i hate that they dont have anywere 2 live and because were greedy and lazy they have 2 suffer
Polar Bears are the most adorable creatures ever and they deserve to be saved. SAVE THE POLAR BEARS!!! <33
Computer calculations- and all the dead polar bears found in water that USED to be ice. You know, that ice that they lived on? Before it melted thus removing almost all their food sources, except farther inland. Where they can’t go because of human settlements. At best the polar bears get humanly captured and released farther away, at worst they get killed. THATS why they could survive the Medeval Warm period not now. Yes the Medeval Warm period was warmer but but there was less then half the c02 there is now at the time as well. There for the climate now is just going to KEEP getting warmer. Not only that but ice is reflective; sunlight bounces off of the poles and into space. As the ice melts the sun will heat the newly exposed water, thus riaising the global tempature further. This will kill the seals, polar bears, and eventualy everything else as sea levels and tempatures rise.
this is so cool
i think people should care about animals that are in danger because what if we kill your family members then they will never be any more of your family
i think people should stop global warming and do not smoke it is bad and try not to use that much cars it pullutes the air and polar bears are dieing cause of that and it is going to be all your fualt also DO NOT LITTER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I THINK POLAR BEARS ARE CUTE
“caroline { 12.04.08 at 3:02 am }
i hate that they dont have anywere 2 live and because were greedy and lazy they have 2 suffer”
This is must be an ironic parody of how alarmists “think” and, above all, feel, right?
Kirti M is living in la la land. Where is the evidence that polar bears are endangered? Or sea levels are rising faster than the past 150 years rate?
Climate warmer? Where? Oh yes on the 1% of Antarctica!
Check science facts not Al Gore hysterical lies.
… And the warmer tempatures, and the dead polar bears.
Brain J is living under a rock.
Kirti M - you need the rock…….
“The latest government survey of polar bears roaming the vast Arctic expanses of northern Quebec, Labrador and southern Baffin Island show the population of polar bears has jumped to 2,100 animals from around 800 in the mid-1980s.
As recently as three years ago, a less official count placed the number at 1,400.
The Inuit have always insisted the bears’ demise was greatly exaggerated by scientists doing projections based on fly-over counts, but their input was usually dismissed as the ramblings of self-interested hunters.
As Nunavut government biologist Mitch Taylor observed in a front-page story in the Nunatsiaq News last month, “the Inuit were right. There aren’t just a few more bears. There are a hell of a lot more bears.”
Their widely portrayed lurch toward extinction on a steadily melting ice cap is not supported by bear counts in other Arctic regions either.”
Kirti M - here’s another sea level item…..
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
Want another rock?
so let me see if I have this correctly then: there are alot more bears and every scient who has taken a population count has just been wrong. And all the drowned bears washing up on sand bars that used to be surrounded by ice are just illusions.
Kirti M, Don’t be duped by 4 bears found drowned after a massive storm. Since then no one has found any more and then was in 2004.
Got another rock ready?
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2008/05/16/where-are-all-the-drowning-polar-bears/
Yes I have one here. When would you like me to throw it at you?
The polar bears don’t just stay floating after they die they wind up on shores or are devoured by fish. We don’t find many drowned penguins either, and the same thing is happening to them.
Kirti M
The ones who know are the local Inuit populations. If they say there are more polar bears then is that surely more likely to be correct than some academic counting bears from an aeroplane?
Read these lips…
“Yet despite the Canadian government ’s $150-million commitment last week to fund 44 International Polar Year research projects, a key question is not up for detailed scientific assessment: If the polar bear is the 650-kilogram canary in the climate change coal mine, why are its numbers INCREASING?
The latest government survey of polar bears roaming the vast Arctic expanses of northern Quebec, Labrador and southern Baffin Island show the population of polar bears has jumped to 2,100 animals from around 800 in the mid-1980s.”
Answer please Kirti M?
And the local Inuits know that they are not seeing the same bear more then once HOW? At least from a plane you know that you are moving faster then the bear and thus can only count it once.
(And how do you expect me to read your lips of a computer?)
a population thats *estimated* to be just over two thousand, with a shrinking food source, when up to 500 bears have been known to die over a hard winter is stable HOW?
Kirti M
The FACTS are there Kirti, Polar Bears are dying out politically in the Greenie Hysteric World but in reality they are thriving and adapting to whatever conditions Mother Nature gives them. As they have for many thousands of years.
Animal populations vary according to available food source, weather etc. In your mind a hard winter kills polar bears and a hard winter is caused by what? Global Warming?
You can’t see the wood for the trees can you?
“Finally, it’s not even clear that polar bears are that dependent on sea ice for their survival. Polar bear fossils have been dated to over 100,000 years, which means that polar bears have already survived an interglacial period when temperatures were considerably warmer than they are at present.”
point taken, yes. (I did wonder if they would have another severally cold winter to deal with.)
Yes they’ve been around for thousands of years while ADAPTING TO THE ICE. As it is the polar bears do most of their hunting on the ice, and floating ice bergs are what they fish off of. Aside from drowning loss of ice= loss of food sources.
Thank you, yes the population does shrink when the availibility of food decreases. And the food is decreasing because the *ice* is decreasing.
Kirti M
Please note……from Alaskans who live amongst polar bears……
“But many Inuit say they haven’t seen a decline in the population and worry that overly harsh restrictions that threaten the northern way of life will be imposed to appease people who don’t depend on the bears for their livelihood.
“We feel our polar bears are doing fine,” said Nunavut Environment Minister Daniel Shewchuk. “We’re basing that on living there and living with polar bears all of our lives … People are encountering more polar bears out on the land.”
When the bear population increases, it becomes a safety issue for residents who can no longer even go camping, Shewchuk said. The Inuit would like to do a proper survey of the bears once they get funding, he added.”
Whoops! For Alaskans read Canadians!
I recently sent an idea for preserving the polar bears to the Polar Bears International organization and got this letter in reponce:
” Thank you for your letter and sugestion…” “…The problem is that the pontoons would not give the bears a way to hunt, which is the main difficulty they face in a warming Arctic. Polar bears depend on the sea ice as a platform from which to reach seals, the mainstay of their diet. They are unable to catch seals in the open water.
The sheer scale of the open water is also a factor. Keep in mind that the area we are talking about is vast–this summer’s ice melt was equal to the size of Texas, Alaska, and the state of Washington combined. Given this reality, even if we were able to transport the platforms, it is unlikely the bears would find them.
We view the situation of diminishing sea ice in the Arctic as serious but not hopeless. The polar bear scientists on our Advisory Council believe that we have a five-year window in which to reverse the effects of climate change and save the bears. I have attached a PDF of our various projects. It outlines our ambitious “Polar Population Project,” which is an all-out push to define exactly what is happening with the various polar bear populations so that scientists can develop strategies to save them.
We would welcome your help in spreading the word about our efforts! We are very proud of the fact that 100% of all donations go to our initiatives. Time is running out for the bears, so we feel a sense of urgency in terms of our work.
Warm regards,
*Kirti M has removen the name for protection of author*
http://www.polarbearsinternational.org“
I think we should care for them, their so sweet!
[...] Al Gore’s movie, let alone be misled by it. It cannot be the case that polar bears starve because they believe hyped and false claims about global warming. Polar bears starve because it’s really warmer. Possibly related [...]
Who cares if my kids never see a polar bear. they can just go to the zoo. or look at a magazine of how they were in life. big deal.
You should care because thousands of real living creatures are going to lose their lives because of us.
“You should care because thousands of real living creatures are going to lose their lives because of us.”
true, but we don’t have anything do do about it. Its all up to companies and the government to lower polution and things that danger the enviroment. so until we actually get the technology that won’t effect the enviroment, we have nothing to do and its none of our (most of us) faults.
And animals going extinct is a naturall process. Humans will go extinct sometime as well.
Of course humans go extinct. But specise (other then humans) are being wiped out more then ten times faster then they used to. Three specise of frogs die out in the rain forest every second.
It is the fault of everyday people- things that seem like no big deal having a huge impact. For example, having more then two children raises the population, and yet there’s octo-mom having eight babies at once and everyone is congradulating her. It’ll take eight people willing to never have children to neutralize the effect of all those new drains of space and natural resources.
Yes they are being wiped out 10 times faster. But they are also being replaced by other organisms. But i am afraid that they are going extinct far faster then they are makeing new species.
I just read on AOL that the climate is takeing a turn for the worst and will soon raise see level 20 inches which will effect a lot of shore side citys as well as animals that live there. What must be done to the enviroment needs to be done now.
What must be done to save the environment SHOULD have been going on for the last twenty years. We need to get our act together before things get worse.
okay, im 18 and i can tell u more about polar bears than u all kno why dont u take the time to research what your talking about, protect seal pups from killer bears? omg seriously its part of life jst like bugs eat plants should we protect them too? polar bears are endangered bcuz of the stupidity of the human race along with all the other endangered species… ppl have hunted most of these species till the brink and its bcuz most ppl dnt care… think about all that has been done to bring the eagle back from its close call, populations dropped and bcuz we were greedy and wanted a bug free world we almost wipped them out with ddt pesticides so before u go looking to pt fingers at others, take a look in the mirror and realize what ur doing to help out, not saying i am perfect but i realize that life has a cycle and things eat others to survive, its part of life…we have to do our part bcuz everyday more houses and cities are built taking over the land that was once not inhabited by ppl, and taking more and more away from our wildlife, which with out we wouldnt be able to survive…cuz together we make the world go round… u cant survive on jst cows and crops….
whats wrong with you people? polar bears are just as much a part of earth as we are. Why should anything care if humans went extinct? All we do is pollute and kill animals! Don’t you people have hearts?
you guys are a bunch of ******** if you think by saying that you have nothing to do with it then you have noything to do with it but your wrong. I might not have a bunch of fancy pancy facts but there are flaws in fly over counts like polar bears are white and the snow and ice is white. Brian J if you didn’t notice but we have better now technology then we did in the 1980’s
Thank you Brea, Mike M, random, and Zach Q. Exactly what I’ve been trying to convince them for months. (But could you please read the comments before dissing everyone here? I’m a conservationist too, and I *have* done research on polar bears and their effect ont heir ecosystem.)
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