Polar Bears Are Thriving

Local guide says W Hudson Bay bears have recently ‘put on a lot of fat and are healthy’
Posted on February 27, 2021 | Comments Offon Local guide says W Hudson Bay bears have recently ‘put on a lot of fat and are healthy’
Canadian polar bear guide Dennis Compayre has spent more than 20 years around Churchill, Manitoba, and his simple words in a 19 February CBC article promoting an upcoming CBC documentary special are clear: Western Hudson Bay (WH) polar bears are currently thriving.


Mother with triplet cubs, 31 October 2020. Dave Allcorn photo.

Compayre does not appear to be a global warming skeptic: he seems to accept the prophesy that the future is grim for these bears. However, if he hadn’t I’m certain he wouldn’t have gotten the job as guide for this Nature of Things documentary, hosted by Canada’s ultimate carbon dioxide doom-master David Suzuki. However, he is at least willing to tell the truth about what has been happening over the last four years (the time it took to film this documentary) with WH polar bears. Continue reading

 

More polar bear catastrophe hype: bears use four times more energy than expected
Posted on March 1, 2021 | Comments Offon More polar bear catastrophe hype: bears use four times more energy than expected
Last week (24 February 2021), The Guardian was promoting a study that claims polar bears now use four times more energy than expected to survive because of ‘major ice loss’ in the Arctic, as a way of suggesting that the animals are already on their way to extinction.



But like many papers of this type, this study by Anthony Pagano and Terri Williams (Pagano and Williams 2021) is yet another model describing what biologists think may be happening based on experimental data collected from individual bears, not a conclusion based on evidence collected from subpopulations with the worst amounts of ice loss.

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Polar bear attack in Svalbard: victim survives, polar bear does not
Posted on March 2, 2021 | Comments Offon Polar bear attack in Svalbard: victim survives, polar bear does not
A man was attacked from behind this morning by a small male polar bear on the east coast of Svalbard, Norway, where there is abundant sea ice. His companion shot the bear and the victim escaped with minor head injuries. Most bears are very hungry at this time of year because the seal pupping season has not yet begun.



Young bears are extremely dangerous and the most likely to attack people (Crockford 2019; Wilder et al. 2017): a three year old male fatally attacked a camper in August 2020 just outside Longyearbyen, Svalbard, an incident unfairly blamed on lack of sea ice (Crockford 2021).



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Report: Polar Bear Numbers Continued to Grow in 2020 Despite Climate Fear
SPECIES IMPACTS MARCH 3, 2021

". . . In the State of the Polar Bear Report 2020, published February 27 on International Polar Bear Day by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), zoologist Dr. Susan Crockford explains that while the climate change narrative insists that polar bear populations are declining due to reduced sea ice, the scientific literature doesn’t support such a conclusion.

Crockford clarifies that the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s 2015 Red List assessment for polar bears, which Facebook uses as an authority for ‘fact checking’, is seriously out of date. New and compelling evidence shows that bears in regions with profound summer ice loss are doing well.

Included in that evidence are survey results for 8 of the 19 polar bear subpopulations, only two of which showed insignificant declines after very modest ice loss. The rest of the polar bear populations were either stable or increasing, and some despite major reductions in sea ice. As of 2020, the global polar bear population size is now almost 30,000 – up from about 26,000 in 2015. . . . ."

 

Will low sea ice threaten harp seals & polar bears on Canada’s East Coast this year?
Posted on March 11, 2021 | Comments Offon Will low sea ice threaten harp seals & polar bears on Canada’s East Coast this year?
In early February this year, sea ice was much lower than usual along the Labrador coast and virtually non-existent in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which are two important pupping habitats for North Atlantic harp seals. The picture would have been very bleak for harp seal pups and the Davis Strait polar bears that depend on them for food if ice hadn’t expanded and thickened by early March – but it did. Past experience suggests that harp seals that usually whelp in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where ice is still well below average this year, will move to ice off Southern Labrador (‘the Front’) to have their pups.

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Polar bears are thriving: an ICSC Canada short video
Posted on March 19, 2021 | Comments Offon Polar bears are thriving: an ICSC Canada short video
From Tom Harris at ICSC Canada: Polar bears are nowhere near as sensitive to declining sea ice than originally thought. In fact, their population is now three times higher than in the 1960s. 17 March 2021 [1:28]

 

Choose verifiable facts over emotional narratives on polar bear conservation
Posted on March 22, 2021 | Comments Offon Choose verifiable facts over emotional narratives on polar bear conservation
“Polar bears continue to be described as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ for the effects of human-caused climate change, but the evidence shows they are far from being a highly-sensitive indicator species.” Susan Crockford, 24 February 2021



You’ll find the evidence I allude to above – backed up by references to the peer-reviewed literature – in my many publications (Crockford 2015; 2017; 2019, 2020, 2021). My open-access research paper from 2017 has been downloaded more than 6,000 times and despite this being an online forum for legitimate scientific critique, none has been offered. My comprehensive polar bear science book released just two years ago (see below) has a 4.7/5.0 star rating on Amazon, with 132 reviews so far.



For recent blog post examples of the evidence that polar bears are thriving despite profound summer sea ice loss, see this discussion about the many contradictions that exist for claims that sea ice declines have caused harm to polar bear health and survival and this review of the evidence that less summer sea ice has meant more food for polar bears.

For those who haven’t seen it, I’ve copied below the preface from The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. This book is an antidote to the emotional blackmail coming at the public from all sides by journalists, polar bear specialists, and elite influencers like David Attenborough.
Continue reading

 

Polar bear problems onshore in Svalbard before prime feeding season
Posted on April 5, 2021 | Comments Offon Polar bear problems onshore in Svalbard before prime feeding season
At the end of March there were two polar bear incidents on the same day in Svalbard, where one bear trashed a holiday cabin. Think a door or a window can keep out a polar bear? Think again!


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Harp seal pup production poor in Gulf of St. Lawrence but it won’t impact the population
Posted on April 12, 2021 | Comments Offon Harp seal pup production poor in Gulf of St. Lawrence but it won’t impact the population
A seal biologist with Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans has confirmed that harp seal pupping was almost non-existent this year in the Gulf of St. Lawrence due to poor sea ice conditions. The ice at the Front has been lighter than usual this year but probably adequate for a decent crop of baby seals.


The ice was definitely sparse in the Gulf this year. Reports in the middle of March indicated few white-coated baby harp seals were found in the Gulf this year, ruining the prospects for the specialized businesses that take tourists out to the ice by helicopter to view the adorable newborns in the wild.

However, while it is unfortunate for the local businesses, even the loss of all the harp seal pups in the Gulf this year will not seriously impact the total population. Even in a good year, at most a third of Northeastern Atlantic harp seals have their pups in the Gulf – the majority of seals give birth at the Front (DFO 2020; Stenson et al. 2015). So as long as ice there remains in decent condition over the next few weeks, most of the harps and their pups at the Front should be OK (see ice chart below for week of 5 April 2021). . . .

 

Less than usual ice conditions off Labrador have meant very few polar bear sightings
Posted on April 14, 2021 | Comments Offon Less than usual ice conditions off Labrador have meant very few polar bear sightings
I’ve been wondering ever since last year why reports of polar bears onshore in Labrador especially and also the north coast of Newfoundland, have been virtually non-existent. This year there has been little ice off Newfoundland except for the Northern Peninsula but relatively abundant ice off the south coast of Labrador.


Yesterday, Canadian Ranger and polar bear guard Jefferey Keefe of Black Tickle (which is on an island off the Labrador coast) said on a CBC radio interview (13 April 2021) that while in 2019 they had 72 sightings around the community over the season, last year they had 7 and so far this year they have had only 2 sets of tracks – but no actual sightings of bears. He estimated the average number of sightings per year is about 20, and that he had talked to his colleagues in Makkovik (north of Rigolet on the map below) and their experience is similar. It appears that numbers are down throughout southern Labrador, although one bear was seen in Charlottetown last week (south of Black Tickle).


Keefe said that the sea has been very rough around the island this year, effectively breaking up the young sea ice almost as soon as it forms. They have no ice in their harbour right now, which is unusual. He thinks this lack of nearshore ice is keeping the bears further out on the pack ice: the bears are still out there but just taking different routes this year. Given the current ice conditions locally, he’s not really expecting any more visits this season. . . .

 

Earth Day 2021: celebrate abundant sea ice habitat for polar bear feeding and mating
Posted on April 22, 2021 | Comments Offon Earth Day 2021: celebrate abundant sea ice habitat for polar bear feeding and mating
Late April is the height of the most important polar bear feeding and mating season and there is abundant sea ice habitat across the Arctic for doing both.


Sea ice charts below. Compare to 2018 conditions here; 2015 here; and 2014 here. Sea ice maximum this year was apparently “uneventful” according to the folks at the NSDIC because it didn’t even come close to setting a new low record.

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Death of prominent Canadian polar bear biologist a tragic loss to science
Posted on April 29, 2021 | Comments Offon Death of prominent Canadian polar bear biologist a tragic loss to science
Markus Dyck, a renowned Canadian polar bear biologist, died in a helicopter crash near Resolute Bay, Nunavut, along with two crew members on Sunday 25 April 2021. Dyck and the crew were beginning this year’s survey of the Lancaster Sound polar bear subpopulation (Crockford 2021), which hasn’t had a population count since 1997.




From the initial CBC News report on Monday 26 April:

Three people are dead after a helicopter crash near Resolute Bay, Nunavut, during a trip to survey the Lancaster Sound polar bear population, the premier says.

It happened near Griffith Island and involved a Great Slave Helicopters AS350-B2.

A news release on Monday morning from Yellowknife-based Great Slave Helicopters said there were two flight crew and one wildlife biologist on board. No one survived, the company says. . . .

 

How are polar bears doing 15 years after the IUCN declared them ‘vulnerable’ to extinction?
Posted on May 10, 2021 | Comments Offon How are polar bears doing 15 years after the IUCN declared them ‘vulnerable’ to extinction?
The beginning of this month was the 15th anniversary of the day the IUCN declared polar bears ‘vulnerable’ to extinction because of climate change, the first time such a designation had ever been made. It was based on the opinion of polar bear specialists who examined the vague information available at the time and decided that in 45 years the bears might be in serious trouble. This decision changed the way the IUCN assessed species risk and led to mass confusion for the general public, who falsely assumed polar bear numbers had already declined by a huge amount.


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Wandering polar bears are the new starving polar bears, falsely blamed on climate change
Posted on May 15, 2021 | Comments Offon Wandering polar bears are the new starving polar bears, falsely blamed on climate change
Back in 2017, we famously had National Geographic falsely blaming a starving polar bear on climate change but since then we have been inundated (relatively speaking) with stories of ‘wandering’ bears sighted far from Arctic coastlines. These wandering bears are oddities to be sure but are not in any way an indicator of melting Arctic sea ice or lost habitat, as The Times (UK) has claimed in this latest example (Polar bear treks 1,500 miles south as Arctic hunting zone melts away).


Similar to three other recent examples, from 2019 – in Alaska in winter, in Chukotka in early spring, and Siberia in late spring – this month’s example cannot rationally be blamed on lack of sea ice. This year’s bear took at least eight weeks to travel from the Lena River Delta area of the Laptev Sea to a small village in Yakusk, Russia where it was captured on 11 May, shown below on the map of the route it took included in the story at The Daily Mail (11 May).


From The Daily Mail, 11 May.
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Spring polynyas in the Arctic then and now as feeding areas for hungry polar bears
Posted on May 23, 2021 | Comments Offon Spring polynyas in the Arctic then and now as feeding areas for hungry polar bears
Patches of open water in the Arctic that develop in the spring, including polynyas and widening shore leads, are largely due to the actions of wind and currents on mobile pack ice rather than ice melt. Contrary to concerns expressed about possible negative implications of these early patches of open water, these areas have always been critical congregation areas for Arctic seals and are therefore important feeding areas for polar bears in late spring.


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The polar bears have everything they need.
Surprising sea ice thickness across the Arctic is good news for polar bears
Posted on May 27, 2021 | Comments Offon Surprising sea ice thickness across the Arctic is good news for polar bears
This year near the end of May the distribution of thickest sea ice (3.5-5m/11.5-16.4 ft – or more) is a bit surprising, given that the WMO has suggested we may be only five years away from a “dangerous tipping point” in global temperatures. There is the usual and expected band of thick ice in the Arctic Ocean across northern Greenland and Canada’s most northern islands but there are also some patches in the peripheral seas (especially north of Svalbard, southeast Greenland, Foxe Basin, Hudson Strait, Chukchi Sea, Laptev Sea). This is plenty of sea ice for polar bear hunting at this time of year (mating season is pretty much over) and that thick ice will provide summer habitat for bears that choose to stay on the ice during the low-ice season: not even close to an emergency for polar bears.


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Another victory for science.
Activist heads explode as USFWS says oil activities pose minimal risk to polar bears in AK
Posted on May 30, 2021 | Comments Offon Activist heads explode as USFWS says oil activities pose minimal risk to polar bears in AK
Apparently, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) under Joe Biden agrees with my conclusion that oil company activities in Alaska pose minimal risk to polar bears (Crockford 2019, 2020, 2021). Although this ruling is not yet final, they have proposed that oil exploration and extraction activities on the North Slope of Alaska can proceed over the next five years.


After noting that no major offshore oil spills have ever taken place in the Alaskan portion of the Beaufort Sea (see map below) and that all spills to date have been on land with no impact on polar bears, the proposed rule in the 200+ page assessment states:

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There are more bears than expected.

New survey estimates 10x as many polar bears in Russian section of Chukchi Sea as in USA portion
Posted on June 2, 2021 | Comments Offon New survey estimates 10x as many polar bears in Russian section of Chukchi Sea as in USA portion
A joint US/Russian aerial survey has estimated that a minimum of 3,435 polar bears (but possibly as many as 5,444) likely inhabited the Chukchi Sea in 2016, quite a bit more than a previous study that estimated a population size of 2,937 the same year (which used data from one small US area extrapolated to the entire region).


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The bears are having a good year.
Polar bear habitat in Canada at the first week of June sees widening of critical polynyas
Posted on June 8, 2021 | Comments Offon Polar bear habitat in Canada at the first week of June sees widening of critical polynyas
Winds primarily cause the apparent sea ice ‘breakup’ in late spring through the widening of persistent polynyas and shore leads. This year the development of critical open water areas in Canada (which are important feeding areas for polar bears) is on track with previous years in most areas, although there is a lot of year-to-year variability.


Several prominent polynas also opened up along the Russian coast and Northeast Greenland: see the entire Arctic condition at 7 June 2021 below, courtesy NSIDC:




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The bears' environment supports a robust population.
Polar bear habitat update and the progress of breakup on Hudson Bay
Posted on June 17, 2021 | Comments Offon Polar bear habitat update and the progress of breakup on Hudson Bay
At mid-month, there is still an abundance of thick first year ice over much of Hudson Bay, suggesting that – yet again – this will not be an early breakup year for Western Hudson Bay polar bears. The early breakup years in the past (like 2010) that generated all kinds of panic amongst polar bear specialists have not developed into ever-continuing declining trend (Lunn et al. 2016) or another abrupt step-change like there was in 1998/99 (Castro de la Guardia et al. 2017).


In the last few years conditions have been more like they were in the 1980s than the prophesied catastrophe we were promised. I don’t see a ‘tipping point’ for Hudson Bay; do you see a tipping point?

The more light green areas of thinner ice present, as there was in 2010 (below), the earlier breakup is apt to be:


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It hasn't been declining in recent years and still above the Holocene median for the summer time extent.

Nothing was denied here, it just the data that says so.

 

No the Corals have come back,

Good news for Australia’s Barrier Reef you’ll likely not hear about in the media

LINK

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The reefs have survived far worse than what it faced the past couple decades, it survived rapid sea level rise and warmer seas than now thousands of years ago.

 

More ice, less ice -- the bears don't care.
Barents Sea polar bears thriving despite huge summer ice loss: spring research results are in
Posted on July 1, 2021 | Comments Offon Barents Sea polar bears thriving despite huge summer ice loss: spring research results are in
After being locked out last year, fieldwork monitoring polar bears in the Svalbard region of the Barents Sea resumed this spring. The results show that despite having to deal with the most extreme loss of summer sea ice in the entire Arctic, polar bears in this region continue to thrive. These facts show no hint of that impending catastrophic decline in population size we keep hearing is just around the corner. No tipping point here.


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Actually you don't care or you would have discussed this honestly......,

Since your weak bowing out new reports show that Corals are growing well and the sea warming is so small to trivial. If you really cared you would have learned the oceans were a lot warmer during MWP than now, yet the world went on....

You live there yet me and Jack seems to know more about the Coral reefs than you do, that is hilarious!

 

Yeah but to date a “site you trust” appears to include any unreferenced blog and exclude actual research from qualified scientists