The Cult of Climastrology long agon made the polar bear, a massive animal that has no problem killing other animals and humans, the face of climate change doom. They’re having apoplexy over one in particular, and, among the news fables on it, this is possibly the nuttiest
Video of starving polar bear fuels fears of climate-linked extinction
Studies warn that polar bears could be extinct by 2050.
The world’s tragedies often have images that end up defining them: A 5-year old screaming in Iraq after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers. A starving child being stalked by a vulture during a ruthless famine in Sudan.
A video released this week of an extremely emaciated polar bear has served a similar purpose: as a rallying cry and stand-in for a largely unmitigated environmental disaster.
The video was shot by Paul Nicklen, a nature photographer and contributor to the National Geographic magazine for the last 17 years. He is also a biologist by training and the co-founder of Sea Legacy, a nonprofit that uses storytelling and images to advocate for the environment.
Nicklen’s video, which he shot on a trip for Sea Legacy, depicts an emaciated polar bear, its coat patchy, seemingly near death on an island in a Canadian territory inside the Arctic Circle. It searches for food in a rusted garbage can and chews what Nicklen said was an old snowmobile seat.
Nicklen told National Geographic “We stood there crying – filming with tears rolling down our cheeks.†Here’s what it looked like
Heart-breaking video of a starving polar bear on iceless land shows how #ClimateChange is destroying #wildlife pic.twitter.com/1vXzMVK6mP
— World Wildlife Day (@WildlifeDay) December 10, 2017
Really, it’s no surprise that the Cult of Climastrology would take this one polar bear and run with it to the extreme. It’s what they do. They’ve made these predictions many times, and then populations of polar bears grew too big to actually sustain, and have fallen off.
The hysteria was so bad that even uber-Warmists (and nice guy) Eric Holthaus chimed in
Important fact check from a wildlife biologist on those horrible starving polar bear images we've all seen. This is why it's important to get the facts and science right first in any climate communication. (And why PB's aren't great messengers) https://t.co/NLwh7iqctc
— Eric Holthaus (@EricHolthaus) December 10, 2017
You can read the whole thread Eric links at Twitchy. Jeff Higdon suspects that it is a different problem, most likely cancers which go through populations. And the population the PB is from is considered stable. And “What the Sea Legacy crew should have done was contact the GN Conservation Officer in the nearest community and had this bear put down. And necropsied. The narrative of the story might have turned out quite different if they had.”
Cristina Mittermeier, co-founder of SeaLegacy, told CBC Radio why they filmed the incident and released the video
“While Mittermeier said the bear had no obvious injuries and she believes it was too young to die of old age, she contends that’s irrelevant. ‘The point is that it was starving, and …as we lose sea ice in the Arctic, polar bears will starve.’â€
In other words, it was a prop. Animals get sick. That’s nature. Fabius Maximus points out
But if sea ice loss due to man-made global warming had been the culprit, this bear would not have been the only one starving: the landscape would have been littered with carcasses. This was one bear dying a gruesome death as happens in the wild all the time (there is no suggestion that a necropsy was done to determine cause of death, just as with Stirling’s bear that supposedly died of climate change.)
In fact, research done by polar bear specialists that work in the field shows that the most common natural cause of death for polar bears is starvation, resulting from one cause or another (too young, too old, injured, sick). From Amstrup in Wild Mammals of North America: Biology, Management, and Conservation
…
Warmists keep trotting out a tiny number of polar bears starving as PROOF!!!!! of global warming doom. It’s interesting that they throw Darwinism out the window in order to push their cult.
I did not see a date on the video. but from the lack of snow in the background, it looks to be Fall. But Polar Bears typically starve in the summer and fall when the sea ice normally retreats. Their diet is too dependent on seals thus the starvation in the warmer months. All I see is normal bear life and mortality.
Yeah that’s been all over Facebook. I tried to set a few friends straight with some facts about polar bears and their populations, diet, and relation to ice, showed them pictures of normal fat polar bears and the manipulative use of sad pictures. But their emotions are already triggered by the video and it validated their views, so any other input just confuses them and makes them angry.
I also linked to Susan Crockford’s polar bear video “The Death of a Climate Icon”
https://youtu.be/XCzwFalI8OQ
But then they wring their hands and claim “Heartland Institute”, because that or the Koch Bros is the answer to all views that disturb their flow.
Blick, I disagree that polar bears starve when the ice retreats. They starve from disease, lack of hunting skill, or old age. They can also starve from too much ice. They do most of their hunting and major fattening in the spring and are already slowing down when the ice is at it’s late summer mininimum. If they are young and couldn’t figure out how to hunt in the spring, they could be in trouble by late summer. Although, it’s normal for them to forage on land for food and receding ice doesn’t necessarily cause deprivation.
JG, PBears are hungry, famished, losing weight, all summer as they are poor hunters on land. they are not “starving to death” as this one obviously is. So I agree with you, it is other problems. we just disagree on terminology.
A key fact to remember is that bear population has not declined as predicted by conservationists through recent periods of lower summer sea extent. The population has been stable or increased over the last 10 years in all but one of the bear conservation areas.
BTW, bears left land for the sea ice by Nov. 8 this year, the same average date as they did in the 1980’s.
Also, a couple of points from Susan:
The Chukchi Sea population is thriving despite a pronounced lengthening of the ice-free season since 2007.
Less sea ice in the summer in the Chukchi Sea has meant a healthy prey base for polar bears because ringed seals feed primarily in the ice-free season.
Polar bears are thriving: they are not currently threatened with extinction.
Tens of thousands of polar bears did not die as a result of more than a decade of low summer sea ice, as was predicted.
Polar bears don’t need sea ice in late summer/early fall as long as they are well-fed in the spring.