PEDs?
Whenever I've been to the zoo, those polar bears look really happy in the water. Not sure what the big deal is here.
More idiotic BS from the LA Times. Oh no! Polar bears swim i the ocean. Just like they've been doing for 100000 years.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j8SGs_gnFk
The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service estimates that the polar bear population is currently at 20,000 to 25,000 bears, up from as low as 5,000-10,000 bears in the 1950s and 1960s. A 2002 U.S. Geological Survey of wildlife in the Arctic Refuge Coastal Plain noted that the polar bear populations “may now be near historic highs.” The alarm about the future of polar bear decline is based on speculative computer model predictions many decades in the future. And the methodology of these computer models is being challenged by many scientists and forecasting experts. (LINK)
Scientists Debunk Fears of Global Warming Related Polar Bear Endangerment:
Canadian biologist Dr. Mitchell Taylor, the director of wildlife research with the Arctic government of Nunavut: “Of the 13 populations of polar bears in Canada, 11 are stable or increasing in number. They are not going extinct, or even appear to be affected at present,” Taylor said. “It is just silly to predict the demise of polar bears in 25 years based on media-assisted hysteria.” (LINK)
Evolutionary Biologist and Paleozoologist Dr. Susan Crockford of University of Victoria in Canada has published a number of papers in peer-reviewed academic journals. “Polar bears, for example, survived several episodes of much warmer climate over the last 10,000 years than exists today,” Crockford wrote. “There is no evidence to suggest that the polar bear or its food supply is in danger of disappearing entirely with increased Arctic warming, regardless of the dire fairy-tale scenarios predicted by computer models.” (LINK)
Award-winning quaternary geologist Dr. Olafur Ingolfsson, a professor from the University of Iceland, has conducted extensive expeditions and field research in both the Arctic and Antarctic. “We have this specimen that confirms the polar bear was a morphologically distinct species at least 100,000 years ago, and this basically means that the polar bear has already survived one interglacial period,” Ingolfsson said. “This is telling us that despite the on-going warming in the Arctic today, maybe we don’t have to be quite so worried about the polar bear.” (LINK)
Internationally known forecasting pioneer Dr. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the Ivy League University of Pennsylvania and his colleague, forecasting expert Dr. Kesten Green of Monash University in Australia, co-authored a January 27, 2008 paper with Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon which found that polar bear extinction predictions violate “scientific forecasting procedures.” Excerpt: The study analyzed the methodology behind key polar bear population prediction and found that one of the two key reports in support of listing the bears had “extrapolated nearly 100 years into the future on the basis of only five years data - and data for these years were of doubtful validity.” (LINK)
Biologist Dr. Matthew Cronin, a research professor at the School of Natural Resources and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks: “We don’t know what the future ice conditions will be, as there is apparently considerable uncertainty in the sea ice models regarding the timing and extent of sea ice loss. Also, polar bear populations are generally healthy and have increased worldwide over the last few decades,” Cronin said. (LINK) & (LINK)
Naturalist Nigel Marven is a trained zoologist, botanist, and a UK wildlife documentary maker who spent three months studying and filming polar bears in Canada’s arctic in 2007. “I think climate change is happening, but as far as the polar bear disappearing is concerned, I have never been more convinced that this is just scaremongering. People are deliberately seeking out skinny bears and filming them to show they are dying out. That’s not right,” Marven said. (LINK) & (LINK)
Biologist Josef Reichholf, who heads the Vertebrates Department at the National Zoological Collection in Munich: “In warmer regions it takes far less effort to ensure survival,” Reichholf said. “How did the polar bear survive the last warm period? … Look at the polar bear’s close relative, the brown bear. It is found across a broad geographic region, ranging from Europe across the Near East and North Asia, to Canada and the United States. Whether bears survive will depend on human beings, not the climate.” (LINK)
Polar bear expert Dennis Compayre, formerly of the conservation group Polar Bears International, has studied the bears for almost 30 years in their natural habitat and is working on a new UK documentary about the bears. “I tell you there are as many bears here now as there were when I was a kid,” Compayre said. “Churchill [in Northern Canada] is full of these scientists going on about vanishing bears and thinner bears. They come here preaching doom, but I question whether some of them really have the bears’ best interests at heart.” (LINK)
Botanist Dr. David Bellamy, a famed UK environmental campaigner, former lecturer at Durham University, and host of a popular UK TV series on wildlife: “Why scare the families of the world with tales that polar bears are heading for extinction when there is good evidence that there are now twice as many of these iconic animals, most doing well in the Arctic than there were 20 years ago?” (LINK)