By Tom Harris Mary-Jean Harris contributed to this article——Bio and Archives--July 17, 2023
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It really is getting tiresome that so much is falsely blamed on climate change. The most blatantly wrong example is the supposed pending demise of polar bears that, activists claim, will soon occur due to human caused climate change. Any increases in their populations that we currently see are surely insignificant in light of their prospective extinction.
For example, a 2020 press release of Polar Bear Range States asserts:
“Ten key threats are identified in the CAP: of these, human-caused climate change and the effects of such changes on polar bear habitat and prey is considered the primary threat.”
The World Economic Forum (WEF) have also joined the chorus, saying in Polar bears and climate change: What does the science say? | World Economic Forum (weforum.org):
“The consensus is clear – as Arctic sea ice melts, polar bears are finding it harder to hunt, mate and breed. While polar bears have shown some ability to adapt to changes in their surroundings – for example, by foraging for food on land, or swimming more to hunt for prey – scientists project that as sea ice diminishes, polar bears will find it harder to survive and populations will decline.”
But these are conclusions resulting from modelled projections based on ‘worst-case scenario’ climate models (i.e., the IPCC RCP8.5 scenario) that are now discredited as implausible, if not impossible.
If the WEF and Polar Bear Range States were to look at actual-real world data, they would see that a very different story is emerging, one that paints the polar bear not as a victim of climate change, but a testament to the evolution of a species that adapted to the changing climate of the distant past, well before humans started to have any significant impact on the environment.
Dr. Susan Crockford, a zoologist and expert scientist on polar bears, tells us that polar bears arose as a new species due to climate change when brown bears were forced to colonize the sea ice. This occurred about 140 thousand years ago in the area that is now Ireland.
This was a natural evolution that had nothing to do with human intervention, just as most climatic changes in the present have nothing to do human intervention. In her new book, Polar Bear Evolution, Dr. Crockford explains how, by looking at fossil evidence and the genetics of hybridization events, we can understand the development of a new species. Because polar bears had evolved from brown bears living in a warmer climate, they are pre-adapted to survive in a warmer world. Indeed, polar bears survived through the early Eemian interglacial period, which occurred approximately 130 to 120 thousand years ago. In the Arctic, temperatures were 5 to 8 degrees Celsius warmer and sea ice extent was much reduced. In the summer of the warmest point in the Eemian, there were essentially ice-free conditions, and the polar bears survived.
Although some sea ice is necessary for polar bears to hunt seals, when sea ice is very thick or widespread, less sunlight penetrates the ocean. Sunlight is needed for the growth of phytoplankton, and with less phytoplankton, there will be less zooplankton which feed on them. Following the food chain, there will be fewer fish, fewer seals, and so fewer polar bears. It is therefore not the case that more ice always leads to more polar bears. There is a range of conditions that provide the optimum support for seal populations and thus polar bears. As long as there is sea ice during the winter and spring months, minimal sea ice in the summer can result in higher marine productivity, which benefits polar bears.
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Dr. Crockford summarizes the situation well in Polar Bear Evolution:
“The extremes of climate change that polar bears have endured are almost unimaginable, from the deepest glacial conditions that drove them out of the Arctic altogether, through at least one interglacial warmer than today with months-long periods of open water in summer and less ice in winter, as well as the very warm conditions at the beginning of the Holocene. It seems plausible that a warm interglacial may have presented less difficult survival situations for polar bears than the extreme cold of glacial periods, in part because of the increased productivity generated by more open water over the summer… Given what we know about the past, the suggestion that polar bears cannot endure Arctic warming in the future, whether natural or due to human influences on climate, or both, seems overly pessimistic. Climatic extremes have defined the evolutionary history of polar bears, so climatic extremes have fine-tuned their physiological adaptability and behavioral flexibility.”
We thus see that, as polar bears are pre-adapted to survive in warmer climates without sea ice, the claims from climate activists that polar bears are dying is simply unfounded. Dr. Crockford concludes:
“This is the truth the world needs to hear: the experts were wrong. Polar bears have not been driven to the brink of extinction by climate change, they are thriving.”
In 1973, an international treaty between Canada, Denmark, Norway, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the United States was signed that outlawed the unrestricted hunting of polar bears. The polar bear population has increased from 6,000 to 12,000 in 1973 to between 22,000 and 31,000 in 2020. So by simply looking at the numbers, it is clear that polar bears are thriving. We have also seen indicators of good physical and reproductive health of polar bears over the last two decades, even when there has been a decline in sea ice. Moreover, sea ice has been increasing in areas such as Hudson Bay, allowing bears to hunt on the ice to a much further extent. There have been increases and decreases in sea ice throughout the world, and polar bears adapt to these conditions as they have for thousands of years.
Cherry-picking evidence and showing images of starving bears (a rarity, but in large populations bound to occur to some individuals) does not accurately represent the thriving bear population that has developed to this day. This doom and gloom portrait is being painted by activists, not scientists who are trying to understand the truth about the polar bear population and its relationship to climate change.
It is important to listen to the experts who are out in the field observing polar bears in their natural habitat and the scientists studying their evolution throughout history rather than activists and computer modelers. It may be that the loudest voices are telling us to save the polar bears, but the scientists we should be listening to are those such as Dr. Susan Crockford, who have done the work to study this fascinating species.
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Tom Harris is Executive Director of the Ottawa, Canada-based International Climate Science Coalition at http://www.icsc-climate.com.