gizmo_2655 wrote on Apr 15^th, 2011 at 10:02pm:


This is what happens when you spend so much time with your head shoved so firmly up your own arse (colloquially known as "the denialosphere"), you lose all sense of proportion and think that the incessant bleating of misinformation coming from a small number of fringe activists actually constitutes "almost everyone on the planet".

Meanwhile, back on Planet Earth, reality rolls on unabated while real scientists patiently document them by making observations and collating data:

Quote:

And what's happening with the OTHER 12 polar bear populations????

Look at this graph:
http://pbsg.npolar.no/en/status/status-table.html

That's 4 'stable or increasing', 8 'declining' and 7 'we don't have any info'...

How much of the decline due to hunting, particularly in the Western Hudson Bay stock, and reduced food supply due to fishing and seal hunting???

The effects of global warming are most profound in the southern part of the polar bear's range, and this is indeed where significant degradation of local populations has been observed.[118] The Western Hudson Bay subpopulation, in a southern part of the range, also happens to be one of the best-studied polar bear subpopulations. This subpopulation feeds heavily on ringed seals in late spring, when newly weaned and easily hunted seal pups are abundant.[109] The late spring hunting season ends for polar bears when the ice begins to melt and break up, and they fast or eat little during the summer until the sea freezes again.[109]

Due to warming air temperatures, ice-floe breakup in western Hudson Bay is currently occurring three weeks earlier than it did 30 years ago, reducing the duration of the polar bear feeding season.[109] The body condition of polar bears has declined during this period; the average weight of lone (and likely pregnant) female polar bears was approximately 290 kg (640 lb) in 1980 and 230 kg (510 lb) in 2004.[109] Between 1987 and 2004, the Western Hudson Bay population declined by 22%.[121]

In Alaska, the effects of sea ice shrinkage have contributed to higher mortality rates in polar bear cubs, and have led to changes in the denning locations of pregnant females.[78][122] Recently, polar bears in the Arctic have undertaken longer than usual swims to find prey, resulting in four recorded drownings in the unusually large ice pack regression of 2005.[119]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_bear#Observations_linked_to_global_warming

Warm winters in the Gulf of St. Lawrence have led to thinner and more unstable ice there. In 2007, Canada's federal fisheries ministry reported that while the pups are born on the ice as usual, the ice floes have started to break up before the pups learn to swim, causing the pups to drown.[43] Canada reduced the 2007 quota by 20%, because overflights showed large numbers of seal pups were lost to thin and melting ice.[44] In southern Labrador and off Newfoundland's northeast coast, however, there was extra heavy ice in 2007, and the coast guard estimated as many as 100 vessels were trapped in ice simultaneously.[45][46]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seal_hunting#Canada

astro_surf wrote on Apr 18^th, 2011 at 9:19pm:


We're talking about something that can potentially decimate the world population if we don't do something soon, and here's Al Gore going on about polar bears?

astro_surf wrote on Apr 20^th, 2011 at 8:15am:



The latest figures for March 2011 show the second lowest extent of Sea Ice on record after 2006. Considering the fact that we have a strong La Nina combined with low solar activity, this year should be colder than average, but it isn't shaping up that way so far.  

It doesn't augur well for the future.