Bearing the Unbearable - a follow-up

For all the doubting Thomases who say the picture of the polar bear I posted yesterday was falsified or photoshopped, here is the full background story.

I have two expressions to reflect this attitude

• denial
• contempt- prior-to-investigation

Many thanks to Dragon Kate for the heads-up

A background story - No. 2

http://www.arctic-dreams.com/en/news;1.0.0.0/page0/id22.html

For tourists and wildlife photographers, the main reason to come to Svalbard is to see polar bears. And yes, usually we find them: beautiful bears, photogenic bears, playfull or even at a kill. At first glance, everything is, as it has always been in one of the most easily accessible polar bear populations of the world, strongly protected and doing good, so some people say. But are they really doing good, the bears up here?

I am a critically minded person, and I observe. I see the summers being so pleasant (and warm) as never before. I see the glaciers calving, retreating dozens to hundreds of metres every year. I see the pack ice disappearing in record speed. Yes, I have seen bears in good shape - but I have also seen dead and starving polar bears. Bears walking on the shores, looking for food, bears trying to hunt reindeer, eating bird's eggs, moss and seaweed. And I realized that the fat bears are nearly exclusively males which stay on the pack ice all year long. The females, on the other hand, which den on land to give birth to their young, are often slim. With the pack ice retreating further and further north every year, they tend to be stuck on land where there's not much food to be found. In the first year, they lose their first cub. In the second year, they lose their second (and last) cub. Only once I have seen a mother with a nearly independent cub. Only few times I have seen beautifully fat mothers with beautifully fat young. Many times I have seen horribly thin bears, and those were exclusively females - like this one here. A mere skeleton, hurt on her front leg, possibly by a desperate attempt to hunt a walrus while she was stuck on and.

Some experts claim the Svalbard population to be stable, even rising. Well, here comes my question: how can a population be stable if it consists of less and less females and cubs? How can a population be doing good if most bear will score a body index of 2-3 out of 5? Only once I have seen a bear getting a big fat „5“, but several times I have seen dead bears and bears like this one: a mere „1“ on the scale, doomed to death. I do not have scientific data to proof my observations, but I have eyes to see - and a brain to draw conclusions. Climate change is happening big deal here in the Arctic. And it is our decision to trying to change this. So: let's do something about the biggest threat of our time. Maybe we cannot save this bear here. But every little action we do to change our ways is a step in the right direction. We just have to get started and keep on going!

The heartrending plight of the polar bear

Fossil Fuel Ecocide Forces Starving Polar Bear to Hold Breath For Three Minutes in Seal Hunt

Robertscribbler,

7 August, 2015

(A starving polar bear is forced to hold breath for a record three minutes in a failed hunt for seals.)

Like so many other innocent creatures on this planet, polar bears are facing ever-worsening life-threatening conditions due to the fossil fuel industry’s insistence to keep burning, and to keep us dependent on their horrific energy sources. The bears’ Arctic home has been transformed in ways that are profound and terrible. The sea ice they used for hunting grounds is greatly depleted. The seals they hunted for prey have ever-more-numerous avenues of escape into dark and warming waters.

It’s a merciless and terrible burning. One that encompasses many genocides together. Ecocide, ecological shock, growth shock, the sixth great extinction. All words to describe what we now watch. What fossil fuel industry influence is preventing us from stopping. But to the bears themselves, it’s a wrenching torture. 

A forced orphaning and starvation combined as the bears grow increasingly emaciated, weak, and desperate. Transformed into walking skeletal beings, they’re ghosting off toward the obliteration fossil fuel interests are sentencing them to.

(Plunging Arctic sea ice driven by Northern Hemisphere polar amplification is the chief agent of habitat loss and extinction pressure for polar bears. As you can see in the superbly rendered video above by Andy Robinson, the fall has been merciless and precipitous.)

To a climate change denier, the plight of these poor creatures is a subject of ridicule and derision. ‘Who cares about stupid bears’ is the rallying cry of heartless ignoramuses everywhere. They’d rather us be worried about our own petty day-to-day existences. The back and forth, stuck in traffic, want more money, pay less taxes, fear of far off ISIS daily grind of the right wing soundtrack. Or when the tinny siren song of that ever-more-stuffed-with-straw appeal fails it’s back to the old — pretend it’s not happening — trick. Starving polar bears so desperate that they’re now forced to hibernate in summer to conserve energy must be photo-shopped by some imaginary government agency after all, right?

Deny as deniers do, for the bears it’s all too real. For one bear in particular, recently filmed in the above video, it was a life and death struggle. Not some narcissist’s thrill like the needless poaching of innocent wild lions for blood-sport in Africa. No, for this bear, success in the hunt meant a continuation of blessed life. A second chance to keep going, to keep living in the great world. Failure meant weakness, fading, pain and death.

The bear, in dire need of food, was forced to hunt in a way it was not adapted to — by stalking in the water. It was forced, in desperation to swim toward near-water seals. And it was forced to hold its breath underwater. Hold it for longer than any polar bear ever witnessed. Hold it for a full 3 minutes where a mere 72 seconds was the previous record. It was as if the starved bear had been forced to perform impossible feats — or die. That’s the situation the callous greed and disregard of some have put them in. Do the impossible, or just die.

(The gaunt, emaciated and obviously starving polar bear that broke the recent diving record in a photo by Rinie van Meurs. Image source: Meurs Study and The Weather Network.)

This bear’s struggle is not one occurring in isolation. It’s not just the struggle of a single individual. But the struggle of an entire race that is now being torn from the fabric of existence.

The cliche phrase to say at this time is that we are all responsible. That we all share the guilt. But it’s not true. In fact to say such a thing is a terrible lie providing an out for the real perpetrators of this egregious harm. There are some of us who want to change the bear’s situation. Some of us who want to improve its chances. Some of us who want to cut the destructive fossil fuel threads that bind the bear and us all to a terrible and ever worsening ecocide. The ones who want to help are not the problem. The ones attempting again and again to stop the ongoing damage are not the guilty party.

But the deniers and the fossil fuel industry the deniers wittingly or unwittingly serve are entirely different. They don’t care one whit about bears suffering an all-too-real existential crisis. And it seems they don’t care about their own children’s rising existential crisis either. They are the ones who deserve blame. For they are the authors of this great harm.

Links/Credits:

This one’s for Colorado Bob

Polar Bear Forced to Hold Breath for a Record Three Minutes

Record Breaking Polar Bear Spurs Climate Concerns

Food Situation so Bad, Polar Bears now Hibernate During Summer

Sea Ice Volume Decline By Andy Robinson

Bears' desperation

Buried deep within the article -

“The bears are usually returning to their winter pack ice habitats over Hudson Bay around this time of year....Yet recently, this return has been delayed by “increasingly late formation of the sea ice caused by climate change.”

Polar Bear Attacks Canadian Pedestrians

Following a polar bear attack in Northern Canada on Friday, a man and woman were in stable condition while some considered climate change as a probable cause.

Climate Progress,

4 November, 2013

Churchill, Manitoba is a town on the shore of Hudson Bay, also known as the polar bear capital of the world. Many tourists visit to try to catch a glimpse of the planets largest terrestrial carnivore, but two residents got a much closer view than anyone would want.

Around 5 a.m. local time, two pedestrians had just left a house in town and were surprised by a young polar bear. “It was right in town,” said RCMP spokeswoman Tara Seelm. One of the two, a 30-year-old woman in Churchill as a seasonal worker for the tourist season, was the initial focus of the attack and her screams prompted neighbor Bill Ayotte to run out of his house with a shovel.

Ignoring the shovel, the bear turned its attention to Ayotte, according to Mitch Paddock, who rushed out once he heard the commotion. “He was on his back, the bear was right on top of him with both paws,” said Paddock.

The bear dragged Ayotte around, and smashed both paws on him repeatedly. Paddock ran to get a gun that shoots off a kind of firecracker, and after several attempts to scare off the huge bear, he glanced it with a shot, which gave the bear pause. Another neighbor drove at it with their car, honking the horn, and that was what finally got the polar bear to leave.

Ayotte and the woman were taken to the hospital with multiple lacerations — the woman was released on Sunday while Ayotte remained.

The attack happened several hours after trick-or-treating wrapped up for local children. The town actually monitors the area for bears with a helicopter and tries to keep them away with emergency vehicles’ flashing lights on Halloween. The bears are usually returning to their winter pack ice habitats over Hudson Bay around this time of year.

Yet recently, this return has been delayed by “increasingly late formation of the sea ice caused by climate change.”

Doug Webber, a neighbor who has lived in Churchill for 50 years, said that there have only been “a handful” of polar bear attacks while he lived there. A bear chased a resident and swiped at him with a paw in September.

Steven Amstrup, chief scientist for Polar Bears International told the Guardian that it is likely polar bear attacks will become more frequent as there is less and less sea ice:

The number of bear-human interactions, bear-human conflicts, may be somewhat on the rise. We have predicted in no uncertain times that as bears become hungrier as the sea ice absence period is longer, more and more of these animals are going to be venturing into communities, venturing into villages, raiding food caches, getting into garbage, and even attacking people. So we predict these kinds of events are going to be more frequent and more severe because of climate change.

A recent study concluded that “anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases have led to unprecedented regional warmth.”

Manitoba Conservation tracked down the animal ended up shooting and killing two polar bears following the attack.

The plight of the polar bear

I have been asking myself about the plight of the polar bear

Starved polar bear perished due to record sea-ice melt, says expert

Climate change has reduced ice in the Arctic to record lows in the past year, forcing animals to range further in search of food

This 16-year-old male polar bear died of starvation resulting from the lack of ice on which to hunt seals. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Global Warming Images

the Guardian,

6 August, 2013

A starved polar bear found found dead in Svalbard as "little more than skin and bones" perished due to a lack of sea ice on which to hunt seals, according to a reknowned polar bear expert.

Climate change has reduced sea ice in the Arctic to record lows in the last year and Dr Ian Stirling, who has studied the bears for almost 40 years and examined the animal, said the lack of ice forced the bear into ranging far and wide in an ultimately unsuccessful search for food.

"From his lying position in death, the bear appears to simply have starved and died where he dropped," Stirling said. "He had no external suggestion of any remaining fat, having been reduced to little more than skin and bone."

The bear had been examined by scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute in April in the southern part of Svalbard, an Arctic island archipelago, and appeared healthy. The same bear had been captured in the same area in previous years, suggesting that the discovery of its body, 250km away in northern Svalbard in July, represented an unusual movement away from its normal range. The bear probably followed the fjords inland as it trekked north, meaning it may have walked double or treble that distance.

Polar bears feed almost exclusively on seals and need sea ice to capture their prey. But 2012 saw the lowest level of sea ice in the Arctic on record. Prond Robertson, at the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, said: "The sea ice break up around Svalbard in 2013 was both fast and very early." He said recent years had been poor for ice around the islands: "Warm water entered the western fjords in 2005-06 and since then has not shifted."

Stirling, now at Polar Bears International and previously at the University of Alberta and the Canadian Wildlife Service, said: "Most of the fjords and inter-island channels in Svalbard did not freeze normally last winter and so many potential areas known to that bear for hunting seals in spring do not appear to have been as productive as in a normal winter. As a result, the bear likely went looking for food in another area but appears to have been unsuccessful."

Scientists are tracking polar bears with radio collars in Svalbard, Norway, to monitor their search for food. Photograph: Ashley Cooper/Global Warming Images

Research published in May showed that loss of sea ice was harming the health, breeding success and population size of the polar bears of Hudson Bay, Canada as they spent longer on land waiting for the sea to refreeze. Other work has shown polar bear weights are declining. In February, a panel of polar bear experts published a paper stating that rapid ice loss meant options such the feeding of starving bears by humans needed to be considered to protect the 20,000-25,000 animals thought to remain.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the world's largest professional conservation network, states that of the 19 populations of polar bear around the Arctic, data is available for 12. Of those, eight are declining, three are stable and one is increasing.

The IUCN predicts that increasing ice loss will mean between one-third and a half of polar bears will be lost in the next three generations, about 45 years. But the US and Russian governments said in March that faster-than-expected ice losses could mean two-thirds are lost.

Attributing a single incident to climate change can be controversial, but Douglas Richardson, head of living collections at the Highland Wildlife Park near Kingussie, said: "It's not just one bear though. There are an increasing number of bears in this condition: they are just not putting down enough fat to survive their summer fast. This particular polar bear is the latest bit of evidence of the impact of climate change."

Ice loss due to climate change is "absolutely, categorically and without question" the cause of falling polar bear populations, said Richardson, who cares for the UK's only publicly kept polar bears. He said 16 years was not particularly old for a wild male polar bear, which usually live into their early 20s. "There may have been some underlying disease, but I would be surprised if this was anything other than starvation," he said. "Once polar bears reach adulthood they are normally nigh on indestructible, they are hard as nails."

Jeff Flocken, at the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said: "While it is difficult to ascribe a single death or act to climate change it couldn't be clearer that drastic and long-term changes in their Arctic habitat threaten the survival of the polar bear. The threat of habitat loss from climate change, exacerbated by unsustainable killing for commercial trade in Canada, could lead to the demise of one of the world's most iconic animals, and this would be a true tragedy."

Marine critters speed toward poles thanks to climate change

Don’t believe in climate change?

You may want to make your case to marine life, which a new study shows is migrating toward the poles as a result of rising water temperatures. An international team of researchers say marine creatures are feeding, breeding and living about 4.5 miles closer to the poles every year. That’s about 10 times faster than land creatures, which are making the move at a far slower 3.7 miles per decade.

The report is by an international team of researchers that looked at about 40 years worth of data. "This is occurring even though sea surface temperatures are warming three times slower than land temperatures," says lead author Elvira Poloczanska.

[Source] [Source]

http://now.msn.com/marine-life-reacts-to-climate-change-by-quickly-migrating-toward-poles#scpshrjwfbs