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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Yeah. Your many years of polar bear research and your uncited "scientific" papers.

Gosh, I'm convinced.

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ORIGINAL: Nnanji

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

From Nwf.org

It's not about the polar bear olympics.

Global Warming and Polar Bears

The chief threat to the polar bear is the loss of its sea ice habitat due to global warming. As suggested by its specific scientific name (Ursus maritimus), the polar bear is actually a marine mammal that spends far more time at sea than it does on land. It is on the Arctic ice that the polar bear makes its living, which is why global warming is such a serious threat to its well-being.

How are polar bears being impacted by global warming?

-Population sizes decreasing
-Sea ice platforms moving farther apart and swimming conditions more dangerous
-Fewer hunting opportunities and increased scarcity of food

As climate change melts sea ice, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that two thirds of polar bears will disappear by 2050. This dramatic decline in the polar bear is occurring in our lifetime, which is but a miniscule fraction of the time polar bears have roamed the vast Arctic seas.

Rapid Arctic ice melt in 2011:

-Arctic sea ice extent for January 2011 was the lowest in the satellite record for that month.
-The winter's maximum Arctic sea ice extent tied for the lowest on record. The year saw the second lowest Arctic ice levels since 1979 when observation began.
-A female polar bear reportedly swam for nine days - nonstop-across the Beaufort Sea before reaching an ice floe, costing her 22 percent of her weight and her cub.

Population Size Declines

In southern portions of their range, like Hudson Bay, Canada, there is no sea ice during the summer, and the polar bears must live on land until the Bay freezes in the fall, whereupon they can again hunt on the ice. While on land during the summer, these bears eat little or nothing.

In just 20 years the ice-free period in Hudson Bay has increased by an average of 20 days, cutting short polar bears' seal hunting season by nearly three weeks. The ice is freezing later in the fall, but it is the earlier spring ice melt that is especially difficult for the bears. They have a narrower timeframe in which to hunt during the critical season when seal pups are born. As a result, average bear weight has dropped by 15 percent, causing reproduction rates to decline. The Hudson Bay population is down more than 20 percent.

Retreating Sea Ice Platforms

The retreat of ice has implications beyond the obvious habitat loss. Remaining ice is farther from shore, making it less accessible. The larger gap of open water between the ice and land also contributes to rougher wave conditions, making the bears’ swim from shore to sea ice more hazardous.

In 2004, biologists discovered four drowned polar bears in the Beaufort Sea, and suspect the actual number of drowned bears may have been considerably greater. Never before observed, biologists attributed the drowning to a combination of retreating ice and rougher seas.

Scarcity of Food

Exacerbating the problems of the loss of hunting areas, it is expected that the shrinking polar ice cap will also cause a decline in polar bears’ prey -- seals. The reduction in ice platforms near productive areas for the fish that the seals eat affects their nutritional status and reproduction rates.

Polar bears are going hungry for longer periods of time, resulting in cannibalistic behavior. Although it has long been known polar bears will kill for dominance or kill cubs so they can breed with the female, outright predation for food was previously unobserved by biologists.

Polar Bear Status

In 2008, the polar bear was listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act primarily because of the decline of its primary habitat: sea ice. The Secretary of Interior listed the polar bear as threatened but restricted the Endangered Species Act's protections and thus the polar bear's future is still very much in jeopardy.

The polar bear is the proverbial "canary in the coal mine" of the serious threat global warming poses to wildlife species around the world, unless we take immediate and significant action to reduce global warming pollution.

And yet, with a simple google you'll find many links to "scientific" papers that show the polar bear population is not declining and is, in fact, healthy and expanding. So, the entire promise of your propaganda article is false making the entire article nonsense.

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Our message is not simple or conventional or consistent with the dire warnings present in much of the polar bear literature since 2006 (Schliebe et al. 2006). We show that much of the scientific evidence indicating that some polar bear subpopulations are declining due to climate change-mediated sea ice reductions is likely flawed by poor mark–recapture (M-R) sampling and that the complex analysis models employed to overcome these capture issues apparently fail to provide accurate estimates of the demographic parameters used to determine subpopulation status.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Yeah, that's it. Good catch. FFS.

If YOU had read, you'd have caught the bit about not being about polar bear olympics.

That's a literary device known as allusion. I was assuming an adult reader would catch that. I forgot I'm talking to you.

I'll dumb it down next time, Drax.

Oops....another allusion!

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Read what you quoted. It's not a counter-argument.

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ORIGINAL: Nnanji

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Read what you quoted. It's not a counter-argument.

Read the whole thing and then read other studies. I think you'll be amazed at what reading can do for your life.

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Until 2012, the PBSG considered PVA and TEK in the creation of their status reports. However, the PBSG status report did not consider PVA or TEK perspectives for their most recent status report (IUCN/PBSG, 2012). Rather they employed qualitative judgments based on the expert opinions of their members. The FB listing was changed from “data deficient” to “stable” based on recent aerial survey results indicating a stable/increasing trend (Stapleton et al. 2016). However, WH continues to be listed as “declining” in spite of a recent aerial survey that indicates no difference (trend not significant at P>0.05) and actually indicated a numerical increase (Stapleton et al. 2014). The SH subpopulation was listed as “stable” in 2009 in spite of PVA projections for decline and continues to be listed as stable, perhaps in response to the recent aerial survey that shows no change in numbers (Obbard et al. 2013). The DS subpopulation status was revised from “declining” to “stable” with no new research in DS to draw on. The LS and NW listings were also changed to “data deficient” based solely on the age of the subpopulation estimates of vital rates (IUCN/PBSG, 2013). Without a consistent (between subpopulations) rationale or consideration of all the information relevant to individual subpopulation status, the 2013 PBSG subpopulation status determinations are difficult to evaluate.

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ORIGINAL: Musicmystery

Try reading to learn instead of for bias affirmation. You'll be amazed at what it can do for your life.