How far can a polar bear swim?

hmm 58 views and no comments. that's odd. Does everybody agree with me?

Note that this is the time of peak danger in the year o a polar bear where climate change is concerned. they are out on the ice trying to kill and eat seals, their main food source. It is also the time of year when the ice is most scarce, because climate change is melting almost al of it. The ice will be back in the winter, but some of the bears will not live to see it.

I agree Chris,but too many just don't care.
''Give me more tax breaks/wealth and possessions.''
Drill,drill,drill......................................
Man 1 Earth 0.
Games about over.

Don- I had to notice that everytime gas prices went up, everybody stopped talking about climate change. lookin out for number one, short term style. Plan to have grandkids?

Thank goodness no.
There won't be anything worth having left for them.

We will pay for this cruelty. We are already paying. If I could stop it I would. If I could go get those bears and place them in safety I would.

Lynn, I'm just wondering, where would be a safe place for polar bears except in the polar ice field regions?

GG, I don't know of any other place. Maybe an environment created for them with the temps and water and ice, a polar bear reserve of some sort. It has only been a couple of weeks that I read an article that Bush lifted a ban on the laws in place to protect the polar bears. This is a big mistake. We might be seeing the demise of the polar bears right now, but it will eventually lead to us, as are some of the other animals on this earth.

from the Calgary Herald newspaper (August 16 was date that polar bears were observed at least 20 kilometers from land):

Polar bears are strong swimmers, and it's not unusual to see the occasional one so far from the land or the ice they hunt on.




Scientists say seeing so many (swimming bears) in one day is extraordinary and worrisome, especially in light of an apparent increase in drownings in recent years.

"The bottom line here is that polar bears need sea ice," said Richard Steiner of the University of Alaska's Marine Advisory Program.

"The sea ice is decaying, and the bears are in very serious trouble. For any people who are still non-believers in global warming and the impacts it is having in the Arctic, this should answer their doubts, once and for all."

Satellite images indicate there was little ice in the region where the bears were found Aug. 16.

Scientists said this year's meltdown in the Arctic could exceed the record set last year.

While polar bears in most of the Arctic will be able to survive until the ice comes back in the fall, the fear is they will be in serious trouble further down the road, as the Arctic continues to heat up.

"To find so many polar bears at sea at one time is extremely worrisome, because it could be an indication that, as the sea ice on which they live and hunt continues to melt, many more bears may be out there facing similar risk," says Geoff York, a polar bear biologist with the World Wildlife Fund.

"As climate change continues to dramatically disrupt the Arctic, polar bears and their cubs are being forced to swim longer distances to find food and habitat."

NOTE: the eventual fate of the 9 swimming bears is unknown, as the plane did not observe them at length to see their eventual fate. It is possible that some may have changed direction and made it to shore- but keep in mind that the bears do not want to go to land because there is NOTHING TO EAT there.

I offered a bet several months back that this year's ice melt would exceed last year's. Too bad I did not get any takers.

Lynn, I'm glad you didn't say, "In a zoo." I am not a big fan of zoos! I can't think of any other place either. I guess I was just trying to spark some conversation.

I feel for the polar bears, I wish there was some way to help them possibly some kind of artificial ice bergs, I don't know if that would be possible with depth of the water though. But fi they can set up oil rigs in the ocean that humans can stay on and live on why couldn't they do that for the plar bears. Permanent structures that would never melt. Of course that would make it harder for the to catch their main prey the seals, but they would always have a safe and sturdy place to go to. For every oil rig, they must build 3 artificial ice burgs.

Rae- you are missing the point, I respectfully submit. When you create a problem, the correct response is to fix the problem. The correct response is not to let the problem stand, but come up with some odd strategem to lessen the impact of the problem.

Climate change is not just some weird "cycle" as the denial squad argues. It is a climate alteration stemming from our burning fossil fuels in the amount of several million tons daily, thereby nearly doubling the carbonddioxide content of our sky. Carbon dioxide is invisible, but it is a fact.

John- global warming is a controversial issue for those who have not asked a scientist.

if I am being curt and impolite, I apologize. But in the year 2008, it is no longer okay to argue that the observd changes in arctic climate are unrelated to fossil fuel use.

If someone wants to argue that it is too late to completely fix the Frankenstein we have created here, I would readily agree. Yes, it is probably impossible to go back completely now. But that fact is not a valid argument for doing nothing. If we CONTINUE to pump that CO2 into the sky, our descendants are going the way of the polar bear.

“Swimming 100 miles is not a big deal for a polar bear, especially a fat one,” said Dr Ian Stirling of the Canadian Wildlife Service.

Hey but thats not me saying it; regardless whether the fate of the polar bears is an unfortunate one or not, it still does not make a valid case against "climate change" as a natural phenomenon.

Of course i'd already covered several links to "climate change" in my earlier article, nevertheless, are links on the subject:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?memberId=327245&articleId=281474977065384&nav=MyGather

SOME NEWER ARTICLES:
How is the artic ice really fairing?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/15/goddard_arctic_ice_mystery/

Whats been the trend in the last few years?
http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/april2008/040408_cools_off.htm
http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/49875/story.htm

What are the possibilities given the natural climate change occurances in future?
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A//www.milenio.com/mexico/milenio/nota.asp?id=651680&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=es&tl=en
http://www.coastalpost.com/08/03/08_Calm_Sun__Cold_Earth.html
http://www.prisonplanet.com/scientist-predicts-ice-age-within-10-years.html

I am really concerned about the plight of the polar bears. I dont know what can be done to help.

What a very sad story! I would sure like to think that someone would make some kind of effort to help these poor things!

I can't figure out why you have so many views, but so few comments, unless THAT many people really don't want to "get into it" about global warming vs. climate change or something like that. That's the only thing I can think of, Chris!

That's SAD !!!

did you know that publishing articles on Gather consumes about 1/350th barrel of oil!
Save the polar bear, stop publishing articles!!

yup it is sad, Peter.

Nancy- that could be the explanation. Usually I get a bunch of guys like Dar attacking me and making long lists of websites run by Mexican podiatrists and Latvian astronomers explaining how we are headed into an ice age & explaining that I am jumping to conclusions. I am not jumping to conclusions unless the several hundred climatologists of the IPCC are jumping to conclusions.

No thanks, Dar, I get my climate news from the climate professionals of the IPCC (Intergovernmental panel on climate change). You can find somebody to argue with their analysis if you hunt around, but I am not interested in discussing denial science.

Scott- I could drive around to several hundred households all across america and hand deliver this post, would that be more fuel efficient in your view?

I can drive a Hummer if you like.

That is one option, another would be to dig a hole, jump into it, and train a bear to cover the hole with its own feces

odd that you would pick a "planet earth from space" as your icon, Scott.

any other comments, Gather?

That is how oil is made Chris... animals jumping into holes, and other animals defecating on them. Science has proved that. Its just basic biology

I have a comment. Chris W. Thanks for a sensitive article. Scott A, you are a stupid little twit.

Wow another twit.
we are so blessed here at gather.

I have a comment. Chris W. Thanks for a sensitive article. Robert S., you are also a stupid little twit.

Oh i'm sure you would have figured those links weren't for you, surely we understand each others position on this issue and of course i understand you're not interested in discussing denial science but instead in denying science itself.

Not only is the science on this man made global warming shaky but also the funding behind behind it as well, not to mention their motives. The green revolutionists who are also the same names behind big oil, namely the international bankers (as i've shown in my article), have simply made "man" the problem for "climate change" and have simply come up with cocky solutions (problems actually) to screw man over. When it comes to the air, these Eco hypocrites raise fears & come up with things such as carbon credits which are essentially a taxing system for corporations finally passed down to the consumer. Then when when its comes to oil, they raise fears of oil supplies (i.e peak oil & that to raising fears of expectations in the near future) there by ripping us off on huge profits from gas prices as markets expectations respond to fears cause by manipulative information(V.Important:Remember those who started the green revolution are the same guys who own big oil, see my article for this).

Frankly speaking, Chris & i will never be on the same boat with this but for the rest of you, do not take my word for it or for that matter Chris's. Simply look at all the data provided by both of us & make up your own minds after researching all of it.

Dar: "Simply look at all the data provided by both of us & make up your own minds after researching all of it."

There is not one scientific organization or association worldwide that disputes the IPCC reports.

Re: polar bears, I'm afraid nothing will be done to affect their fate. We are in a period of massive species extinction due to climate change. Even if we were to completely stop man-made emissions right now, the ghgs already in the atmosphere will increase average global temperatures by around 2 degrees F. We will be lucky to stop it there, because we show no signs of any serious attempt to reduce ghgs. And while I can appreciate the sentiments expressed for polar bears, the fates of future generations also are affected by what we will do or not do to stop (and possibly reverse) ghg emissions.

I am not optimistic. Most Americans favor McCain's plan to drill for domestic oil in order to (supposedly) help them with the price of gas (which it will not do). We are like an addict, who will do anything for the next fix. Sadly, this addiction will also be our own undoing.

They should have harpooned the bears and used the meat and fur. Missed opportunity.

Steve- right you are. The answer to addiction is not McCain's approach of "take a bigger hit now so that you can take a smaller hit tomorrow". The way to end an addiction is to go cold turkey, or at least drop the dose steeply. I am discussing fossil fuel use here of course, not heroin or cocaine, but it is the same essential process.
Sadly, I agree that you are probably right about the polar bear. A relic population may survive on the north shore of alaska, scavenging for garbage, maybe finding a dead moose or caribou, interbreeding with its cousin the grizzly bear now that the white coat will no longer be a survival asset in the absence of ice fields.

We could of course benefit from the negative example of the polar bear, if we have the character to pay attention. They say that humans are the only mammals capable of rational forethought, but its a dubious proposition. To benefit from a larger brain, you have to pay attention to what it tells you. Bush has busied himself re-writing the climate science reports from NASA and EPA, and most of our electorate does not have a big problem with that. After all, science is only important if it can build a better hamburger.

for a negative example of my second paragraph, see Don's entry above.

It's a sad thing. It's going to become apparent to the nay-sayers soon. Then, if nothing else, we can feed them to the bears.

Chris W.,
“hmm 58 views and no comments. that's odd. Does everybody agree with me?”
What do you want someone to disagree with? Do you want someone to say that people aren’t seeing polar bears swim miles and miles, that the ice isn’t melting, or that burning oil won’t generate CO2?

Are you looking for someone to say that the earth has been cooler then now and will be cooler again, or that the earth has been warmer than now and will be warmer again?

actually Duane, to be honest I do not want to argue any more. I would like us to progress from denial to acceptance to action. But we seem to be stuck in denial. The earth has certainly been much cooler than at present, they called it the ice age and there was ice a mile thick over chicago. That's not where we are heading, we are heading the other way.

I would like to know what the denial crowd would like from me. To join them in ignoring science and in begging everyone else to ignore science as wel? To stop worrying because God is in charge, as I have been invited to do here on Gather? To rationalize our inaction and our abdication of world leadership because fighting climate change "costs too much"" - this from people who consider the half trillion we have spent in iraq to be well worth it?

I would like to stop worrying and get happy, really I would. It's not as if I am enjoying this. I honestly think I am capable of looking at myself objectively. The guy I see in th mirror does not obsess over climate change just because he can't get a date. My concern has to do primarily with my gradkids yet to be, and their kids as well. I want them to have a livable world, and that will not happen without some minds being changed.

Chris W.,
I am not enough of a scientist or have too much experience to be overly concerned. As far as I have been told, the ambient temperature is rising (which I don’t disagree with). And just as many other things science there is ebb and flow. Greenland has been green before (remnants of villages have been found where there were hundreds feet of ice), suggesting that the temperature has cycled in the time that man has been able to migrate across the globe and before much of the current energy use. That suggests to me that there is something more in the nature of the earth’s system than man, and it has more of an influence than man. So I am skeptical of CO2 being the sole cause of the current temperature rise.

I also hear a lot of the concern about the global warming having to do with the destruction of the earth. That to me is an exaggeration. Almost every time I hear someone with a political point to make, they use exaggeration. Just as you have mentioned we have had greater extremes in temperature and the earth survived. I have not heard anyone claim that another planet had its climate and world destroyed by some act of its inhabitants. So people using world destruction to describe a current issue tends to undercut the credibility of their position, in my eyes.

The one point that I seldom if ever hear is consideration by the global warming theorists that blame man, is what the consequences might be if they are wrong. For me so much of life is a balance between cost benefit, I wonder when anyone feels so omnificent that they need not consider the alternative to their point of view that are they are truly thinking through their position.

I will readily admit to a short sightedness, a limited mental ability, and even a probable delusion that the earth ecosystem can and will repair itself over time. With that said, I am open to a description of how a compound that is measured in parts per million is having a greater impact on our climate than those compounds that are measured in percentage of our atmosphere.

As far as a livable world, how would you describe that, unchanged from our current conditions or simply that the earth would support a doubling or tripling of the current population, or that there are no more poor people, or that we so change society that there are no more rich people?

"There is not one scientific organization or association worldwide that disputes the IPCC reports"

I think that would be a rather premature statement without understanding scale of the institutions involved or funding for that matter. Honestly speaking, The very size of the projects & funding used by the UN means very few would actually take up the challange to the UN unless perhaps it were in their own interest & they are substantially large enough to voice their oppossition. That is why generally for instance, only countries/ individual nations(something of that scale) in oppositions to UN often get attention in this regard.


Secondly, institutions generally do not just set out to get on with projects with a clear objective to challange the findings of UN projects. The very size & clear purpose of the UN institutions for which they were set up often means that many would rather rely on their conclusions than to set up specific studies into the matter. That does not however mean that scientists the world over, agree or have to agree with such findings. Neither is this an indication that scientists have not conducted peer reviewed studies/Journals/(peer reviewed papers) whose findings are not in agreement with those of the IPCC, it simply means that such findings are not always unanamousily representative of the institutions to which these scientists belong (Scince many institutions were not specifically created to address an issue such as global warming and seconly because scientists may conduct such peer reviewed studies with other peers independant of the institutions that they work for.). That said, here are but a few of the many examples of peer reviewed papers (other than all the other arguments i have already put up earlier in earlier articles/links) that are not in agreement with the IPCC findings:

http://icecap.us/images/uploads/NEW_PAPERS.doc
http://www.fraserinstitute.org/Commerce.Web/product_files/Independent%20Summary5.pdf
http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/files/documents/Madhav%20bibliography%20LONG%20VERSION%20Feb%206-07.pdf
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DATA_ISSUES.pdf

Some additional articles on peer review findings:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Recent_Coolingand_the_Serious_Data_Integrity_issue.pdf
http://ff.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=406&Itemid=76
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=84e9e44a-802a-23ad-493a-b35d0842fed8
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=175b568a-802a-23ad-4c69-9bdd978fb3cd
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html

More on the IPCC findings:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/other/whatiswrongwiththeipcc.html
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_originals/peerreview.html

Also more on polar bear numbers:
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/commentaries_essays/senate_testimony_on_polar_bear_listing.html


With more scientists begining to speaking out the world over, the number of papers(reports) such as those above are on the rise.The scale of IPCC operations are no doubt significantly larger than others, however its findings are by no means definite or conclusive, given the nature of its funding, the processes involved in conducting the study (& clear opposition to it by other scientists) and alternative findings by other scientists.

Dar: Your sources, like the Fraser Institute, are not scientific organizations. They are so-called "free market think tanks", which have an economic ideology. Compare that with the following list:

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences
European Academy of Sciences and Arts
Network of African Science Academies
National Research Coucil (US)
European Science Foundation
American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)
Federation of American Scientists
World Meteorological Society
Royal Meteorological Society
Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences
International Union for Quaternary Research
American Quaternary Association
Stratigraphy Commission of the geological Society of London
International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics
International Union of Geological Sciences
European Geosciences Union
Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences
Geological Society of America
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
American Physical Society
American Chemical Society
Engineers Australia
Federal Climate Change Science Program (US)
American Statistical Association

I know you want to make the case that scientific organizations, and their positions do not matter, but you cannot name one of them that disputes IPCC - hint: there are none.

yes Steve. Consider the source.

Chris,
I can appreciate your concern for the bears. I love animals and am also concerned when I hear that an animal is in danger. But if you are going to report information to people, you must always be sure of your facts. I too have read the same report, here is what you got wrong. 1) the bears were not 400 miles from shore, and the bears were not all together they were spotted throughout the day in different spots ranging from 15 to 60 miles from shore which if you do research is not a hard swim for a polar bear, they are created for this environment.
2) The bears were not spotted "drowning" they were reported as "swimming" in the water and no mention of struggling or being in distress.
3) you implied that their ice pack had the back luck of having their ice field melt , how could you possibly know? The report stated nothing of where they came from or why they were swimming. Why couldn't the reason be that they were just hunting for their food ? That is what they do, you know.
You also stated how they " looked around" and "saw no ice so they headed north" . boy are you taking artistic license with this one, did they call you and tell you this?
You apparently have some psychic ability to know more about the event than the people who were actually there, how is that?
Stick to the facts Jack!

Hi Tracey-
there is a morsel of truth in what you say. the airplane did not hang around. I cannot prove the bears drowned, just as you cannot tell that it all worked out for the best.
However, bears do not hunt in the water. They only hunt on top of floating ice, because they eat seals, and in the water seals are faster. Bears only swim to get from one large piece of ice to another to ambush a seal coming up to breathe at a breathing hole.

Am I guilty of using Artistic license in getting into the heads of polar bears? possibly. But on the larger topic, that the ice is going away and polar bears have no prospect of survival without ice to hunt on, I am not using any license whatsoever. it is what it is.

It should also be noted that the polar bear is not the only arctic creature dependent on ice for survival. the Walrus is also likely to disappear from most of its current range.

Tracy,
Thanks for the special effort to get us the facts.