Report shows Alaska-area polar bear population [allegedly] declining | WORLD News
2. Can we see the actual data for each year?
3. What's the data for 2008 and 2009?
4. What's the margin of error for each year's population estimate?
Polar bear populations in and around Alaska are declining due to continued melting of sea ice and Russian poaching, according to reports released Friday by the US Fish and Wildlife Service.1. A population "hovering" in that tight range sounds pretty stable to me.
...
There was an estimated 0.3% annual decline in the polar bear population in the southern Beaufort Sea between 2001 and 2007, with the total numbers likely hovering between 1,397 and 1,526 animals, according to the draft assessments.
2. Can we see the actual data for each year?
3. What's the data for 2008 and 2009?
4. What's the margin of error for each year's population estimate?
Posts
1 comment:
Given that the bears (and the seals, and the pine trees, and the cute little bunnies, and all of us) survived just fine through the Holocene Optimum of ~8000 years ago, when global temperatures were around 5 deg C above the present, I'm not worried.
And frankly, if they want to eat an occasional Russian, that doesn't worry me too much either, even though I'm very much against elephant poaching. There are more Russians than elephants at the moment, though the Russians' reproduction rate seems to be now below that of elephants.
Perhaps in a couple of years Mr. Obama's EPA will declare Russians an endangered species. Then we'll have All Gore broker Russian offsets to the polar bears. Perhaps sealskin will make a comeback as a currency.
Something that does worry me, though, is that the article seems to imply that the bears are being poisoned by eating Russians. No more Stolichnaya for me...
Post a Comment