More ridiculous propaganda from the Telegraph: Polar bears 12 miles from land spun as human-caused calamity

Will polar bears make it back to shore? - Telegraph

The future looks bleak for this polar bear and her cub huddled on a rapidly shrinking iceberg 12 miles out to sea.

By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
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The pair became stranded after climbing onto the chunk of ice during a expedition to hunt seals. Soon the ice floe shrank down to just a few yards and rapidly drifted down the Olga Strait of Svalbard in Norway.
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[Chris Packham] "An adult can swim up to 50 miles at five or six miles per hour so the mum here should have no trouble completing the 12 miles back."

1.  It's suggested that this is a current event.  Did someone actually observe the ice floe "rapidly shrinking", or is this an artistic embellishment?

2. According to Weather Underground, the temperature in Svalbard has been far below 32 F recently.   How "rapidly" do icebergs "shrink" under these conditions?

WWF - Polar bears found swimming miles from Alaskan coast

[comment] Back in the 60's and 70's I was a crewman on an icebreaker. Remember now, this is back when "global cooling" was the terror that was going to lay down a new ice age. Well guess what? We used to see polar bears swimming 100 miles offshore and they were no more in danger of drowning than the fish that swam around them. Polar bears have a thick undercoating of hair called “guard” hair. These hair follicles are hollow, full of air. For the bear, that’s like wearing a giant life preserver. In 1938, a Canadian ship crew spotted a polar bear 200 miles offshore on an ice flow. He jumped in the water and started swimming. The boat and the bear were headed back to shore at about the same speed. Two days later, the crew observed the bear scrambling back up on the mainland. He’d made it!

Polar bear shot dead after 200 mile swim

A polar bear that swam more than 200 miles through near-freezing water to reach Iceland was shot by local police - just in case it posed a danger to humans.

General Information on Polar Bears

They can swim several hundred kilometres without resting and can dive under water for up to one minute.