The American Spectator : Oscillate This

As you'll learn at this link from NASA, the dominant current cold temperatures we're having (as well as warm ones we've had in the past that were attributed to greenhouse-gas driven global warming) have a lot to do with oscillation patterns, as NASA explains

Canada's growing polar bear population 'becoming a problem,' locals say

Harry Flaherty, chair of the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board in the capital of Iqaluit, says the polar bear population in the region, along the Davis Strait, has doubled during the past 10 years. He questions the official figures, which are based to a large extent on helicopter surveys.

“Scientists do a quick study one to two weeks in a helicopter, and don’t see all the polar bears. We’re getting totally different stories [about the bear numbers] on a daily basis from hunters and harvesters on the ground,” he says.
...
Forty years ago, old-timers living in the area around Hudson Bay were lucky to see a polar bear, Nirlungayuk says. “Now there are bears living as far south as James Bay.”

The growing population has become “a real problem,” especially over the last 10 years, he says. During the summer and fall, families enjoying outdoor activities must be on the look-out for bears. Many locals invite along other hunters for protection.
...
In the Western Hudson Bay area, where harvest quotas were reduced by 80 percent four years ago, communities are complaining about the number of polar bears. “Now people can look out the window and see as many as 20 polar bears at the ice-flow edge,” Flaherty says.

During a public hearing last September focusing on the polar bear population in the Baffin Bay region, hunters reported more sightings of females with three cubs. The normal litter is one or two. Flaherty, himself a serious hunter, says the abundant food supply – primarily baby ring seals – in the area is responsible for the bigger litters.

The on-the-ground reports, if accurate, seem to contradict the official story of the beleaguered polar bear. According to the standard theory, warmer temperatures (caused by human CO2 emissions) are shrinking the ice floe, the polar bear’s main hunting ground, forcing populations to compete for a diminishing food supply. Warmer temperatures also are to blame for the loss of thicker “multi-year ice.”

Flaherty and many others disagree with the official story. “We are aware there are changes in the weather, but it is not affecting the daily life of the animals,” he says. “Polar bears hunt in the floe-edge areas, on newly formed ice, and in the fiords in search of baby seals. They don’t hunt in the glaciers [areas of multi-year ice].

“We’re not seeing negative effects on the polar bear population from so-called climate change and receding ice,” he says. He is convinced that some scientists are deliberately “using the polar bear issue to scare people” about global warming, a view widely shared by many Nunavut locals.

More evidence that if you want to kill polar bears, emitting trace amounts of CO2 in Topeka isn't the way to do it

Healthy polar bear count confounds doomsayers - The Globe and Mail

The debate about climate change and its impact on polar bears has intensified with the release of a survey that shows the bear population in a key part of northern Canada is far larger than many scientists thought, and might be growing.

The number of bears along the western shore of Hudson Bay, believed to be among the most threatened bear subpopulations, stands at 1,013 and could be even higher, according to the results of an aerial survey released Wednesday by the Government of Nunavut. That’s 66 per cent higher than estimates by other researchers who forecasted the numbers would fall to as low as 610 because of warming temperatures that melt ice faster and ruin bears’ ability to hunt. The Hudson Bay region, which straddles Nunavut and Manitoba, is critical because it’s considered a bellwether for how polar bears are doing elsewhere in the Arctic.

...Mr. Gissing said he hopes the results lead to more research and a better understanding of polar bears. He said the media in southern Canada has led people to believe polar bears are endangered. “They are not.” He added that there are about 25,000 polar bears across Canada’s Arctic. “That’s likely the highest [population level] there has ever been.”

There’s much at stake in the debate. Population figures are used to calculate quotas for hunting, a lucrative industry for many northern communities. Hunting polar bears is highly regulated but Inuit communities can sell their quota to sport hunters, who must hunt with Inuit guides. A polar-bear hunting trip can cost up to $50,000. Demand for polar-bear fur is also soaring in places like China and Russia and prices for some pelts have doubled in the past couple of years, reaching as high as $15,000.

The Nunavut hunting quota in the western Hudson Bay area fell to 8 from 56 after the 2004 report from Environment Canada. The Nunavut government increased it slightly last year but faced a storm of protest. Over all, about 450 polar bears are killed annually across Nunavut. Mr. Gissing said a new quota is expected to be announced in June.

If BP accidentally kills a polar bear, is that bear significantly more dead than ones accidentally killed by researchers, or any of the hundreds deliberately killed every year by hunters?

BP risks another PR disaster as polar bear is killed in Alaskan oilfield | Mail Online

BP has landed itself in a new public relations disaster in the US after accidentally shooting dead a polar bear at one of its Alaskan oil fields.
...
The security guard believed that his gun contained the beanbag devices, but the weapon had instead been loaded with noise-making pyrotechnic ‘cracker’ shells, designed to startle animals without physical contact.

The shooting occurred after the guard saw the bear prowling around near an employee housing area.

2007: Nunavut investigates 2 polar bear deaths - North - CBC News

Nunavut's Environment Department is investigating the deaths of two polar bears near Pangnirtung earlier this month.

Both bears drowned after they were tranquillized by researchers doing an inventory of bears in the Davis Strait.

Polar bear hunting, harvesting and over-harvesting

Polar bears are harvested in Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and parts of eastern Russia (Chukotka area) under provisions set by the International Agreement. The numbers taken are regulated by quota in some areas, however, there are no legal limits to the number taken in some jurisdictions (see PBSG Proceedings for details). Annual harvest is between 500 and 700 bears or 2-3% of the world population of about 25,000 bears and is thought to be sustainable.

If we're already "sustainably" killing hundreds and hundreds of polar bears per year, do we all really need to radically change our lifestyles to save them from carbon dioxide?

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Announces Final Designation of Polar Bear Critical Habitat

“This critical habitat designation enables us to work with federal partners to ensure their actions within its boundaries do not harm polar bear populations,” said Tom Strickland, Assistant Secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks. “Nevertheless, the greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of its sea ice habitat caused by human-induced climate change. We will continue to work toward comprehensive strategies for the long-term survival of this iconic species.”
...They are most abundant near the shore in shallow-water areas, and in other places where currents and ocean upwelling increases marine productivity and maintains some open water during the ice-covered season.

The bear facts about the polar bear hunt - thestar.com

"We harvest more polar bears in Nunavut than the rest of the world combined," said Drikus Gissing, Nunavut's head of wildlife management. "Our annual harvest is between 450 and 500 bears a year.

"For us to justify a level like that, we need to put a lot of emphasis on research. And we believe the harvest is sustainable. We believe we have a very good management system to support it."

Alaska governor to fight polar bear habitat designation

Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said in a statement Thursday that the state is considering its options, including a legal challenge, to oppose the classification. "This additional layer of regulatory burden will not only slow job creation and economic growth here and for our nation, but will also slow oil and gas exploration efforts," Parnell said in in the press release.

Edward Itta, mayor of the North Slope Borough, also expressed concern with the designation, saying he worries it could impact subsistence hunting, projects in some northern villages, and "routine North Slope oil and gas development. "What's most aggravating in all of this is that it won't save any sea ice, so it's not a real solution to the problem," Itta said in a statement.

[Note that the article above uses the bogus polar bear "photo" discussed here] | Watts Up With That?

Polar Bear Quota Increased

Polar bear hunting season has started on Baffin Island almost a month earlier than usual. This year, the Inuit will harvest up to 32 males and nine females up from the usual limit of 16 males and seven females. The Davis Strait population of polar bears is one of the few that all parties (NGOs, science and Inuit) agree is increasing.

The increase in the Davis Strait population is both on account of changing ice patterns/good ice seasons in the eastern Arctic but also from an explosion of seal populations. I have heard that since the seal harvest was reduced in Newfoundland/Labrador that Harp Seal populations have not only increased dramatically in that area but have spread north.

Polar Bear Blog – What Are Hudson Bay’s Polar Bears up to in the New Year?

Either way, the best a polar bear can hope for right now is a mild winter – it is a bit of a fallacy that bears need the extreme cold. They seem to prefer mid-range temperatures (mid-range for us northerners being -20C). In fact, polar bears simply hunker down during blizzards (yes, they are adapted to exist in -40 blizzards but no one actually likes -40 blizzards… except for maybe ravens who on the surface do not appear to be adapted for it at all).

Polar Bear Blog – January 20 2011 – Minus Fifties For a Bit

Windchill in Churchill today is somewhere in the minus fifties. Of course, once you are in the minus fifties, it doesn’t matter much whether it is -53 or -57. They are calling for winds gusting up to 60km/hr (which is really still just moderate winds for the coast of Hudson Bay) but when your ambient temperature is already closing in on minus forty, it gets pretty intense.

Anti-apartheid activist now heads Greenpeace

Some critics, such as Sun Media's Ezra Levant, have slammed Greenpeace for growing into a multimillion-dollar corporation with its own ships and hundreds of jet-setting employees.

Naidoo said Greenpeace's resources, based on donations of individuals from around the world, without any corporate or government funding, are a drop in the bucket when compared to what they are up against.

"If you look at what the fossil fuel (industry) is putting up in money to promote climate denialism to block climate legislation and so on, if you put it all together it's more than the combined GDP (Growth Domestic Product) of the 25 per cent poorest countries in the world," said Naidoo.

Anchorage Daily News : Excess Ice Is An Indication Of Melting Ice | Real Science

US needs to act as melting ice transforms Arctic

CASE IN POINT AT NOME : The security cost of the United States’ limited capability in the Arctic became clear this month. Officials in Nome needed a Russian tanker to deliver an emergency shipment of fuel when the city was blocked by sea ice

http://www.adn.com/

Well Done, Marlo! - By Charles C. W. Cooke - Planet Gore - National Review Online

Ethanol subsidies, long opposed by most free marketeers, went quietly into the night — on Sunday, a sunset clause removed them from the tax code and Congress elected to stand by and watch.

2012 Arctic Ice Extent Heads Into New Territory | Real Science

Ice extent is more than 4000 Manhattans greater than any other recent years. Experts call this a death spiral.

Polar bear price increase | Heliogenic Climate Change

Every year, about 450 polar bears are killed and skinned in Canada — largely by Inuit hunters in Nunavut. ...Amid the threat of melting sea ice, Mr. [Andrew E.] Derocher [a biologist with the University of Alberta] said researchers rarely take issue with polar bear hunting. “I don’t know a polar bear scientist that hasn’t support subsistence harvests of polar bears — or even sport hunting of polar bears,” he said.”  “N.W.T. ups price paid for polar bear pelts to $1,750 as demand for the fur rises“

Polar Bear Alley - Polar Bear Blog, Polar Bear News from Churchill, Manitoba

Polar Bear Blog - November 2, 2008 - More Bears and More Snow

While its a beautiful sunny day right now, probably hovering around -2 or so, there's another blizzard headed our way, more north winds and unbelievably more snow. This is a good and a bad thing. The north winds should push the ice back onto the coast, bringing the bears a little closer but hopefully not too close to their seal hunting season. More snow means that it will take a little longer for the tundra to freeze up, meaning a tougher time for snowmobile and tundra buggy travel but probably better insulation for arctic plants.

More bears have come back including Dancer, the closest thing we have to a bear celebrity up here. There are a couple old bruisers out there that everyone keeps thinking are a little too past their prime but keep showing up looking better than ever. Most of the bears this year are in great shape.
...
Polar Bear AlleyPolar Bear Blog - October 30, 2008 - Good Ol' Blizzard

Two ful days of snow - something like 17cm in 24 hours... and still going, except that now the wind has switched to the northwest and we have a full-on blizzard - a pre-Halloween blizzard no less... There's really only one bear season in the past ten years that I remember more snow than this one, maybe 2001 or 02 or something like that... I could be wrong...

More bears coming in, three sets of mothers with this year's cubs added to the three or four families already around. Sounds like five big males are hanging out along the coastal trail, sparring now that the weather is colder.

Hottest year update, Churchill polar bear edition: "the ice is really just too thick right now for consistent and successful seal hunting"

Polar Bear Blog – Winter, Freeze-up and Churchill’s Polar Bears | Polar Bear Alley – Guide to the Polar Bears of Churchill

Well, it is around -50C with the windchill in Churchill today...
As I have said before, January is not a really big month for the polar bears of western Hudson Bay. The bulk of hunting is done in the spring and the ice is really just too thick right now for consistent and successful seal hunting. It is believed that the bears will actually keep losing weight over the winter, hitting their lowest weights in spring. For much of the coldest and darkest parts of winter (even if its not that dark near Churchill…), the bears actually remain in a state of ‘walking hibernation’.

In blizzards and extreme cold, the bears kind of take a ‘time out’, hunkering down on the lee-side of a snow drift or ice ridge and simply wait things out. Much like blizzards in ‘bear season’, they will let the snow cover them, likely providing a bit of insulation from the wind. It is this time of year that is toughest for sub-adult bears and mothers with cubs. Any bear without a good level of fat stores is more susceptible to extreme temperatures and the increased energy expenditures associated with cold.

Zoologist Susan Crockford: Ian Stirling’s latest howler: “the polar bear who died of climate change”

polarbearscience

I suggest this is what really happened: the polar bear biologists working in Svalbard earlier this year knew this bear was going to die back in April when they captured him – they simply waited, with a photographer on hand, until he died. It was an orchestrated photo-op...How is it possible that this bear was healthy in April but dead by starvation less than 3 months later? Why was he even on land in April? Why was global warming photographer Ashley Cooper in Svalbard for 12 days in July, fortuitously available to take the bear’s picture?

The fact that the bear was onshore in April, available for capture by polar bear biologists, is a red flag. He should not have left the ice this early. He should have been out on the ice hunting seals. The ice may have pulled away from the shore but there was no compelling reason for him to go onshore if he was healthy and still successfully hunting – he just had to stay on the ice. He must have [been] sick or dying of old age.

This bear was doomed back in April by the simple act of leaving the ice so early and the biologists working the region (putting radio collars on bear) had to have known it: leaving the ice in April was not normal behavior. I suggest they alerted their colleagues and then kept track of him until he died, so they could get a useful picture of his dead carcass.

[Lots of inconsistencies in this typical AP polar bear sob story] -- latimes.com

Paradoxically, although scientists have documented a 25 percent decline in numbers around Hudson Bay, Inuit there and elsewhere in eastern Canada and in Greenland report seeing more bears.
...
Only 14 bears were taken in the last December-to-May hunting season here, out of a local quota of 40, Branigan said. Half the quota is allotted to sport hunters. The unused tags are then added to the half reserved for "subsistence" hunting by Inuit, who prize the skins for making traditional winter clothing [if we're willing to devastate economies trying to save polar bears from carbon dioxide, why are we letting people make clothing out of them!?] or for selling whole to middlemen.
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Born, of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, also labels as "nonsense" the contention of some that global polar bear numbers have grown impressively in recent decades. Historical data don't exist to make that comparison, he said.
...
Already, in their scattered studies, researchers find bears thinner, hungrier, having fewer cubs.  [ok, we don't have historical data on polar bear populations, but we DO have historical data on polar bear "thinness" and "hungriness"?!]
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Like little Henry Nasogaluak Jr., Eddie Gruben's 103 grandchildren and great-grandchildren [I guess this guy doesn't buy into population control as a response to the global warming scam] will likely live in a very different Arctic in the 21st century, no matter what happens in courtrooms and government councils down south.

"The ice is melting [except it just grew by an area 1.5 times the size of Texas]," the old man said. He worried about his old foe, the white bear.

Margaret Wente: How to save the polar bears: Leave them alone! - The Globe and Mail

“It’s not fun to see a mother bear watch her cubs falling dead because she can no longer nurse them,” University of Alberta scientist Andrew Derocher told the CBC last week. He thinks desperate times call for desperate measures.
...
Here’s some news you won’t hear from Dr. Derocher. The polar-bear population is not declining. In fact, it’s much bigger than it was 40 years ago, when a global hunting ban was introduced. After dwindling to a few thousand, the number of polar bears has rebounded to 20,000 or 25,000 today.

“This is essentially a heartening fact, but nobody knows it,” says Zac Unger, a California writer who planned to write a book on the end of the polar bears. Instead, he wound up writing a book about the loss of scientific integrity. It’s called Never Look a Polar Bear in the Eye.
...
Northerners are generally contemptuous of fly-in experts from the South. The polar bears they see are doing fine, not that anyone cares what they think. One experienced ranger – who has helped countless researchers prepare projects meant to prove the bears are doomed – told Mr. Unger: “I’m just starting to resent being told that I’m not seeing what I know abso-flipping-lutely damn well that I’m seeing with my own eyes.”
...
Mr. Eliasson is skeptical of doom-and-gloom scenarios based on computer models – on which scientists such as Dr. Derocher rely heavily. “There is a widespread belief in the North these days that researchers and NGOs have become more interested in media face-time than actual polar bear research,” he says. “They are super nice guys. I had incredible respect for them, but now I’m blogging against them. I just feel like they’re lost.”
...
Mr. Unger has another suggestion for polar bear researchers. Stop doing politics and get back to doing science, which is by its very nature complicated and uncertain. Of course, the headlines might die down. But the alternative is to risk being utterly discredited. And that would not be good for polar bears, scientists or anybody else.  [Via SC]

Clive James: Attenborough’s Global Warming Blunder | The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)

Getting a bit frail in my old age, I never thought I’d live to see the day when the Guardian told the BBC to stop cooking the books. But it happened.

About those walrus stampedes

Google currently shows about 14,000 hits for "walruses stampedes".

Excerpts from a typical scare story, along with my comments:

The giant, tusked mammals typically clamber onto the sea ice to rest, or haul themselves onto land for just a few weeks at a time.

Ok, so it's not unusual for them to haul up on land. Google shows a lot of pictures of them on land.

As a result, walruses came ashore earlier and stayed longer, congregating in extremely high numbers, with herds as big as 40,000 at Point Shmidt, a spot that had not been used by walruses as a "haulout" for a century, scientists said.

Are you saying that that spot *was* used as a haulout in earlier years?

Walruses are vulnerable to stampedes when they gather in such large numbers. The appearance of a polar bear, a hunter or a low-flying airplane can send them rushing to the water.

Are stampedes ever caused by the appearance of researchers or low-flying research planes?

Sure enough, scientists received reports of hundreds and hundreds of walruses dead of internal injuries suffered in stampedes. Many of the youngest and weakest animals, mostly calves born in the spring, were crushed.

Biologist Anatoly Kochnev of Russia's Pacific Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography estimated 3,000 to 4,000 walruses out of population of perhaps 200,000 died, or two or three times the usual number on shoreline haulouts.

Were anecdotal reports of "hundreds and hundreds" used to come up with the estimate of 3,000 to 4,000? How much actual counting was done? What's the baseline number of annual stampede deaths? Is anyone checking that any animals found dead were killed in stampedes, rather than dying from some other cause?

No large-scale walrus die-offs were seen in Alaska during the same period, apparently because the animals congregated in smaller groups on the American side of the Bering Strait, with the biggest known herd at about 2,500.

So when a walrus herd of 2,500 is panicked, stampede deaths are not a big deal, but when the herd reaches tens of thousands, we can expect lots of stampede deaths?
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It seems to me that more walruses worldwide may die from hunting than from stampedes. Note an excerpt from this Sea World link:

As the Pacific walrus population grew, annual subsistence catches by indigenous Arctic peoples ranged from about 3,000 to 16,000 walruses per year until about 1990, and then decreased to an average of 5,789 animals per year from 1996 to 2000.

A related paragraph is here:

Pacific walrus meat has been used for the past 40 years to feed foxes which are kept on government - subsidised fur farms in Chukotka. One estimate made by natives was of an annual kill of 10,000 - 12,000 walruses per year, but this may have been overstated. Recent investigations have found that much of the meat is left to waste and that there are no markets for the resultant fox furs. Fox farming operations in Chukotka are currently in decline due to economic recession. Local unemployment caused by the general economic situation and the closure of the farms has however led to a recent increase in illegal head-hunting.

Some more background information is in this 2007 WWF post:

Last fall some 20,000-30,000 animals were piled up there. No one has actually counted them all, but the Vankarem residents are certain the number is growing.
...
In early winter, when the ice is re-forming and walruses leave the beach, up to 100 carcasses remain behind. These blubbery animals offer a perfect meal for wandering and hungry polar bears.
...
As soon as the walruses departed, the polar bear patrol spent several days working to collect the remains of walruses killed in the stampedes. Using a tractor, they carted the carcasses six miles west of the village, anticipating that the bears would come from the west in the fall. In the end, they scattered some 80 walruses around selected sites -- and then they waited.

In mid-November, a truck driver alerted the patrol to bear tracks on the beach. The wave had begun. For the next three weeks, bears making their way along the coast stopped to graze on the carcasses at this so-called "feeding point" instead of proceeding to the village. At one time alone, Sergey and his team counted 96 bears feeding on the walrus. In total they estimated that 185 bears had been circulating with a six mile radius around the village.

My comments: Eighty-100 dead walruses out of 20,000-30,000 hauled out on land seems quite low, if Kochnev's estimate of 3,000-4,000 total stampede deaths is correct (remember, his estimate is based on a population of maybe 200,000, many of which are not hauled out in huge herds).

Also, if polar bear numbers are so threatened by global warming, what are 185 of them doing within six miles of the village?

When I read stuff like this, I'm also not completely convinced that walruses are threatened with extinction:

...researchers have encountered herds as large as 100,000 in recent years...

When I read this in the "walrus" Wikipedia entry, I'm also not convinced that lack of summer ice is necessarily a big deal:

In the non-reproductive season (late summer and fall) walruses tend to migrate away from the ice and form massive aggregations of tens of thousands of individuals on rocky beaches or outcrops.

In the same entry, when I read this, I'm not convinced that polar bears really need year-round sea ice in order to feed successfully:

Polar bears hunt walruses by rushing at beached aggregations and consuming those individuals that are crushed or wounded in the sudden mass exodus, typically younger or infirm animals.

Some video of polar bears successfully hunting walruses is here and here. I don't see any ice in that first hunting scene.

I hate it when that happens: Polar bear population is "stable" while also allegedly being decimated by climate change

Inuit, the Polar Bear and Climate Change - The Ecologist

The Greenlandic government, a largely autonomous Inuit outfit, have been garnering condemnation from environmentalists for years over its whaling, fishing and hunting practices and its reluctance to cooperate with internationally enforced restrictions. Its members argue, alongside the Canadian Inuits, that the polar bear hunt is sustainable and the bear’s population stable...
Isolated from external factors, the arguments hold up. It is not hunting that is decimating the polar bear population but climate change, while whales, similarly affected, have suffered the additional pressure of decades of over fishing from foreign boats.

Hunting, not global warming, affected polar bear population

PUPAGANDA: Hunting, not global warming, affected polar bear population

Dr. Mitch Taylor, a Canadian polar bear expert who tracks polar bear populations, says bear populations will show increases, not decreases, in the 2009 census now underway.

Akshay produces documentary on global warming - The Times of India

Akshay Kumar, so far associated only with mainstream Bollywood films, has found a new cause that he is passionate about. He has produced a documentary about the effects of global warming.

Titled 'White Knight', it is about Chewang Norphel of Leh, who makes artificial glaciers to conserve water for those living in high altitude areas.

Now The European Union Starts To Ban Recycling - Forbes

No, it’s not a spoof. It really is true that those tasked with running an entire continent, the bureaucrats in Brussels, think that putting home made jam (jelly to you perhaps) in used jam jars should be and is a crime. With serious penalties too

Polar Bear Blog – Carcasses, Trophies and Collars | Polar Bear Alley – Guide to the Polar Bears of Churchill

Bears have also been increasingly seen feeding on whale carcasses across the Canadian arctic. A recent articles implies that this is a new trend because of starving climate change bears but, in reality, bears are opportunistic scavengers and have been feasting on whale carcasses for, well, quite a long time. While warming climate and declining ice likely contribute to more bears on land, it is also a very real possibility that there are just more bears around.

Speaking of more bears around, the Inuit and US Governments are in a battle over polar bears. The US government is planning to ban the import of polar bear ‘trophies’ while the Canadian Inuit organizations insist that polar bear populations are not in imminent danger and many, in fact, may be healthy.

There is a major gap between north and south on this issue. Most of the people that live around polar bears do not feel that their populations are declining as of yet and that while there are definite threats, now is not the time for drastic action. For years, there have been very good hunting/wildlife management protocols in place and, to me, it looks like the Inuit feel extremely disrespected by the actions of the US Government.

While I am not a hunter (especially not a trophy hunter), this looks a bit like the usual American protectionism disguised as conservation – we put up with this stuff a lot in Canada. If American hunters cannot travel to Canada, they will seek their trophies in Alaska. Maybe a cynical view but, well, prove me wrong.

Finally, there is a new study being launched by the Ontario Government to study the polar bears of southern Hudson Bay. This is the most southerly population of bears, I believe on the same latitude as London, England. While most would think that this population is in dire straits due to a warming climate, the current evidence suggests that it has been doing quite well – better, in fact, than the polar bears of western Hudson Bay (Churchill’s bears).

Increased survival of polar bear cubs during mild springs

From this page:

Unusually high polar bear (Ursus maritimus Phipps, 1774) predation on ringed seal (Pusa hispida (Schreber, 1775)) pups and increased survival of polar bear cubs during mild springs is documented in published articles. Strong predation on newborn ringed seal pups in early spring, however, is likely to lower the overall energy intake of polar bears if ringed seal pups are their main food, because the energetic value of ringed seal pups increases 7–8 times during the 6 week lactation period. So although hunting success in early spring increases cub survival during the period after den emergence,when they are most vulnerable, it is likely to increase the number of starving bears later in the season. This negative-feedback effect of strong spring predation will not occur in areas where other seal species are abundant during summer, and polar bears in such areas are likely to exhibit population growth during periods with milder springs, at least until the ringed seal population has been depleted. Long time series of population estimates that can be used to test this hypothesis do not exist, but it is strongly supported by catch statistics for polar bears and ringed seals from east Greenland.

Note that the increased polar bear cub survival in mild springs is actually documented while the "starvation later" part seems to be only a hypothesis.

A related paragraph is here:

In November 2007, he [Dr. Mitch Taylor, Wildlife Director with the Government of Nunavut] commented: “I really think that the amount of seals seen and seal kills witnessed (or almost witnessed) means that the ringed seal population in Hudson Bay is huge right now, probably well in excess of the last estimate of nearly half a million. Considering we need about 10,000 ringed seals to feed this population of bears, the bears have a good start.”

NY Times features this quote: "The situation of polar bears is getting more and more similar to the story of the Great Auk"

Russia and U.S. Join to Help Polar Bears - NYTimes.com

Scientists and wildlife conservation groups say the world’s polar bear population, estimated at 20,000 to 25,000, is in grave peril because of climate change, which is depleting ice levels, and increased hunting and trade in skins and parts.
...
Mr. Ovsyannikov said that even in sanctuaries, scientists were observing a general weakening in the polar bear population, including lower reproduction rates and higher mortality.

“The situation of polar bears is getting more and more similar to the story of the Great Auk,” said Mr. Ovsyannikov, referring to the Arctic bird that became extinct in the mid-19th century. “We start thinking and start discussing what actions we have to take when it is too late.”

Flashback: Polar bear counts up fivefold since 1970s

Indeed, since the 1970s, while the world was warming, polar bear numbers increased dramatically from around 5,000 to as many as 25,000 today - higher than at any time in 20th century.

If we're really so concerned about polar bears, why don't we try not shooting them?

globeandmail.com: Nunavut rejects call to curb polar bear hunt

Nunavut has decided to leave unchanged the number of polar bears it allows to be killed each year in one of the largest areas of the territory, rejecting calls for tighter restrictions on hunting to allow the carnivores' populations to recover.

The Ministry of Environment has left unchanged the annual quota of 105 polar bears from the Baffin Bay region. A formal announcement of the decision is expected as early as today. Setting the quota has been highly controversial because it fixes the number of the animals that are available for both Inuit hunting and international big-game hunters.

The Baffin population straddles Canada and adjacent areas of Greenland. The number of polar bears has dropped from an estimated 2,100 in 1997 to about 1,500 today, due to high levels of hunting by Inuit in both countries.

Environmentalists have warned that the hunting decision may lead to international boycotts against Nunavut, and to concerns that the government, which relies heavily on advice from Inuit hunters, is ignoring the scientific research showing a precipitous plunge in the number of bears.

The hunting quota was set at 105 in 2004, based on the relatively large population numbers from the late 1990s. The harvesting in Nunavut was also based on an assumption that the number of bears killed in Greenland was as low as 18 a year, but subsequent research has shown the actual figure to be about 10 times higher.

"You can't pretend to be looking after polar bears by carrying on with the same level of harvest. It is just totally unacceptable," said Peter J. Ewins, director of species conservation for WWF-Canada, an environmental advocacy group that has lobbied Nunavut to reduce hunting levels. "They've made a huge mistake that caused a 30-per-cent population decline."

He says hunting should be curbed while Greenland, Nunavut and the federal government jointly work on a plan that would allow populations to recover and then be managed on a sustainable level.

The recommendation for the hunting quota was made by the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and accepted by the Ministry of Environment.

But in 2007, the ministry had proposed a range of options to the board, from having a complete harvest moratorium until the population increases to the healthy levels that prevailed in the 1990s, to allowing a scaled-back hunt of 64 animals a year, the previous level.

Mr. Ewins said the government's decision reflected pressure from Inuit hunters.

Again, a question: If we're actually worried about polar bears, why are we allowing people to shoot high-powered bullets through the vital organs of many thousands of them per decade?

Polar bear habitat threatened | News | Wanderlust

Conservationists predict a dramatic reduction in polar bears over the next ten to 50 years with climate change as the biggest threat to their survival

Polar bear - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Soviet Union banned the harvest of polar bears in 1956, however poaching continued and is believed to pose a serious threat to the polar bear population...Until 2005 Greenland placed no limit on hunting by indigenous people. However, in 2006 it imposed a limit of 150, while also allowed recreational hunting for the first time...About 500 bears are killed per year by humans across Canada

Flashback: Polar bears: Close encounters between Arctic animals and humans on the rise | Alaska Dispatch

From July 2010 to July 2011, about 48 problem bears were killed in Nunavut.

More outright fraud from polar bear researcher Steven Amstrup: "We have no evidence that they can forage successfully in open water or on land"

Was This Polar Bear a Victim of Climate Change? | Weather Underground

Polar bears' diet consists almost exclusively of ringed seals, so they must hunt on sea ice to find enough food, notes Dr. Steven Amstrup, the chief scientist at Polar Bears International.
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"We have no evidence that they can forage successfully in open water or on land," he said

The Polar Bear | Terrestrial Foraging

Feeding Habits based on Age and Gender

Terrestrial diet of summer bears includes: berries, seaweed, grass, carrion, eggs, sedges, rodents, birds, other vegetation and food wastes (Practical Dictionary of Siberia and the North, 2005). However there have been documented cases of polar bears hunting caribou and readily hunting birds (Derocher, Stirling and Andriashek, 1993.
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Feeding on berries in adult females can be linked to the required energy stores needed for successful reproduction (Derocher, Stirling and Andriashek, 1993, p. 252) and survival of the newborn cubs (Derocher, Lunn and Stirling, 2004, p. 165; Derocher, Stirling and Andriashek, 1993, p. 253).
Similarly, summer scavenging of reindeer carcasses in Svalbard by females with cubs may be a crucial aspect of cub survival in the family’s first spring (Derocher, Wiig and Bangjord, 2000, p. 677).