Reader Arthur C. Smith III of Alaska has responded to Ed Caryl’s earlier essay: The Polar Bear, and my claim that the polar bear is in no real danger. I’ve upgraded his comment to a post. Smith has studied polar bears for years.
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What Do Polar Bears Dream While They’re Dying?
Dear Ed, P,
If this were only the Pleistocene, your factual errors, outdated science references and unfounded conclusions aside, you are right, polar bears would come to land and survive.
However, this is not the Pleistocene, it is the Holocene. For the first time in polar bear evolution, the decline of sea ice now places the bears’ turn to land in direct conflict with an animal with which it has never before had to compete: man.
Polar bears are most certainly more threatened now than in any time in their history, and we are to blame. Behind the screen of climate change, the world has been duped; polar bears do need land, a fact and reality that is being denied.
Behind this denial, there exists no sanctuary for polar bears in Alaska and no one seems to mind, much less care. “Critical Habitat” here in the US, is 96% melting sea ice. While only 4% is land, that land is still available for development.
When the sea ice melts, and it is melting, and the polar bears come to land (they are already doing so), 2,000+ polar bears will have no choice but to come ashore with no land set aside for them.
When 2000+ polar bears find no sanctuary, no refuge from development, no home, no peace, they will not survive. You say they they are in no danger, the fact is that they have never faced a greater danger.
Like Mr. Gore, your misguided position only serves to further public confusion, and further damage the future of polar bears.
Polar bears can survive climate change, but not human greed. If we continue to wage the politics of climate change on the backs of polar bears, they will never have a chance.
Polar bears need sanctuary, and until they get it, they have no future as a species on this planet.
Respectfully,
Arthur C. Smith III
8 year resident, studying and filming polar bears
Kaktovik, Alaska
Barter Island, Arctic Ocean
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Just to be clear, I meant that the polar bear was not threatened by climate change. Of course recent history shows that the polar bear (in the 1950s) were endangered due to hunting by man. Is that the case today? The population is over 25,000, up from 5000 in the 1950s.
Can man live and extract natural resources from the Arctic while co-existing with the polar bear and other wildlife? That too can be done in my opinion, so long the bears are given the room they need and industry drills and mines gently. It is not us against them.
Good points all. We (humans) have invented something with the Religion of AGW that just loves to suck all the problems of the World into one BIG Bag, which are impossible to do anything about, will never get to 1st Base, but will allow the Political Anarchists of the Globe a tree to gather round for centuries. If there is a problem with coal fired power plants and their exhausts (or anything else), fix it (don’t close them). If there’s a problem with Polar Bear habitat in the Arctic, fix it (as best you can now and keep at it if need be tomorrow). If there’s a problem with oil wells exploding in the Gulf of Mexico (or anywhere else), fix it (don’t stop and close the damn Gulf). So… don’t stand around like a bunch of Wall Street Sit-In Idiots demanding that the world STOP and START OVER with a NEW ECONOMIC ORDER and that everything be tossed out the window and we start over from Marx up just because an idiot or two in E.Anglia, Oxford, Stanford, or PennState, thinks there’s something really funny and very bad about the other gas of life (not oxygen, the other one). Yhep! People can be stupid as well as smart. I have a theory that it’s something in the water we drink that isn’t taken out during the purification process we currently use. Something that makes women think and sound like little girls, and men think and act like boys. Wonder what it is?
PS: Another curious thing: Has anyone else noticed that since July 14, 1789, there has been a phenominal increase in anarchy and insanity? It may not be just the water, there may be a genetic ‘something’ here too. It’s strange, but since that date, almost like a graph of temperatures or CO2, people have been getting dumber and dumber by the day. Just look and women’s fashions.
Hmm… the 30 year war was before that… Pascvaks, there were too many insane things happening before the storming of the Bastille to count…
Well you know you have to start sometime. I’ve always thought the French cut too much out of their gene pool. But, as you note, there certainly were a lot of ‘wiggles’ on the graph before the Bastille fell. OK! It’s the water! That French Spring water is my first suspect. 😉
I would appreciate some description of the “factual errors”. As to the “outdated Science references”, I suspect you are refering to the diet description. Their diet can’t have changed in the last 40 years. As for safe refuges ashore, most of the Alaska north slope is federal land or national wildlife refuge. It is much the same in Greenland and the Canadian arctic. Barter Island is by no means representative of the whole arctic.
I can’t speak for Alaska, but don’t they already have an Arctic National Wildlife Refuge? As for Canada, we have about 1.5 million square miles of northern territory that currently holds a population of about 100,000 people.
Lots of room for polar bears to find habitat without man in their backyard, even some wilderness areas already set aside, http://www.ec.gc.ca/nature/default.asp?lang=En&n=F77294A3-1
Other countries that border on the Arctic have populations of polar bears also, with the same sparse distribution of human communities. Even Alaska shows human population of less than 1 person per square mile for large portions of the coast and interior, even if not protected. http://www.census.gov/history/www/reference/maps/population_profile_maps.html
Even if I did believe that the Arctic was going to stop freezing each winter, I’m still having trouble seeing any sort of massive conflict looming.
The false belief in Darwin’s theory led people to think that adaptation, evolution amd extinction were natural processes.
We now know that there is an eco-god who controls and protects all species and the weather. He has sent his representatives to earth to carry out this goal. Pope Pachuri, Cardinal Hansen, Saint Algore, Bishop Suzuki and even Mr Smith have been charged with responsibility over every living thing and the sun and the rain.
They’ve got the whole world in their hands.
And by the way, Arthur, on the subject of pollution in the Arctic, I’m on your side.
https://notrickszone.com/2012/05/04/russian-sulfur-dioxide-may-be-the-cause-of-arctic-warming/
Much of that pollution is coming from Russian rivers that drain into the Arctic Ocean. The rest comes from the world ocean at large. PCB’s are a big problem because they are not easily broken down, they dissolve in fat, and therefore concentrate at the top of the Arctic food chain.
By the way, there was a DEW Line site on Barter Island. Did they completely clean that up? Transformer and other electrical component insulating oil is full of PCB’s.