We've seen the USGS predict that two-thirds of the polar bear population will be wiped out by 2050. But that analysis assumes the Arctic will still have summer ice then. The USGS acknowledges (PDF) their projection is "conservative" since it is based upon an average of existing climate models and "the observed trajectory of Arctic sea ice decline appears to be underestimated by currently available models."
In fact, the Arctic now is poised to lose all its ice by 2030 -- and possibly by 2020, as I discuss below. What will happen to the polar bears?
"The survival of polar bears as a species is difficult to envisage under conditions of zero summer sea-ice cover," concludes the 2004 Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (PDF) by leading scientists from the eight Arctic nations, including the United States. Another 2004 study by Canadian scientists agreed:
[G]iven the rapid pace of ecological change in the Arctic, the long generation time, and the highly specialised nature of polar bears, it is unlikely that polar bears will survive as a species if the sea ice disappears completely.
Why does the loss of sea ice threaten polar bears? The Canadian study "Polar Bears in a Warming Climate," in Integrative and Comparative Biology, explains:
Spatial and temporal sea ice changes will lead to shifts in trophic interactions involving polar bears through reduced availability and abundance of their main prey: seals.... A cascade of impacts beginning with reduced sea ice will be manifested in reduced adipose stores leading to lowered reproductive rates because females will have less fat to invest in cubs during the winter fast. Non-pregnant bears may have to fast on land or offshore on the remaining multiyear ice through progressively longer periods of open water while they await freeze-up and a return to hunting seals. As sea ice thins, and becomes more fractured and labile, it is likely to move more in response to winds and currents so that polar bears will need to walk or swim more and thus use greater amounts of energy to maintain contact with the remaining preferred habitats.
Research by Claire Parkinson of NASA and Canadian scientist Ian Stirling "suggests that progressively earlier breakup of the Arctic sea ice, stimulated by climate warming, shortens the spring hunting season for female polar bears in Western Hudson Bay and is likely responsible for the continuing fall in the average weight of these bears." The reality is quite grim:
"In 1980 the average weight of adult females in western Hudson Bay was 650 pounds. Their average weight in 2004 was just 507 pounds -- a 143-pound reduction," said Stirling. A 1992 study in the Canadian Journal of Zoology indicated that no females weighing less than 416 pounds gave birth the following spring.
When the ice goes, the polar bears will go. How soon could the ice go? New research suggests that the summer Arctic could be ice-free far sooner than anyone ever imagined.
Simply looking at the shrinking area of the Arctic ice misses an even more alarming decline in its thickness, and hence its volume. At a May 2006 seminar sponsored by the American Meteorological Society, Dr. Wieslaw Maslowski of the Oceanography Department at the Naval Postgraduate School reported that models suggest the Arctic lost one-third of its ice volume from 1997 to 2002. He made an alarming forecast (PDF):
If this trend persists for another 10 years -- and it has through 2005 -- we could be ice-free in the summer.
With stunning ice loss in 2007, this trend has not just continued, it has accelerated. The polar bear may be gone by 2020.
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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Comments
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caniscandida Posted 6:55 am
11 Sep 2007
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/9/7/20534/99869/#6
In that case, the polar bear would not technically be "extinct." Nevertheless, the extinction of a population, even within a species that is elsewhere hanging on, should be considered a hardly less grave matter. Cf. the circumstances of the Florida panther, the Amur tiger, the Borneo elephant, and isolated populations of the white rhinoceros.
Also, as was discussed in the "Eh ..." thread, it is not clear what benefit listing the polar bear as "threatened" according to the Endangered Species Act may have.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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SMLowry Posted 9:29 am
11 Sep 2007
We lose biodiversity, yes, but it's more than that. Imagine playing your piano one day and one of the keys is broken. And as time goes on, more keys break. The fullness of sound, the freedom to express using all the chords, would be gone. It's the same with the Earth. Pianos can be fixed. But extinction, so the saying goes, is forever. Every species add to the juiciness, the fecudity, the life force, of the Earth, in its own way. As species die, the Earth become barren.
I think listing polar bears as endangered is more a symbolic thing. If there was time to save enough habitat that the bears could survive then it might actually have impact. So on the off chance . . . Regardless, the listing should occur. For polar bears and any other species threatened by climate change. It's the right thing to do.
Me, I wonder what the breaking point is in human awareness and understanding of exactly what it is we're doing, living as though we had forever to make changes. Really, business-as-usual should stop. Period. We need to stop, take a look around, and come together and make necessary changes. We need to say, "Whoa, we really messed things up here. This is really not what we intended. Let's take a break and figure out what we can do about it." Think about it. What would we do if we could really change things? If the people's ideas of agriculture, education, business, ecological sustainability, equity, etc., in specific places, bioregions, were actually on the table and even implemented. I know, I know - chaos. And where would money come from to pay the bills? And what would we do about the greedy ones? And there are all kinds of arguments about how or why such idealism just won't work. But what we're doing isn't working either. How many, I wonder, will it take to really shift the power so that decisions are more likely to reflect reality, ecological and human reality, rather than the imperative to increase profit?
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wiscidea Posted 10:00 am
11 Sep 2007
"...I wonder what the breaking point is in human awareness and understanding of exactly what it is we're doing, living as though we had forever to make changes. Really, business-as-usual should stop. Period. We need to stop, take a look around, and come together and make necessary changes."
How will it be accomplished? What will bring an end to business as usual? Reason is not working. Violence is not acceptable and would not work anyway.
This website hosts plenty of discussion about the problems, plenty of discussion about how we would all -- in our wildest dreams -- prefer people behave, plenty of discussion about sweeping government policy changes that will never see reality. But where are the practical suggestions about how to motivate people to change and create a better world?
Forward!
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SMLowry Posted 1:07 am
15 Sep 2007
For many years now I've been putting ideas and examples of mostly community-based models out there that have the potential to make major differences for individuals and communities. These are small scale and do not have the power to supplant the global economic system, they do not have the ability to manufacture the stuff we have come to "need", they will not offer the magnitude of jobs or salary that many in the developed world have come to expect and depend on. But they are about recreating relationships, about developing community and interdependence. And who knows what they could lead to over time if given a chance? Our economic and political systems need a complete transformation. Our society and culture need to become less materialistic, more compassionate, more focused on quality of life and spirit, and ecology than on gain and profit and "stuff". And in order to make this happen many, if not most, of us will need help in one way or another. If we're in debt, whether for house or car or other things, well, these debts need to be addressed otherwise we won't have the freedom to choose another way of life. Very few people will quit their job for a more ecological lifestyle if they know they'll end up on the street for inability to pay the mortgage or rent.
Come down on me if you must for this extremely idealistic point of view, just as banks and other global institutions come down on the concept of debt forgiveness for indebted countries. You could say, well, people got themselves into their precarious financial situations, so let them suffer. You can be righteous about it but then we'll get nowhere in the most important struggle humanity has yet faced. Because it's not just "poor" people who would suffer should our current economy collapse (which it will eventually anyway and probably more dramatically if we continue dancing toward the precipice - of climate change and peak oil - that awaits). Given all the things that are happening "faster than we thought", it appears time is short (if we have any time at all) to mitigate the worst of climate change.
You're right. Reason is not working and violence isn't desireable. So therefore we must become unreasonable. For the kind of enery and spirit it will take, check out Diane Wilson's book, "An Unreasonable Woman: A True Story of Shrimpers, Politicos, Polluters and the Fight for Seadrift, Texas". I interviewed Diane for my newsletter back in 2004. Her book came out a year later. Here's what she told me: "Being rational, logical, and linear, working for more regulations isn't going to cut it. Corporations have made the playing field. If we play by their rules we're not going to get anywhere. I believe you have to be unreasonable and go out for what you believe is possible - and expect miracles. I totally do. I expect miracles. I expect things to turn around. And people just look at me in amazement. People are so disillusioned. They don't believe you can win anything. They say, "You're just wasting your time, making a fool of yourself. You can't change City Hall. But if that's your attitude, you're not going to. So when I speak it's not so much to convince people on zero discharge but to inspire them to take their passion and create miracles with it, create change. . . . All things are possible. It's whatever you can dream up. You have to be willing to put yourself out there. . . "
The solutions aren't going to be handed to us by people who know what to do. We're going to have to come up with them, each of us in our communities figuring out what will work in our places. We can borrow and replicate models, we can dream up new models, we can re-create relationships and learn new skills. We can care for each other, forbid banks from taking our homes, prevent landlords from kicking us out of their overpriced apartments. A few people cannot stand alone against those in power (like banks and other credit insitutions) but those in power cannot long stand up to a majority demanding change. Our economy is a house of card and it can come tumbling down. And there will be some violence, whether we want it or not. We cannot expect those in power to graciously hand it over to us. We cannot expect them to willingly forgive debts. We cannot expect the system to be transformed from power-over to power-with without some chaos, anger, and struggle.
I believe it has come to this point: I believe we must do whatever it takes. Yet here I sit at my computer and tomorrow morning I'll get up and drive my car to work. Why? If I believe so strongly in what I've written here? Because thumbing my nose at my bank or creditors will only endanger me, my sister, and ultimately my children and grandchildren. So I'm doing what I can on a personal level, along with putting ideas and examples and info out there in various ways, while working towards creating a living community with family and friends, hopefully before I'm too old and decrepit to do the physical work required. Will I succeed? Who knows? I hope so, I pray so because it hurts to continue to be part of the problems endangering Gaia.
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caniscandida Posted 7:27 am
15 Sep 2007
It strikes me that if we are overwhelmed by frustration, we are doing something wrong. And that is an obvious hazard of exclusively results-oriented activism. I hope it is not too controversial to suggest that while results obviously must matter, nevertheless the activism should fundamentally be virtue-oriented: This is the right thing to do right now, no matter what the future brings.
There is that by now traditional piece of wisdom, almost a cliche', of forgotten origin, which is kind of similar: "It is not the destination that matters, it is the journey." Well, I would not characterize virtue-oriented activism quite like that, but you see the similarity.
Also, with a powerful nod toward Stoicism, there is that alleged saying of Crazy Horse: "This day is a good day on which to die." (And if we can believe the prophetic writers of Star Trek, the Klingons will from time to time find the occasion to say the same thing, a few centuries from now.) I.e., whether at the end of the day you are victorious, or even whether you have survived at all, does not matter so much as whether you have fought well.
Possibly David Roberts touched on this in his recent, interesting post about recovering the voluntary local institutions of "civil society." But I am not sure; that post rather confused me. You will recall that he conflated two good things: local groups, unions, gatherings, congregations, etc. of people drawn together by a common interest or cause; and those local groups that have as their common cause the mitigation of global warming. Within the former set of groups, we could expect there to be plenty of occasions for virtue-oriented activism. And even if their activities do not look "activist" at all, nevertheless the personal satisfaction and improvement that they can afford are good things, and conventionally considered in our civilization to be elements of the "Good Life." But inasmuch as they are not specifically aiming for the mitigation of global warming, is that what DR was getting at?
Consider too the recommendations of E.O. Wilson, which Jon Rynn, I think, mentioned in that thread. Wilson wants people to get out and get involved in anything nature-oriented. He recommends such activities as birding trips, and naturalist-directed species surveys of, say, a forest or a mountain or a pond or a seashore. And he believes that such activities are genuinely helpful in dealing with the biodiversity crisis and the current on-going mass extinction event. Frankly, as much as I love and admire him, I do not quite see the connexion. Nevertheless, I entirely agree that those activities are very good and worthwhile things.
Does any of this resonate with what you remember Diane Wilson to be saying? I hope to read your interview with her at some point.
To return all this to the fate of the polar bear: If it is reasonable to expect that in a matter of a few decades, all polar bears, or at least almost all of them, will be dead, then what should we do right now? Should we simply despair, abandon the "recovery mission," and give them up as lost? I say, No, not at all; we must fight on; and we must expect miracles. At the same time, we must have the courage to acknowledge that the Earth in a few decades will likely be a most disappointing place. But it already is, in countless ways. It is our courageous perseverance that is the precious jewel at hand, and which we must hold on to.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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MAD MAC Posted 2:57 pm
04 Aug 2008
Victory in Pattani
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